She nestles against me, I stroke her back. Of course I understand that she’s worried, but this is clearly over the top. Slowly I draw her over to the examination couch, we sit down, and I feel her gradually relax.
Thank God.
‘Everything is fine,’ I say again. ‘There’s absolutely no reason to worry.’
‘But the readings and the symptoms…’
‘Shhh.’ I kiss the crown of her head gently, she lets out a long breath.
Out of nowhere, her whole body goes rigid. Despite my attempts to hold on to her, she pulls away from me.
What is she doing? Is she seriously staring at the CT image on the screen?
Yes. She keeps staring at it, then she gets up as if in a trance and moves toward the image. The silence in this room suddenly becomes unbearable.
Now she taps the monitor with her index finger. ‘There.’ It’s only a small word and she barely whispers it, yet it sends a shiver through me. ‘The lymph nodes have fused together, all three of them.’
I get up too and take a look at the image. Admittedly, the nodes aren’t particularly well delineated from one another, but they are not fused.
Besides, I can’t be sick. I can’t have the same thing Lilly has, I can’t go down the path she…
No. I’m healthy.
‘I don’t see anything worrying there,’ I say.
Her expression is serious. Far too serious. ‘You’re not a doctor either.’
No, I’m not. But I’ve studied long enough to be able to assess the situation. She really needs to stop cobbling together horror scenarios for which there is no real basis. Abnormal blood values after a cut and lymph nodes that don’t hurt when she’s on painkillers don’t give the slightest cause for concern.
No doctor in the world would suspect cancer—only Nyla, who is once again turning into Miss Worst Case over absolutely nothing at all.
‘Everything points to it.’ Nyla sounds as if she has completely lost her mind by now—no, wrong, she doesn’t just sound like it, she has. She has lost her mind. ‘We should look into this further.’
Did she really just suggest that? Because she can’t get a handle on her irrational fear any other way, I’m supposed to undergo painful tests? ‘No.’
She scrutinizes me relentlessly, bitter seriousness etched on her face. ‘You have cancer.’
That’s enough now. ‘I’m healthy,’ I reply forcefully. I have to be, because anything else would be… Whatever, it’s not like I even need to think about it.
We look at each other—I have no idea for how long—then she shakes her head. ‘Just because you don’t want to see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.’
Her words conjure up our conversation in the garden earlier, and for a moment I wonder if she’s right. Am I behaving like my mother right now?
No. This has absolutely nothing to do with that. Nyla is completely losing it. Nothing she believes is real actually is. But how on earth am I supposed to make her understand that?
Chapter Thirty-Nine
NYLA
A strange kind of stubbornness suddenly takes over his expression. ‘For the last time: I’m not sick.’
I stare at him, appalled by his reaction. ‘You’re just like your mother, don’t you see that?’
He stares back, a mixture of incomprehension and anger in his eyes. ‘Don’t you start on my mother now, that’s not what this is about at all. Yourdiagnosisis completely far-fetched, and you know it. You’re overreacting.’
I most certainly am not. ‘I’m ordering a biopsy and a full-body CT scan,’ I reply urgently. ‘As soon as we have all the data, we’ll talk to my oncologist. Then you’ll start therapy as quickly as possible.’
Up to now he’s been leaning against the windowsill, trying to look casual, but now he pushes himself away sharply. ‘Now you’re already planning the therapy too? You’ve completely lost it.’
