Page 131 of While I’m Still Here

I don't consciously tell it to. There is no thought behind it, no decision, only a movement I've made thousands of times without noticing. My palm lifts towards my chest, reaching for the familiar weight that has been there since puberty, and my fingers meet something that doesn't make sense.

Dressing.

My hand stops. Beneath it there is tenderness and padding and a shape my drugged brain cannot immediately understand, so I move my hand sideways, absurdly convinced I've simply missed.

I haven't.

There is no breast there.

The realisation comes before the memories do, and for one horrible second I am awake enough to understand that something is missing but not awake enough to remember why. Then everything crashes back into place at once. The hospital. Cancer. This morning. Colin's T-shirt. Burnt toast. Three men fasting with me because apparently I collect idiots. The anaesthetist. The lights above the operating table.

Two breasts when I went to sleep.

None now.

“Oh.” The sound barely makes it out of my mouth, but somebody beside me hears it.

“Bea?”

Colin.

I turn my head slowly and find him sitting in a chair pulled so close to the bed that his knee is almost touching it. I don't know how long he's been there. His eyes are red, his hair looks as though he's spent hours dragging his hands through it, and he's still wearing the same clothes he had on this morning. Something about his face feels painfully familiar, and I stare at him for several seconds without speaking.

“Hi,” Colin says quietly.

I should probably say hello. Instead, I look around the room and realise two people are missing. “Where are they?”

Colin doesn't need me to explain. “Outside. They only let one of us come in at first. Danny told me to go.”

“Marcus agreed?”

“He did.”

Of course they chose Colin. Twenty-two years gives you certain privileges, apparently, including being elected first boyfriend at the bedside when your girlfriend wakes up without her tits. “Are they still here?”

Something in Colin's expression cracks. He leans closer and brushes his thumb over the back of my hand. “Bea, they haven't moved. Danny went for coffee once, and Marcus went with him because he didn't trust Danny to come back with anything drinkable, but they've been here the whole time.”

I close my eyes again, letting the relief settle somewhere beneath the anaesthetic fog. All three of them are still here. When I open my eyes, however, my hand is still resting against the dressing on my chest, and whatever comfort their presence gives me cannot change what I can feel underneath my palm. “Did it happen?”

Colin's smile disappears. “Yeah, sweetheart. It happened.”

“Both?”

“Both.”

“Definitely?”

That produces the saddest little laugh I've ever heard from him. “Definitely.”

I look down, although there isn't much to see yet. A hospital gown, dressings and tubes I absolutely refuse to acknowledge until someone forces me to. But I can see enough. The silhouette I've known for most of my life isn't there anymore, and my drug-addled brain seems to find this deeply offensive. “My tits are gone.”

“Yeah,” Colin says softly.

“I had them this morning.”

“I know.”

“They were quite good tits.”