Page 134 of While I’m Still Here

Danny bites his lip. Colin closes his eyes. Marcus looks at the ceiling as though asking a God he doesn't believe in for patience. “Yes, Bea,” Marcus says eventually. “We remember.”

“Just checking.”

Colin gives my hand a squeeze. “Go back to sleep.”

“I don't want to sleep.”

“You need to rest.”

“I need tits.”

Nobody laughs, and the joke hangs there for a second before collapsing under the weight of what it actually means, and my eyes fill again. Marcus is the one who answers. “I know.”

* * *

Several hours later, I finally decide I want to look.

All three of them are still there. Danny has disappeared for coffee twice and returned both times, Marcus has answered every practical question I've asked without once pretending his own experience makes him my doctor, and Colin has barely moved from the chair beside me. Nurses have come and gone, observations have been taken, pain has shifted from frightening to manageable and back again, and through all of it I have carefully avoided looking properly at my chest.

Eventually, I can't avoid it anymore. “I think I want to see.”

The change in the room is immediate, but nobody rushes me. Colin turns towards me, Danny sits straighter, and Marcus watches my face. “Do you want us to leave?” Marcus asks.

“No.” The answer comes so quickly it surprises even me. “I want you here.”

Danny nods. “Then we're here.”

My hands are shaking by the time I reach for the gown. Colin notices and quietly asks whether I want help, but I shake my head. Before I can move, I look toward Marcus, and he gives me a tiny nod.

Then I look.

I pull the gown open slowly, my hands clumsy from medication and nerves, and for several seconds my brain refuses to make sense of what I'm seeing. There are dressings, swelling and bruising, and tubes that make me immediately decide drains are vile little bastards regardless of whatever useful medical purpose they serve. But those things aren't what hold my attention.

It's the absence.

The curves are gone. My chest looks flat beneath the dressings, and without my breasts above it, even my stomach looks unfamiliar, as though removing two parts of my body has somehow rearranged everything around them too.

“Oh.” Nobody speaks. Thank fuck. “Oh, fuck.” My throat closes. “I hate it.”

Colin shifts towards me but waits until I reach for him before taking my hand.

“I fucking hate it,” I say again, crying now. “I want them back.”

“I know,” Colin whispers.

“I don't look like me.”

His thumb moves over my fingers. “I know it doesn't feel like you.”

“No.” I shake my head, frustrated because that isn't what I mean. “Look at me, Colin.”

“I am looking at you.”

“No. Look.”

I gesture towards my chest.

So Colin does. He looks properly, and because apparently I enjoy emotional self-harm, I watch his face while he takes in the dressings, the swelling and the body that is different from the one he held last night. There is sadness in his expression. Shock too, perhaps. But there is no disgust.