Page 148 of While I’m Still Here

Not dramatically. There is no cinematic moment where I wake up bald, scream at my reflection and discover a perfectly arranged clump of hair sitting on a white pillow like my body has developed a flair for visual metaphor. I wake because I need a wee, lie there for several minutes negotiating with my bladder about whether either of us truly cares enough to get out of bed, then finally roll onto my back and notice three strands of hair caught against my cheek.

Three.

That's nothing.

People lose hair every day. Hair falls out in the shower, gets trapped in brushes, wraps itself inexplicably around your toes even when you haven't brushed your hair anywhere near your feet. Three hairs are not an emergency.

So I pick them from my cheek and drop them onto the bedside table and then I sit up.

There are more on my pillow. I stare at them. Maybe fifteen… Twenty. It's difficult to count hair because strands overlap and I haven't yet reached the stage of cancer where I am willing to separate individual hairs before breakfast. They are just there, dark against the pale pillowcase, unmistakably mine.

My stomach drops. “No.” It's the first thing I say.

I knew this was coming.

That is the most useless sentence anybody can say about anything terrible.

I knew I had surgery coming. I still cried when I woke without breasts. I knew chemotherapy could make me sick. I still cried the first time I spent half the night on the bathroom floor feeling as though my body was trying to turn itself inside out. I knew my hair might fall out because my oncology team told me it could, Marcus told me his did during treatment, and every cancer leaflet ever printed appears contractually obligated to contain a photograph of a beautiful bald woman wearing a headscarf and looking suspiciously serene about the entire situation.

I knew. Apparently knowledge and experience live in different fucking postcodes.

I reach up slowly and touch my hair. My fingers slide into it at the side of my head, and for a few seconds I don't move them because some stupid part of me believes that if I don't pull, nothing will happen. I can stay exactly like this forever, sitting in bed with my fingers buried near my roots, and my hair will remain attached because I haven't moved a muscle.

Eventually, I pull. Gently. There is no pain, and that's somehow worse because my hand comes away with hair caught between my fingers.

Not one strand or two. Enough that I stop breathing. “Oh.”

There is that fucking word again. The same one I said when I woke after surgery and reached for breasts that weren't there.

Oh.

Apparently that's what I say when my body becomes unfamiliar. I stare at my hand for so long that the individual strands blur together, then I do it again. I don't know why. Maybe because humans are fucking idiots. Maybe because when something hurts, we have an inexplicable need to check whether it will hurt exactly the same way twice.

My fingers disappear into my hair again, and I pull. More comes out. I make a sound I don't recognise, and then I'm out of bed. I don't even put my slippers on. I walk straight into the bathroom in an oversized T-shirt and knickers, switch on the light and stare at myself in the mirror.

I still have hair. It's still there. I look exactly like I did when I went to sleep. Messy bun half collapsed from the night. Flyaways around my face. Roots desperately needing attention because apparently even cancer cannot prevent me from procrastinating a hair appointment.

I take the elastic out, and more hair comes with it. My throat closes. “No.” I put the elastic on the sink. There are strands wrapped around it. “No, no, no.”

I run my fingers through the ends. Hair comes away. I do it again.

More.

Again.

More.

By the fourth time, tears are already running down my face, but I keep fucking doing it because apparently I need proof. I need to know how bad it is. I need to find the point where my hand comes away empty.

It doesn't.

I stare at myself in the mirror, hair wrapped around my fingers, and something inside me breaks. “I don't want this.” My reflection doesn't answer. “I don't want to lose this too.”

I thump my hand against the sink. “I don’t want to fucking do this!” I sob and cover my mouth when a horrible, wounded sound comes from me, then I make the mistake of looking into the mirror and see the hair still wrapped around my fingers, pressed against my mouth. “No!”

It's hair.

I know.