Page 51 of While I’m Still Here

Except considerably less likely to be blamed on a questionable decision in Magaluf. Then a door opens, and someone calls my name, breaking me out of the constant loop of titty herpes in my head. All amusement dies so quickly it feels as if somebody reached inside me and switched off the humour switch. “Sorry you have cancer… no laughing for you, you miserable cow.”

I stand, automatically smoothing my hands down the front of my blouse even though there is nothing wrong with it, and Colin gets to his feet beside me. “You don’t have to come in,” I tell him.

Colin doesn’t argue immediately. Instead, he studies my face before asking. “Do you want me to?”

I glance towards the nurse waiting beside the door. Yesterday, I might have said no because I’d have thought I was supposed to prove I could do it alone. Today, I’m discovering that being capable of doing something alone and actually wanting to are two completely different things. “Yes,” I say.

Colin nods. “Then I’m coming.”

He bends to collect his coffee, but I’m already shaking my head. “Not with that you aren’t.”

His hand stops. “Why?”

“Because if I walk in there and someone tells me something awful and you’re sitting there drinking coffee you have done nothing but complain about, I’ll resent you forever,” I tell him.

He looks at the cup, then at me, apparently decides this is a perfectly reasonable boundary and drops it into the nearest bin. “Anything else before we walk in there?”

“Don’t breathe too loudly.”

“For fuck sake,” he laughs. “Come on then, Bea. Let’s get you some answers.”

The nurse at the door laughs… at least one of us is having a nice morning because I get precisely zero concrete answers. The appointment itself is somehow both reassuring and absolutely fucking useless. Nothing terrible has appeared, but I have to resist the urge to tell the doctor to piss off when she says that there isn’t a precise schedule detailing exactly what is going to happen to me and when.

Instead, all I get is more ifs… some probablys, and then some more we’ll know after.

It’s like a fucked up cake recipe that nobody wants to eat.

They’re discussing surgery and lymph nodes, what they already know from the biopsy, and what pathology will tell them afterwards. More tests to arrange, and more decisions that can’t be made until those results come in. Colin sits beside me with the cheap notebook we bought specifically for cancer because I refused to contaminate one of my good notebooks with malignancy, and he writes down almost everything the doctor says.

His handwriting is atrocious. At one point, I lean over to look and whisper, “What the fuck does that say?”

“Lymph nodes.”

“That does not say lymph nodes,” I whisper-shout.

“It does to me. Now pay attention to the nice doctor, Bea.”

“It looks like you’ve written lemon nudes.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “I’ll remember what it means.”

“You absolutely won’t.”

The doctor pauses, and we both look up. “Sorry,” I say sheepishly. Colin at least has the decency to look ashamed.

I don’t.

By the time we're released, my head feels stuffed with information and somehow empty of answers. I've learned more about breasts in the last few days than I did during thirty years of owning two of them, and I would now like to return home and spend several hours watching television designed for people with no remaining cognitive function.

Unfortunately for me, Claire is waiting in the corridor. I’ve started to distrust Claire when she's holding paper. Today, she's holding paper.

Pink paper.

“No.”

She hasn't even spoken yet. Claire looks down at the leaflet in her hand, then back at me. “Good morning to you too.”

“I know what that is.”