Page 57 of While I’m Still Here

I smile into my tea.

I understand him a little better now. He's not here because he loves talking about his feelings or because he’s some serene survivor who has reached enlightenment and now spends his Thursdays dispensing wisdom to newly diagnosed cancer patients. He comes because once, he walked into a room like this and nobody looked like him, and now he makes sure someone does.

“You said around four hundred men get it every year?”

“In the UK, roughly. It's a very small proportion of breast cancer diagnoses.”

“That’s still four hundred men,” I say, but saying it out loud makes it feel both huge and tiny at the same time. “And presumably a lot of people telling them they didn’t know men could get breast cancer.”

“Yup,” he pops the P.

I grimace into my tea because, excellent, I’ve managed to become part of the exact problem he’s describing within approximately four minutes of meeting him. “Sorry.”

Marcus looks at me over the rim of his mug, and something almost weary crosses his face, though I get the impression it isn’t directed at me. “Stop apologising.”

“I put my foot in my mouth.”

He sighs, “You asked a question.”

“I assumed you were someone’s husband, and then stared at your chest.”

“You weren’t the first, and you won’t be the last.”

That makes me laugh, partly because he says it with such complete seriousness and partly because I have spent the last four days surrounded by people handling me with the emotional equivalent of oven gloves, terrified that one wrong word might cause me to shatter all over the floor. Marcus doesn’t seem remotely concerned about saying the perfect thing—stupid perfect Mr Bennett. If anything, he seems aggressively uninterested in perfect things, which might be why standing beside a kettle with him feels easier than sitting in a circle full of women who have been nothing but kind to me.

His gaze settles on my face for another second before he asks. “Newly diagnosed?”

The question shouldn’t surprise me. We’re standing in a breast-cancer support group, after all, and I am presumably radiating newly diagnosed energy from every pore, but my fingers tighten around the cup anyway. “Four fabulous days.”

Something changes in Marcus's face. His features soften, but there is no pity there, thank fuck. I have become frighteningly good at recognising pity over the last ninety-six hours. It comes with a particular tilt of the head, a softening of the voice and an expression that makes me feel as though I've already died and everyone is simply being polite enough not to mention it. Marcus doesn't look at me that way. He looks at me with recognition, which is somehow entirely different.

“That’s fresh…”

“Apparently,” I huff before taking another sip of my tea.

“What are they saying?”

I look down into my tea, watching the pale film gather inside the paper cup because apparently even tea can become depressing if you drink it in a cancer support group. “Surgery first, then more tests. Then they’ll decide what else they want to throw at me.” I take another mouthful even though it’s gone lukewarm, mostly because swallowing gives me something to do before I add the part I still haven’t learned how to say without feeling as though I’m describing somebody else’s body. “Possibly one breast… maybe both. Most likely both.”

Marcus nods.

That’s it.

He doesn’t flinch or do that sharp intake of breath everyone else has done. He doesn’t immediately rush to reassure me that reconstruction exists like my mum did because that’s what she had done. Or that I’ll still be beautiful or that breasts don’t make me a woman, as though I have somehow spent thirty years believing my entire personality is stored inside a bra. He doesn’t tell me that the important thing is being alive, either, which I already know and am beginning to resent being reminded of.

Of course I want to be alive, but wanting to live doesn’t magically make me enthusiastic about having pieces of myself removed to achieve it.

Marcus simply accepts what I’ve said, and I decide I like him more for that than I probably should. “Are you scared?” he asks.

The question is so direct that for a second I think I’ve misheard him. Everyone else keeps circling around the word scared, replacing it with softer things. How are you feeling? How are you coping? Are you okay? Questions that leave enough room for me to lie without technically lying. Marcus apparently has zero interest in giving me an escape route.

I stare down into my tea again. “Yes. I’m bloody terrified.”

“Good,” his voice comes out gruff.

My head snaps up so quickly a drop of tea nearly sloshes over the side. “Good?” I almost sound offended.

“It would be considerably more concerning if you weren’t.”