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‘Not a lot, really. I mean, I hardly know him. He dropped me home. It wasn’t awkward or anything. I just don’t think either of us was expecting it.’
‘Have you seen him since?’
She shakes her head. ‘And it’s fine – that’s the thing. I really like him, but there’s no hurry. Whatever happens, I’m trusting it’s going to work out the way it’s meant to.’
I feel my heart warm. It’s a side of Rae I haven’t seen before – sparky, her eyes lit up. ‘It’s kind of cool though, isn’t it, that we’ve both met someone? And it doesn’t hurt to help these things along,’ I tell her. ‘As we both know, nice guys are a little thin on the ground.’
She looks at me sternly. ‘It hasn’t been long. He’ll have been working – and so have I.’
But I also know she’s been devoting her time to me. ‘You should go for it,’ I tell her. ‘Never mind all this…’ I gesture towards my head. ‘Life has to go on.’
‘And it is.’ She gets up. ‘To be honest, it’s like I’m adjusting. You know what I’ve been like. It’s a long time since anything’s happened in my life – and I’ve kind of liked that.’ She pauses. ‘But now… I think I might be ready for more.’
Lying on my bed, a maelstrom of extreme emotions rages through me. Joy that Rae has met someone, that she’s breakingfree from the grief that’s trapped her, that her life is changing for the better. There’s gratitude, too, for the generosity of the friends I’ve made, for the support they give me. There’s the wonder of this love I feel for Forrest. But it’s bittersweet that it’s happening at this point in my life, when my future is filled with uncertainty and amidst the impact my illness is having on all of us.
I learn more a couple of days later, and it isn’t good. My cancer is stage four. It also has a name that chills my blood to ice crystals. Glioblastoma. I listen as the consultant explains the treatment they’re proposing – radiotherapy alongside chemo – and that they can hopefully slow the growth of the cancer cells. But there is no cure.
When I tell them I feel fine, that I feel better than I have in months, if not longer, they explain it’s temporary after surgery; most likely the tumours have been there for years, their effects creeping up on me slowly, so I didn’t notice – until suddenly I did.
Sitting there, I feel removed, as though it’s happening to someone else; a single question burning inside, one I’m terrified to know the answer to. But I have to ask it.
How long?
I spend the rest of the day sitting on the beach. Oblivious to the people around me, I gaze at the sea, watching the ebb and flow of water, the waves curling over, the way they sparkle where the sun catches them.
There’s a constancy to the ocean, a timelessness, that our human lives will never have. In a few years, we’ll all be gone, another generation here in our place.
For as long as the moon rises, the tides will remain. But as I sit here, I confront the fact that in a limited number of months or weeks, I won’t be here.
As I make my way home, I try to get my head around what lies ahead, replaying the consultant’s question.
Have I considered my options when my cancer advances?
Sitting on the train, I can’t think about anything else. As I told the nurse I spoke to after seeing the consultant, I have no family, no support plan in place. But in my wildest dreams, I never expected this.
Instead of going to Rae’s, I send her a message that’s intentionally upbeat.I’ll fill you in later! Just going to pick up a few things!Putting off the moment I tell her, I go home. Drained, I collapse onto the sofa. All the way here, I’ve blocked it out, but alone, fear creeps up on me, taking me over until I’m drowning in it.
At a pinch, in a year or two, I might still be where I am now. But I have this feeling deep inside that I won’t.
But, I ponder, it isn’t entirely impossible that it won’t come to that. I try to invoke my age-old strategy of not worrying about what might never happen. In my current circumstances, it isn’t entirely impossible that maybe God, or some random natural event, will get to me before cancer does. I know my logic is questionable: firstly, I don’t believe in God – and secondly, the south of England isn’t known for an abundance of life-threatening meteorological phenomena.
As I sit there, anger and despair swamp me.If this is how it ends, what’s the point in anything? If I’m going to die?I may as well give up now.
I pick up my phone to call the hospital, to tell them I’ve decided against treatment, getting as far as punching the numbers in before putting it down. It’s one thing to feel a victim of a rampant gene mutation, another altogether to orchestrate the end of your life.
But I know that short of a miracle, it’s an end that isn’t far away; that all the treatment is doing is buying me time.Why?I ask myself over and over.Why this obsession with prolonging life? Putting off the inevitable?I answer my own question, and it doesn’t help.
Because life is beautiful.
Given the choice, for however long I have, I want to live.
21
RAE
Marnie’s upbeat message doesn’t fool me for an instant. If it was good news, she would have told me. But it makes it no less shocking when she does.
‘What happened?’ My words echo in the quiet of my flat.
