“I just don’t know what to do,” I ended up sniffing.
“Yes, it’s difficult,” he agreed, then thought for a moment.
“You just have to do what you can I suppose. You’re not a doctor I take it?”
“No.”
“Or a, what do they call those chaps, a radiographer?”
“No.”
“And you certainly don’t look like a nurse,” he pointed out,
also pointing out the attitudes of the decade he seemed to have wandered in
from. “So you just have to do what you can,” he said. “It might not seem much
at first, but it’s the little things that make all the difference. Look after
her. Take care of her. Cook her dinner. Bring her flowers. Make her feel
special. Your wife, what’s her name?”
“Sally.”
“Sally needs a friend right now and the best friend a woman
can have is her husband.”
“And vice versa?”
“Without doubt,” he nodded. “Without doubt.”
His eyes sparkled a moment to suggest his thoughts were
elsewhere and I was about to ask his own circumstances when he got in first and
asked me if Sally was my actual wife, or whether she was just my common-law
wife.
“No, my actual wife. We were married seven years ago,” I
told him, my mind drifting back to that gloriously hot summers day.
“Good,” he approved. “A lot of people don’t these days so
you can never tell. You remember those words; for better, for worse, in
sickness and in health and all the rest of them?”
“I do,” I replied. The old fella smiled.
“Well, you just have to do your best to live up to that vow.
For richer, for better, in health? These are the easy ones to live up to, but
for poorer, for worse and in sickness? They’re what marriage is really all
about. To be there for each other.”
At this point, a sniff turned into a blub, which turned into
a shudder, which turned into tears and before I could slam on the brakes, the
boo-hoo express was pulling into the station. Everything was on top of me.
Everything. Sally’s pain. What the doctors might find. My uselessness.
And my shame over what had almost transpired with Elenor.
“It’s a difficult thing to be strong for someone else,” my
elderly friend said. “You just have to try. You just have to be optimistic.”
“It’s not that,” I finally admitted, barely able to look him
in the eye.
“What is it then? Tell me.”
But I couldn’t. He was a decent, kind, old man, who’d
clearly been best friends with his wife their whole lives, whereas I was the
scum of the Earth who’d almost hopped into bed with my secretary while my wife
had been stricken with cancer (not that I knew it at the time).
Eventually I got this off my chest, if only to necessitate
the scorn I duly deserved, but the old boy simply nodded some more.
“I see,” he said again.
He handed me a napkin and I wiped my eyes and blew my nose
until I could almost breathe in silence again then he told me I shouldn’t take
on so.
“You didn’t go with this girl then, this Elenor, did you?”
he asked. I shook my head and told him I hadn’t. “Have you ever been unfaithful
with any other woman?” he then asked. Again, I told him I hadn’t. “There you go
then. That’s good, very good in fact. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“But that’s not the point. I almost did and that’s the thing
I can’t get over.”
“You can’t beat yourself up over every little thing you
almost did, young fella,” he said. “It’s hard enough coping with the things we
actually do without piling on the pressure of the things we almost do as well.
I mean if you think about it, it’s better to be tempted and pass temptation
than to never be tempted at all.”
The old boy thought for a moment then leaned in a little
closer.
“You know, I almost killed my daughter one time,” he said,
making me stare up at him in horror. “Oh it was an accident and everything, but
it would’ve still amounted to the same thing,” he sighed, shaking his head
forlornly. “I was up on the roof see, replacing a couple of broken slates. I
was a bit sprightlier back then of course. I was also a bit more impulsive. I
had all my tools and materials up there with me and once I’d finished I started
clearing everything away. So, what did I do? Like an idiot I started throwing
the old slates and bits of baton and even my tools into the lawn below, hammer
and screwdriver and saw and so on, to save myself a couple of trips up and down
the ladder. Naturally, I’d called down to make sure no one was below, but the
kitchen door was open and my calls lured my six year old out to see what all
the fuss was about.”
The old boy paused and blinked a couple of times in
disbelief.
“One of the broken slates brushed her head by fractions of
an inch. It came so close, in fact, that the corner actually took the tiniest
little nick out of her scalp. That was how close I came to killing my
daughter,” he said, staring back at the memory. “Still makes me shudder,” he
puffed, blowing out his cheeks and shaking his head. “All to save three or four
trips up a twenty foot ladder.”
“Was she okay?”
“Oh right as rain, except for a little cut in her hair. She
works in London now, something to do with the interweb or something, I don’t
know.”
“But that was just an accident,” I said.
“No, it was
almost
an accident,” he corrected me. “Actually, I like to think of it more as a lucky
escape; miraculous even, and one I’ve said thanks for every day since. I know
it might not seem like the same thing but think about it anyway.”
“I will,” I promised him, trying to sound like I meant it.
“I’ll tell you another thing, I don’t throw bloody crap off
the roof any more either,” he laughed. “Righto, well it was nice to meet you
Andrew. I really hope your wife gets better. She sounds like a smashing young
lady. Well, all the best.”
The old boy rose to leave when I suddenly realised I’d been
so busy talking about myself that I hadn’t even bothered asking him his
circumstances.
“Me? Oh I’m here with the wife too. In-growing toenails. Can
you believe it? At her age? I told her not to wear those shoes.” And with that,
he gave me one last smile, then disappeared off into the labyrinth of hospital
corridors.
A nice old man.
With more slates than he knew.
Too sad…
It was the news we’d been dreading
and it pushed us beyond emotional pain barriers we never even knew existed.
Sally’s cancer had spread.
Tests and the staging laparotomy confirmed that it was stage
II B grade I ‘Serous’ ovarian cancer, for those of you who like to get
technical about these sorts of things.
I’m able to give you the full name for it now because I’ve
had time to get over my initial shock and actually take some of it in, but at
the time it was just a jumble of words. Scary algebra for doctors and it left
me on the floor when we were told the results.
In fact, when I first heard these words an icy hand gripped
my heart and squeezed it with such force that I thought I might black out. And
I probably would’ve done too had it not been for the fact that I was meant to
be there for Sally, not the other way around. With everything else on her
plate, the last thing she needed was me falling face first into the tiles to
sidetrack the conversation.
Still, at least we now knew its name. As it happened, Serous
is the most common variant of Ovarian cancer, so this was something at the very
least. Well, if you’ve got to get cancer it's probably best to get the most
common form of it rather than the extremely rare type that only you and really
fucking unlucky foothill pigmy's get, don’t you think? The most common and the
most widely researched.
The doctor went on.
While they had successfully debulked a considerable
proportion of the affected areas, subsequent tests showed that further
treatment was going to be needed.
This meant chemotherapy.
A few strides had been made in recent years with regards
chemotherapy. A new drug had come over from America called Taxol which when
administered alongside other drugs gave for a better survival rate.
I didn’t like the words, “survival rate,” but I quickly came
to realise these were the terms in which cancer was spoken. Survival. Five year
to be precise.
That didn’t mean that the doctors would help Sally live for
five years then that was her lot.
“All done, off you go, you’re on your own.” It was just a
scientific way of measuring the immeasurable and as good a way as anyone had
come up with thus far.
Commonly, for women with Stage I ovarian cancer, there was a
seventy-eight per cent survival rate. For women like Sally, with Stage II, this
dropped to fifty-nine per cent. Stage III dropped even further to twenty-three
per cent and for women with Stage IV, only fourteen per cent would still be
with us in five years.
Naturally, like with everything in life, there were no
concrete equations and you had to take into account a myriad of considerations
with each individual case but by and large Sally had roughly a three in five
chance of surviving until she was forty.
Fortunately for Sally, she had a number of factors going in
her favour. She was young and she was strong, so the doctors were optimistic
that she’d respond well to the chemo, though this was going to be a testing
ordeal for her.
These were powerful drugs and they were going to make her
pretty ill. I mean chemotherapy is basically a poison. Localised and targeted,
it’s poison nevertheless, which is used to stop a part of your body that’s
growing out of control in its tracks. This is what chemotherapy boils down to.
“So, you’re going to have to build up your strength. Diet is
very important, as are plenty of rest, exercise and support.”
Then the doctor looked at me for some reason.
“Family and friends have never been so important as they are
now. I can get you some literature on the subject that’ll help you help Sally,”
he said.
Unable to remember which words I was supposed to use at this
particular juncture in my life, I just nodded and expressed as much unhappy
gratitude as I could.
Sally barely looked up.
See, while the news was positive as far as her survival
chances were concerned, there was more to it than that. The cancer had spread
to her other ovary, her fallopian tubes and her uterus.
The doctors had cut it all out and were happy they’d caught
it in time.
But Sally would never have children.
I don’t know how to describe what
I’m feeling today because it’s too big an emotion to deal with. It’s too huge.
Too all consuming. There’s hardly anything of me left. I’m almost completely
gone. Too much. Andrew’s coming later.
No appetite. And not just for food,
but for anything. I can’t read or watch TV or listen to music or make
conversation. Everything is a horrible irritation.
I’m going to try to put into words exactly what I’m feeling
because I’ve never felt anything like this before and both the nurses and
Andrew think it might help. I don’t know about that but it’s marginally more
preferable to spending the day staring at my bottom lip.
Feel sick.
I’ve never known anyone who’s died before. A girl who was in
the same English class as me at school did and both sets of grandparents have
passed away but I don’t think I ever spoke more than six words to the girl at
school (they were “are we in this classroom today?”) and I was too young to
remember my grandparents so I’ve never experienced mourning before. But that’s
what this feels like – mourning. I’m mourning my babies. I’m mourning
their loss. I’ll never see their faces or hold them in my arms or tell them
that I love them or…
Got a headache.
The nurse brought me a cold flannel for my face and it felt
so good that for a minute I forgot about everything except that flannel. I got
another one for my stitches and lay beneath them groaning until the novelty
wore off.
Sore.
I’m full of emptiness. Choked to the point of bursting and
there’s nothing I can do to relieve the pressure. I know I should eat something
but I can’t. Managed some soup but brought it back up little on.
I always thought I’d have children one day. I always thought
that. Like rain during a long hot summer. The weeks might stretch on and on and
on but you know that it’ll rain one day. It will because it has to. One day.
You just take it for granted. But now it won’t. It’ll never happen. How has
this happened?
Andrew sat with me this evening and brought me magazines but
I can’t fix my eyes on the words. Nothing’s soaking in. Can’t focus and don’t
have the energy to try.
So tired.
This day looks a lot like yesterday
only it’s raining outside. It’s lashing against the windows in thick, whipping
sheets and drawing everyone’s eyes. It feels like the sky is crying and
reflecting my mood with its great black clouds. It’s miserable outside and it’s
miserable in here. Everything is black and white. Andrew’s coming later. That’s
all I have to say about today.
A new woman arrived this morning and
they put her in next to me. She tried to strike up a conversation but I didn’t
feel like talking so she spent the entire morning talking to the lady in the
bed opposite. The nurse asked them to keep it down but they carried on
regardless. I can’t help but soak it all up in absence of any other sort of
distraction and now I know everything there is to know about her; where she
lives, what her husband does, what her children are called, what programs she
likes on TV and what sort of carpet they have in their living room. She just
goes on and on.