Zac and Mia (5 page)

Status: 5 days to go. Dying of boredom. Suggestions?

Mum’s assigned herself a project: teaching herself to knit from a
Knitting for Dummies
book. At forty-nine, and a soon-to-be-grandmother, she decided it was time. Her first attempt is a scarf for Bec’s yet-to-be-born baby. She clicks and clacks using wool from a packet that was hygienically sealed to prevent germs from entering our cocoon. Cast 32, knit-stitch eight, purl 24. It sounds like aerobics. Mum could do with some aerobics.

I need a project too. Something to make my last week trip along like her stitching, quickening with increasing confidence. Instead, time feels like a lump of plasticine in my useless, puffy hands. Five big fat days to go.

It’s not that Mum hasn’t offered to teach me—she
bought spare knitting needles in the hope we would purl in sync—but I threatened to use one to stab myself in the eye. I’d rather watch repeats of
Glee
than take up knitting. Besides, I need to pay more attention to my image.

‘I need a hat,’ I tell her.

‘I’ll have to finish the scarf first.’ Since when do babies wear scarves anyway?

‘Not knitted. Bought. A cap, or something, like Ryan Reynolds would wear. Can you get me a hat?’

‘Why would you need a hat inside?’

‘It’s not for sun protection. It’s more for … ego protection. My head is too pale.’

Mum glances up mid-row. ‘Who’s Ryan Reynolds? And what’s wrong with your head?’

‘I’m a human lightbulb. I want a hat. A cool hat. A manly hat. A hat hat.’

‘All right, Dr Seuss.’

‘But not from the hospital store. Somewhere … cooler. Could you do that?’

‘What, right now? After thirty days, you’ve decided you need a hat right now?’

‘Pretty much.’

Mum exaggerates a sigh as she finishes the row, then she places the needles and wool in her lap. ‘You’re a funny one. Is this about the scarf? Because I’m doing one for the baby first?’

‘Can’t a man have a hat?’

‘Do you need to talk to Patrick?’

‘I
need …
’ I repeat, exasperated, ‘a hat. And a
mother who doesn’t ask so many questions.’

‘Tetchy,’ she mutters, tossing her handbag over a shoulder. ‘I’ll get some ice-cream while I’m out then. So, draw me a picture of this manly hat.’

I tear a page from the neglected diary and draw something similar—but not too similar—to the hat Mia’s boyfriend was wearing when he came in a week ago.

He’s wearing it again today as he passes my round window, crossing paths with Mum in the corridor. I wonder if she takes any notice of this guy, with his fixed expression and fistful of carnations.

The conversation next door is too quiet to hear. Mia’s speaking, at least, which is more than she’s done for the past two days. I’ve wanted to tell her that it gets better; that this will pass. I hope Rhys is saying these things to her now. I hope he’s being the significant other that her mother couldn’t be.

There are already twenty-four comments on my latest post asking for a project. There are predictable suggestions from people I barely know—
make a scrap-book of your journey; write a letter to yourself in one year’s time; monogram a Christmas stocking
—to ideas from mates:
build an Eiffel Tower out of used needles
(Alex);
sell your old marrow on eBay
(Matt);
convince the nurses to star in a porn movie
(Evan). The least-offensive suggestion comes from Rick, another Emma Watson fan:
back-to-back Harry Potter movies
. Easy.

Mia hasn’t commented, not that I’d expected her to. I refresh her page again and again, waiting for her
to add something about hospital, her dumbass ankle, or even the creepy Helga-boy from next door. But her page remains unnaturally cheerful and my eyes ache from watching it. Her status update, posted last night, says:

Still chilling down south. Anyone got tix to Future Music Fest?

I read her friends’ banter about the line-up. None of them ask about her ankle.

Don’t they realise how wrong they are about her life? How sick and sad Mia is? I’ll bet the only one who knows is in with her now, and he doesn’t stay long. I hear the door open and close, then I see Rhys in the corridor, empty-handed. A minute later I spot him through my rectangular window as he emerges from the main entrance, seven stories down. He lets himself into a car in the five-minute parking bay. Then he zooms off, leaving behind the hospital and its sickness and the seventeen-year-old girl who’s crying softly in the next room.

It’s more painful than any pop song.

If I could get up and go in there, I would. At least, I think I would.

I’d go in there and sit on her bed. I’d rub her back. I’d put my arm around her, I think, if that’s what she wanted, the way Mum used to do with me.

But I’m stuck in this room, burdened with the sad sounds that no one else can hear.

When Mum returns from the shops, she presents me with a tea cosy with earflaps.

‘What the hell?’

‘The man at the store said it’s on trend. He said Burt Reynolds would wear it.’

‘Who?’

She rolls her eyes. ‘The actor. You know,
Smoky and the Bandit.’

Is she for real?

‘It was your idea,’ she says.

I’m tempted to throw up in it but Mum pushes it over my head. She steps back and looks at me like I’m a work of graffiti she’s trying to decipher.

‘Didn’t a gay cowboy wear one in that mountain movie?’

‘Not exactly the look I was after, Mum.’

‘Well, you need to work on your drawing skills.’ She crumples my hat sketch and chucks it into the bin. ‘Why don’t you? I could get some fruit in here … make a still life out of it. Get you a
Drawing for Dummies
book.’

Mum’s testing my patience more than ever. It wasn’t so bad with chemo: we could handle five days together, knowing that back at home we’d have five days of our own space. But a month together is cabin-fever territory. Hysteria is just a sideways glance away.

‘You know that newbie?’ I say, hoping to kill two birds with one stone.

‘I don’t think she’s that new anymore.’ Mum gets me on a technicality.

‘The girl formerly known as newbie. Mia.’

‘Mia?’

‘She’s next door. Can you go say hi? Take Scrabble with you.’

Mum sniffs at the idea.

‘At least the word puzzle,’ I say.

‘She doesn’t seem the … word puzzle type.’

Friendly
, she means. The tea-loving, scone-eating, happy-go-lucky sort, like most of the patients and their significant others.
The girl’s grumpy
, she means, adolescent and angry, the way Bec used to be as a teenager.

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ Mum says. ‘You know, I think that hat suits you.’

‘Pass me a knitting needle.’

Instead, Mum hands me a bowl of hokey-pokey ice-cream. I eat it, even though it tastes sweeter than it should. It’s something to do, at least.

I listen to my new albums with my earphones in, choosing which songs I’d burn for Mia if I had the guts to.

Five days to go.

I leave the toilet unflushed and tiptoe back to bed.

I switch on the iPad and scroll through blogs of patients from around the world. It always amazes me how people confess their fears to a global, unseen audience. How they upload hairless photos of themselves or painful poems in rhyming couplets. Or make promises
to gods of one religion or another. Are they brave or just bored? I even read their prayers. It makes me feel less alone, at 3 a.m., to know I’m not the only one shut in.

I track the progress of the hopeful and hopeless, the winners and losers. And each time I read about someone’s death to leukaemia, there’s a grim sense of relief. I could never admit this to anyone—and I feel like an absolute bastard—but their loss helps me believe, in some cosmic way, that my chances of survival are boosted. Someone else has chalked a hit on the scoreboard. It means I’m safer, doesn’t it?

I don’t know these people and I don’t want them to die, but they make my odds look better. I have to believe in the maths. Mum is snoring beside me for the 32nd night in a row and, even though she can irritate the hell out of me, I can’t let her down. She needs me to beat this.

I read the blogs of parents with children too young to type for themselves. I read panicked letters on forums from people who found out too late and don’t even get the chance of chemo or a transplant. Again I feel lucky. Then I feel guilty.

Then I see her at the bottom of my screen. She’s nothing but a small green dot peering up at me: a glow-in-the-dark planet. As if she’s been watching.

I’m not the only one not sleeping.

The green dot means go. Should I go?

But she writes first.

I add. And then:

I hope it doesn’t look like an empty promise.

Like a dart, her question finds me. She has good aim.

My head sinks heavier into my pillow. She’s right. At least she’s honest enough to say so.

The ‘d’ word jumps off the screen. Everyone else here avoids it.

What do I type in response?
Thanks?

I imagine mountains of phones. Songs forgotten in clouds.

She must know, mustn’t she? That females her age with osteosarcoma have an eighty per cent survival rate, but hers is above ninety because of the location. If all the cancer gets zapped and the tumour’s cut out, it’ll be over ninety-five. Doesn’t she realise how good ninety-five per cent is?

Instead, I type:

There’s a soft tap at the wall that could be accidental.

I switch off the iPad and the room fades to black, but there’s no chance of sleep. Our conversation loops in my head like a song on repeat. It’s not a perfect song, but it’s an improvement on the Lady Gaga kind.

Mia’s funny, in a
ha ha
kind of way.

I lie in bed thinking of all I typed, and the things I’ll type tomorrow at 3 a.m., the hour when rules are suspended.

I’m so hot right now.

Over 39.5 degrees. So much for my perfect graph.

The cleaners threw out everything of Mum’s: tubs of ice-cream, reading glasses and crosswords. Even the calendar’s in a hazard bag in an industrial bin somewhere. My room’s been emptied, scrubbed and sterilised.

Mum’s gone too. Dr Aneta ordered her to take her cold of unspecified origin back home with her. Dad phoned to say he was coming up, but I talked him out of it. The room’s too small for him. Bec offered, but I’d hate for her to pick up bugs in her pregnancy. Besides, what would be the point? It’s not like I can entertain anyone.

My platelets have plummeted to 12, neutrophils to 0.4 and haemoglobin to 8. My total white blood count
has nosedived to 0.8 and I’m too sick to give a shit. I’m slumped in the pink chair while Veronica makes my bed. My sheets are soaked with last night’s sweats. Again.

It’s just a cold. A stupid freaking cold that I’m too pathetic to fight on my own. The line from my Broviac leads to two bags of antibiotics. I use the urine bottles. Cleaners ferry them away.

I keep the blinds drawn, not knowing day from night. It’s all the same. Psychedelic dreams weave through sleeping and waking, looping around themselves. I only had four days to go. How long ago was that?

I’d forgotten this blanket of fatigue and how it holds you down. I’d forgotten the sweats and shivers and endlessness. Nurses offer to play
Call of Duty
but I can’t manage it. I’m not interested in TV or the internet.

This is a good thing, Nina insists, keeping a hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s better your white blood cells get a thumping in here than out there.’

Come on, Helga. Show some spine and fight back.

Later, when I can’t be bothered sleeping, I drag the iPad towards me and switch it on. The brightness dazzles me. It’s just past 3 a.m.

My Facebook profile has been stormed by well-wishers.
It’s just a cold
, I want to inform everyone.
Don’t stress
. But I don’t have the energy.

I see her name rise into chat. I hadn’t realised she was there.

I don’t need to lie to her. It is what it is. She only wants the truth.

Shit. How long have I been sick?

I remind us both.

The cursor blinks, waiting for me. Without my mum sleeping beside me, I don’t have to rush this. No typos, no cliches.

I’ve never known anyone to die here. Death usually takes place in the comfort of a patient’s home after the hospital has handed them over to family or palliative care or God, or whoever else will listen. They’re supposed to sort out their wills and choose the songs for their funerals, say their goodbyes and go out in their own beds surrounded by loved ones. It must have been unexpected.

I let her keep going. It’s the most she’s ever typed. I think I hear her fingers on her keyboard.

All the relatives I’ve known are still alive: four grandparents, two uncles, an aunt, a great-aunt, four cousins, one brother and a sister. I’ve never even been to a real funeral.

I wonder what Mia looks like with a smile. Not a posed one, like in her Facebook photos, but a lazy real one, slumped against a pillow in the middle of the night.

The shrill sound punctures the silence, twice, three times, before I can knock the handset from the wall. I’ve never heard the internal phone—everyone else calls me on my mobile. I hold the bulky receiver, forgetting what to do with it.

‘Helga?’

I swallow. ‘Zac.’

‘Are you okay … to talk?’

‘Yeah,’ I tell her, though my throat’s thick and husky. ‘I’m okay.’

‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

How come she asks the kinds of things everyone else avoids? Is it because we’re still, technically, strangers? Or because it’s 3.33 a.m. and the normal rules don’t apply? My breath whistles through the holes.

‘Um … I don’t know.’

‘Yes or no?’

‘No.’

‘Heaven?’

‘No.’

‘God?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘You do?’

When she pauses, I hear her breath whistling too. ‘Can I tell you something?’

‘Yeah. Yes.’

‘When the woman died in Room Nine, there was something else … in the corridor.’

‘What?’

‘Like something I couldn’t see.’

‘A ghost?’

‘I don’t know. It felt like … like that old woman was standing next to me. Like she was watching too. It freaked me out.’

I know all about death. I know that one person dies in Australia every three minutes and forty seconds. I know that tomorrow, 42 Australians will die because of smoking, almost four on roads, and almost six by suicide.

In this coming week, 846 will die from cancer: 156 will be from lungs, 56 from breast, 30 from melanoma, 25 from brain tumours like Cam’s. And 34 of them will have had leukaemia, like me.

Google tells me everything I need to know about death except what comes after.

What can I say about a ghost in the corridor? How can I tell her it was her imagination, and nothing more? When I was little I believed in Jesus and Santa, spontaneous combustion and the Loch Ness monster. Now I believe in science, statistics and antibiotics. But is that what a girl wants to hear at 3.40 a.m.?

‘Helga?’

What I really want to say is how good it is to hear her voice. ‘I’m here.’

‘You think I’m crazy?’

‘Depends. What drugs are you on?’

‘Does it hurt to die?’ she asks.

‘No.’ This I believe.

‘I haven’t even lived yet.’

‘Yeah, you have, and you will. Until you’re eighty-four, at least.’

‘But still,’ she says. ‘If I did, what a stupid way to die.’

I take a lozenge from a packet and put it in my
mouth. ‘Actually, there are plenty of stupider ways.’

‘Stupider than a lump on my ankle?’

‘As stupid as watering a Christmas tree with the fairy lights plugged in.’

‘Helga, no one has
ever
done that.’

‘Thirty-one people have been electrocuted that way. And that’s just in Australia.’ I hear her laughing through the wall and it makes all my sickness disappear. ‘Did you know three Australians die every year testing batteries on their tongues?’

‘No way.’

‘Yep. Then there’s death by vending machine. For future reference, if a chip packet ever gets stuck in one, just walk away …’

‘Are you talking crap?’

‘The crappest way to die is drowning in sewage.’

‘No
way.’

‘Last year a New York man fell into a sewer vat.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah, vat deaths are pretty common. Six Indian workers died in a vat of tomato sauce.’

‘Six?’

‘One fell in; the other five jumped in to rescue her.’

‘You are so making this up.’

‘Cross my heart. There have been deaths in vats of oil, paper pulp, beer—’

‘I wouldn’t mind falling into a vat of chocolate.’

‘That’s been done. New Jersey, 2009. A twenty-nine-year-old man—’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I’ve had a lot of time on my hands.’

I hear her breathing while I wait for what’s coming.

‘Helga, if you had the choice—’

‘A vat of Emma Watsons.’

‘You’ve thought about it?’

‘Of course. You?’

‘Since chocolate’s taken … a vat of Jelly Bellies? You do realise there’s only one Emma Watson.’

‘Then she’ll do.’

Mia laughs. ‘Good luck with that.’

The IV monitor whirs beside me. I’d forgotten it was there. For the last five minutes there have been no machines or meds or leukaemia. There’s only been two people with a phone line between them. I’d wanted to make Mia feel better—I hadn’t expected it would rub off on me.

‘Mia, one in two people get cancer,’ I say. ‘We’re just getting ours out of the way early.’

‘I would’ve preferred to wait till I’m old.’

‘Mia?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Use the mouthwash. It’s foul but it beats ulcers.’

‘That’s what the nurses said.’

‘And sucking on ice cubes helps too.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Trust me.’

I’d meant it as a throwaway comment but she falls quiet as if chewing it over.

‘Okay.’