Page 117 of While I’m Still Here

At quarter past nine, the humour stops working.

It happens without warning. Danny is halfway through an impassioned argument about why hospital gowns should have Velcro at the back because nobody needs “surprise arse during a medical crisis” when my attention catches on the piece of paper Marcus abandoned earlier.

Admission: 07:00.

Tomorrow has had a strange, distant quality all day, but now tomorrow is suddenly less than ten hours away. My stomach turns to the point I think I’m about to throw up my Chinese. Marcus notices before I say anything and forces Colin to turn the television down. “Come on then, hit me with them all,” Marcus says.

And then the questions start.

I've apparently been storing them all day. What happens if I panic when I get there? What if I cry and can't stop? What if I don't want to walk into the hospital? What if I wake up in pain? What if I can't look at myself? What if I regret it the second I wake up?

Marcus doesn't pretend any of those things are impossible. He doesn't tell me I'll be brave or that I'll surprise myself with how strong I am. He tells me I can panic. I can cry. I can tell the nurses I'm terrified. I don't have to arrive at the hospital calm simply because I've agreed to what happens once I'm there. When I ask what happens if I wake up and regret everything, his answer is even harder.

I might.

My world tilts, but Marcus keeps looking at me. He reminds me of what he's already told me. Wanting my breasts back tomorrow won't mean I made the wrong decision today. Hating my chest won't mean I've failed to accept it. Grief isn't evidence of a mistake. If I can't look immediately, I don't have to force myself into some cinematic moment of bravery for everyone waiting for me to declare that scars are beautiful.

I can simply be devastated.

I don't realise how desperately I needed permission for that until my eyes start burning. Then I ask the question I've been avoiding. “What if I die?”

Colin goes pale beside me, and Danny looks down at the prawn crackers. Marcus's jaw tightens, but Nobody tells me I won't. Nobody can. And for once, Marcus doesn't even try to give me information. He simply tells me he knows I'm frightened.

That is what breaks me. “I'm really fucking frightened.”

Colin pulls me into him before I've finished saying it. My face disappears against his chest, his arms close around me, and when he calls me sweetheart into my hair, I cry harder because he almost never calls me that. Danny's hand finds my shin beneath the blanket. Marcus stays where he is, close enough that I can see the tension in his face, and nobody tries to make the crying stop. They simply let me be frightened.

Eventually there is snot on Colin's shirt, and Danny somehow manages to make a joke about tomorrow, which results in all four of us realising he said tomorrow as though it is something I will unquestionably have.

It shouldn't matter.

It does.

* * *

At ten forty-seven, I decide I need photographs of my breasts. The thought arrives with such urgency that I sit upright. “I need pictures.” Three faces turn towards me. “Of my tits, if that wasn’t clear.”

Danny's entire posture changes so quickly that Colin says his name in warning, but for once I barely notice either of them because suddenly, I can't believe I don't have them. I have photographs where my breasts happen to exist, but I don't have photographs that belong to me. Not of my breasts because they are mine. Not the slight difference between the left nipple and the right. Not the stretch marks underneath. Not the exact way they sit when I'm standing naturally instead of pulling my shoulders back because someone has pointed a camera at me.

Tomorrow, memory becomes the only place they exist, and suddenly memory isn't enough.

Colin understands, and he offers to take them—that feels right.

Then I look at Danny and Marcus. I could ask them to leave. Perhaps I should. But the thought of closing a door between us now feels stranger than letting them stay. “You two can stay.”

Neither man makes a joke. That nearly undoes me before I've even started, but I pull my T-shirt over my head. The room goes quiet, and I snort before I can stop myself. “They are just tits.”

“And what glorious tits they are, Bea,” Colin says, taking full permission to ogle them.

We go upstairs, and suddenly Colin stands several feet away from me in the bedroom, phone in hand. For the first photograph, I automatically suck in my stomach. I don't even realise I've done it until Colin lowers the phone.

“Don't,” he warns me.

I frown at him. He doesn't lecture me. He just waits so I breathe out. My stomach softens, and he takes the photograph. When he shows it to me, my first instinct is immediate. My stomach looks too big. My breasts aren't symmetrical. One nipple points slightly differently from the other. There are stretch marks I hadn't noticed until a camera froze them in place. “Delete it.”

Colin doesn't, and then suddenly he’s in front of me, hand on my chin tilting my face up to look at him. “You asked me to photograph your body.”

“I know.”