Page 137 of While I’m Still Here

Danny reaches down beside his chair, lifts her carefully, and settles her against my stomach, adjusting her until she's sitting upright beneath my arm. “She was worried,” Danny tells me.

“She's a stuffed penguin.”

“She's also been considerably more emotionally stable than the rest of us.”

Marcus gives him a look from the chair opposite. “Speak for yourself.”

“I am. I was a fucking wreck.”

“You told Bea you had allergies,” Marcus points out.

“I don't remember asking for a witness statement, Bennett,” Danny snarks.

I'm about to tell them both to shut up when someone knocks gently against the door. My mum appears in the doorway.

Everything inside me changes. She doesn't rush in. That's the first thing I notice. My mum, who has spent the weeks since my diagnosis attempting to assemble half of Britain into a cancer Avengers support network, actually stops. Her handbag is hooked over one arm, her coat is still on, and her eyes are swollen enough that I know she's been crying somewhere I couldn't see her. She's fixed her makeup afterwards. I can tell because Mum has always believed concealer can cover most evidence of emotional catastrophe, but a faint pinkness around her nose still gives her away.

For a few seconds, she just looks at me.

“Mum.”

Her mouth trembles.

Marcus stands.

Of course he fucking does.

He rises immediately from his chair, buttons his cardigan as though he's meeting somebody's mother over Sunday lunch rather than beside her daughter's hospital bed and quietly offers Mum his seat. Danny stares at him in absolute betrayal. “You stood up?”

Marcus glances towards him. “Yes.”

“You can't just stand up.”

“I just did.”

“You've made the rest of us look like animals.”

Colin, who has been sitting beside me for most of the day, gives Danny a tired look. “You could also stand up.”

“It's too late now. It'll look reactionary.”

Mum's eyes flick between them, and for the first time since she appeared in the doorway, something resembling amusement touches her face. Marcus gestures towards the empty chair. “Mrs James.”

“Oh, don't Mrs James me. You'll make me feel ancient.”

“Sorry.”

Danny looks appalled. “And now he's apologising. Brilliant. Absolutely fucked us, Colin.”

“Danny,” I warn.

“Going quiet.”

He actually does, and Mum puts her handbag down beside the chair Marcus has offered her, but she doesn't sit. Her attention has already returned to me, and suddenly the room shrinks until there is only the distance between my hospital bed and the woman standing beside it.

“Can I hug you?” Mum asks.

My throat closes so quickly that I can only nod. She comes closer carefully. Colin moves his chair back to give her room, and Mum pauses long enough to work out where the tubes are before bending over me. The second her arms go around my shoulders, I smell her perfume, the same perfume she's worn often enough that my brain apparently files it under Mum, and whatever composure I've managed to scrape together disappears.