Page 141 of While I’m Still Here

Times Danny has threatened to fight cancer personally: 2.

Times Marcus has explained that this would not be medically useful: 2.

Times Colin has asked whether I have everything: 14.

Times I have considered running away: 6.

Times I actually ran away: 0.

Current status: No-tittie Bea has entered the chat.

Chapter 22

THREE MEN AND A CHEMOTHERAPY APPOINTMENT

Danny Clarke

There are approximately seven hundred things you're not supposed to say to a woman on her first day of chemotherapy.

I know this because I've googled it.

Not casually, either. I've spent the last week googling chemotherapy with the intensity of a middle-aged man trying to diagnose a suspicious noise coming from his boiler. I've read NHS pages, cancer charity pages, hospital leaflets and several forums I absolutely should not have opened at two in the morning. I know about nausea, fatigue, taste changes, mouth ulcers, temperature checks and approximately four hundred other potential side effects I have deliberately not mentioned to Bea because she already has an oncology team and doesn't need Danny Clarke, Junior Internet Oncologist, bursting through her front door with seventeen printed pages and a concerned expression.

Last night, at one forty-three in the morning, I found myself researching whether metal cutlery might taste strange during chemotherapy and wondering if I should buy plastic spoons, which was roughly when I realised I had become the sort of man who researches fucking spoons because he's frightened the woman he loves might not enjoy her yoghurt.

I didn't buy the spoons… I bought her a six-foot inflatable penis.

In my defence, it says FUCK CANCER down the shaft.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, chemotherapy wards are notoriously lacking in enormous inflatable cocks. I haven't technically been inside one yet, but I'm confident NHS funding has failed catastrophically in this area. Secondly, and considerably more importantly, if Bea looks at me today and sees how fucking terrified I am, she'll start worrying about me.

I know her well enough to understand that now.

Bea doesn't merely notice other people's feelings. She collects them. She spots a change in somebody's face, picks it up, turns it over, examines it from every angle, and somehow decides it's her responsibility to fix it. If Colin is scared, she watches him instead of herself. If her mum cries, Bea starts making jokes. If Marcus goes quiet, she'll ask whether he's all right, even though Marcus Bennett has the emotional regulation of a fucking monastery and could probably remain calm during a hostage situation. She has spent weeks being frightened and still somehow finds time to monitor everybody else's emotional temperature.

So I have made a decision… Dangerous, I know, but it’s worth the risk for the woman I love. When Bea looks at me today, she won't see only fear. She can see the inflatable penis. She can see the tote bag I've packed with approximately £46 worth of snacks despite having no idea which ones she'll actually want.

She can see the ridiculous card in my coat pocket that says CHEMO? I HARDLY KNOW HER, because apparently there is no human tragedy that cannot be made worse by novelty stationery.

She can see me, but she doesn't have to carry the scared bit.

That belongs to me.

I pull up outside Bea's flat at seven forty-three and discover Colin is already here.

Of course he fucking is.

His car is parked outside like a territorial marker, and I sit behind the wheel for several seconds staring at it with an irrational degree of irritation while my six-foot inflatable penis lies folded across the passenger seat beside me.

It would be significantly easier if he were a cunt. If Colin Fletcher were arrogant, possessive or even mildly unpleasant, I could hate him with the enthusiasm he deserves for having been in love with Bea for seven fucking years. Unfortunately, he's funny. He's kind. He makes decent tea. He knows Bea better than anybody alive and somehow manages not to wield that knowledge like a weapon. He loves her in a way that has existed so long it seems built into the foundations of her life.

He also stayed on the phone while Bea and I had sex, then there was the night before her surgery… All four of us.

Nothing about this situation fits into any relationship structure I've previously understood. I'm thirty-three years old. I have considered myself reasonably competent at women and relationships for most of my adult life. You fancy someone, they fancy you, eventually somebody gets naked, somebody gets emotionally attached, then you either become a couple or spend three months claiming you're keeping things casual while getting irrationally furious when they take four hours to reply to a message.

There are procedures.

There are rules.