Page 6 of While I’m Still Here

Your Mastectomy.

I reach for it then stop.

No.

Not yet.

Instead, I pull my jumper over my head, and my bra follows. And there they are. Two completely ordinary breasts. I stare at them.

Right.

Left.

Good tit.

Murder tit.

It’s ridiculous how difficult it is to reconcile what I’m looking at with what I was told this afternoon. I expected to change something. For the lump to suddenly become visible, or for my skin to look different.

But it doesn’t.

I walk toward the mirror hanging over the fireplace and look at myself.

Thirty years old.

One slightly smudged mascara eye.

Hair that needs washing.

A faint mark around my ribs from a bra that cost forty-five fucking pounds and still apparently couldn’t keep its contents under control.

Cancer.

I touch my left breast again.

I’m going to lose it… Then I look to my right because the doctor said something about taking them both, just in case.

I don’t particularly love my boobs—I’ve complained about them for most of my adult life. They’re too big, and bras are expensive as hell. Running requires an engineering degree, and going downstairs without adequate support is practically an extreme sport.

But they’re my tits.

And now someone is going to take them away because if they don’t, it might kill me.

My throat tightens. “Fucking traitor,” I whisper to the traitorous tit.

This time, when I start crying, I don’t force myself to stop. I stand topless in my living room and cry so hard my nose runs, which feels unnecessarily humiliating considering I’m already having a bad day.

I cry because I’m scared shitless, and I don’t know if the treatment will work. I cry because I’m going to lose my tits, and chemotherapy might take my hair. I start to sob loudly because the doctor talked to me about fertility, and I hadn’t even decided whether I wanted children yet, and apparently even indecision is a luxury you can have stripped from you.

Eventually, the crying slows.

I wipe my nose with the sleeve of my jumper before remembering I’m not actually wearing it.

Excellent.

I retrieve it from the floor and use that instead. Then my phone rings. The sound is so sudden I nearly launch the thing across the room. I stare at the screen, and because the universe clearly has a fucking sense of humour and has decided that I haven’t quite had enough to deal with today, I recognise the name.

Of course.