Page 64 of While I’m Still Here

“I was offering to pay for my own drink.”

“Misogyny,” she spits back at me.

I look at her. She's smiling, so I let her pay because I hate how that smile makes me feel, even if I want to see it again.

We take a table beside the window, and for the first ten minutes cancer doesn't come up at all. I learn that Bea works in an office she describes as “spreadsheets and suffering,” that her mother responded to her diagnosis by creating a fourteen-person WhatsApp group called BEA'S SUPPORT SQUAD, and that one of the members is a woman named Carol whom Bea has never met.

“Perhaps she's a distant relative,” I suggest.

“She sent me soup, Marcus.”

I pause, coffee halfway to my mouth. “Actual soup?”

“A photograph of soup.”

“Did she explain why?”

“No. Just soup.”

“Maybe it's medicinal.”

“Maybe Carol's a witch.”

“Useful person to have in a cancer support group.”

Bea considers this. “I hadn't thought of that. Maybe I was too hasty leaving.”

She tells me about her mother calling immediately afterwards because Auntie Linda was upset, and I'm still smiling when Bea's expression changes. It's subtle. She wraps both hands around her mug and watches the coffee for a few seconds before looking at me. “Can I ask you something horrible?”

“That depends on how you're defining horrible.”

“About your surgery.”

I understand then why she asked me for coffee. Oddly, I don't mind. “What do you want to know?”

Her fingers tighten around the mug. “What was it like when you woke up?”

There are several answers to that question, and most of the ones given in support spaces are carefully cleaned up. They focus on pain management, drains and dressings. They explain what nurses do and what recovery might look like. Bea isn’t asking me about any of that, though.

“Physically, it wasn't as bad as I'd convinced myself it would be,” I tell her. “I was sore. Tired. I had drains and dressings, and I was fairly heavily medicated for the first day. Emotionally was different.”

Her eyes stay on mine. “How?”

“I didn't want to look.”

Some of the tension leaves her shoulders, which tells me more than anything she could have said. “How long did it take?”

“Two days,” I tell her.

“And nobody made you?”

“No. They encouraged me when I was ready, but nobody forced me.”

“Good.” The speed of the answer makes me study her. Bea notices. “Everyone keeps telling me what they can do afterwards. Reconstruction. Prosthetics. Different bras. All the options.” She looks down briefly at her chest, then continues. “And I know they're trying to help. I know they're basically telling me that I won't have to look in the mirror and hate myself forever, but sometimes I want to scream at them because I don't want to know what they can put back. I want the tits I fucking came in with.”

There are moments when people don't need reassurance—this is one of them—I could tell her reconstruction can produce excellent results. I could tell her many women adjust well after mastectomy. I could tell her that whatever happens, she will still be herself.

All of it would miss the point. “I know,” I say.