Page 85 of While I’m Still Here

The consultant nods, and beside me, Colin stops writing.

We've discussed this possibility before. I know we have because it exists somewhere inside the ugly cancer notebook Colin has been carrying to every appointment, alongside several diagrams, phone numbers and one page where his handwriting makes lymph nodes look suspiciously like lemon nudes. The possibility of losing both breasts has been mentioned more than once, but until today it has always been surrounded by comforting little words like might, depending, option and we'll discuss it once we have the results. I have discovered that might is a wonderful word when you're frightened. You can shove almost anything behind it and pretend it belongs to another version of your life.

I might need chemotherapy.

They might recommend radiotherapy.

They might take both breasts.

I might also win the lottery and marry Pedro Pascal, but nobody has put either of those things in the Pink Folder of Doom.

Now might has disappeared.

The consultant begins explaining the results again, slower this time, because apparently my face has stopped pretending to understand English. The additional imaging has given them what they need to finalise the surgical plan. The cancer is in my left breast. The right breast is not currently cancerous, a sentence that should make me happy and instead makes something twist painfully beneath my ribs. Given everything they've found, my history and the conversations we've already had about risk and my preferences, the agreed plan is bilateral mastectomy.

Bilateral.

A very sophisticated word for both your tits are coming off.

Colin asks a question about the lymph nodes. The consultant answers. Claire adds something about what will happen on the morning of surgery, and I try to listen because this is important information about my own body and presumably I should be participating in the meeting rather than staring down the front of my jumper.

They look exactly the same as they did this morning.

That's offensive.

My left breast contains cancer. There is an actual malignant tumour inside my body, and yet visually it has made absolutely no effort to distinguish itself from its law-abiding neighbour. No moustache. No eye patch. No tiny leather jacket announcing its descent into organised crime. I could almost forgive the betrayal if it had the decency to look sinister.

The right one looks innocent because it is.

“Bit fucking greedy,” I say.

Claire glances at me. “What is?”

“Cancer.” I gesture vaguely towards my chest. “It's only in one. Taking both feels like it's won some sort of two-for-one offer.”

Usually this is the point where somebody laughs. Claire often does. Colin almost always does, even when I know he doesn't find the joke particularly funny because he understands that sometimes I need the sound of another person laughing to convince myself I'm still in the room.

This time, nobody does. Worse, I don't either.

I look down again.

My left breast is the murderous one. Fine. Traitor. Bastard. We've established our positions. I've spent weeks glaring at it in mirrors, insulting it in the shower, and occasionally poking the general area of the tumour as though malignant cells might respond to intimidation. There is something inside it that could kill me, and apparently the price of removing that threat is losing the breast around it too. I hate that. I fucking hate it. But there is at least a horrible kind of logic involved.

The right one hasn't done anything.

It's just been sitting there for thirty years, minding its business, and it's going too.

“Bea?”

I look up.

The consultant has stopped speaking. “Sorry.”

“You don't need to apologise.”

“I wasn't listening.”

“I know. That's okay.”