Page 86 of While I’m Still Here

It isn't, though. None of this is okay, and I'm becoming increasingly suspicious of how many people keep telling me things are okay when they clearly aren't. Crying is okay. Being frightened is okay. Not remembering information is okay. Needing help is okay. Apparently everything is okay except the actual fucking cancer.

Colin shifts his chair slightly closer to mine. “Can we go through the plan again?”

His voice is steady. Too steady. I turn my head and look at him properly for the first time since we sat down.

He holds the notebook on one knee, the pen resting between his fingers. Three pages of notes from today alone. Dates. Instructions. Questions he remembered to ask because I didn't. Colin has become frighteningly efficient at cancer administration, which would be impressive if I didn't know him well enough to recognise what it means.

His handwriting is neat.

Colin's handwriting is never neat.

He normally writes as though the pen has personally offended him and he's attempting to finish the sentence before it escapes. Today every letter is careful. Controlled. He's underlined 9th NOVEMBER twice.

He's scared.

Fuck.

I look away before he catches me noticing.

I can hear the words they are saying, and I understand them individually, but together they become noise. All I can think about is Monday, 9th November.

I wonder what I'll have for breakfast on Sunday. It's such a stupid thought that for a second I nearly laugh.

Breakfast.

Of all the things my brain could choose to focus on while somebody discusses removing both of my breasts, it chooses toast. Because on Sunday morning I'll wake up in my own bed with two breasts. I'll get out of bed with them. I'll shower and wash beneath them without thinking about it. I'll pull a towel around my body and probably complain that my hair won't cooperate. I'll put on a bra, which suddenly feels obscene after years of resenting the fucking things, and my breasts will settle into the cups in the completely unremarkable way they have thousands of times before.

Maybe I'll have toast. Maybe Colin will be there, and he'll make it too dark because he always does, then insist it isn't burnt despite the fact that it could be used as roofing material. I'll spend an entire ordinary Sunday inside this body.

Then I'll go to sleep.

And when I wake up, it will be the last morning I ever have breasts.

My vision blurs.

No.

Absolutely fucking not.

I blink several times and focus very hard on the consultant's tie. I have cried enough. There should be a loyalty scheme. Ten breast-cancer cries and the eleventh is free, except they're all already free because apparently my tear ducts have abandoned any concept of scarcity.

“Bea?”

Colin this time.

“I'm fine.”

The lie leaves my mouth automatically. Claire gives me the sort of look nurses must learn during training. “All right,” I amend. “I'm not fine fine. I'm cancer fine. Different category. Like airport food.”

Nothing. Not even Colin. That's when I know the jokes aren't working. My eyes drop to the date again, and suddenly the tears are falling whether I approve or not. I wipe them away angrily, which only makes more arrive. Brilliant. Excellent. Apparently, we're doing this here, beneath fluorescent lighting, while my consultant watches and a plastic model of a breast sits on the shelf behind him looking smugly intact.

Colin reaches for my hand, and his thumb moves slowly across my knuckles. I've known that movement since we were children. He did it before my GCSE maths exam because I'd convinced myself failing algebra would render me unemployable. He did it when my grandad died. He did it in A&E after I sliced my hand on a wine glass and spent twenty minutes insisting I wasn't going to faint while actively turning the colour of printer paper.

Twenty-two years of I'm here contained in one tiny movement. And suddenly I can't look at him. Because if I look at Colin, I'll see what this is doing to him.

I already know. His handwriting told me.

I can cope with being frightened. I cannot cope with his fear as well.