AllFreeNovel
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After the first week he’s tired and loses his appetite, and I do my best to provide alternative sustenance in the form of nostalgic TV shows and a playlist of emo music from 2006. It doesn’t give him energy and it doesn’t bring his appetite back, but it keeps his spirits up, which is all I can ask for.
I’m struck by how different this time around is. Beneath his perfectly warranted fear and fatigue is an undercurrent of annoyance. Annoyed this thing just won’t leave him alone, annoyed he’s had to put a stopper in his plans, annoyed he’s pretending he’s fine just to avoid having to tell other people what’s happening and experience their wide-eyed condolences.
Slowly but surely, we start making those dreadful jokes again. When other people overhear, their discomfort is so tangible it’s almost funnier than the joke itself.
‘Kind of unfair that you get to spend ages off work when you actually enjoy your job,’ I say one morning as we make our way up the wide steps in front of the hospital. ‘Where’s my month off?’
‘You know the stats nowadays,’ he says tonelessly. ‘One in two, Col. It’s only a matter of time.’
I choke on a laugh, and when he shoots me the kind of troublemaking grin from our childhood, I let the hope trickle in, hope that this will be the last time he has to do this, hope that we’ll never have to use these terrible jokes to cope again.
Those familiar fears from last time worm their way through the cracks too, attaching to the hope like a parasite, but I know to expect them, and it means I can meet those feelings halfway instead of letting them bowl me over. They still ache, and I’m still scared, but I don’t feel the pain quite so acutely as before.
I take the day off work for his last radiotherapy session, accompanying him to the hospital and then going into a coffee shop to buy us drinks and doughnuts while I wait for him to finish. In line with his wishes to keep everything quiet, when Dylan asks if I’m doing anything fun on my day off, all I tell her is that I’m spending time with my brother.
Under the soulless fluorescent lights of the waiting room, my phone pings. Adrenaline surges through me but leaves as quickly as it arrives, like the tide pulling water from the shore. It’s just a notification from Uber reminding me how long it’s been since I used the app.
Finn and I texted back and forth at first. He let me know when he landed in San Francisco, I shared a funny customer story, he sent a photo of his shitty hotel coffee. We tried to keep up our constant texts like before, but it hurt, picturing him on the other end of the phone, so close but so far, imagining that half-smile tugging at his face as he typed. We FaceTimed a few times too, and it just made his physical absence even more glaring.
On Max’s first day of treatment he asked me to wish him luck, and then he checked in a few more times after that, but since my reply to his text a few days ago where he told me he’d found an apartment, it’s been radio silence. And the more days that pass, the more I think I’m grateful our texts have waned. It makes the break a little easier.
I knew this might happen, but the recently softened part of me still hoped it wouldn’t. He’s busy starting a whole new life, exactly as he warned me he would, right when we first met. He was always going to leave, and I was always going to stay. Sitting by my phone waiting for a reply isn’t going to undo that.
When Max appears through the doors, all thoughts of Finn disappear, and I unfold myself from the chair with a creak of plastic to greet him. My heart twinges as if it can detect the missing part of it that he took over the edge all those years ago, like it’s a magnet trying to tug its pieces back.
‘It’s done,’ he says with a satisfied sigh, stretching his neck and pulling himself up to his full height. He’s always tall, always takes up space, but today he feels larger than life.
‘Do you get to ring the bell?’ Despite the faintly acerbic hospital smell lingering on my brother, when I pull him into a hug, beneath it all is the familiar lemony smell of him.
‘Didn’t want to. It feels like tempting fate.’ He releases me and squints slightly as he looks down. ‘I know that’s ridiculous. Maybe I’ll come back to ring it if I’m still cancer-free in five years. MaybeI’ll just have a party.’
I’ll celebrate anything he wants, whenever he wants. I grab my tote bag from its spot on the linoleum and we step through the automatic doors out into the October air.
I’ve been so focused on getting through this month that it’s only when we enter Regent’s Park that I realise the leaves are starting to turn. We wind along the gravel paths, coffee in hand, and I inhale the beginnings of autumn; delicious golds and ambers and calls for cosy nights in.
Max sprawls across the first empty bench we come upon and says, ‘After I’ve slept for about two weeks straight, I can’t wait to be out exploring again. London’s great, but I still can’t believe you live here full time. It’s just… a lot.’
Tiredness leeches into the lines of his face, but adrenaline and relief bring the light back to his eyes in a way that makes me so giddy I could float.
‘I think that’s why I like it.’ I watch a child run away from his mother, who lifts him in the air to joyful squeals when she catches up. ‘There are always so many people around that you can trick yourself into thinking you’re not lonely or bored.’
I fight the urge to move Max’s cup from its precarious position when he rests it between us on the bench. He links his now-free hands behind his neck and pulls down to stretch out the muscles. ‘I can’t imagine choosing somewhere permanent to live. It still feels pointless getting my own place when I’m constantly on the go. Well, I mean, notconstantly.’ He grimaces and points at his hip. ‘Not when the big guy comes to visit.’
‘Uncle Neil stays over that often?’
He flings forward and barks out a laugh, and in a move I definitely foresaw, his cup starts to tilt, spilling some of his Americano onto the hem of his plaid shirt before he has the chance to grab it. Unbothered, he says, ‘One day I’ll move out of Mum andDad’s. One day.’
‘You know they’ll just follow you.’ I open up the box of doughnuts and pick a cartoon-looking one with pink icing and sprinkles. ‘They hate you travelling already. Stresses them out having you so far away.’
‘Ugh. You have it so easy. You could fuck off to the Gobi Desert and all they’d do is ask you to send them a postcard.’ His features instantly pull in on themselves as he tries to backtrack in a fluster. ‘Wait, I didn’t mean they don’t care about you. I just mean they don’t try to wrap you in cotton wool.’
‘It’s fine. You’re right.’ I finish my doughnut and brush the crumbs from my lap. ‘I do have it easy.’
I’m not just talking about Mum and Dad being overbearing though.
An unreadable expression crosses his face. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ He sets his coffee down again but doesn’t wait for me to confirm. ‘Would you swap places with me, if you could?’
‘Yes.’ My answer is immediate. I’d take the pain from him in an instant.
