The Mistake

by Katie McMahon

  I was very glad I’d told no one. Unnecessary fuss and fretting and flights; I would have looked like a drama queen. No Hortense Maloney-style carry-on for me, the down-to-earth Australian with my sultry pout and my to-die-for curves.

  My right arm, now partly exposed, was like a new lover. At physiotherapy I gripped a squash ball over and over. I dealt cards. I touched my thumb to each finger, many times. Back on the ward, I rubbed my hands together and scratched my nose and wiped my bottom (in the bathroom, obviously) and turned page after page of books. I undid little paper sachets of sugar for the horrible tea and I thought, wouldn’t it be awful to lose your hand.

  I felt the way you feel when you hear about a shooting in America: genuinely sorry for those involved, but also, not really disturbed, because losing a limb was clearly something that happened to others, such as people in the First World War. I, on the other hand (as they say) was lucky enough to have the British National Health Service and CT scans and sterile equipment and Mr Cartwright.

  See, everyone was so upbeat. My temperature was normal – ‘Good work!’ said the intern. My pain was well controlled – ‘Sterling,’ said the pain doctor. I was eating and drinking and my bowels were working – ‘Keep it up, do,’ said the nurse. I was making great progress at squash-ball squashing and card-dealing; there were no signs of infection; I had commendably avoided acquiring a blood clot in either one of my legs.

  The way they all – even Mr Cartwright: ‘Those wounds are healing beautifully, aren’t they?’ – acted, it was as if there was nothing at all to worry about. At no point did anyone sit me down and say, ‘Kate, you’re not out of the woods yet. All this is just trivia, because your amazingly healed skin and your fabulously rehabilitated muscles and the fact you’re young and fit and have a perfectly functional bowel won’t matter at all if there’s any cancer in there still.’ But no one said any of that, so it seemed to me that I’d shrugged off a leiomyosarcoma with my trademark fucking insouciance.

  That’s why it was quite a shock when, six days after the operation, the laboratory report came back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bec

  Bec had been working for just over a month.

  She made it through her shifts in a sort of chirpy, dazed fog, looking forward to morning tea, then lunch, then finishing up and driving home and seeing her kids and changing into her round-the-house clothes and having a cup of tea. And then doing all the other stuff. How people worked this way for years on end honestly perplexed her. If ever she needed to be financially independent, she’d definitely need to do something easier and better paid than medical reception.

  She looked down at the rings on her left hand as she waited for a fax to go through.

  The first time Bec’s mum had seen Bec’s engagement ring, she’d laughed and said, ‘Excellent service at Gloss coming your way, I predict.’ Gloss was a ritzy boutique that had – back then – seemed slightly intimidating.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be able to buy pant with ease,’ Bec had giggled. Stuart proposed to Bec around the time the word ‘pant’ was storming the fashion world, leaving ‘pants’ and ‘trousers’ for dead.

  What’s happened to me? Bec asked herself, as the third page disappeared. She used the term ‘pant’ without irony now. Even ‘short’. And what had she even been thinking, buying fifty-dollar shorts (yes, from now on she was calling them shorts, like a normal person) for her children, who would have them grass-stained or tomato-sauce-spattered within hours?

  Ryan thought children didn’t need a lot of expensive stuff. He thought the current obsession with gadgets and social media and photographing every single moment was a tragedy. His poor-but-happy childhood in Western Australia sounded idyllic. His mother – the potter – would send all five kids down to the beach so she could work. He always wore hand-me-downs and they drove an old Ford Falcon station wagon. He and his brothers slept on a covered veranda in the summer. (‘Didn’t your parents worry about you running off?’ Bec had said. ‘Getting abducted?’ Ryan had laughed and said, ‘Nah, of course not,’ as if she’d asked about a zombie attack.) His dad was a chef, and they went surfing together and caught fish off the rocks, and his younger brother played violin in a folk band, and his sister won the junior triathlon every year. Once they’d entered a family team; he’d done the swimming leg.

  ‘What about your family?’ he said.

  ‘I grew up just round the corner. One of those draughty old houses that looks charming from the street.’

  ‘I know the sort of place. High ceilings. Amazing floorboards. Bathroom the size of this bed.’ They exchanged a sexy look. It was two in the afternoon on a Monday. ‘Bit different to your house nowadays,’ he said.

  There was a silence. They’d been facing each other; now she turned to lie on her back.

  ‘Bec?’ He put a hand on her cheek. ‘Sorry. Sorry. I totally understand you’d want to keep that part of your life separate.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She shrugged. ‘I feel so worried about it but at the same time . . .’ she trailed off, indicated them, their naked, delighted bodies, all the irresistible, perilous, intoxicating pleasure. Under the sheet, they knitted themselves together again. It felt as natural and easy and wonderful as coffee in the morning, as sweet tea when you’d had a shock.

  ‘I know.’ He sounded upset too. He tilted her face up to him, traced her mouth with his thumb.

  ‘These lips,’ he said.

  It was remarkable, how, when he was actually kissing her, she didn’t even have to try to put the guilt to one side. It evaporated, as naturally as spilt water on sunshiny concrete. As if she wasn’t even doing anything wrong.

  *

  Driving home that day, Bec thought about her parents’ house, and her childhood room, and then, because thoughts skirt and circle before they finally land where they were going all along, she got to her sister.

  It had been just after 7 a.m. on a Saturday, and Dr Bec Leicester had been in bed, drowsing under a patchwork quilt that her grandmother had made. Her mum was in the shower; her dad was out getting the paper. When the phone rang in the hallway, Bec knew straight away it was Kate. Who else would ring that early? Bec wished she’d go away. She’d started work at the hospital before eight every morning that week; today was supposed to be a sleep-in. The phone would ring out in a minute. It did. But then it started again.

  Bec moaned and sat up. She put her feet on the Persian rug. Kate’s childhood bed was still on the other side of the room. Bec threw it an annoyed look as she stomped into the hallway.

  ‘Hello, Bec here,’ she said, into the phone. Brisk international-call pips cut in. ‘Hi, Kate,’ she sighed.

  That was the first time she heard Kate’s stringy, see-through voice.

  ‘Bec?’ she said. ‘Are you sitting down? Is Mum there?’

  ‘What?’ Bec said. ‘And yes, I’m sitting down.’ She sat on the hall chair, the peach velvet seat firm against her pyjamas. The wooden back dug into her spine in an uncomfortable-comfortable way.

  ‘Don’t let Mum hear,’ said Kate.

  ‘She’s in the shower.’ Bec listened. ‘Yep, definitely. What? God, are you pregnant?’

  ‘No.’ Kate’s voice was full of what sounded like scorn.

  ‘Fine. What then?’

  Silence down the phone. Bec twisted the cord of the receiver round her fingers.

  ‘Kate?’

  ‘I’m coming home. I’ve been in hospital. I – I had to have a bit of surgery, but I need more. It’ll be better if I have it in Australia. At home. Insurance and support and rehab and blah-blah-blah.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Bec. Kate was twenty-five.

  ‘I . . . there . . . Bec, I had . . . it was such a little lump. On my arm. It . . . turns out it’s not benign.’ Bec sat forward and put her head between her knees. ‘It’s a—’ There was a rustle of paper and Kate said something unintelligible that sounded like Leo-Moss-Are-Coma.

  ‘Spell it out,’ Bec s
aid, very quietly. After Kate got to the sixth letter, Bec interrupted.

  ‘Leiomyosarcoma,’ she said. Lie-oh-my-oh-sar-coma.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But . . .’ Bec sat up. Her mouth was dry. ‘They got it all?’ she asked.

  She was a bit hazy about leiomyosarcoma. It was extremely rare: what her Pathology lecturer had called the small-print stuff. Unless, of course – the dry, sorrowful half-chuckle he reserved for particularly dreadful illnesses – you were the one with it.

  ‘Well,’ said Kate. ‘I think no? They have . . . to cut more away. Bec. That’s why I have to come home. They said they might have to cut away quite a bit of my arm.’

  That was the first time bad news made Bec vomit.

  *

  It was winter now, and there was no morning sun on the path to his bungalow. She’d been seeing – well, sleeping with – Ryan for what the calendar said was three weeks. It felt like months.

  In the beginning, she used to hurry home to regroup. She’d shower and do cleaning or shopping so that when it was time for school pick-up she’d feel nearly back to normal. ‘I did lots of washing today,’ she could say truthfully, to the children. ‘I went to four different shops to find the right size leggings.’

  Nowadays she tended to stay in his bed. He would make them tea. He liked trying different types of organic, spicy things. ‘Elderberry is used to awaken creativity,’ he’d tell her. ‘Fennel’s for your inner fire.’ She could almost believe him.

  Stuart never asked where she’d been. Even when he was up and about, if she just put milk or bread on the counter, he seemed to assume they had taken her hours to buy.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ Ryan finished his tea and set the empty cup on the floor. The arc of his arm through the air reminded her of a sea bird swooping. ‘Just checking my plans for you are realistic.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, flirtily. She was wearing only a white cardigan. ‘Well, I’m all yours till two. Nothing much on today.’

  ‘Glad you’re free.’ He looked like a kid who was being a good sport about the grand final he’d just lost. He curled closer around her legs, with his face near her hip. She tangled her fingers in his hair, and waited for him to speak. His voice was a bit muffled as he said, ‘Bec, it’s just that you’ve got this whole other life that I can’t ever be part of.’

  She said something about how difficult she’d find it if things were the other way around.

  ‘I think of you. You in your kitchen, all calm and earth-motherish.’ She made a pleased sort of scoffing sound. ‘Or lying on your couch reading one of your parenting books.’ Had anyone ever listened so well to her? ‘And if you come over and you seem a bit grumpy or a bit down or really joyous – like you were last week, I could tell – then it’s weird to even ask why.’

  ‘Surely I’m never grumpy,’ she deflected. Last Friday she’d been in a particularly good mood because one of the new school mums had invited Essie for a play date.

  ‘Oh, I know how to read you, Rebecca Anne Henderson.’ He squeezed her feet and smiled a pleased smile.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s part of why I like you.’

  ‘Not just the epic sex, then?’ He was still smiling.

  ‘God, of course not. Sex schmex. It’s all about how perceptive you are,’ she said, and they both laughed. She pulled his head a little bit, so that it was on her thighs.

  ‘Tell me some stuff,’ he said. His hair tickled her tummy as he nestled into her lap. ‘Stuff about your life.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Go on.’ He opened his eyes and looked up at her. ‘Probably got about four minutes till I do something about that cardigan.’

  So she told him about Essie and Lachlan and Mathilda. About the ridiculous love and the relentless work of motherhood, and how it felt as if – when you did it right – you were taken for granted. She told him about Allie. She told him about Daniel Gilbert.

  ‘You look after everyone,’ he said, softly. It had been much longer than four minutes, but he said, ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘Well, then of course, there’s my husband.’ She stopped. She hadn’t meant to talk about Stuart.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I really – I have no idea what the boundaries are here.’

  ‘No boundaries,’ he said. He sat up all of a sudden, and straddled her legs. He put his hands around her waist, and her cardigan fell right open. ‘Tell me anything. Everything. Whatever you want.’ She lowered her head. When she looked back up, he was still looking at her face.

  ‘He’s had a complaint made against him,’ she said. ‘My husband. To do with, like, sexual harassment. He lost his job, basically. And so, things have been pretty strained. That’s why I’ve been working, and the kids are that bit more challenging, and life’s just – well, you know, much harder than it once was. Not that – Ryan, sorry, I didn’t mean – that’s not what this – between us – is about, I honestly don’t think.’

  ‘S’all right.’ He waved away her apology. ‘Serves me right. Carrying on with a married woman.’

  ‘And everyone in the family all think he’s perfect and that there’s no way, but I think that he’d been drinking and that people can surprise you.’

  He made a face. Understanding. She got the feeling he was remembering Stuart. ‘It’s not my business, but – speaking as a man – it can be so easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have the right to whatever you want.’

  Bec had heard all that before, she honestly had, and she’d always thought it was just a big excuse. She’d certainly never thought of Stuart as that type of man. She was sure he wasn’t.

  Almost sure.

  She leaned back, and shrugged a let’s-change-the-subject shrug. He nodded.

  ‘Hey, Bec. D’you ever think about our first kiss?’ His voice was like glitter. Warm fingers tapped a little rhythm on her waist

  She nodded. Of course she did. ‘It was very gentlemanly,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’ He smiled. ‘It nearly killed me.’

  She thought for sure he’d kiss her (in an ungentlemanly way) right then, but he just looked at her. No one spoke. Outside, a car sounded a friendly, farewelling sort of bip-bip.

  ‘Bec?’ he said, in the end. ‘Do you ever think this is more than just a fling?’

  She picked up his hands from where they lay on her skin, and held them in both of hers. They sat like that for quite a while.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said, finally, to their hands.

  It was almost as if she was holding a ticket to a whole new life.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kate

  They told me to go home to Australia for the next lot of surgery.

  ‘The rehabilitation process will be more arduous, next time around,’ Mr Cartwright said. ‘You’ll certainly need family support. Certainly.’

  It turned out the Hobart doctors said I needed to go to Melbourne. They said I needed something called an oncological orthopaedic surgeon which, apparently, didn’t exist in Hobart. I imagined David Attenborough talking about oncological orthopaedic surgeons. He’d call them OOSes. A rare breed, he’d intone. Fussy about their habitat. Only ever sighted in enormous city hospitals. And – the punchline; he’d use an awed voice – in a miracle of biology, virtually always male.

  So, Mum and Dad and I went to Melbourne. Bec stayed home to work – she’d almost finished her internship then. She wrote down a list of questions for me, in blue ballpoint pen on lined A4 paper. She underlined some of them – What about bone grafting? What about radiotherapy? – in red.

  The Melbourne OOS’s name was David Rowe. He asked me all the questions Mr Cartwright had asked, plus a whole lot more. Questions about my ‘living arrangements’, and whether I had a partner, wanted children, followed a spiritual faith. When he got to the part about what I did for a living, I told him I was a ‘fashion model’.

  ‘Full time? That’s your main source of income?’

  ‘Yes.’

 
‘Do you have income protection insurance?’

  ‘Yes.’

  For some reason, he glanced at my parents as he said, ‘You’d be astounded how many people don’t.’ I waited for BFG to nod at me, as if to say, ‘See? What did I tell you, Kate-o?’ but he didn’t.

  David Rowe flicked on a light-box and looked at the brand-new lot of scans I’d had; he skimmed the reports I’d brought with me from England. He seemed particularly interested in the fact I’d already had two surgeries and in how far along my arm the scars extended.

  Then, David Rowe laid it out for me.

  ‘There’s good news and bad news, Kate.’ He didn’t look away from me. ‘Your tumour, as you know, is of a very aggressive type.’ I had not known this. ‘Chemotherapy offers no hope of cure. Radiotherapy might help, but again would not be curative.’

  I kept my face still, but I had only just realised that – since David Rowe was an oncological surgeon and he had said the word chemotherapy – I must have proper, non-Hortense-Maloney style cancer. Denial, eh? My personal super-power.

  ‘Very fortunately, the tumour does not seem to have spread beyond your arm. So, at least in my view, a cure is still possible. That’s the good news.’ He looked out of the window. I got the distinct impression that he was calculating how much to say.

  ‘However. When the original malignancy was resected, there was, very unfortunately, a great deal of bleeding. You probably noticed it as swelling. That bleeding gave the tumour a chance to seed cells through your arm’s tissue, including, it appears, into your elbow joint.’

  He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, so I said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘The tumour was seeded so extensively that its complete removal – although attempted in your second operation – was in my view never likely to be possible.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘In my view, the initial lump removal and your second operation were ill-advised.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Most ill-advised. In my practice, such a lump would always be biopsied – needled and then tested – before being removed.’ He made a face so compassionate I felt terrified. ‘Having said that, given it was fairly large – and deep – when you first came to medical attention, it might not have made any difference anyway.’