The Truth

by Naomi Joy

  It annoys me that, even amongst this group of people, they talk about this disease as a fight. I struggle to see how ‘fighting’ has any bearing on what our cancer is going to do. Winning or losing against cancer doesn’t make you any stronger or weaker, you’re just here for the ride, and, if you get off safely it really won’t have a lot to do with you, but all the factors around you that you often can’t control: your DNA, how advanced the cancer is, how quickly you caught it and started treatment, how well your body reacts to chemo, how much sugar you eat, how regularly your partner is poisoning you with heavy metals and the list goes on… and on. But, I guess you have to say something to keep positive, so, when it comes to my turn to share I tell them that I intend to fight my cancer to the bitter end, that cancer didn’t know what it was letting itself in for when it chose me.

  I notice the birdlike woman opposite me sits next to a cylindrical steel tank, a run of tubes snaking from its head, up under her top, splitting beneath her neck, then disappearing into both her nostrils. She stands to speak.

  ‘My name is Lucy. I have lung cancer but I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life, which is why this is particularly cruel.’

  She takes a few quick breaths between her words, every sentence a struggle. Now this is a fight.

  ‘My daughter turns three next week. I hope to be well enough to make it to her birthday party.’

  Her eyes fly back in her head and she takes a series of noisy breaths as she composes herself. ‘Thank you.’

  I have an urgent desire to leap across the room and hug her, but I don’t. I have to do what everyone else does, so, I murmur my support and smile sympathetically.

  ‘You’ll make it, Lucy,’ says Nick, based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

  *

  The session, once I get into it, flies by. Tips are exchanged, hope given, praise received, small victories celebrated, losses of previous group members mourned, a few tears shed, and, before I know it we’re all holding hands, promising to meet again, wishing each other a successful week. Lucy, breathing heavily through her oxygen tubes, walks over to Mishti and me as we’re getting ready to leave. She sits down and encourages us to do the same. When we’re sitting, she points at a clump of our fellow sufferers who’ve descended on the snacks table, devouring them like gannets. Those in active chemo don’t have much of an appetite, so it’s only those who are recovering – those who’ve proven themselves the fittest – who are wrangling with biscuit wrappers, carving out thick slices of chocolate cake, popping open bottles of lemonade and Coke, fizz filling the air.

  She takes a deep breath. ‘Lucy,’ she says, introducing herself, holding her hand – thin as paper – out for me to shake.

  ‘Emelia,’ I reply. ‘This is my friend Mishti.’

  ‘Aren’t you hot in that coat?’ asks Lucy and Mishti blushes. She’s clearly kept it on as a security blanket. I don’t think she’s found today particularly enjoyable but she did it for me, and for that I’m so thankful.

  ‘We found your story really moving,’ I say to Lucy, changing the subject.

  She smiles, then narrows her eyes. ‘You didn’t share much about your own,’ she observes, her breath heavy. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I was diagnosed recently, multiple tumours, and, yeah…’ I stop for a moment. ‘It’s been a really difficult Christmas. I start chemo in the new year and um…’

  Lucy waits for me to elaborate.

  ‘My partner left me on Christmas Eve.’

  Her face stretches in sympathy for me and she instinctively reaches for my hand. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Mishti bows her head in the background, not wanting to interfere.

  I continue talking. ‘This is a good distraction, though, new people, a change of environment. Something, and I know this sounds weird, to look forward to each week.’

  She nods, understanding what I mean.

  ‘You should help us with the auction we’re putting together,’ she says, pausing for air. ‘Anything you have to go towards it would be much appreciated. Everything you raise will go to a charity of your choice.’ She breathes again, hard. ‘I support lung cancer initiatives, but you might decide differently.’ Another pause. ‘You should think about it and let me know.’

  ‘I love auctions,’ I say back. ‘I’d be delighted to help.’

  *

  Mishti and I leave, deep in discussion about whether it’s been an overall uplifting or depressing experience.

  ‘Uplifting,’ I say to her, our feet walking in sync, this whole horrible ordeal bringing us closer than ever. ‘Thanks to being shown the strength of the human spirit… but ultimately depressing because I’m not convinced the human spirit counts for much in the fight against cancer.’

  She reaches for my arm, loops her hand through it and squeezes. ‘It does, Ems, it really does. You need to muster all the spirit you can find. Do the auction that Lucy was talking about, get involved in any and everything you can. Fight this full on, no mercy. I believe in you. You can beat the odds. You’re amazing, Emelia. You can do anything you set your mind to, don’t forget that.’

  Blog Entry

  1st January, 9.03 a.m.

  Pull yourself together, girl. That’s what Dad would say to me now as I stand in the street waiting for the taxi to arrive to take me to hospital. Today is my first day of chemotherapy and I am facing it alone. I’d considered inviting my parents, but decided I couldn’t bear the thought of them sitting next to me, twitching incessantly, Mum calling the whole thing unbearable, poisonous, hating the way the IV drip, drip, dripped, slowly, stickily, like a liquid sand-timer counting down my life expectancy. She’d collapse, predictably, when it all got too much, and my dad would usher her to A&E, leaving me to face it by myself anyway. I’d thought about asking Mishti, but I don’t want to frighten her. She is a good friend but she didn’t ask for this, for me.

  I say it to myself again, quietly Pull yourself together, with a little pause between each word for added emphasis.

  The taxi arrives, a slightly battered Prius with a few added extras: a pungent apple-scented air freshener and mini dreamcatcher swinging from the rear view mirror, a paper sign sellotaped to the chairs in front with a list of rules. No nail cutting, no hair brushing, no food of ANY kind, no racism, no dirty feet, no alcohol…

  I check my phone. A couple of messages from my parents glare back.

  Did you and Anthony have a good Xmas?

  What pressies did you get?

  All unanswered, all unopened, all irrelevant.

  I’m brought back to the car as the driver asks me to confirm that I want to go to the Royal Marsden.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ I say back. My heart is beating rapidly against my chest, my palms are sticky, my right foot bobbing up and down like a manic wind-up toy. I sit in a state of anxious silence as the driver accelerates towards the traffic jam in front of us, then slams on the brakes at the last minute, launching me into the triangular embrace of my seat belt. I always wonder why some professional drivers struggle with a gentle glide to the lights, like every journey is a police chase, or an F1 circuit. I recover from the emergency stop and the engine idles whilst we sit in the traffic, fumes from the cars ahead creeping in through the driver’s open window. I’ll add lung cancer to the list before we get to the hospital at this rate.

  *

  The driver pulls into the visitor’s entrance and says thank you a few too many times as he puts two and two together with my terrified face, and where we are. I want to hug him. I want to ask him to come with me. Pull. Yourself. Together. Girl. You can do this.

  I can almost hear the heartrate monitors bleating as I take my first steps through the doors. There’s antiseptic in the air and colourful signs on the walls. Keep breathing, I tell myself.

  I’m led through to a communal bay. I’m told number ten has been assigned to me.

  ‘Is anyone with you today?’ asks the receptionist.

  ‘Just me,’ I reply, as bravely as I can.


  She isn’t expecting that answer. She’d been ready to tell me where the extra chairs were, I’d seen them walking in, all piled up in the corner. She looks at the empty visitor seat in bay number ten.

  ‘Not to worry, I’ll just get this out of your way, someone else might need it.’

  Right. A little harsh, I think. What about the stack behind us? Then it dawns on me: maybe she thinks she’s doing me a favour. Her cheeks concertina as she smiles, carefully slotting the chair back into place, sparing me the pain of being reminded of my own loneliness.

  *

  A nurse is swirling around me now, explaining what will happen next: blood tests, IVs, PICC lines. She’s talking to me patronisingly, as though I’m a young girl whose mummy and daddy haven’t done a very good job of preparing her for today. By the way, I have no intention of getting a PICC line fitted; I’ve read horror stories about them (a tube is squeezed into your vein, up and around your shoulder, then poked into position near your heart: it’s fitted while you’re fully awake). I tell her and she fondles my arm in faux-understanding, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, freezing fingers rubbing against my innocent skin – only good little girls get sweets and good little girls get PICC lines.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ I say, a little too certainly for her liking.

  ‘Very well, have it your way.’ She hooks me up to an IV, baring her overlapping front teeth as she smiles whilst plunging the needle deep into my vein. I don’t flinch when she does it; won’t give her the satisfaction. She has no idea how well practised I am in this field.

  I steal a glance at the top of the IV line, the big bag of fluid hanging above my head. Drip, drip, drip.

  There’s a woman opposite me, sitting in bay five’s visitor chair, twisting spectacular rings round bony, big-knuckled fingers. She has purple-streaked eyes and baggy, wrinkled cheeks. In fact, as I shift my focus from chair to chair, I can’t help but notice how everyone in here is old: lined, saggy faces one after the next, all of them exhausted and hopeless. Just like my previous stint in hospital. The visitors are more eager than on the regular ward, though. You can tell they’re desperate, clinging to what little hope their relative has left. I watch as one lady thrusts a pickled onion sandwich – I know because I can smell it – toward her ailing husband’s half-open mouth. ‘Your favourite, Cliff. Come on. Keep your strength up.’

  She’s being told off now by the snaggletooth nurse, ‘Sorry, love, no food allowed in here,’ and I watch the woman sniff indignantly, then relent, packing the soggy white triangles back into her cloudy Tupperware.

  As I sit, drugs pumping round my bloodstream, I decide I want to do something to help people like me who find themselves in this Godforsaken place without support. I wouldn’t wish this experience on my worst enemy, I wouldn’t even wish it on Anthony. When I get back, I will set up a donations platform for Cancer Research and start dreaming up some horrendous fundraising challenges to get things going. Perhaps I could put the money towards chaperones for people who, for whatever reason, turn up at chemotherapy by themselves. The thought gives me hope that something positive may come out of this.

  In the end.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ the nurse asks suddenly, startling me. I’ve dozed off, amazingly, although I feel a little groggy.

  ‘Err,’ I croak, my mouth dry. ‘I don’t know, why?’

  The nurse disappears, her crocs squeaky on the lino flooring as she goes. She reappears with a bewildered colleague with a lopsided fringe, leaves, then returns once more with a doctor holding a clipboard. It transpires they’ve neglected to hook me up to any anti-sickness drugs. I’m bombarded with questions: Do I feel nauseous? How nauseous? One to ten? Ten being the worst, remember. Without really listening to my answer, the doctor rams a syringe driver into my arm. It hurts. A lot. I look down at the intersection of veins and arteries and ligaments and tendons in my wrist, the scar Anthony gave me in the same location opening back up. A burning sensation follows, long and deep, as though the fluid is pumping directly into my muscles rather than joining gently with the flow of blood in my veins. A rush of heat overwhelms me.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do this any more, I’ll come back tomorrow, I literally can’t. Get it out of me, get it…’ I paw at the needle, a tidal wave of wooziness crashing over me at the same time.

  ‘Assistance!’ I hear someone shout.

  My neck loses its strength and I faint forwards as I try to stand up to get out of here. I collapse down to the floor and nightmares of the drugs burning my insides, liquefying them to mush, fill those seconds of darkness. Then my vision returns, as though I’m peeping through a post box, dozens of pairs of pupils focused on me. My entire body is shaking, someone has me under the armpits, coaxing me to standing.

  ‘First timers, eh!’ I hear a man say, and everyone laughs.

  ‘You’ll get used to it, love,’ calls a purple-haired woman from the next chair along.

  I sit back in the chair. The doctor asks if I’m OK.

  I’m not.

  I feel really sick and the sound of the toxic medicine drip-drip-dripping through the twists of plastic tubing and into my diseased body, mixing with my blood, makes me feel even worse. Blood, blood, blood. Red streaks of it painted in hasty strokes along my forearm, blue oceans of it racing underneath my skin. Blood, blood, blood.

  ‘I need t—’

  I vomit, suddenly, mostly into the bucket the nurse had put in my lap without me realising, but also a little over her arm. She looks sideways, probably thinks I’m getting even. Maybe I am.

  I get up and walk towards the bathroom as though my legs are on backwards, jerking my enormous chemo drip alongside me, leaning into it as though it’s a walking stick. The irony of my likeness to the room of pensioners next door not lost on me. I cup my hands together, turned yellow in their bid to send blood to my vital organs, blood, blood, blood, and thrust them under the cold tap. I suffocate my face with water. I open my fetid, vomit-caked mouth and rinse it out, then raise my head from the sink. My ears fill with a high pitched whistle then close up. My pupils turn to pinheads. I feel my heartbeat rush to my brain and, as I hit the ground, I hear myself cry for help.

  Blog Entry

  1st January, 6 p.m.

  I’m not sure how many hours later it is that I’m finally let out of that place. One of the receptionists kindly orders me a taxi to take me home and it’s not long before I’m approaching the grey streets of north London again. I ask the driver to let me out a little early, the motion of the car had been making me queasy, and I navigate the rest of the journey on foot.

  I look up at Anthony’s lounge window as I turn onto the park. The sight staring back at me turns me cold; for a moment I think I see someone up there, watching me through the dark, gaping pane. The vision stops me mid-step and I squint to get a better view, but I soon realise the reflection is just the sway of the nearby sycamore tree.

  But I want to find out for sure. I divert my path and head for his flat, his key in my hand.

  I take the strenuous flight of stairs up to what used to be my front door and I’m conscious of the sound of my footsteps striking the stone, the chorus of my ascent bouncing off the white walls. Honey, I’m home! I check every room when I get inside, I even check the cupboards, as if it’s rational to think he’s hiding in one of them. It’s not long until the search reaches its inevitable conclusion: he’s not back from Greece yet. Thank God.

  I decide to take a shower; the chemo feels as though it’s still sticking to me. I turn the chrome handle and undress while the frosted glass fogs and the bathroom steams; so much nicer than the dilapidated green-tinged plastic bathroom in my studio. I rifle through the scents and smells that sit under the sink cabinet: cocoa butter, shea, tea-tree, black vanilla musk. Black vanilla musk. That one’s not Anthony’s, or an old one of mine. I take it in a vice grip and flick the lid, about a third used, and breathe it in. Her, her, her. My stomach spasms and I freeze in my crouched p
osition, looking, I imagine, a lot like Gollum, hunched naked over something that holds a mysterious power over me. I keep it in my hand and pull the shower door wide open, the heat hitting my face first, then the running water as it splashes and soaks me. I swirl a large dollop of black vanilla into my palm. Has she moved in? What will I find next, a toothbrush in the pot on the side? Her dying body in my bed? I imagine the three of us sleeping side by side, befuddled bedfellows, three pairs of eyes staring at the ceiling in the dark wondering what to say.

  I lather the shampoo into the lengths of my hair, scratching my scalp as I clean, her presence surrounding me. I turn over the bottle and inspect the ingredients. Paraben-free, sulfate-free, vegan, organic. Expensive. I pour another fat dollop into my hand and rub a new lather into my scalp, then I rinse it out, running my fingers through my hair.

  Slap.

  I look down. A sloppy, thick, clump of my hair has fallen to the shower floor. I stare at it for a moment. Of course it’s not a complete surprise, I’d been warned this might happen down the line but, well, I suppose I just hadn’t expected it so soon. I thought I’d have time to style my look from shoulder-length curls to long bob, to short bob, to pixie, to nothing. Or to a head of someone else’s hair, perhaps. I switch off the shower, scared to go on, and wring out my rotting hair between my hands. As I pull them away, hundreds of thick, long, strands attach themselves to my skin as though I’ve stuck my palms in honey and traced them along a hairdresser’s dirty floor. I move feverishly, pulling great fistfuls of wet hair from my hands, daring it to break free, seeing how much wants to come loose. Go on, do your worst. I look down at the tiles that have turned black: great, muddy piles of hair strewn across them. I sink to the floor and pull handfuls of adhesive strands from the tiles to the bin. It’s not long until it is full. A bedraggled wet cat, curled up in a heap on top of discarded toilet roll tubes and empty packets of toothpaste, snarls back.