Go on a murder mystery weekend.
Spend all night on a beach and sleep under the stars.
And all at once it was the right moment to pull the cord. Because if he didn’t do it then, he would never get the chance to find out what tomorrow would bring.
It was time to live.
To fight.
To not be defined by the dream that kept him awake at night.
Four
Emma
Day One
The hospital letter had told Emma to bring someone with her. It was an obvious statement, given what she was facing. What it didn’t state was who to bring in the eventuality you didn’t have anyone to fill that role. She had always been the carer, not the cared for.
Of course, her mother would have come with her, if Emma had told her about the appointment, but it was an unnecessary worry at the moment and getting Carole to the hospital in her wheelchair would have added to the stress of an already anxious day. Besides, it might still be nothing.
Other than her mother, there was no one else on the happy-for-them-to-see-my-boobs-be-ultrasounded list. She’d considered her closest friend, Alice. But as she had her dad to care for and a younger sister to keep in check, she didn’t want to add to her burden at this early stage. So it was a me, myself and I moment. One that she was taking for the team, even if it was making butterflies appear in quarters they’d never been before. Right now, every inch of her torso was aware of how hard her heart was beating, pushing itself to the limit in this unfamiliar environment. It would have been nice to have someone here with her, but some occasions were just better ventured into alone. She didn’t think company would help her find the sense of calm she was hoping for.
Looking for distraction, she lifted a faded copy of Woman’s Fortnightly from the paltry offerings on the waiting room table. She hated to think how many patients had leafed through the pages before her, but she was desperate. The clock on the wall was driving her mad with its insistent ticking. A constant reminder of how long she was going to be left wondering what was wrong.
The only other person waiting was a man similar in age to her. With his ruffled dark hair, he appeared to have come straight from work, wearing what looked like mechanic’s overalls. He was handsome, with a rough-and-ready air, and seemed strangely out of place in the sterile waiting room. Presumably he was supporting his partner or mother or sister in their moment of need, during their breast clinic appointment. It was good that someone was here with an uncomplicated source of support. If only she’d managed to locate the same.
‘Where’s Robot Wars Monthly when you need it?’
He was speaking to her. Emma generally tried to avoid conversations with strangers. Partly it was down to her job at the library. There, she had to talk to strangers; it was part of her role. But the more years she’d worked there, the more she’d come to appreciate that a good percentage of strangers were weirdos. Or perhaps that was just where she worked.
‘I’d say it’s a bit specialist. Maybe lower your expectations and hope they have The Sun.’
The potential weirdo laughed. A features-creasing-up laugh, like she was actually funny. ‘You think they’d cater for men a bit more, wouldn’t you?’
‘Ermmm…’ She’d not really considered the quality of the reading material, or whether it met with equality standards.
‘I guess they don’t expect us here for appointments.’
Emma was rather flummoxed to be engaging in conversation with a good-looking man about the quality of the reading material at the breast clinic. It wasn’t something she’d envisaged happening as part of today’s visit. ‘There must be lots of men coming to support their relatives. Maybe you should bring in your stash of Robot Wars Monthly. They’re clearly in need of donations.’ As she said it, she fanned the pathetic pages of the magazine, which was barely holding together.
‘I think you’re right. I’ll add it to the top of my list of things to do.’ He said it without sarcasm and the thought made her smile, even if she was pretty certain he’d made the magazine up.
He glanced around the waiting room, looking like he was at as much of a loss as she was. ‘So, what magazine are you going to be donating? We need a bit of balance if the men are going to have plush new ones to read.’
She could have made up any title. Something exotic and exciting. Something racy. Something glamorous. But rather than embellishing her life, she told the truth and named the only subscription she had delivered. ‘Carers United.’
‘Are you here with someone then?’
‘I wish.’
‘Oh. It’s just – the carer thing… I thought, maybe… It’s just, you seem young to be sitting here waiting for an appointment.’
‘Apparently not. Although hopefully it’s nothing.’ Even though this wasn’t a cancer clinic, they both knew what might be discovered behind these doors. ‘So, who are you here with?’ She didn’t want to think about what was to come.
‘You.’
God. Definitely a weirdo. ‘I mean who have you come with?’
‘Me.’
‘I don’t understand.’ She’d heard of wedding crashers. Maybe even funeral crashers. But an appointment crasher was a new level of strange. There wasn’t even a food buffet to try and freeload from.
‘I’m the patient.’
‘Oh.’
‘Turns out men have boobs too.’
‘And you’re here by yourself?’ Emma didn’t know why she sounded so surprised when she was in the same predicament.
‘Yeah. Turns out it’s fairly embarrassing to admit to any of your mates that you need to be accompanied to a breast clinic. I figured I could handle an ultrasound by myself.’
‘But what if it’s bad news?’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s going to be bad news. What about you? Why is no one with you?’
The magazine she hadn’t read fell onto the floor and it gave her a moment to avoid answering. She wasn’t sure she would be able to if she was looking directly into his bright green eyes. He was a stranger. She didn’t share details of her life with random men she met in waiting rooms. Even if they did have particularly lovely eyes. But then… Did it really matter if she shared? It was important that she didn’t box her world in at times like these.
‘The carer thing…’ she began. ‘My mum has been slowly dying all her life. She doesn’t need to know her daughter might beat her to it.’
‘Fuck. And there I was feeling sorry for myself. I guess you’ve already convinced yourself you’re getting bad news as well.’
‘I can’t see it being anything else.’
A set of double doors swung open. Footsteps headed towards the waiting room. Papers were shuffled as medical notes were checked.
‘Emma Green,’ the uniformed woman called.
‘I figure now is the time to find out.’ She placed the magazine far too carefully on the table, as if the hesitation would make the inevitable go away.
‘Anyone with you today?’ the uniformed woman asked, with a polite glance towards her new weirdo stranger friend.
Emma glanced in the same direction and watched as he stood, as if it were his time to go in.
‘I’m here.’ Weirdo stranger wiped invisible dust from his overalls. ‘If you need me to be, that is?’ He looked directly at her this time.
‘Through here.’ The woman held the door open for them both. ‘Partners are welcome to sit in for support.’
It went against every fibre in her body to even think about having a stranger in the room. She wasn’t good at being intimate, even with those closest to her. She would always be the one slipping her bra on under her jumper in the changing room, never confident enough to be brazen. So allowing this new man in, especially when the ultrasound person was assuming Emma knew him, was the opposite of what her instincts would normally tell her.
But then this woman was a stranger, along with all the doctors and nurses and hospital officials she would meet over the coming months. So even though it was totall
y at odds with everything she was thinking, she returned the stranger’s gaze and nodded. ‘Okay.’
The woman led them into a room just off the corridor. In a better set of circumstances, Emma might have tricked herself into believing they were here for a pregnancy scan. Her partner with her to hold her hand as they saw their child for the very first time.
‘You just need to take your top and bra off. There’s a sheet there to cover yourself up with while you’re waiting. I’ll knock in a few minutes to check that you’re ready.’
When the door closed, Emma froze.
‘They’ve got a cheek calling that a sheet,’ he said. ‘It’s the blue roll that the cleaners use, that’s what that is.’
It made her smile, at a time when smiling should have been an impossibility. As if what she was facing wasn’t enough to deal with, somehow she’d managed to rope herself into undressing with a stranger watching. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Nathan. Nice to meet you, Emma Green.’
He extended a hand for her to shake, and she did. He had a solid, dependable hold, and all at once they weren’t strangers. ‘And as I’m such a gentleman, I’ll be looking away throughout. I’m just here if you need a hand to hold or someone to talk to.’
‘You know this means I’m doing the same for you,’ Emma replied. She realised the moment she said it that must have been what Nathan wanted. It would seem they were both in need of some support after all.
‘Well, naturally. I’m only doing this so I can cry on your shoulder like a baby if I need to later.’ His smile wavered for a second. ‘If I’m being honest, I’m really fucking scared.’
‘Look away then,’ she said. She pulled off her jumper and tackled her bra before slipping under the totally inadequate blue paper blanket. ‘It’s okay to be scared. I’m really scared too.’
There, she’d said it. She’d admitted to another human being that she’d been having kittens ever since she’d realised there was a problem. And somehow it was marginally easier to bear with her new weirdo stranger friend in the room.
Nathan’s Diary
Everything in life has contrasts. The colours, the textures, the flavours. The way one person experiences something is entirely different to the next person. No two people have the same experience when they skydive. It is the same activity, the same drill that they go through, and yet so many things are different. Even for me. Sometimes it’s the view I take in. How easy it is to notice the change of season when you experience it from 15,000 feet. Other times I focus entirely on the sensation of falling.
That’s why I’m writing this dream diary… because there are things I don’t understand about my dream. There’s something about it that lacks layers. And yet I don’t doubt it will come true. How can I, when it’s the only dream I’ve ever had? What could be more convincing than something that reproduces itself in an exact duplicate most nights? A cast-iron statement of things to come.
In my recurring dream, I’m lying in a hospital bed, struggling for breath. I can hear a rattle and I’m aware of people in the room, but I have no idea who they are. I want one of them to be my mother, but as she is no longer on this earth, she’ll only appear once the rattling has finally stopped.
So, I listen, wondering if each rasp is my last, one after another, and when they stop, that’s when I wake. That’s when I take a breath like no other. It’s the moment I realise that, no matter how many times I have the dream, I’m no closer to knowing who’s in the room with me. No closer to knowing if there is someone who loves me enough to hold my hand when the time finally comes. All I know for certain is that it’s too soon. And there’s nothing I can do about it other than keep breathing.
Five
Emma
Day Six
Emma had always seen working in the library as a passport to the world. Any career path she wanted to know about, any country she wanted to visit, any famous person she wanted to meet, they were all here in this one building, sitting on the shelves, hidden in the pages of countless books.
But as she carried out the mundane task of checking the Dewey Decimal Classification, ensuring each book was checked in properly on the computer system and returned to its rightful home, she sensed the passport shutting.
These shelves were no longer portals to other universes, they were a testament to the all the things she hadn’t done.
In her hand was a Lonely Planet guide to Italy. She could take that book home and read it cover to cover, savouring the sights and sounds and smells of the country, but she might never go to Italy. For her, it might only ever exist in her imagination.
Just like she would never cook all the recipes out of Mastering the Art of French Cooking like she’d planned, as if she were starring in the movie Julie & Julia. She would never expand her voluntary work to another country, like Namibia. All the things she’d ever longed to do had warped into impossibilities overnight.
In a few short days, the walls of the library building had closed in enough to squash all sense of purpose out of her. She had a lifetime of nevers stacking up, and now she really would never get round to doing any of them.
She took the next book off her wheelie trolley and regretted it instantly. The full works of Shakespeare was a big enough volume to make her wince, and she wasn’t able to keep hold of it. The thick tome landed on her toe with a thud, adding to the pain in her chest.
Emma closed her eyes, trying not to let everything get to her. There were so many things hurting and she didn’t want it all to unravel under the duress of a whacked toe. Rather than shout out in pain, she swore under her breath and inhaled deeply before heading to the staffroom. She wasn’t about to start crying out here, where she would be seen by staff and customers alike.
She didn’t know anything yet, she told herself. There was still a chance it was benign. A very slim chance, but a chance all the same.
‘Is everything okay, Emma?’
It was Trevor, her boss, blocking her route to the staffroom. And the question leaving his lips wasn’t actually the one he was asking. The question he really wanted an answer to was: ‘Why aren’t you getting on with your job?’
‘I dropped a book on my toe.’ Emma said it quietly, as if she were making an apology that she didn’t want to be heard.
Trevor laughed. ‘Hazard of the job, I guess. As long as you haven’t broken any bones, you can at least pick it up. We don’t want any customers falling over now, do we? Health and safety and all that.’
Emma glanced back at her abandoned trolley. She was unaware she’d left the book on the floor, its pages splayed in an ungainly fashion and its spine cracked in a position that would normally bring her out in hives. Today, she didn’t care. Books could be replaced. Bosses didn’t have to be arseholes.
‘Go on then.’ Trevor gave a definite nod and glare, as if she were a misbehaving dog that had not yet retrieved its stick.
‘You pick up the frigging book.’ Emma’s voice was no longer quiet. It was loud and clear and made every punter in the library turn and stare.
Before Trevor was able to recover from his shock at her outburst, Emma turned on her heel, bypassed the staffroom and headed straight through the automatic doors to freedom.
Screw never.
Six
It took approximately two hundred metres for the wind to leave Emma’s sails. What had gotten into her? Being rude to her boss and walking out of work were so uncharacteristic for her, she was sure they’d have a mental health nurse waiting for her when she got home.
Having marched out with an unprecedented amount of gusto, she quickly deflated to a standstill and had to find a bench to rest her woes on.
Her toe throbbed. Her boob throbbed. Her heart throbbed. Well, her heart throbbing was no doubt a good thing, but how long would that last if it turned out the lump they’d found was cancerous? The cancer specialist nurse had said it was more than likely malignant, so she wasn’t holding onto much hope that the final diagnosis would be anyth
ing different. Faced with that, she would cope with her toe and boob ache as long as her heart throbbing continued. It was pretty essential after all.
And as it was still beating, she needed to work on screwing never. Which was a harder notion than it seemed when she needed to be back home for her mum by five o’clock. Heading off for a couple of weeks in Italy, sightseeing around Rome and eating some authentic Italian pizza and creamy, sugary gelato would help pass the time until the dreaded results arrived – if only it were a possibility, to just jet off and escape her worries. For most women her age it would be… But she had responsibilities she was unable to leave behind. So, other than walking out of work (which she might live to regret), she wasn’t sure how to embrace life when she only had two hours before she needed to catch the inevitable bus home.
Glancing back in the direction of the library, Emma wondered whether what she’d done was sensible. Her practical side told her that she should just go back and apologise. But then she spotted Trevor outside the automatic doors, searching the crowds up and down the high street. He was looking for her. If she was going to die soon, she wasn’t going to put up with any more of his shit.
Seeing Trevor propelled Emma into marching with renewed energy. Screw. Never. Screw. Never. Her feet beat the rhythm into the pavement. Screw staying put. Screw biopsies that didn’t provide definitive results for two weeks. Screw life. No, backtrack, she didn’t want to screw that. She rather liked life. Screw what life was throwing at her. That was more like it.
So invested was she in her own personal marching crusade that she didn’t notice the A-frame on the pavement until it sent her falling arse over tit (not the best thing to do in her bruised post-biopsy state).
Glancing around to see if anyone had noticed, Emma got to her feet, using the frame for balance, dusted herself off and decided stomping around in a rage was clearly not the answer.
99 Days With You Page 2
