Everybody Died, So I Got a Dog

by Emily Dean

  I found a champagne-coloured shoulder-length one with flicked-out ends. ‘This is the one,’ I said. ‘She can wear it with a scarf to hide the parting. Bad partings are the truth-tellers with wigs.’

  My mum agreed. ‘Oh, darling, you are so clever! This is perfect.’ My mobile rang. It was Adam. I went outside to take the call. The cancer was spreading. He mentioned lymph nodes. And bones. He told me that Rach didn’t want to burden my mum with this news. She worried Mum wouldn’t cope. In just the same way she didn’t want to worry her friends – or Mimi. He told me Rach wanted to keep it between the three of us. ‘I understand,’ I said, watching my mum through the window, engaging the shop assistants in laughter as she tried on unflattering hairpieces to amuse them.

  ‘Who was that?’ Mum asked as I entered the shop.

  ‘Oh, just Adam checking in.’ My breeziness was too forced. ‘Shall we get—’

  ‘Is everything okay, Em?’

  ‘Yep, all fine.’

  18 January

  It had been three weeks since the Agatha Christie consultant broke the news. Rach didn’t want to dwell on the cancer’s ceaseless march upon her body. She urged all of us to get back to normal, accept invitations, start dipping back into work. She wanted me to go back to the radio show. ‘Please, Em, I want everyone to be living their lives. It’s depressing otherwise.’

  I told Frank I was going to return to the show that weekend. ‘Only if you’re sure, Em,’ he said, warily.

  I had been popping back into the magazine office for the odd hour but had spent most of every day over the past fortnight keeping vigil in Rach’s bedroom as she built up her strength for chemo. ‘Hey, C,’ I shouted as I raced up the stairs every morning. We gossiped about friends, pored over the endless gifts and teased Mum as she read out passages from a cancer survivor’s story. ‘Why do actors always read everything as if they’re auditioning for Macbeth?’ Rach giggled to me. I watched over her while she napped, counting the minutes until her eyes opened again.

  20 January

  Rach started chemo at the Marsden yesterday. But when Mum and I popped in today to see her after her second session, she was in a lot of pain. ‘This is worse than childbirth,’ she gasped, gripping the bed. But she somehow still managed to pass on the sighting of ‘a really fit doctor’ for me. I laughed to cover up the panic I felt. And because it was just so her.

  Consultants paced in and out, asking her questions with a calm professionalism.

  Mum and I retreated to the waiting room while they investigated further. Adam explained a few hours later that they would be keeping her in overnight. He would call to let us know how she was getting on.

  ‘She’s in the best place, at least,’ I said to Mum as we headed home. ‘Thank fuck for that hospital. I’m sure her body’s just trying to deal with the chemo. It’s basically poison,’ I pointed out, with that slightly know-it-all tone of someone who’s overheard a few doctors talking and decided they are now a medical expert.

  The other day, during one of our bedside chats at home, Rach had asked me to look into a big family holiday for all of us – her, Adam and the girls, me and Mum. ‘Somewhere hot and lovely,’ she’d said. ‘Soon, Em.’ So I decided to spend the evening researching destinations.

  I had always sensed she felt slightly caught between two worlds – her past with us and the new one she built for herself. Our family story was too all-consuming to recede politely into the background. But now, she was simply able to ask for what she wanted: to bring those worlds together.

  I started to Google short-haul winter-sun holidays. Seeing the sparkling pools and ‘available now!’ notices filled me with hope. ‘The only family holiday we ever had was the shit sandwich to tell us they were divorcing,’ Rach once said. I was going to put this right.

  My phone rang.

  ‘Em?’

  It was Adam.

  ‘They’ve taken her to the intensive care unit,’ he said. ‘She’s in a bad way. They think … it’d be a good thing to gather at her bedside now.’

  Intensive care. Bad way. The words didn’t make sense. It was too soon.

  ‘I’ll call Mum. We’re on our way.’

  Mum sounded merry when she picked up. Her spirits had been lifted by Prosecco and the company of her old actor friend, Hugh Quarshie, who had popped in to see her. ‘Hugh’s here! He was just talking about that time—’

  ‘Mum, Adam called. Rach has been taken to intensive care. She’s in a bad way.’

  She gasped. And then went silent.

  It was Hugh’s voice I heard next. ‘Emily, I’ll drive you. We’ll see you in ten. Hang on in there,’ he said in his deep resonant voice.

  I felt almost high on the car journey to the hospital – strung out on shock. My mother sat in the front, cloaked in silence. Bright optimism had carried her through her entire life but it was a currency rendered obsolete now. I thought of her parking on yellow lines outside Harrods as she unleashed her Churchillian battle cry, ‘The Dean luck will be on our side, girls!’ She couldn’t call on that anymore.

  Hugh kept up a soft stream of conversation. It was a relief to have his robust presence buffering our raw fear. A family friend invested in the enormity of our journey but not sprawling, bewildered in the centre of it. He played a surgeon in the BBC medical drama Holby City and mentioned the potential confusion when he entered a hospital, as people struggled to separate life from drama. It was a conversational ramp I clung to, one that bridged the world of our childhood thespian anecdotes and the realm Rach now inhabited.

  ‘We’re here,’ Hugh said.

  The doors swung open to take us into the hushed womb of the intensive care unit with its whispered conversations and hulking equipment blinking out numbers. The consultant gathered us into a small family room to talk about Rach’s condition. The medical team referred to things like ‘systemic failure’, ‘organs struggling’, ‘morphine’ and ‘monitoring her constantly’. The words landed with thuds.

  I looked through the window of the room where Rach was lying. Her eyes were half closed and she was hooked up to all sorts of apparatus, her hair piled up in its signature messy half-ponytail.

  ‘Can I see her?’ I asked a nurse, who led me over to hand-sanitiser and thin plastic gowns and aprons, the strangely futuristic uniform that marked out the visitors in this unit.

  I drew up a chair to her bed. ‘Hey, Rach,’ I said, stroking her hand.

  She nodded towards a little bowl with a wet sponge on a stick. I lifted it up to her lips to moisten them. Her eyes looked different. I wasn’t sure whether it was the medication or shock. How the fuck has this happened in three and a half weeks? her expression seemed to say. I stroked her hair in place of answers.

  There was a lot I wanted to tell her. I wanted to thank her for making me feel safe and loved. For navigating the choppy seas of our childhood, and throwing sunshine and laughter on dark moments. I wanted her to know that the way she lived her life – with compassion and kindness – was the right way. I wanted to tell her how proud I was of the values she was instilling in her girls, teaching them to be considerate and kind. Guiding them towards a life where they focused on their minds rather than their beauty. I wanted her to know that when she refused to let me take Mimi to see a movie called 27 Dresses about a marriage-fixated bridesmaid, calling it ‘brain-washing shit’, she was right. And that when she told Mimi never to use words like ‘fat’ as an insult, and I told her to ‘lighten up’, I was wrong. I wanted her to know that even though she isn’t perfect – sometimes guilty of wanting to please too much, often prone to obsessing over past slights, occasionally too frightened of confrontation to demand what she is due – she always strove to be better.

  Most of all I just wanted to tell her that I had never loved anybody as much as I loved her.

  But I didn’t. Because it was her ending, not mine. It didn’t feel right to impose a sense of closure on her life with some grand speech. The truth was, I had no idea how to handle this.
My only experience of talking to the dying had come via movies, where vows are made, forgiveness is sought and life is brought to a neat conclusion. I didn’t know how to say goodbye to my sister.

  So I decided to just tell her how I was feeling right now.

  ‘I want you to know … that I really love you. You make me a better person – you make everyone a better person. I’m so lucky to have you as my sister. You’re basically my world, Rach. You always have been.’

  She looked up and squeezed my hand.

  A nurse padded into the room. ‘How are we doing?’ she asked, and our moment of heightened intimacy receded into a glow, like candlelight flickering but not quite going out.

  Back in the waiting room, I rested my head on my mother’s lap. She stared ahead, in silence, stroking my hair as we retreated into the roles of child and parent. It felt easier than being two frightened adults.

  ‘She’ll beat this, I know she will,’ my mother said firmly, in a tone that said she couldn’t entertain any other outcome.

  The clock ticked towards 2.00am. I walked out to glance through the glass at Rach as she slept, watched over by Adam. We all had our own story with Rach and there was an unspoken respect for that between us, so I resisted interrupting his intimate moment.

  The critical-care sister approached and patted my shoulder. ‘It’s up to you, but don’t feel you can’t go home and get some sleep,’ she said. ‘You need to look after yourselves.’

  ‘But what if …’ I trailed off.

  ‘We’ll call you if there are any changes. We’re monitoring her every minute.’

  We gathered up our things. I glanced over at Rach’s handbag and her Top Shop leopard-print jacket, slung over the back of a chair. Taunting us, as if she had thrown it casually off her shoulders and was about to return to the room, fizzing with energy and anecdotes.

  ‘Miracles happen all the time,’ said my mum defiantly, in the cab home.

  I nodded reluctantly. I wanted her to adjust the sails for what was coming. I felt as helpless as someone watching a thriller, yelling at the protagonist to flee from the house into the dark forest because the ambush hiding in the basement was worse. Prepare yourself, I wanted to scream. Be the sage adult. The keeper of uncomfortable truths. That way I can be the scared child. I felt the absence of Rach, suddenly. Our world simply didn’t work without her in it.

  21 January

  ‘How are we faring this morning?’ asked one of the consultants as he popped his head round the door into the waiting room. He came in, his lilac shirtsleeves neatly rolled up, lanyard dangling from his neck. His presence was distinguished but friendly, a headmaster temporarily burying his authority at the school fete. He joked about the quality of the vending machine coffee before expertly shifting gears into discussion of Rach’s condition, telling me that they were doing their best to control her pain.

  ‘Thank you for looking after her,’ I said. ‘Everyone is lovely in this unit. So kind. It’s like a little cocoon.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice to hear. It’s funny; people always talk about living in the moment, don’t they? But they rarely do.’ He smiled. ‘I think this is probably one of the only places where that really does happen every day.’

  He was right. Not once had anyone brought up the future or even the following day. Instead, people talked always in the present tense. ‘We are trying.’ ‘We are monitoring.’ His remark stayed behind after he had gently closed the door. What happened yesterday, what might happen tomorrow, was never mentioned here. It was a little haven of now.

  I put on my plastic apron and gloves and entered Rach’s room. The nursing team had told us that earlier on, she seemed to be indicating that she wanted to see a priest. ‘I think she’d like that,’ I agreed, remembering how comforted she had been by the friendly, informal hospital chaplain who chatted to her after her diagnosis.

  The elderly man who arrived half an hour later seemed keen to get straight to business. ‘Weekends are busy,’ he said, hurriedly placing a silk stole around his neck. As he recited long passages from the Bible in sombre, ceremonial tones my stomach lurched. This archaic language and high formality were all off. I’d really booked the wrong person for this gig. ‘Awfully sorry, but this is not the religion we were after!’ I wanted to say diplomatically. ‘We were looking for something a bit lighter. Tad more spiritual and personal, perhaps?’ Our intimate vigil space felt pierced with oppressive symbolism and finality.

  I exchanged worried glances with my mother, who offered me a camp grimace, the kind she reserved for hopelessly miscast actors.

  ‘Well, SHE was a bit Fire and Brimstone, dear,’ she said when he was gone, opting for the female pronoun, as if he were a drag queen.

  It was an irreverent habit picked up from her gay friends in the theatre who liked to call Sir Ian McKellen Serena McKellen. She was doing, of course, what we had always done – alchemising disastrous moments into anecdotal light relief. And it was exactly how Rach would have handled it. But I was struggling to lapse into that familiar style over this incident. I should have thought ahead, done research, made a better booking.

  It’s funny how you can find yourself focusing on things like the wrong tone by someone’s bedside when you’re losing them. Art directing someone’s final days, planning the perfect end. It feels easier, perhaps, than confronting the thing you can’t face.

  I talked to Jane when I got home that night at 1 a.m. She managed to bury her own shock to wrap me in support. My phone had filled up with messages from people wanting updates, offering to help and visit. I hadn’t shared the true extent of Rach’s situation with most people, respecting her wishes. But Penny had grasped exactly how things stood. When I spoke to her she said, with pragmatic compassion, ‘I think, my Em, we are going to have to prepare for a swift and painless exit for our darling girl.’ It was a relief to hear those words. ‘Swift exit.’ I was the child briefly on the receiving end of difficult truths, rather than the adult reluctantly delivering them.

  Some of my friends had deduced that things were hurtling towards a conclusion we hadn’t foreseen. They listened as I cried, reassuring me that a long, drawn-out illness might have given us time to adjust but would have been tougher on her.

  ‘You know what? Either way it’s shit, Em, it just is,’ said one friend.

  There was an inescapable honesty in this. The right type of priest, the right goodbyes, the right length of time between knowing someone was going and watching them go – perhaps there were no good or bad endings. There were just endings.

  22 January

  We were sitting by Rach’s bedside, chatting in the style that we had fallen into over the previous thirty-six hours. One that protected her from discussions of the future and the world outside and just cradled her in the gentle hum of family exchanges. She was increasingly less responsive, sometimes lifting her head or gesturing. But the medical team told us she would hear everything we said. I once read an article about how hearing is considered to be one of the last senses to go. What did she want to hear? It was a question to which I would never know the answer. But perhaps anyone would just want to feel loved.

  I scanned Rach’s face for a flash of approval. She often responded to things that made her smile. Overheard conversations between nurses, descriptions of eccentric visitors in the canteen, scandalous updates about a friend’s love life. Rach had always been obsessed with the tiny details of human interaction. She would stay on a bus past her stop just to hear the end of an intriguing conversation.

  ‘Tell Rach about the doctor, Em!’ my mother suggested.

  I retold the moment, from last night, when I was describing a consultant as ‘the really hot one, a bit like a GQ model’ only to discover that he was standing right behind me.

  Rach looked up, intrigued. I’d made a dick of myself and that was anecdote touchdown for her.

  The consultant/GQ model took it well, I told her. ‘It’s okay, worse things happen,’ he had said, with a smile. Perhaps saying
‘worse things happen’ in an intensive care unit had been a bold moment of gallows humour on his part. Or maybe just a poorly chosen phrase he was also now reliving with horror. But I was grateful to him for gifting us this pocket of light relief. And he did really look like a GQ model.

  Adam started to talk about the girls, recalling one of Mimi’s ‘kids say the funniest things’ moments, when Rach suddenly reached out and grasped both our hands with a firmness that surprised me. Mustering strength from somewhere, her face set in concentrated resolve, she lifted my hand and Adam’s up to be joined above her head. A gesture of unity. About the future, and her girls. She enveloped Adam in an embrace before falling back into the bed, exhausted.

  I sat in the waiting room afterwards wondering whether it was her way of saying goodbye. Did people know that they were nearing the end? Was that some sort of ceremony of closure? When would it happen? Tomorrow? And then I shut the thought down. I’d forgotten the first rule of the intensive care unit – you never talk about tomorrow.

  23 January

  Adam and I were in the cab, on our daily journey to the Marsden. Rain dribbled down the windows as the cream villas of Regent’s Park hulked into view. Commuters navigated the wet pavements, speaking into phones, preparing for the week. Was it Monday? I’d begun to lose track of the days, out of sync with the rest of the world and their hurried flat-white orders, all those infinitesimal decisions that build a twenty-four-hour period. It was hard to remember when those hundreds of daily flickering thoughts filled my head, like tea lights, before they were extinguished by the furnace blast of fear. I envied those people now.

  The driver had Magic FM turned up loud, the familiar accompaniment to every cab ride in London. I wondered whether the drivers had held a meeting and collectively decided it provided the best all-purpose playlist – soothing enough for the brokenhearted and mainstream enough for the ride with a work superior, where you don’t really want the songs to stray into territory like ‘I’m a boss you a worker bitch.’