by Bella James
‘And tell me your date of birth, including the year.’
Nice and easy. I start with confidence. ‘The first of September …’ then my mind just goes blank. Of course I know what year I was born. It is there somewhere but the information will not reach my mouth. He watches me struggling, seemingly unconcerned that he has me so thrown and nervous I can’t remember my own bloody birth year.
‘I’m seventeen!’ I blurt out crossly, and now it is my turn to fold my arms. I glare at him, convinced he is completely out of his mind.
Mr Raj places some paper in front of me and asks me to draw some shapes and then continues to ask more ridiculous questions.
He shines a light in my eyes, particularly my right one, and does the knee-tapping thing that makes your leg stick out. I’m subjected to similar tests to those Dr Braby carried out. Lying flat, tummy prodded, asking me to lift my legs in turn … squeeze his finger (I silently pray he doesn’t have the same sense of humour as Miles), smile, half smile, stick your tongue out, and it just goes on and on. God, Mr Petri must really hate me.
I had not even noticed the door opening, but as he asks me to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed, I see a plump nurse sitting a little way to the left of us. She smiles at me.
‘Anna, if you could take your jumper off, please, I need to listen to your chest.’
A cold wave of despair washes over me as I realise I’m wearing my sexy lace bra, the one with a sparkly red heart over each nipple. “Damn you, Boux Avenue” is my only anguished thought as I pull my jumper off and stare furiously at the nurse’s sensible shoes.
When it’s finally all over I find myself back in Alice in Wonderland’s chair.
‘Dr Braby was right; you seem to have some weakness in your left side, along with headaches. You say you wake up with them sometimes?’
I nod.
‘I’m also seeing a little swelling on one of your optical discs …’
He continues to look at his notes and starts tapping away on his keyboard.
‘Do you ever suffer from deja vu, Anna?’
‘Didn’t you ask me that earlier?’ I smile but he carries on, ignoring my hilarious joke.
‘Do you ever feel dizzy or uncoordinated?’
‘I don’t know.’
I’m starting to feel very hot, not to mention uncomfortable and I cannot tell him how much I want to get out of here and down to the Whistling Duck where Jules and Miles are waiting for me.
‘Mood swings?’
I flick my hair over my shoulder and tell him, ‘I’m a woman, Mr Raj; it is my prerogative to have mood swings.’ My returning feistiness brings with it a little comfort.
Taking his glasses off again, the stranger opposite me tells me that he is booking me some scans and further eyesight and hearing tests.
‘Why do I need them? I’m not really ill, you know. I’ve just been a bit under the weather. You know what it’s like … a few too many sick days, but do I really need a full MOT? Surely you must have real patients to see to? I’ll get out of your hair. Sorry to have wasted so much of your time.’
I go to shake his hand but his arms remain folded, leaving me hanging, so I clamp my arm back to my side.
‘Anna, some of these tests are highlighting factors that could relate to brain malfunction. I don’t want to alarm you, and it may be nothing serious, but you need to attend these investigative procedures. I’ll send you the information you’ll need for your scan then we’ll meet again when I have your results.’
He heads back round to his side of the desk and sits down, replaces his spectacles, and bids me a rather curt, ‘Good day.’
I take my cue to leave and jump down from the chair with pleasure. I exit his room, department, and hospital as fast as my shaky legs will allow me.
***
It takes four ciders to convince myself that everything is going to be fine. Jules and Miles laughed uproariously when I lifted my jumper and showed them the bra I was wearing. They agreed with enthusiasm that this was all a wicked plot to teach me a lesson, and by cider number six I realized that of course Miles was right. Mr Raj was not a real doctor; he was an actor hired by Petri to enhance this elaborate scheme.
***
I spent the next week trying to convince myself that everything was going to be all right. Sleep became impossible, so I perfected a regime of raiding my mother’s wine stash each night, only to pass out and wake around dawn with an increasingly torturous headache. I existed on paracetamol and the odd slice of toast, occasionally supplemented with a can or two of Red Bull to get me through the abomination of school work. Had I known what was to come, I need not have bothered showing up for my classes ever again.
It only took one rather frightening CT scan and a similarly disconcerting MRI to convince Mr Raj that I had a grade-three tumour, nestled snugly in the frontal lobe of my brain. Everything that I had attributed to too little sleep and too much alcohol was in fact caused by a malignant mass of cells, growing steadily with each day.
The shaking, the dizziness, the headaches, forgetfulness, tiredness, and numbness were not caused by self-anaesthetising with cider and the occasional joint. I had cancer.
‘I’m sorry, what?’
He looks at me steadily while handing out this death sentence and the plump nurse sits solidly to my left, offering to hold my hand. I ignore her entirely and direct my gaze back to him. The room gets smaller. I feel as though I’m struggling to breathe as he asks me if there is anyone I would like him to call. I feel very sick, and as if on cue, the tumour causing my headaches sends a marching band through my brain, an excruciating stamp on every nerve just in case I did not get the message.
You have cancer! It pounded into me.
I do not fully remember the next few minutes. I wished I hadn’t excluded my mother. I suppose I cried with shock and fear. The nurse ignored my protests and put her arms around me. It was a surprisingly comforting gesture. If she had dallied about or been the slightest bit hesitant I would have imploded, but she held me firmly and stroked my back with confident hands.
‘Will I die?’
He must dread this question, but he was well prepared.
‘Anna, this has come as a terrible shock to you but you must take heed that we are treating your illness with an aim to cure. There have been many exciting developments in this field over recent years. We will do everything we can to treat you, and I can assure you the oncology and neurosurgery team at Milton Keynes Hospital are second to none.’
Himself included, I supposed, as he said the last part with pride.
‘So I won’t die?’
I wouldn’t let him wriggle off the hook quite so easily.
At this point, the door opened and I heard a faintly familiar voice. ‘May I come in?’
I turn to see Dr Braby hesitating and it’s all I can do to stop myself launching at her. All my hate focuses in her direction, and with one look at me she actually takes a step back.
‘This is your fault,’ I hiss. ‘I was fine until I came to see you, now I have a brain tumour! Tell her!’
I look at Mr Raj, looking less confident and probably more familiar with patients who need sympathy and comfort after this sort of news. Not me. I’ve always been an angry person and quick to find someone to blame. Well, here was the person. Miss Perfect was done up to the nines for work, and for what? Just to interfere and ruin lives with her examinations and fascination with ‘all things brain’. I started shouting at her, words I cannot remember. I may have called her a slut, at which point Mr Raj slammed his hand on his desk, making us all jump, and Braby left, closing the door swiftly behind her.
‘Did that make you feel better?’
Actually it did, but his face had gone very red so I said nothing. Angry men unnerve me.
‘I invited Dr. Braby to our meeting. She is very learned in this field and I thought you may want to thank her for alerting us to your illness. Lord only knows how long it would have taken you to realiz
e you were ill. By which time your condition could have been so much harder to treat.’
I cannot help but feel desperately sorry for myself. Now I’m being told off? The nurse, who had removed her arm from me when I started shouting, professionally changes the subject and suggests we discuss treatment and focus on that for now. Mr Raj smiles gratefully and she blushes. He tells me he would look further at my scan results before deciding on the next course of action.
‘The tumour is not in the most desirable place so it is likely we shall start a course of radio and possibly chemotherapy before attempting surgery. This could reduce the mass and make matters more promising for us.’
‘Not the most desirable place?’ I am left wondering in what world there is a desirable location for a brain tumour. I sigh and, with that, the dark cloud settles itself contentedly above me.
***
It has been a little over a month, but I have not entirely accepted the fact that my old life has finished; that I now belong to this nightmare – a new world of pain, fear and desolation. I have experienced levels of pain I did not know existed, and I’ve had treatments you would not wish upon your most hated enemy.
November’s early dusk creeps into the room in which I now reside, and to my left I hear my mother snoring gently, her posture awkward in the visitor’s chair. I feel a sudden rush of love I’ve not felt in long while. For the first time since my illness struck, I was not thinking about myself. I was sad for her. She had never been very tactile with me or my younger sister, Isabel. There had never been any of the all-enveloping bear hugs that came naturally to most parents. Mother would pat us gently on the shoulder if we brought home a good school report, or give us an occasional brusque kiss on the cheek if she was feeling really affectionate.
We had always been cared for, I suppose. A little spoilt, really, with bedrooms crammed full of dolls and toys, dresses that matched shoes and ribbons that matched dresses. I didn’t want to feel angry at her any more. She barely left my bedside now.
I pulled the blanket away from my legs and, manoeuvring around my drip-stand, tucked it gently around her. I wanted to close the window at the far end of the room but I was too tired. A cold autumn breeze blew the thin curtains back and forth in a ghostly dance.
I opened my eyes sometime later and Mother was fussing around the bed, tidying up. The blue blanket was back over my legs and the window was firmly closed.
She did not exactly stroke my head, but she sort of patted it the way a person might pet their friend’s snarling Chihuahua when they’re secretly terrified but do not want to seem rude.
‘The doctor is on his way, Anna. We should be ready for him.’
Mr Raj walked in right on cue. Despite having my own room, there is no privacy here. Your body becomes hospital property. I’ve woken up several times during the night to find a nurse is injecting something into my stomach. No explanation, no ‘Perhaps we should wake her first and see if she minds being stabbed with whatever this is.’
In here I was no longer Anna Winters; I was female patient in room C. Brain tumour.
Mr Raj pulled the visitor’s chair towards me with a piercing scrape and sat down. Mum hovered behind him, then to his left, and eventually plonked herself down at the bottom of the bed. I could hear her breathing.
‘How are you feeling, Anna?’
The old me would have had a thousand sarcastic quips to offer him, but now my mouth felt too dry, my mind too cloudy. ‘OK,’ I mumbled.
‘I have the results from your last scan and I’m afraid it’s not good news. The chemo does not seem to be working. This will be your last session, and in a week we may let you go home while we plan the next stage in your treatment.’
‘Aren’t I too sick to go home?’
‘I talked to your mother earlier and she will take care of you at home for a little while. I think being away from here will do you good. Try to regain your appetite, get plenty of rest, and we’ll we see where we are then.’
‘Am I going home to die?’
I heared my mother let out a tiny cry but I was sick of beating around the bush.
‘Anna, look at me. You are a very stubborn and determined girl. I strongly advise you to use this to your advantage and be determined to get through this. I have practiced medicine for many years and have seen people with worse prospects get well again. But we will need to operate to remove the tumour before it causes any further damage. I would have liked it to be smaller but that’s not happening, so we will work with what we’ve got. The operation will carry risks; I’ve explained those to you.’
‘Tell me again.’ I wasn’t going to make this easy on him and I wanted the gory details. I was beyond terrified, and making this man feel uncomfortable was the only power I had. ‘I have a right to know exactly all the risks.’
‘Anna, please try to stay strong.’
‘Tell me!’ I shouted, making him jump. Ha, that got him. It pleased me to see that he looked shocked and annoyed. It really ticks me off that some doctors choose to behave like they are so above you. They tell you things on a-need-to-know basis and I was not having it. It was my tangled brain and for me this was life or death. For him it was just another tricky operation that afterwards he could literally wash his hands of, saying he’d tried.
He composed himself and looked me right in the eye. ‘As you know, the tumour is large and growing. It is located in a dangerous place and we can’t be sure till we operate how close it is to the cerebral lining. Its position also increases the risk of a haemorrhage. The operation has a thirty-seven per cent complete success rate. It can commonly cause paralysis, speech impairment, memory loss …’
Thank God he’d stopped talking as he sees my face and my mother’s sobs grow louder.
‘Anna, people do survive these operations and make good recoveries. Please focus on that, and my team will do their very best for you. I need you strong before we can attempt anything, so for once listen to your mother –’ (he seemed to know a bit too much here. I glared at her) ‘– and let her take care of you.’ He paused and looked at his chart. ‘I see you’ve lost a great deal of hair.’
Where the hell had that come from? I reached my hand up to my head and realized I had been too out of it lately to notice.
‘I’m sorry, does that bother you?’ I said heatedly. ‘Would you like me to hop on the bus to the nearest Vidal Sassoon and see if they can do something with it?’ I grabbed a few strands that came away in my hand and held them in front of my face while Mum cried gently. It angered me even more that she was crying. I’m the one who’s losing my hair, my mind, my life. I started to shout at her hysterically, telling her to stop looking at me like that. ‘Get out! Get out! GET OUT!’
At that point I saw someone tall standing in the doorway watching me, and through a blur of tears, I started screaming. A nurse pushed past them and tried to hold me down and I felt like I wanted to explode with rage. I was crying so hard it was difficult to breathe. Another person entered the room with a small tray of medication. But the fight had left as quickly as it came, and I had no strength left as she held my arm down and administered a now redundant sedative.
Chapter Three:
A Little Kindness
I must have been out for a while, because when I open my eyes they are all gone. My sister is next to me, and I see she is reading one of those awful celebrity magazines we pretend to despise but secretly love.
‘It says here that Taylor Swift weighs eight stone seven.’
At the sound her voice, I try to pull myself out of the drug-induced sleep.
‘That’s seven pounds more than you.’
For the next few moments, I forget I have cancer.
‘I’m thinner than Taylor Swift?’
‘According to your hospital records.’
‘Let me see that.’ I snatch the clipboard that should have been hooked on the bed rail from her grip. ‘God, it’s true. Annabelle Winters, height, five foot six, weight … eight stone. I’ve n
ever been eight stone! I’m positively gaunt.’ I almost cry with happiness. ‘Who else is in there?’
‘Cheryl Cole, no make-up. Kim Kardashian in frock-horror shocker, and Rhianna, before and after the maple syrup diet.’
‘Ooh, let me see.’ I grab the magazine off her and we enjoy a few more minutes analysing who has had Botox and who needs it.
Sometime later, Dr Braby sticks her head round the corner.
‘Are you feeling better, Anna? It certainly sounds like it.’
She said it nicely but there was a tone to her voice I could not quite place. Possibly fear.
‘Do you mind if I talk to you for a few minutes?’
Isabel jumped up like a rocket saying she needed to go to the café and did I want some chocolate brought back?
‘No thanks, but maybe some juice?’ I had learned that if I added a drink on the end of ‘no, thank you’ every time I was offered something to eat, I was less likely to get a lecture.
Dr Barbie was having none of it. ‘Bring Anna some fruit, please, Isabel.’ She looked back to me. ‘How will your body repair itself if you don’t give it the tools to do so? You need a little protein, vitamins and carbohydrates to get well again.’
She continued to drone on about fats and minerals so I rolled my eyes at Izzy, expecting her to pull a face also. We hated being told what to eat, and much preferred diet and starvation. But she nodded along with Dr Braby, agreeing that I needed to eat more, and that she’d bring me some bananas for folic acid and berries for antioxidants.
I felt doomed as Izzy left the room and closed the door behind her.
‘Mr Raj told me how upset you were earlier.’
‘So would you be if you just found out that you’ve suffered the worst, most terrifying weeks of your life for nothing. That it didn’t work but hey, look on the bright side; you’ve lost all your hair and you can no longer eat or drink without throwing up so let’s just look forward to the major brain surgery you probably won’t survive and be happy, shall we?’
Dr Braby took off her expensive glasses and looked at me. I thought her lovely eyes seemed watery and she suddenly seemed rather young and soft.
