by Aimee Said
“Ziggy, wake up! We’re leaving for the hospital in fifteen minutes.”
The lump groans. “I’m not coming. Close the door and leave me alone.”
“What do you mean you’re not coming? Mum’s surgery is today.”
Ziggy sits up and rakes a hand through his shaggy hair. “Note to annoying big sister: I’m not the one performing the surgery so I don’t need to be there. Dad already said it was okay for me to hang out with Biggie, so don’t get your panties in a wad about it.”
“Panties in a wad” is one of the charming sayings Ziggy’s picked up from Biggie. Rationally, I know it’s the same as “knickers in a knot”, which Mum uses all the time, but there’s something about the words “panties” and “wad” together that makes it sound altogether more … unsavoury.
“Fine, we’ll be better off without you there,” I say, slamming the door shut.
“What’s going on, you two?” calls Mum from her room.
“Nothing,” Ziggy and I chorus.
The Women’s Hospital is very, very pink. The carpet is pink, the walls of the corridors are pink, even the lettering on the signs is pink. It’s like they’re trying to send a visual message: if you’re a man, you don’t belong here. The look on Dad’s face says they’ve succeeded.
We follow the pink signs to admissions where an efficient woman goes over Mum’s forms, double-checking all the details even though Mum filled them in herself last night. Then a porter arrives with a wheelchair that he forces Mum to sit in and leads us via the pink signs to Oncology.
“You’re lucky you’ve got the room to yourself for now,” he says, wheeling her into a room close to the nurses’ station and pulling up by the window. “They’ve given you the bed with the view.”
“Lucky me,” says Mum, eyeing the construction site next door.
I watch as a frail-looking patient wheels her IV stand slowly past the door. “It’s better than the view of the corridor.”
“Good point,” says Mum, transferring the contents of her overnight bag to the small cupboard next to the bed.
“Hello, I’m Sally,” says a cheerful nurse around Mum’s age. “I just need to check the details on your chart and get you settled in before Dr Bynes comes for your pre-surgery consultation.”
Sally works her way efficiently through the information on Mum’s chart. I don’t know why she needs to check Mum’s name and date of birth and blood type and allergies since Mum only confirmed the answers at admissions fifteen minutes ago, but I’m beginning to realise that going to hospital involves a lot of paperwork.
“Last one,” says Sally, her pen hovering at the bottom of the page. “Can you confirm that your surgery is for a mass in your right breast?”
After hearing about Grandma’s friend Maisy, I don’t know whether to be relieved that she’s double-checking, or worried that she has to ask.
Half an hour later Mum is sitting up in bed, wearing a flimsy surgical gown that gapes at the front.
It’s almost 10.30 when Dr Bynes finally arrives, by which time I’m questioning how committed to her patients she is if she keeps them waiting for so long. She also seems way too young and way too glamorous to be a top surgeon. I know from medical dramas that surgeons should be old enough to have had loads and loads of experience, and not care about their appearance. They certainly shouldn’t wear stiletto heels.
“Good morning, Gene,” says Dr Bynes, leaning to kiss Mum’s cheek as if they’re old friends. She holds out her hand to Dad. “Good to see you again, Terence. And this must be Freia.” I shake her hand hoping she won’t notice how clammy my palms are. They’ve been sweating ever since we got here.
Dr Bynes goes over the information on Mum’s chart again. I’m about to pull Dad aside to ask whether he really thinks this doctor’s the best person to operate on Mum if she doesn’t know all this stuff already when she looks straight at me and says, “It’s ridiculous how many times we have to go through this, isn’t it? But it’s hospital procedure. You’ll hear it all again when the porter comes.”
It’s unnerving that Dr Bynes knew exactly what I was thinking, but I am somewhat reassured.
“Okay, Gene,” she continues. “Let’s go over the surgery plan we agreed on last week. If you’ve changed your mind about anything or you want to go over the options again, just say so, okay?”
“Should Freia and I wait outside?” asks Dad.
Dr Bynes nods at Mum. “Up to you, Gene.”
“I think you should stay,” says Mum. “Unless you’d prefer not to know the details, Fray?”
All eyes are on me and I can’t work out what the right answer is. I’m the sort of person who changes the channel when they show surgery on TV, so I’m not sure whether I’m ready to hear the gory details of Mum’s operation. But will it seem like I’m not interested in what she’s going through if I don’t stay? And is the look Dad’s giving me please-give-me-an-excuse-not-to-hear-this-again or do-it-for-your-mum? I can’t tell.
Eventually, Dr Bynes takes my inability to speak to mean that I want to hear about it. She pulls a notepad from her designer handbag and reads from it. “So, the plan is for a complete local excision, with a surgical margin. If there are further masses or microcalcification that wasn’t detected by the ultrasound, we may have to proceed to a full mastectomy. We will also do a sentinel node biopsy.”
I haven’t understood a word except “mastectomy”, but it all sounds pretty terrifying to me.
“And to put all of that into non-surgical jargon: we’re going to remove the lump and a small amount of healthy tissue around it, to make sure we get it all. If there are any other tumours or malignant-appearing calcium deposits in other parts of the breast, we may have to remove the breast entirely. We will also remove the sentinel lymph nodes in your right armpit and send them to pathology to be tested for cancer cells. Is that still what you want, Gene?”
“Yes,” says Mum, firmly. “That’s what I want.”
“Good. I’ll go and get ready for surgery now. The porter will be along shortly to bring you down to theatre.” Dr Bynes smiles at Mum as if she’s just confirmed lunch plans at a nice restaurant. “If everything goes smoothly, you’ll be out of surgery by twelve-thirty, and back on the ward an hour later. Your family can come back then.”
“What are we going to do till half-past one?” I ask after we’ve followed Mum’s gurney to the patients’ lift at the far end of the floor and said our forcedly cheerful goodbyes.
Dad doesn’t speak until the lift doors close. “I don’t know, Fray. I don’t know what to do.”
In the end, we go to the visitors’ lounge down the corridor from Mum’s room. It’s a small alcove, out of sight of the patients’ rooms, with a couple of saggy pink couches, a stack of falling apart magazines and a telly that’s tuned to kids’ programming. I catch up on the Hollywood gossip from 2007 while Dad stares vacantly at Play School. When I get up to grab another magazine fifteen minutes later, he’s humming along to the Bananas in Pyjamas theme.
“You and Zig used to love this show,” he says when he notices me staring at him. “Back when I was staying home with you every day, I used to park you in front of it so I could work on my novel. B1 and B2 were the best babysitters I ever found.”
He smiles, as if remembering better days. I don’t say anything, since Dad talking about his still-unfinished novel usually results in him locking himself in his study for hours, after which he emerges looking despondent.
Things to do while you wait for your mum to get out of surgery
Gnaw at a hangnail until it bleeds and wonder whether it’s possible to get anything as simple as a bandaid in hospital.
Ponder whether the dark stain on the carpet is blood or coffee.
Wash your hands extra thoroughly in the bathroom, à la a surgeon scrubbing up for theatre.
Make a mental list of all the things you’ll do if everything goes okay, starting with going to the supermarket every week without complaining.
Fight the urge to call your boyfriend and ask him to come and hold your hand till you’re sure she’s going to be okay.
12
From one o’clock onwards, Dad nips to Mum’s room every five minutes to see if she’s back yet. He’s led back from his fifth trip by an exasperated-looking nurse.
“Just stay put please, Mr Lockhart,” she says, guiding him to the couch in front of the TV. “I promise someone will come and get you as soon as your wife is back.”
“Sorry,” says Dad, but his eyes are resentful. It’s the same expression Ziggy gets when Mum forces him to agree not to do something stupid, like jumping off the roof into next door’s pool.
I try to ignore Dad’s incessant foot tapping and sighing for the next forty minutes. I’ve exhausted the magazines and moved on to a jigsaw that I’m beginning to suspect is made up of assorted pieces from two separate puzzles, unless there’s a Jungle Book story in which Mowgli meets Mona Lisa that I don’t know about.
Finally, a woman wearing a pink Volunteer badge comes to get us. On the way to Mum’s room she introduces herself as Jenny.
“Are you going to be looking after my mum?” I ask, trying to ascertain how much patient care volunteers might be responsible for.
Jenny laughs. “Don’t worry, the doctors and nurses take care of all the medical business. We volunteers are here for the non-technical stuff – foot rubs and hair brushing, someone to chat to, that sort of thing.” She stops outside Mum’s room. “She’s still groggy from the anaesthetic, so don’t worry if she seems a bit out of it. She’s got a drip in her hand and there’s a drain under her right arm – it looks scary, but it’s all normal after an operation like this. The nurse will be along in a minute to chat to you.” She leaves us at the door with a cheery wave.
Dad hesitates for a moment before going in. The curtain is drawn around Mum’s bed.
“Do you think we can just open it?” he whispers. “Or will that nurse come and tell me off again?”
“Terence?” Mum’s voice is hoarse and muffled but, as soon as she says his name, Dad pulls back the curtain and moves like lightning to the bed.
“Hello, Gene-genie. It’s good to see you.”
He leans down to kiss her, carefully avoiding the tube that snakes from the right sleeve of her hospital gown to a plastic bag below, where yellowish liquid tinged with drops of blood is accumulating. Mum does her best to smile but her eyes give away that she’s in pain. She holds out her left arm to me and I go to the other side of the bed and hug her as well as I can without getting tangled in the drip.
“Good afternoon, Gene,” says an efficient voice from the doorway. Dad’s nemesis nurse motions for him to move away from the bed so she can take Mum’s pulse. “I’m Janet O’Toole, the nurse-in-charge this afternoon. Dr Bynes will be along shortly to talk to you about the operation, but according to your notes everything went to plan.”
Dad gives his first genuine smile for the day. “When do you think she’ll be able to come home, Janet? Will she be out by new year?”
“When the doctor says so, Mr Lockhart. Let’s not forget that your wife has just come out of surgery. Our first concern is for her health, not your social plans.”
“That’s not … I didn’t mean …” Dad flounders. Ordinarily, Mum would jump in and say something in Dad’s defence, but she’s closed her eyes.
Nurse O’Toole gives us a look that says, Nursing Staff: 1, Patient’s Family: 0, and leaves the room.
When Dr Bynes appears twenty minutes later she’s back in her stilettos and freshly made-up. If I’d just had surgery, I’d be furious if my surgeon kept me waiting while she gussied herself up, but Mum either doesn’t mind or hasn’t noticed how long it’s been.
“It all went extremely well,” says Dr Bynes before anyone asks. “Although I’m afraid a mastectomy was necessary after all. There was another small tumour behind the one we knew about, and some microcalcification near the chest wall, but I’m confident that we got all of it.”
Mum nods and raises her right hand up to her chest, as if she wants to check that Dr Bynes isn’t playing a prank on her. She only makes it halfway before gasping with pain. Next to me, Dad flinches.
“That arm’s going to be out of action for a little while,” says Dr Bynes, taking Mum’s hand and lowering it to the bed again. “Anyway, it’s not all bad news. As we discussed last week, a mastectomy means that your post-operative treatment should be minimised. We’ll have the results of the biopsy back from pathology tomorrow, so we can talk more about it then, and about your options for reconstruction.”
“So, what now?” asks Dad when Mum doesn’t respond.
“Well, depending on the biopsy results and how Gene’s feeling, she should only need a few days rest before she’s fit enough to go home, but she’ll have to take it easy for at least a couple of weeks. There’ll be no housework, no cooking and, preferably, not too much activity at all.”
“Don’t worry,” says Mum. “Freia will look after things at home. Won’t you, Fray?”
She smiles proudly, showing off her capable daughter to her capable doctor. Suddenly, the job of keeping Dad and Ziggy and the house in one piece feels much bigger than just rearranging the names on the chore roster. When I realise that the three of them are waiting for me to answer, I nod. And keep nodding until Dr Bynes begins to look uncomfortable and turns back to Mum.
“I’ll stop by before I leave today to see how you’re going, Gene. You get as much sleep as you can, and call the nurse straightaway if you’re in pain. We don’t need any martyrs here.” Mum nods and gives her a weak smile. “And you two,” says Dr Bynes, nodding to me and Dad as she stands to leave, “should get going. You can come back during visiting hours this evening.”
After Dr Bynes leaves, I move out of the way so Dad can sit closer to Mum. The two of them whisper back and forth for a couple of minutes. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I get the feeling it’s Mum who’s comforting Dad, not the other way around.
On the drive home Dad’s acting weird, even by his standards. Every time we stop at a red light he gives me a massive grin. At first I think he’s just happy that Mum made it through the operation okay, but when he starts asking random questions about what I’ve got planned for the rest of the day and whether I need any help getting my first batch of brownies to Jay on time, I know Mum’s told him to do it.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You don’t have to pretend to be interested just because Mum’s not around.”
“I’m not, I just …”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re you and Mum’s Mum. I don’t need both of you stickybeaking.”
Dad exhales loudly, as if the time bomb between us has just been defused. “Okay. But you know if there’s anything you want to talk about–”
“Yep, thanks.”
When we get in Dad calls Grandma Thelma and tells her that they operated on the right bits and Mum’s doing fine. Then Gran has her usual rant at him about how he and Mum should get mobile phones. I can tell because he responds with all the lines that he’s heard Mum use: they have no one to call but each other and Gran, mobiles are expensive and unnecessary, no one needs to be contactable twenty-four hours a day. I notice he leaves out Mum’s main argument, which is that the electromagnetic fields from mobiles give you cancer. When Dad finally manages to get off the phone (by lying that I’m waiting for a lift to a friend’s place) he says that he and Boris have a date with his new Bach CD in his study and heads to my room to fetch his cat. Finally, something feels normal around here.
The reason I’ve been hanging near the phone is to check the answering machine in case Dan called while we were at the hospital, but there are no messages. Perhaps he’s waiting for me to call? I mean, if one of his parents had just had surgery, I’d want to know if Dan was okay (and the parent, of course, but mainly Dan), so this doesn’t count as Hysterical Girlfriend behaviour, right
?
There’s no answer at Dan’s house so I dial his mobile number, even though I’m not meant to call it from the home phone unless it’s an emergency. He answers on the third ring.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“I, uh, just wanted to let you know that Mum’s okay.”
“Oh yeah! The, um, it … thing was today, wasn’t it? That’s great news. Listen, can I call you back in an hour or so? I’m with Dad.”
Well, that explains the weirdness in his voice, at least. “Sure. We’re going back to the hospital when Ziggy gets home, but–”
“Excellent, I’ll talk to you later then.” He hangs up before I can even say what time we’ll be home.
One thing about having been exposed to every “women’s interest” magazine on the newsagent’s shelf while I was tagging along behind the Bs is that I’ve read eleventy-thousand articles about the psychology of the male mind, what men say versus what they really mean, how to tell when a guy is lying to you, et cetera, et cetera. I remind myself of the advice given to scores of women who write to Dr Love to find out why their boyfriend/husband/crush is acting less than thrilled to hear from them: don’t read anything into it.
All I have to do is keep myself busy for an hour and then Dan’ll call me from somewhere out of earshot of Dr Phil, and I’ll tell him about Mum and he’ll say something reassuring and everything will be okay again.
I should use the time to make the brownies to drop off to Jay tomorrow morning, but for once I’m not in the mood for baking. Perhaps a little boogie break would help?
It’s dusk when I wake up, still wearing my headphones. I’d treated myself to a little Kylie reminiscing but, instead of making me feel better, it had the opposite effect. Dancing round my room to Kylie Minogue’s Greatest Hits album used to be my best mood-lifter (seriously, I defy you to stay mopey while disco roboting to “Can’t get you out of my head”) but I haven’t listened to it much since I started hanging out with Dan and Siouxsie and Steph and Vix. Their taste is more punk than pop and while they all know about my fondness for Ms Minogue, it’s not something we talk about. Anyway, today it seemed like Kylie was the only cure for my ills so I dug it out from under the pile of cooler stuff Dan had burned onto CDs for me.
