‘Is that why you asked Mum and Dad to have your kids?’
‘Partly. You know how Mum is. She’s much better if she’s busy, and looking after the kids will keep her occupied, give her less time to worry.’
Maggie nodded in silent agreement. ‘How were the kids?’
‘Good. They’ve been yabbying and looking after the chooks and bottle-feeding the lamb the neighbours gave Dad.’ She could picture the two of them, running amok around the farmhouse and the few acres that her parents had on the outskirts of Bowral. They would be enjoying their country holiday with their grandparents, oblivious to what was happening in Melbourne, and that was the way she wanted it. ‘I think they’ve got plenty to occupy them and it’s far better to have them busy up there.’
‘What did you end up telling them about your surgery?’ Maggie asked as she finished plaiting one half of Juliet’s hair and started on the other side.
Juliet had found it difficult to know what to tell the children. She’d been worried about imparting more bad news so soon after the divorce and she’d discussed her concerns with Maggie.
‘I was vague. Sam and I spoke to a child psychologist before we told the children about the divorce and she suggested that we tell them only what we thought they needed to know. She said to give them enough information so they could make sense of what was happening without overloading them. I thought that was good advice and something that would work in this situation too.
‘I didn’t think they needed to hear about the worst-case scenario,’ she continued. ‘I know they’ll realise I look different so I’ve prepared them for that. I told them I found a lump in my breast and the doctor is going to take it out to make sure the lump doesn’t grow. They know to expect my breasts to be smaller. I couldn’t quite tell them they’d be gone altogether and I haven’t mentioned chemo yet or the word cancer. I wasn’t sure how much they would understand. I can give them more information as I go through the treatment.’
‘I think they’ll surprise you with how well they cope, especially if how they’ve dealt with the divorce is any indication,’ Maggie responded, showing her support for Juliet’s decision.
Their conversation was interrupted at this point by the nurse who bustled into the room and dropped a gown on the bed beside Juliet. ‘Can you change into this for me? You’ll be going to Theatre soon.’ She barely paused to make eye contact before she hurried out again, saying she’d be back shortly.
Maggie snapped an elastic band around the tail of Juliet’s plait. ‘I’m finished. Do you want me to wait outside while you get changed?’
Juliet shook her head. ‘I need to use the bathroom,’ she said. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway?she’d been stripped naked and poked and prodded in front of more people than she cared to think about over the past six weeks so undressing in front of her sister was no big deal.
She picked up the gown and went into the en suite bathroom. She stripped off her T-shirt and bra. Out of habit her fingers went to her left breast, palpating the lump. She wasn’t sure when that had become a habit. Just as she wasn’t sure if she was still hoping that one day, miraculously, the lump would have disappeared. But there it was. It was the size of a walnut in a shell but she knew that a few months earlier it had been the size of a pea.
The diagnosis had put her into a spin—the divorce had turned her life upside down but getting the diagnosis of breast cancer had sucked her into a vortex and the only way to stop her life from spiralling out of control had been to fight. And she was fighting with everything she had, starting with sacrificing her breasts. She was going to fight this disease and she’d keep fighting for as long as it took to beat it. That was the only way.
Today was step one. The mastectomy.
Her heart rate increased at the thought of it.
I am not scared, she told herself.
She wasn’t afraid of losing her breasts. Her breasts were insignificant, inconsequential. They were nothing compared to her children. She wasn’t prepared to leave her children without a mother, and if that meant letting someone take her breasts, it was a small price to pay. She’d chosen surgery without hesitation and once she made up her mind she very rarely changed it.
Saying she wasn’t scared of the surgery itself was probably an understatement. She wasn’t afraid of having parts of her removed. She didn’t think she’d miss her breasts and she didn’t imagine anyone else would either, but she was a little apprehensive about the risks associated with surgery. She had to get through it. Her children needed her.
Juliet turned her back to the bathroom mirror as she slid her arms into the gown and fastened the tie behind her neck. But avoiding mirrors didn’t completely mean she could avoid her reflection. As she emerged from the bathroom she could see Maggie waiting for her. She knew how similar they were so she was still able to picture herself in Maggie’s image. Maggie, older by four years, was taller and slimmer but their colouring was identical. Juliet always thought of herself as a rounder version of Maggie. Even now, with the weight loss she’d suffered, that was still the case. In their younger years Maggie had always complained of being too skinny and had called Juliet ‘curvy’. She’d been envious of Juliet’s bust but, as was the way of teenagers, Juliet would have happily swapped her CC cup for Maggie’s narrow hips. Maggie had an oval face and Juliet’s heart-shaped face also made her seem slightly rounder by comparison. But while their physical shape was different, their identical colouring always identified them as sisters. They had the same chestnut hair, although Maggie’s had a wave in it while Juliet’s was heavy and straight, the same bright blue eyes, the same fair skin with a dusting of freckles across their noses.
Looking at Maggie now gave Juliet a teensy insight into what her body might look like after surgery?without the narrow hips. She had decided not to have a breast reconstruction immediately and she knew it would be strange not to feel top heavy, but she could cope with looking like her sister—at least until she decided what to do about new boobs.
‘I brought you a present,’ Maggie said as she handed Juliet a small, flat parcel. ‘I’ll make sure it’s beside your bed when you wake up?it’ll help to remind you that you’re doing the right thing.’
Juliet unwrapped the gift. It was a photo of her children that had been taken at their grandparents’ house on the weekend that Juliet had visited to tell them the news. Kate and Edward had been feeding the lamb and smiling up at the camera. They had been full of life and their sheer delight had been captured perfectly. Maggie was right, the children were the reason she was here. They were everything.
‘It’s perfect, thank you.’
Maggie hugged her just as the nurse came into the room to take Juliet to Theatre. ‘It’ll all be fine,’ Maggie said as she kissed Juliet’s cheek before putting the photograph on the bedside cabinet for her.
Juliet was wheeled off to Theatre still thinking about her children. They had taken the news of her surgery remarkably well considering they were probably still processing the reality of the divorce. Or perhaps she was projecting thoughts onto them. She liked to think that she’d told them as much as they needed to hear, but was it possible they were coping so well because they were still too young to really understand everything that was happening? So far the divorce hadn’t really affected their day-to-day lives and they didn’t know anyone who’d had major surgery so the idea of something going wrong would not occur to them. Cancer was also an alien concept to them and one Juliet was not about to mention at this stage.
She had explained the operation in very simple terms but she guessed that until they saw the post-op result, until they saw her in her altered state, the surgery wouldn’t mean much. The rest of the treatment—the chemotherapy and any reconstructive surgery—she would explain later. One thing at a time, she’d decided. There was no point telling them about things that would happen months down the track—that was far too distant in their future.
She had reached the Theatre suites now and had been transfer
red to the operating table. The surgeon was in the room and she’d been connected to monitors. The anaesthetist had begun. The anaesthetic had been administered and the mask had been placed over her face. Juliet was counting down now. This was it.
Fourteen weeks to Christmas.
Thirteen years she’d known Sam.
Twelve weeks of chemo.
Eleven…
Juliet stirred. She was vaguely aware of being in a strange environment but what she was most aware of was pain. She was flat on her back and her chest was on fire.
‘Juliet.’ Someone was leaning over her, leaning into her field of vision. ‘The surgery is all over, and you’re in Recovery.’
She remembered now. The mastectomy.
‘Have you got any pain?’ The person leaning over her was a nurse. It hurt just to breathe and Juliet didn’t dare move. Was the nurse serious? Of course she had pain. She tried nodding her head.
That was a mistake. Just that slight movement intensified the pain and she felt a wave of nausea wash over her. She must have looked as bad as she felt because the nurse reached behind the bed and grabbed a small green bowl. Juliet turned her head just in time, wincing as the pain carved through her chest, and vomited into the bowl.
It didn’t help. She felt as though her chest was being split open, ripped apart along the seam that turning her head had created. The nurse waited until she’d finished then gave her something for pain and nausea, but the cycle continued for several hours. She vomited at regular intervals and she couldn’t work out whether pain was making her vomit or whether the vomiting was giving her pain.
The consensus was she had reacted badly to the anaesthetic and that had caused the nausea, which had exacerbated the pain. Eventually the nursing staff got everything under control but by that stage Juliet was so exhausted she felt she could sleep for days. As the pain receded she sank blissfully into a state of oblivion.
Juliet opened her eyes and cautiously looked around the room. She saw that she was out of the critical care ward and back in a private room, but she had no idea how long she’d been there. She’d been vaguely aware of people coming and going around her bed but she’d lost track of the days. She remembered seeing Maggie but couldn’t remember whether that was a before-or after-surgery memory. She supposed it didn’t really matter what day it was, although she’d ask the first person she saw just to satisfy her own curiosity.
The first person to come into her room was one of the nurses, bringing a delivery of flowers. ‘Aren’t these gorgeous? Someone’s thinking of you,’ the nurse said as she handed Juliet the blooms. ‘I’ll just go and find a vase.’
Juliet held the flowers. Yellow tulips. They were her favourites. She knew who they were from without reading the card that was nestled in their midst.
Sam.
‘What is the date?’ she asked the nurse, before she could disappear from the room. It wasn’t idle curiosity making her ask the question but a sixth sense suddenly telling her it was now important to know what day it was.
The nurse paused in the doorway. ‘September the twelfth.’
‘Oh.’ Juliet slipped the card from the little plastic stick and opened it. It was hand-written in Sam’s neat, precise script. That surprised her. She thought he would have just dictated a message over the phone to the florist.
My darling wife,
I hope you are recovering well and that these
tulips bring a bit of sunshine to your day.
I will see you soon, all my love, Sam.
Juliet read the card again. My darling wife?did Sam have difficulty remembering they were divorced too? Nearly three months after signing the papers Juliet still thought of herself as married. When would that change?
They would always be connected but at some point, surely, she’d have to accept that she was single.
Accepting it wasn’t the issue. In her head she knew she was divorced but in her heart she still felt married.
Had Sam’s wording been deliberate? Had he used the word wife on purpose? Juliet could remember exactly where she’d been thirteen years ago today. Did Sam remember too? She counted the tulips?thirteen. He hadn’t forgotten either.
Whenever Juliet saw a yellow tulip she was instantly transported back to Canberra in spring of 2005. Sam had taken her to the Floriade flower festival on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. She closed her eyes as she let her mind drift back.
It had been a glorious September day, with the sun shining in a cobalt-blue sky. The water on the lake had been unusually calm and everything about the world had seemed right. She’d been able to smell freshly mown grass and popcorn as they’d waited in line for the Ferris wheel, standing among some of the thousands of spring blooms that were specially planted for the festival. Hundreds of visitors had wandered through the acres of gardens but Juliet had only been aware of Sam. They’d boarded the Ferris wheel and when their carriage had reached the summit it had come to a stop. Looking down, Juliet had seen a carpet of yellow tulips spread our beneath them, blanketing the ground like a reflection of the sun. It was such a happy colour and it had suited her mood perfectly. Sam, however, had been more interested in looking at Juliet.
September the twelfth was the day he’d first told her he loved her, cuddled together on a seat at the top of a Ferris wheel. And on September the twelfth, thirteen years ago, above a sea of yellow tulips, Sam had proposed. Today was the anniversary of their engagement.
But thirteen years later everything had changed. The fairy-tale had unravelled. Juliet opened her eyes. Her dreams lay shattered at her feet in a million tiny pieces and her heart sat heavily in her chest, a leaden weight, immobile, stitched inside her skin.
Her body had failed. Her marriage had failed. She felt betrayed. Despite the tulips there was no gallant knight on a noble steed coming to rescue her.
The twelfth of September was now the anniversary of her surgery. It was no longer a celebration.
The mild perfume of the tulips suddenly made Juliet nauseous and she thrust them to the end of the bed just as the nurse returned with the vase. Juliet was about to ask her to take the flowers away but she hesitated, not quite able to part with them. The nurse picked them up, arranging them in the vase before placing it on the bedside table. Juliet turned her head, watching the nurse’s movements, and her gaze settled on the photograph of her children that Maggie had given her.
She would keep the flowers, she decided. Her marriage might be over but she still had a lot to be grateful for. She was going to concentrate on saving her future. Her children’s future. September the twelfth would be the anniversary of the beginning of the rest of her life. There was nothing to be gained by rehashing the past. The fairy-tale might be over but if she was lucky, her life wouldn’t be. She had vowed to fight and she wasn’t finished yet. Other battles had already been lost and she wasn’t going to lose this next one.
The nurse picked up Juliet’s chart. ‘Do you need anything for pain?’ she asked.
The pain of the surgery was bearable now, as long as she didn’t move too much, and the nausea had settled almost completely, but Juliet’s heart was hurting. She needed to rest and she wanted to sleep so she asked for the medication that was due.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have because when she did drift off to sleep it wasn’t restful. Whether it was the medication, the after-effects of the anaesthetic or just circumstances Juliet didn’t know, but whatever it was it resulted in a dream that was far too realistic for her liking.
She was walking along the coast. She could feel the breeze in her hair, could smell the salty tang of the ocean, but she didn’t recognise the beach. She did, however, recognise the figure walking a few hundred metres in front of her. It was Sam. He was wearing shorts and the green polo shirt he’d worn the night he’d taken the children to dinner at Sofia’s, the night of their divorce. Where were they? And why were they there?
She called his name, hoping the wind would carry it to him. He turned. He’d heard her. He was s
miling and Juliet’s heart flipped in her chest, just like it did every time Sam’s right-to-left smile lit up his face. He held out his arms, open and welcoming, and Juliet felt the last vestige of pain in her chest float away. But before she could move, before she could take another step towards him, Kate and Edward appeared from behind her and ran into Sam’s embrace.
He hadn’t been looking at her, she realised. His smile hadn’t been for her, it had been for his children.
Sam waited for the children and then turned and kept walking, holding their hands. No one paid Juliet any attention. It was as though she was invisible.
Juliet was frozen to the spot, unable to move, as she watched her family walk away without her, without so much as a backward glance. They continued walking along the beach, every step taking them farther away from her. Didn’t they know she was there or did they not care?
Just as Juliet thought she couldn’t feel worse, she saw an unfamiliar woman walking up from the water’s edge to join her family. The woman entered the tableau from the side so Juliet couldn’t see her face, only her back. Juliet called out but if anyone heard her this time, no one turned around. No one stopped. She was helpless, immobile, trapped in a nightmare, and there was nothing she could do as the woman walked away with Sam, Kate and Edward. Her family.
It didn’t matter that Juliet couldn’t see the woman’s face, she knew who she was. She was her replacement.
She woke with a start. She must have moved as she’d woken up because her chest was burning. The dream was so real, so vivid, and Juliet knew she wouldn’t forget it easily.
She lay still in bed, waiting for the searing pain in her chest to subside as she thought about the dream. What did it mean? Had Sam remarried? Replaced her?
She’d been able to see everything. Had she been able to hear them? Had they been able to hear her? It didn’t appear so. A horrible thought hit her. Was the Juliet in the dream dead?
Rescued by the Dreamy Doc / Navy Officer to Family Man Page 22
