Her fingers shook as she unhooked the clasps of the corset and let it fall to the floor. She drew in a breath, but it didn’t feel any easier without the tightness of the corset wrapped around her diaphragm.
Lizzie stumbled out of the dressing room and towards the exit. The anger from the interview had gone, leaving her cold and shivery. It was over. The lie, the trip, the documentary. It was time to go home. She felt only relief at the thought. It wasn’t until she’d shouted out the truth that she’d realised how much the lie had weighed like a brick on her every thought. She’d tried to ignore it, she’d tried to pretend, and for a while she had, but the truth had always been there, haunting her.
‘Will someone please tell me what’s going on?’ Lizzie heard Samantha’s voice before she saw them. ‘Jaddi. You know. I know you know. Tell me.’
Lizzie froze. Horror crawled over her skin. Samantha. She’d forgotten about Samantha.
‘Lizzie will be here in a second,’ Jaddi said in a quick and hushed voice. ‘Let’s wait for Lizzie.’
Panic hit, catching her breath in her throat. Lizzie twisted around and stared back into the corridors of the studio, knowing even as she did that she wouldn’t run; she wouldn’t search for another way out. She owed Samantha the truth, the whole truth, however much it hurt them both.
Lizzie pushed open the door and stepped into a reception area. Jaddi and Samantha stood on the other side of the room by a set of wide glass doors. Beyond the doors, Lizzie could see the black city street. The pattering of rain tapped on the glass. Ben was a few paces away with his back to the wall. She glanced towards him, hoping for something – reassurance, maybe – but his camera was mounted on his shoulder, hiding his face.
‘Ben, did you know about this?’ Samantha asked.
He shook his head and pointed his free hand at Lizzie.
‘Lizzie.’ Samantha rushed towards her. ‘Why did you say all that stuff about choosing death? It’s not true, is it?’
‘Sam, I’m so sorry,’ she said, fresh tears forming in her eyes. They were no longer tears for herself, but tears for her best friend.
Samantha shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. You were given the option to have more treatments that could have prolonged your life, or potentially cured you completely, and you said no?’ Samantha’s voice was low and rang of hurt and confusion in equal measure.
Lizzie sighed. ‘It’s not like that, Sam. The clinical trials—’
‘I … I need some air,’ Samantha said, spinning to the doors and fleeing outside.
Lizzie followed, rushing towards her friend as a gust of wind blasted her face. Tiny sharp hailstones hit her cheeks. ‘Samantha, please let me explain. I know it’s difficult to understand, but that’s why we didn’t tell you. I wanted so badly to tell you the truth, but I needed you with me, and I knew you’d never come if you knew the truth.’ The cold air burnt at the sore rims of her eyes. Something clawed at Lizzie’s chest. Desperation? Fear? Regret? She had to make Samantha understand.
‘Well, you were right about that. There is no way I would’ve come on this … this suicide mission if I’d have known for a single second that you could’ve been having more treatments.’ Samantha paused. ‘After what I’ve been through this week, all I can think of is how much I want to live, and here you are throwing your life away. Why couldn’t you have tried this one experimental treatment at the very least? Then, if that hadn’t worked, said enough is enough.’
‘Because it’s never enough, Sam. There’s always one more and one more. My entire life, there’s always been just one more treatment. It’s all I’ve known, Sam, and I don’t know what it’s all for. Another day, another month, another year, and all full of more treatment, more hospitals, more waiting rooms, more pain and feeling so sick I wish I were dead. When do I get to live, Sam? When do I get to actually live?’
‘But there was hope—’
‘Hope?’ A strangled noise escaped Lizzie’s throat. ‘Hope’s the real killer. It creeps in with every new treatment, every scan, every doctor’s appointment. No matter how much you try and control it, it’s always there building inside of you. It’s contagious too. It spreads through family and friends like a disease. Everyone hopes it will be OK, and then, when it’s not, the devastation is unbearable.
‘I think a part of me has always been waiting for the next tumour. I knew the minute my left hand started dropping things last summer, and after the radiotherapy failed this time, I realised I had a choice. I could choose to really live in the time I had left. There would be no hoping, only certainties. Travel, friendship, love … and then death.’
‘If it had worked though …’ Samantha said.
‘If, if, if! Don’t you hear yourself? I’ve been saying if since I learned to talk. I’m tired of if. This is my fourth brain tumour, Sam. I’ve done it all before. The treatments. Watching the hope on my mum’s face, whilst I was poked, prodded and injected with drugs. Then the total devastation in her eyes when it failed. I’m done, Sam. I’m done with if.’
‘But the clinical trial …’
Lizzie shook her head desperate for Samantha to understand. ‘The list of side effects with any clinical trial is horrendous. And most are permanent. Blindness, loss of limb function, brain damage. All for something nobody even knows will work? I wanted to live, Sam, not spend my last few months in a coma. Please listen to what I’m saying. This is why we didn’t tell you, because you’d never have been able to accept that this was my choice to make.’
Samantha stared at Lizzie for another beat before spinning towards Jaddi. ‘I can’t believe you’d let her do this. How could you let her do—’ The final part of Samantha’s question was lost by the roar of an exhaust.
‘It’s Lizzie’s decision, Sam,’ Jaddi said. Her cheeks shone with tears. ‘I was trying to support her.’
Another gust of icy wind blew over them, bringing with it more pellets of hail.
‘Support? That’s a joke, right?’ Samantha’s voice rose as she looked between them. ‘This is insane. For a minute, I thought, maybe you’d made the whole thing up and lied about it to everyone so we could travel the world. That would’ve been selfish and cruel, but I could’ve got my head around it if you were going to live. But just giving up? You’re not some seventy-year old grandmother here, Liz.’ Samantha stepped forward and gripped Lizzie’s arms. ‘You’re twenty-nine.’ Samantha shook Lizzie, gentle at first, then harder until pain stretched along Lizzie’s biceps to the top of her shoulders, but Lizzie didn’t pull away.
‘It’s my life,’ Lizzie cried out. All of a sudden the anger she’d felt in the interview returned. ‘Whether you understand it or not, it’s my life and my body. People get to choose every day how they live their lives and no one bats an eyelid. And I’ve gone along with it, I’ve played the dutiful patient my whole life, taking all the drugs I was supposed to take, no matter how bad they made me feel, but I’ve had enough. Why should death be any different from life? Why shouldn’t I get to choose death? Choose how I die and when?’
‘Because you’re young and beautiful,’ Samantha said, releasing her hands. ‘You’re funny and kind and clever, and you’re throwing it all away. Why? Because the treatments are too hard?’ She shook her head. ‘Do you even believe in heaven? Do you believe there’s anything else after this life?’
‘I … I don’t know.’ A pain crushed Lizzie’s chest. Her cheeks were wet with tears.
‘I don’t know,’ Samantha repeated the words. ‘And that’s worth gambling your life on, is it? I don’t know.’
‘I’m so sorry, Sam.’
Samantha stared at Lizzie’s face, as if searching for an answer to a question she hadn’t asked. ‘What about your parents? How can you do this to them? Do you have any idea how lucky you are to have Evelyn and Peter? No, of course you don’t, because you don’t know any different. Not all parents love their children, Lizzie. Some of them don’t give a rat’s arse about their children,’ Samantha said with a strangle
d sob.
Lizzie drew in a sharp breath at the mention of her parents. It hurt to think of the crushing grief she would cause them, had already caused them.
Lizzie reached a hand to Samantha’s arm. ‘I’m sorry.’
Samantha jerked away. ‘Stop saying that. It’s not me you should be apologising to, it’s your parents.’ Samantha pulled her mobile out of the pocket of her jacket and thrust it into Lizzie’s hands.
Lizzie dropped her eyes, allowing the noise of the passing traffic to fill the silence that followed. She knew what was coming, but she couldn’t lie anymore.
‘They know, don’t they?’ Samantha nodded, her voice suddenly calm. ‘So, it really was just me, then? Me you didn’t tell. Me you tricked into coming on this suicide mission. I can’t get my head around it.’
Lizzie opened her mouth to say something, to explain herself, but Samantha raised her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter what you say or how you’ve rationalised it in your head, you are choosing to die and I will never understand that.’ Samantha shook her head and strode away.
‘Sam, wait—’ Lizzie stepped after her.
‘Don’t follow me,’ Samantha shouted.
‘Let her go, Liz.’ Jaddi said. ‘She’ll cool off.’
‘Will she?’ Lizzie sighed, allowing the hurt and the guilt to wrap itself around her. There was a strange comfort in it – the churning guilt, the regret over lying to Samantha. For so long she’d ignored it, pushed it to one side, hidden it out of sight, but now it was out it wrapped around Lizzie like a blanket.
Ben lifted the camera from his shoulder and packed it into its holdall. ‘I need to call Caroline. See if she wants you to make a statement or just let the events play out.’
Lizzie turned slowly towards Ben. She thought of the sea and the beach where she’d grown up. The smooth stones she’d lobbed with all her strength past the waves, changing the movement of the sea as the impact rippled outwards. ‘Ben.’ Lizzie stared into his eyes trying to read his thoughts. ‘I’m sorry. I never meant for you to get caught up in all of this.’
‘I know,’ he said, ‘but I did. We all did.’
Lizzie nodded. Fresh tears scorched hot lines down her cheeks. She had a sudden desire to step into his embrace. She searched his face, but his expression remained impassive.
‘Will she pull the plug on the documentary?’ Jaddi said.
Lizzie spun towards Jaddi. ‘How can you think about that now, after what just happened?’
‘It will be alright, Liz. I promise.’ Jaddi wrapped an arm around Lizzie. ‘We knew it might all come out. It was the only way—’
‘Was it?’ Lizzie stepped out of Jaddi’s hold. ‘We should get back to the hotel and wait for Samantha.’
Numbness had swept over her body, like the gloopy white anaesthetic cream the nurses would apply before inserting an IV. The panic, the hurt she’d caused Samantha, the fear of what was still to come, it remained just under the surface, even though she couldn’t feel it anymore.
CHAPTER 64
Six months ago
Lizzie
Whenever Lizzie thought about Dr Habibi, she thought of the BFG. A tall man who had a kind way with his patients. When she was seven, she’d asked him: ‘Are you actually a giant from an ancient land?’ He’d smiled and said in his strong Persian accent: ‘You are half right and half wrong, clever Lizzie.’ His words were always shorter than hers. It wasn’t that he spoke the same words quicker, just that each word he pronounced was shorter somehow, fitting three words into her every one so ‘you are’ became ‘yu a’.
She’d mulled his answer over in her head whilst she played sleeping lions, waiting for the MRI machine to take its pictures, and wondered also if he would be able to see her thinking about him in the photos it took. If she was half right, did that mean he was a giant from this country, or a normal man from an ancient land?
It always surprised her then, when she stepped into his small, square office with its ever-growing wall of colourings and thank-you cards that covered the lifespan of his career, that he wasn’t much taller than her. His giant status had been nothing more than a childhood illusion. The knowing doctor who’d towered oh so high over her hospital bed.
‘Hello, hello,’ Dr Habibi said, ushering them into the four chairs opposite his desk.
Lizzie smiled at Dr Habibi and his energetic hand gesturing. Despite the circumstances of their relationship she liked him. He was thoughtful about the little things, like having four chairs ready instead of three because he’d known her brother was coming with them today. Saving them the awkward few minutes of shuffling and waiting whilst another chair was found and dragged in. They’d waited long enough.
Lizzie swallowed and tried to calm the fluttering of her heart. She’d been willing this day to arrive for weeks, waiting for the news like she’d waited for her exam results at university. Every day growing a little less sure, doubting herself and hoping all in the same breath. But now that they were here she desperately wanted to run far, far away.
‘So, how are you feeling, Lizzie?’ Dr Habibi asked, sitting down at this desk.
‘Better. The effects of the radiotherapy have almost gone.’
‘Sleeping pattern?’
‘Off and on, I guess.’
‘Any more symptoms – shaking limbs, numbness?’
‘No,’ she said, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth and biting. She should tell him about the colours, the spectrum of reds and yellows that had started to float like drifting balloons across her eyes, but she didn’t. The colours weren’t important right now. The results of her scans … that was why they were here.
‘So, I have looked at your scans.’ Dr Habibi’s eyes gazed into Lizzie’s as he spoke before drifting across to her mum, sitting beside her, then her dad, then Aaron. Lizzie didn’t mind that. Her family were in this as much as she was.
Her mum slipped her hand into Lizzie’s and gripped it tight. The skin around her mum’s fingers was slack around the knuckles, and icy to the touch.
Dr Habibi stood up and flicked on the lamps behind the white display boards, illuminating a dozen pictures of her brain, some sideways on showing the shady profile of her nose and mouth. Others more like an alien image or half a grapefruit. Her eyes fell to the tiny black kidney bean at the bottom of the first scan at the point her brain became her spine. A crushing feeling took hold of her, squeezing and squeezing her body. Lizzie knew what Dr Habibi was going to say before he so much as opened his mouth. It was her response she hadn’t planned for.
‘Unfortunately, the radiotherapy hasn’t been successful. As you can see,’ he said, pointing to the brainstem with the nib of his pen, ‘your tumour hasn’t shrunk in size. However, it hasn’t grown either. So, we have options. We can consider a clinical trial. There are some new treatments coming out of America for your type of tumour …’
Lizzie blocked out the sound of his voice. She couldn’t listen anymore. Why had she allowed herself to hope it would be gone? Allowed herself to think forward to the coursework she needed to catch up on, and the school placement she would be able to schedule. To her left, Lizzie felt her mum’s shoulders start to shake silently. Why had they all allowed themselves to hope?
The crushing feeling continued, squeezing and squeezing. Lizzie stood up, pulling her hand out from her mum’s ever-tightening grip and stepping over to the wall. Her eyes scanned the rows of thank-you cards and drawings, stopping every so often to linger on one then another. Right at the top, the scribbled picture she didn’t remember doing. A little girl and a purple dog, or a cat maybe. Someone had written her name and age in neat pencil along the top. Elizabeth Appleton, age 3.
There were pieces of paper pinned on top of other pieces of paper on top of thank-you cards and letters four or five deep on the wall, but hers were always visible. The intricate pencil drawing of a hawk that she’d stencilled from a book. Lizzie Appleton, age 9. Sat beside it was a card with a picture of the Suffolk coast; from her mum and dad
, she guessed. More notes, more thank-you cards, from her and from her parents. She even spied a crayon scribbling with Aaron’s name on it.
She could have changed doctors numerous times over the years, but she never had. Dr Habibi knew her and her family, and they knew him. Her whole life was on this wall. The thought spun in Lizzie’s head. She stepped back and tried to draw in a deep breath, but gasped and coughed instead.
Dr Habibi paused and waited for her to finish before continuing. ‘So there you are. It is not the news we hoped for, but we have options.’
She shook her head. The wall before her blurred into smudges of colour. Her whole life, she thought again. Her whole life was on this wall. Year after year. Four tumours and countless scans, innumerable check-ups and tests. A lifetime of not living displayed before her on the wall.
‘No.’ She heard the word, but it took her a split second to realise she had been the one to say it aloud. Only when it was out there, in the room, did she realise she meant it.
Lizzie turned to Dr Habibi. She felt the wide, watery eyes of her family on her and swallowed through the pain tightening around her windpipe. She couldn’t look at them and say what she needed to say, so instead she focused on Dr Habibi. ‘If –’ she swallowed ‘– I don’t pursue a clinical trial, how long do I have?’
‘Lizzie!’ her mum cried out. ‘What are you saying?’
‘It’s impossible for me to give any exact numbers,’ he said, staring back at Lizzie, both of them ignoring Evelyn’s outburst as if they were alone in his office. ‘We don’t yet know how quickly the tumour will grow –’
‘Best guess?’
‘Based on the growth levels I’ve seen so far, factoring any effect of the radiotherapy, my best guess would be six months. I’m sorry, Lizzie.’
A strangled cry from her mum filled the silence that followed.
‘And there’s no chance that another course of radiotherapy will do anything?’
Dr Habibi shook his head. ‘No, there are no guarantees, but with every treatment we try we get a better feel for what doesn’t work, and therefore what might work. With the tumour at its current size, I would like to put you on anti-seizure medication, to reduce the risk of a seizure as the tumour grows. A clinical trial—’
One Endless Summer Page 29
