by Dani Atkins
Two mums who were chatting close by both turned their heads at Hope’s words. I recognised them as friends of Chloe, and got the distinct impression that whatever I did or said next would eventually find its way back to her.
‘I tell you what, when we get back to my flat, I’ll take a photo of it on my phone and then we can send it to her with a message from you. How would that be?’
Hope nodded, satisfied with my solution, and when I glanced at Chloe’s friends I was pleased to see that they were doing likewise. It might have been a small test, but I felt immensely grateful to have passed it.
We stopped at the swings on our way home, taking advantage of the fading afternoon light and the fact that today I’d come on foot to collect her. We stayed in the park until our normally pale cheeks were flushed red with the cold. And she didn’t fall off of anything. Another test passed with flying colours.
Back at my flat, we warmed ourselves with mugs of hot chocolate, lost under a bobbing froth of mini marshmallows. When Hope had drained her mug, her normally pink lips had disappeared beneath a cocoa moustache, so I pulled out my phone and took a photo, which we sent to Chloe, along with one of the painting.
‘Do you think she’ll message us back?’ Hope asked, her eyes never straying far from my phone, which I’d left out on the kitchen table.
‘If she can, I’m sure she will,’ I said. I don’t know which of us was more disappointed as the hours of the afternoon slipped by, and my phone remained silent.
I was arranging a regimental line of nuggets onto the grill tray when Ryan arrived, far earlier than he’d been the day before. Hope had run to the door with me, which meant my questions about Chloe had to be asked by a series of nonverbal eye and facial expressions as he lifted Hope up into his arms and hugged her tightly. She wrapped her skinny legs and arms around him like a baby monkey, and when he tried to lower her back to the ground, she shook her head fiercely and clung on tighter. If proof was needed how much she was missing her mother, it was there in her death-grip on her remaining parent. Except of course he wasn’t her only remaining parent, I thought sadly, as I followed them down the corridor to the kitchen.
There was an ominous smell of burning coming from my oven, and when I pushed past Ryan and yanked out the grill tray, the golden-brown colour the instructions had told me to aim for had been . . . and gone.
‘I was making Hope’s supper,’ I said, stupidly feeling like crying as I looked down at the line of charred breadcrumbed shapes.
‘Looks delicious,’ said Ryan in a deadpan way that once, a thousand years ago, would have had me laughing. Today it had the exact opposite effect. I was no good at any of this. I was no good at pretending I was anything other than a very poor substitute for the woman both Ryan and Hope would rather be with.
‘What kind of idiot can’t even grill some bloody nuggets?’ I said despondently.
Hope gasped, and leant closer to Ryan’s ear. ‘Maddie said a rude word,’ she whispered, in case it had passed him by. My daughter, the supergrass. I laughed, and thankfully the downward spiral of doubt I could easily have got sucked into was avoided.
‘Tell you what,’ Ryan suggested, ‘why don’t we order a takeaway pizza for all of us, and then you and I can go home so you can call Mummy and say goodnight to her before you go to bed.’ It was quite a feat, finding a solution that could satisfy all three women in his life, but somehow Ryan pulled it off.
It was, I realised, the first meal he and I had shared in six years, but the tiny chaperone, who was half him, half me, prevented either of us from commenting on it. We ate the fragrant cheese and tomato pizza straight from the box, sitting in the lounge, which was warmer and cosier than the kitchen. It also allowed Hope to watch the last half-hour of the film I’d bought her, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV.
‘How were things today?’ I asked softly, glancing over to see if the talking mouse on the screen was holding our daughter’s attention. It was.
‘Grim. Scary, and confusing. You have no idea how many tests they put you through in there.’
‘Actually, I do,’ I said quietly.
Ryan reached over to briefly touch the back of my hand, and then almost immediately drew his arm back, as though he couldn’t quite believe his limb had been so irresponsible.
‘I’m sorry, Maddie, I forget. Of course, you know about all this better than anyone.’
I shrugged, but couldn’t deny that many of the tests and investigations Chloe was undergoing were ones I’d been through myself – not just once, but many times, after waking from the coma and in my regular check-ups.
I looked closely at Ryan, who’d taken no more than a couple of bites from his slice of the wagon-wheel-sized pizza. He might be putting on a show for Hope’s sake, but I knew him better than that. He wasn’t coping well, and that was hardly surprising, given that this was the second time he’d had to live through this kind of nightmare. How could that possibly be fair?
‘She has a cerebral angiogram scheduled for the morning,’ Ryan said, his eyes on the back of Hope’s head, which was still avidly fixed on the screen. I tried to hide my instinctive grimace, knowing how little fun that was going to be. ‘Then in the afternoon we’re meeting with the doctor to go through all the results.’
‘Try not to worry,’ I said, which might possibly have been the most ridiculous thing I had ever said to Ryan, or to anyone.
Chloe
The worst thing about the angiogram wasn’t the room full of scary equipment; it wasn’t the bank of monitors that looked like they belonged in a television studio control room; it wasn’t even the lopsided shaving, which made me look like I’d chickened out halfway through a Brazilian wax. No, the worst thing was seeing Ryan’s face when the nurse very firmly steered him towards the door of the room and back into the corridor. Because it mirrored every one of my worst fears. I needed someone to tell me everything was going to be all right, that this wasn’t going to change our lives in ways I didn’t yet know or understand. But on Ryan’s face I could see only tortured concern and pain, the same expressions he’d once worn for Maddie. Like a suit I’d never really liked, it was disconcerting to see how easily he’d slipped it back on.
‘Don’t you worry, we’ll take good care of her,’ the nurse said, her hand squarely placed in the middle of Ryan’s broad back. She ejected him from the room with the slick efficiency of a nightclub bouncer, but as she walked towards the narrow treatment bed on which I lay, she glanced over her shoulder at the doors several times, as though she didn’t entirely trust him not to come barging through them at any moment.
As the doctor began preparing the catheter for its meandering journey through my body from groin to brain, the nurse did her best to calm me. Gripped tightly in one hand I held the photograph I’d asked Ryan to bring from home. Freed from the frame in which it usually sat, I stared at the snap of the three of us, taken on our last beach holiday. Our faces were tanned and carefree. I remember that we’d hijacked a passing stranger to take the picture, who’d perfectly captured three people whose biggest worry was whether to spend the afternoon at the beach or the pool. The photograph had been taken only weeks before the person they’d once called the Miracle Girl had lived up to her name one last time, and had come back.
‘Is that your little girl?’ asked the nurse, trying to distract me from the very weird sensation of the contrast dye coursing through the catheter. It was hard holding a conversation when you felt as though you’d just peed yourself for the first time in over thirty years.
I nodded, and tried to focus on her words and not the weird scratching sound I swore I could hear as the thin plastic tube journeying inside me travelled past my ear. ‘Yes, it is. Her name is Hope; she’s just turned six.’
The nurse squeezed my wrist warmly and even while I knew her conversation was more to distract me from looking at the bank of screens showing images of the inside of my head, I still welcomed the human contact in this impersonal, clean and
sterile room.
She bent down closer and studied the photograph with care. ‘She looks like you,’ she said, because isn’t that what mothers always want to hear? I smiled sadly, and for once I pretended that Hope actually did.
‘Imagine it like a motorway – the M25, if you will,’ said Dr Higgins, clearly pleased with his analogy. He reached for a large sketch pad and a thick black marker pen and began drawing in quick bold strokes. ‘This long vein in your head is like the M25, and the mass you have – the meningioma – is blocking it.’ He broke off to grapple in the desk drawer for a different coloured pen. The one he found was green, and was almost the exact same shade as bile. ‘And all of these slip roads here are now trying to take the traffic from the blocked motorway . . . but they can’t cope with the pressure.’ He sat back in his chair, his eyes looking approvingly at his own artwork.
Ryan and I stared back at him from the other side of the desk, both wearing the expression of bomb-blast survivors.
‘The good news is: your tumour isn’t malignant; it hasn’t caused you to have seizures; and we now know exactly where it is and how we can relieve the pressure.’
The hours after the angiogram had been an excruciating wait. My body might have been forced to lie totally immobile on a bed while it recovered from the procedure, but my brain had been all too active. Despite the nurse’s admirable diversionary tactics, I’d seen the screens and upon them the ugly white . . . thing . . . that had insidiously taken up residence inside my head.
‘Our first priority is to unblock these roads, and get the traffic moving again,’ continued Dr Higgins, determined to run with his highway theme.
Ryan’s hand squeezed mine tightly, but I was the one who asked the question. ‘But you’re going to take it out, right?’ Of the three people in the room, you could hear only one of them exhale, for the other two were suddenly holding their breath.
‘No, we’re not. At this moment in time, I’m afraid that isn’t our best course of action.’
I leant forward in my chair, feeling the scratchiness of the hospital gown against my skin beneath the fleecy dressing gown Ryan had brought from home. It’s hard to sound decisive and commanding when you’re not fully dressed, but I gave it my best shot. ‘Dr Higgins, I want it taken out. I don’t want to “wait and see”, or monitor and observe it. I just want it gone.’
Dr Higgins sighed sadly, and his features reordered themselves into an expression of sympathy, which I uncharacteristically wanted to slap off him. ‘I understand why you feel surgery would be your best option, Chloe, but you have to believe us when we say that for now inserting stents to relieve the pressure is our best plan of action. The position and size of the mass makes anything else far too risky. Surgery will have to be our very last resort. And it won’t be a decision we make hurriedly, if we make it at all. But we’re not there yet.’
Ryan and I looked at each other sadly, because the rest of the doctor’s words were hanging in the air, like a speech bubble in a silent movie. For it seemed clear that one day, perhaps not too much further down the line, we would be there.
Maddie
I had a new routine; a new normal. Except nothing about it felt at all normal. When I looked back, my days before Chloe’s illness seemed squandered and self-indulgent, while those since seemed curiously stolen or at least borrowed without permission. More than anything – since the very first moment I’d learned of her existence – I’d yearned for Hope to be a permanent part of my world . . . but not this way. Not by default.
I think everyone had imagined that after the stents had been successfully implanted, Chloe would be allowed out of hospital. Yet six days after the procedure, she was still a patient, imprisoned on the ward until they’d successfully stabilised her medication.
As hard as I tried, I’d always known it would be impossible to fill Chloe’s shoes, but what worried me more than failing in that task was seeing the light in Hope’s eyes gradually being dialled down. It happened each day when I turned up alone at the school gates; it happened every night when it was only Ryan standing on my doorstep to take her home.
‘I really think you need to take her to the hospital to see Chloe,’ I said one evening, my voice a whisper as we stood closer than I felt comfortable with, in my narrow hallway.
‘Hope does see Chloe, every night and every morning.’
‘Skype or FaceTime, or whatever other technology you’re using, isn’t the same. It’s not good enough. Being online isn’t real human contact.’
For a moment he almost smiled, and I knew we were both remembering a time when I’d happily shared much of my life online. These days I didn’t even have a Twitter or Facebook account. It was yet another example of how my old life and my new one were worlds apart. Ryan shook his head, and his bright blue eyes looked troubled, but then they’d scarcely looked anything else since the day Chloe had gone into hospital.
‘We’ve both agreed that seeing her mum in a hospital ward – particularly that type of ward – would be too much for her to cope with. It would do more harm than good.’
I let the small wounds he’d casually inflicted go untended. They’d both agreed . . . seeing her mum . . . There’d be time enough later during the long wakeful hours of the night for me to examine exactly how alone they’d made me feel.
‘We won’t risk having her distressed by being in that type of environment. Not again,’ Ryan said resolutely.
I felt the weight of his unspoken blame settling on me like a cloak. This was the reason why Hope hadn’t been taken to see Chloe at the hospital. I was the reason.
‘Hope was only a toddler when she reacted like that. Don’t you think you owe it to her to give her another chance now she’s older and can better understand what’s going on?’ Ryan’s mouth had drawn into a tight and uncompromising line. Words at this point were virtually redundant, because I knew he wasn’t going to change his mind.
‘You weren’t there. You didn’t see how bad it was.’
Two stabs with the sword this time, instead of one. My absence and my ignorance of the pain I’d caused my own child were the weapons he now used to stop me fighting for her. My artillery was empty and I knew his mind was made up.
I padded barefoot down the hallway, a cup of tea in one hand and a slice of toast in the other. Even after several months, I still relished the indulgence of starting each day slowly. It was my small quiet rebellion against the early-rising regimen that the hospital had insisted on. It was after half-past eight, I hadn’t showered, and was wearing the oversized gym T-shirt that I’d stolen from Ryan years before. The fabric was soft from a hundred cycles in the washing machine, the seams were starting to fray, and it was indecently short – but as no one ever saw me in it, what did that matter?
I was contemplating whether going back to bed with a second slice of toast was decadent or just plain lazy, when the sound of the letterbox opening and then slapping shut caught my attention. It was too early for the post, which normally arrived mid-morning, yet the coconut door mat was scattered with brightly coloured cards someone had posted through my door. Holding the toast between my teeth, I bent down to retrieve the collection of glossy cards from the mat. They were paint colour charts, and I smiled slightly around the crust in my mouth when I realised who must have delivered them. I was still smiling when one last card was popped through the flap and landed on my bare feet.
Without thinking, I opened the door and greeted Mitch, forgetting about my inappropriate state of undress, or the fact that my teeth were clamped around my toast.
‘Oh, Maddie,’ he said, taking one startled step backwards into the communal hallway. ‘I didn’t expect to see you.’
His eyes ran fleetingly up my body, from the painted red of my toenails, past the long still-too-skinny legs, before hurriedly skimming over the soft material of the old T-shirt, through which my breasts were clearly outlined. I rather imagined what Mitch might actually have meant was: I didn’t expect to see quite so much of you.<
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He’d left the main front door standing open, and a cold draught of morning air whistled past him, speckling my arms with goosebumps, and making the view of my breasts through the grey marl suddenly more interesting.
I pulled the toast from my teeth, leaving behind a small mouthful that I hastily chewed and swallowed before speaking. ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone,’ I said, which from the way I was dressed was probably perfectly clear. I wondered if pulling down on the hem of the T-shirt would cover up my semi-nudity, or merely draw further attention to it. To be fair, Mitch was making a deliberate point of not allowing his gaze to drop below my chin, so I left the T-shirt alone.
‘It’s very early to be calling,’ I said, before realising that sounded both critical and rude. ‘Not that it isn’t great to see you,’ I added hastily. ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea?’
‘I can’t stop, I’m afraid. I’m on my way to work.’ It was only then that I noticed his normal casual wear was replaced by a more formal shirt and tie. The shirt was stretched so tightly across the breadth of his shoulders, I doubted he ever needed to iron it.
‘I picked up some colour charts from the DIY shop the other day,’ he explained, glancing down at the bundle of cards, which I was holding at the same level as my hemline. Mitch looked uncomfortable as his eyes quickly returned to my face. It might be a race to see which one of us blushed first today, I found myself thinking randomly.
‘If there’s anything there you like, I could probably pick up the paint this weekend and make a start on the second bedroom for you.’
I bit my lip, feeling suddenly awkward. ‘Actually, Mitch, I don’t think it’s a great idea to go ahead with that right now.’
A look skittered across his eyes. It was a look of resignation and inevitability. He thought I was brushing him off. And suddenly I saw him not as the grown man who now stood before me, but as a big gangly teenager, who’d walked nervously across the dance floor only to be turned down by the cool girl, who’d laughed with her friends as he skulked back into the shadows.
