by Shari Low
I’d tried to explain, but – like many things in my family – I realized it didn’t make much sense to anyone else. It didn’t even make sense to Lulu and I, and we’d lived with it for most of our lives. My dad and her mum had been having an affair for as long as I could remember. Her father, Charlie, responded by shagging anything that took his fancy, my mother pretended not to know, valuing her friendship with Gwen over her need for fidelity, and the four of them just got on with it, went on holiday together, spent weekends together, lived their lives together, all of them getting exactly what they needed from the relationships. I didn’t pretend to understand why it worked, but I just knew that it did. It was a four-way, convoluted, complicated dynamic that was wrong on every level, but one that appeared to suit them all.
‘You’re so sweet,’ Lulu told him sincerely, ‘but I promise, we’re fine. We got over it a long time ago.’ And we had. Somewhere around the middle of our teenage years, we’d decided to stop being horrified and accept it. However, what was odd was the difference in how it had affected our personalities. As a result of our backgrounds, Lulu treated sex as a currency, needed a constant stream of affection and put no value on monogamy. I differed on all counts.
‘Anyway, if it helps, I think there’s been a shift in relationships back at the ranch,’ I added. ‘My mother has gone off on an artist’s retreat. I’m fairly sure that means she’s now shagging someone who’s a dab hand with a paintbrush.’
At my side of the room, Rosie, the hopeless romantic sighed. ‘I just think that maybe none of them has met the right person. I mean, perhaps they all settled, found a way to trundle along, and it’ll only be when one of them finds real love that they’ll all make a change. I think that could happen, I really do.’
Lu immediately countered, ‘But let’s face it, who’d want them? Hi, we’re Jeff, Debbie, Charlie and Gwen, available for new relationships just as long as you don’t mind the fact that we’ve been having an inter-couple sexual relationship for decades. Not exactly a tempting personal ad, is it?’
Rosie stood up, her argument defeated, ready to get back to the love and romance of the day, even if we weren’t sticking to pre-wedding traditions.
‘You know, this is all highly unorthodox,’ Rosie pointed out as she helped me into my dress.
‘I know, honey. Colm, can you throw over my shoes?’
Unorthodox it may be, but it was exactly how I wanted it. No stress. No fuss. As little formality as possible. I honestly couldn’t give a damn about photographs, and favours, and big fancy cars. All I cared about was marrying Colm, in front of people I loved. Nothing else mattered.
I froze as I noticed that everyone else was staring at me. ‘What? What is it?’
Nobody spoke. Crap, my dress must be ripped. Or stained. Sod it, I could wear something else. I could…
‘You look beautiful,’ Colm said, perhaps the first time I’d ever seen him being completely serious.
I grinned and moved over to check myself out in the wardrobe mirror. He was right about the dress being beautiful, but it was also absolutely simple. Just a white crepe sheath, off the shoulder, straight down to my ankles, with a split at the back so that I could take steps of more than eight inches. I loved it.
‘You don’t look too shabby either Mr O’Flynn.’ I replied, my jaws hurting because I couldn’t stop smiling. ‘Ready?’
We all piled in to my flash wedding car, otherwise known as Rosie’s rickety old camper van, and we set off, detouring via Teddington to collect the boys, as arranged, from Jess’s parents’ house. They both looked utterly adorable in their matching suits and I was grateful to Jess for making the effort with them.
A hundred verses of ‘The Wheels On The Bus’ later, we made it to Wimbledon and I could see my parents standing waiting outside the church. At least they’d turned up then. We poured out of the van, to the surprise of my dad and the wide-eyed horror of my mother. She didn’t do informal. She didn’t do relaxed. And she definitely didn’t do bloody old camper vans.
Kissing me again, Colm headed on into the church with the boys, stopping to greet an elderly lady and a young guy who looked vaguely like him at the door. I guessed that must be his mum and brother. They’d flown in that morning from Dublin and Dan had collected them and brought them straight here.
Yes, it was bizarre that I was meeting my husband’s family for the first time at our wedding, but between work, the boys, and the fact that we’d only been together for what seemed like five minutes, there just hadn’t been the opportunity to get over to Ireland.
My mother waited until everyone else was inside and then went off to make her entrance, guaranteeing the whole congregation would get a great view of how fabulous she was looking. She was welcome to her moment. Right now, every nerve in my body, every piece of my heart was bursting with happiness and excitement.
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry!’ a panicked voice from behind me, beside me, in front of me, ended with a quick kiss and a ‘God, you scrub up well, gorgeous’ before my old catering college chum, Vincent flew on in, a very pretty redhead teetering behind him.
And then there was perfect peace.
‘You’re getting married,’ Rosie cooed, her eyes filling up as she and Lu came in for a group hug.
My dad waited until we were done, and then held out his arm.
‘Good to go, Shauna?’
No, ‘you look beautiful’. No teary sobs of emotion. No obvious unbridled pride. Just time to go.
Yes, it was.
I took his arm and we walked up the steps to the door, Lulu and Rosie behind us. Dan was waiting there to greet us, holding the door open to let us through, his handsome smile directed first at me, and then at Lulu. Despite their wild, volatile relationship, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long until they were following us up the aisle.
Annie had chosen the songs for the service, persuading the vicar that ‘He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands’ was the perfect start to married life. She was the first person I saw when we got inside, standing next to Vincent, the redhead girlfriend having been dispatched to the row behind. I’d no idea how Annie had managed that but it didn’t surprise me – she’s always had a soft spot for tall, dark and handsome. She winked at me, setting off an irrepressible fit of the giggles that lasted the whole way up the aisle.
There, with Davie on one side and Joe on the other, was Colm. Waiting. Every pore of him matching my happiness. I’d never been surer of anything in my life. I loved this man. We belonged together. We were going to have the most incredible lives. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could touch us or take this away.
The vicar made the introductions and moved straight on with the ceremony.
He lifted my hand and placed it on top of Colm’s.
‘Colm, repeat after me…’
The vicar’s words faded into the background, as Colm and I’s eyes locked, saying so much more than just the words that we were repeating.
‘I, Colm O’Flynn, take you Shauna Williams to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.’
The vicar spoke up again. And now Shauna, could you repeat the same words.
‘I, Shauna Williams, take you Colm O’Flynn to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.’
Davie and Joe burst into an excited round of applause, sending a ripple of hilarity through the gathering. It was perfect.
Colm scooped up Joe and I lifted Davie, just as the vicar announced, ‘I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss your bride.’
‘Yuk!’ Joe exclaimed. The boy definitely had a gift for comic timing.
Colm leaned over and kissed me. ‘I love you, Mrs O’Flynn.’
‘I love you back,’ I whispered.
So, so much.
And I had no do
ubt I always would.
Until death do us part.
15
Colm and Shauna Wait To Hear…
The waiting room, a large open space with rows of chairs was packed, so Shauna and I stood against one of the cream-painted walls. To be honest, I was glad that it made conversation impossible, because I had nothing to say.
A slow, tight knot was forming in my stomach as I looked around the room. A sign said this was the waiting area for the neurology and maxillofacial departments, but the sign wasn’t necessary. In every row was a person with a wound, a scar, a dressing, so many of them with partially shaved heads, their skin pale and drawn. These were sick people. I wasn’t sick. I was fine. That’s what I kept telling myself and Shauna, and here I could see it was true.
Bugger this. Waste of time, it was. I actually felt guilty taking up the time of the medical experts when clearly these poor souls needed it more.
Shauna was staring at her feet, her hand gripping mine. This last week had been hard on her, but I didn’t know what to say to make it better. If I said it would be okay, she asked me how I knew that. I didn’t have an answer. I just had to keep believing it, stick to my mantra that I’d worry when there was something concrete to worry about.
‘Mr O’Flynn.’
Shauna’s head shot up and we both turned to see the liaison nurse we’d met on the first visit. What was her name? Shit. Felt like I couldn’t remember anything these days. Too much on my mind. Julie. Julia. Jessica. Jenny. Jenny, that was it.
We crossed the room to join her and she led us along a corridor and into a side room, where Mr Clyde and the same junior doctor as the last time were sitting. Another bloke was with them now, though. Serious-looking guy with grey hair, his shirt and tie crumpled.
‘Mr O’Flynn, this is my colleague, Mr Miller.’
I shook his hand then sat down next to Shauna, putting my fingers over hers.
Mr Clyde cleared his throat.
‘So Mr O’Flynn, since we last spoke, have you had any other symptoms?’
‘Just a couple of headaches.’
He nodded and made a note on the pad in front of him, then hit me with a load of other questions, many of them the same as last time. Visual issues? Audio distortions? Seizures? Loss of consciousness?
I answered no to everything. It had only been a few days since I’d seen him last, and I could honestly say that this week had been much better. I was on the mend. Definitely recovering. I’d even taken on the twins at tennis and beat them both, one after the other. Two hulking big teenagers, and their forty-one-year-old da’ had conquered. Could an ill man have done that? Nope.
And Beth. Jesus, she was five. She couldn’t have a sick da’ who wasn’t able to take care of her. That just couldn’t happen. I was fine. Top of the world. Just grand.
When he’d exhausted his questions, the doc leaned over and flicked on a switch on a white panel on the wall next to him, illuminating a black and white image, clearly some kind of X-ray of a brain.
‘Mr O’Flynn, this is the result of your MRI scan.’
Beside me, I could hear Shauna’s breathing coming thick and fast, as we both stared at the screen, trying to make sense of it. I couldn’t. There were areas of light and shade, lines and curves, but I had no idea whether this was how it was meant to look.
The doc took his pen and held it an inch or so in front of the screen.
‘Let me get straight to it, Mr O’Flynn.’
Fuck. Straight to what? Did that mean there was something wrong? There couldn’t be. I wasn’t sick. I was fine. Totally fine.
Shauna’s nails were digging hard into my palm now but I barely registered the pain.
‘This area here…’ he continued, swirling his pen over the top of the image, ‘is called the occipital lobe. It’s in this section of your head.’ He was demonstrating by pointing to the back of his head now, about halfway down, just left of centre.
He took his pointer back to the screen. ‘And this shadow you see here…’ More swirling of the pen. ‘…I’m afraid, is a tumour.’
What? Seriously, what?
‘Oh God,’ Shauna whispered.
‘I have a brain tumour?’ I said, in total disbelief. There had to be a mistake. I was forty-one. I’d played five-a-side football last weekend. How the fuck could I have a brain tumour?
‘You do.’
He paused for a moment, perhaps to let us absorb what he was saying, before charging right on.
‘The reason it’s affecting your vision is because it’s infringing on the point in your brain where your optic nerves meet.’
‘So… so…’ I couldn’t form the words.
‘What does that mean?’ Shauna finished for me, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
He put his pen down and turned full on to face us.
‘The tumour is fairly large, around the size of a small fist.’
No. This had to be a mistake. How could something like that be in my head without me knowing?
‘It’s what’s been causing the headaches and the audio dysfunction, and as I said, the pressure on the optical nerves has caused the visual disturbances.’
Another pause. Shauna and I said nothing. Stunned.
He carried on. ‘We have two options. It’s in a position that should be accessible, so the first option is surgery. We could go in, debulk the tumour, try to remove as much as possible, perhaps even all of it. But obviously that comes with considerable risk.’
I wasn’t liking the sound of that course of action at all. I could feel sweat beads pop out on my forehead.
‘What’s the other option?’
‘We could wait and see, monitor it, make the decision further down the line.’
That sounded like a far more acceptable plan – until he went on, ‘But doing that comes with major concerns and fairly high-level risks too.’
‘What risks?’ Shauna asked before me. Her voice was so faint I didn’t even recognize it.
He addressed her question, but was looking back at me. Stop fucking looking at me. I’m not sick. This is a mistake.
‘Your sight could be damaged, perhaps severely and irreparably.’
What was he saying now? ‘Could I go blind?’
‘Yes. And the other risk comes with not knowing what kind of tumour it is. Until we get a biopsy under the microscope, we can’t ascertain that for certain. It could be benign, and that would be the best outcome. However, if it’s malignant and a particularly aggressive one, we may lose our opportunity to operate in a fairly short window of time.’
‘And then I’d…’ I froze. No more words.
‘That would be fatal,’ he said, correctly interpreting what I was trying to ask.
A gasp from Shauna, and ironically, the one fecking time in recent months that my peripheral vision was completely clear, it was allowing me full view of the two silent tears that were running down her face.
‘But… but… it could be… benign? And he’d be… fine?’ Shauna stuttered, the desperate hope in her voice was heartbreaking.
‘That’s a possibility,’ Mr Clyde replied, but I didn’t detect confidence. ‘In a man of your age, that’s certainly the more probable outcome.’ My hope rose.
‘But, again, being completely frank, I would usually expect a benign tumour to have certain markers that I’m not seeing here. That’s not to say it isn’t – I just can’t make any conclusions until we’ve analyzed it.’
I took a deep breath, trying to calm the sickening feeling that I knew what he was going to reply to my next questions. ‘So what should we do? What would you advise?’
‘I think we need to operate. And quickly. That’s why I invited my colleague, Mr Miller.’
He gestured to the grey-haired guy in in the corner seat. I’d forgotten he was even there.
‘Mr O’Flynn, I’m the consultant neurosurgeon and I concur with Mr Clyde’s analysis. I think we need to know what we’re dealing with here and sooner rather than later. I have
checked my schedule and I’d like to arrange your surgery for next Monday.’
‘Next Monday,’ I repeated, trying to digest what he was saying. Next Monday. Christ, they weren’t hanging around here. ‘And you’re what? Going to open my head up?’
‘Would you like me to explain the procedure?’ he asked.
Fuck, no. Absolutely not.
‘Yes,’ Shauna answered.
He looked to me for confirmation and I nodded, fighting that gut-twisting terror you get when you’re at the top of a huge roller coaster and about to plummet to earth.
‘We’ll make an incision across the back of your head in almost a horseshoe shape. That will allow us to remove the back section of your skull, then enter the brain and debulk – that just means remove – as much of the tumour as possible. Hopefully all of it. We will then reattach the skull using metal screws and close the scalp. Mr O’Flynn…’
‘Call me Colm.’ I’ve no idea why I blurted that out, other than something told me that if he was going to actually be inside my brain at some point, it was probably fine to be on first-name terms.
‘Colm… I have to advise you that the surgery also comes with not insignificant risks. We’re dealing with the brain, which is never an exact science.’
‘Give me the worst-case scenario,’ I told him. Shauna’s hand was gripping mine like a vice, her nails digging into my palm so deeply these should have been pain, yet I couldn’t feel anything. All I could see and hear were the doctor and his words.
‘Given the area we will be working in, blindness is a small, but notable possibility. Seizures. Paralysis. And worst-case scenario,’ he said, repeating my words, ‘is that all surgeries, including this one, can be fatal.’
‘So I could die if I do it and die if I don’t?’ I asked, trying desperately to understand. This couldn’t be happening. It was a joke. Jackass cameras were here somewhere.
He nodded solemnly. ‘Yes. But in our opinion, the chances of a fatal outcome are considerably higher if you don’t.’
‘Can I think about it?’
