The Story of Our Life

by Shari Low

  So I just sat a while longer.

  When the door eventually opened, the man who came back looked nothing like the one that had come into the hospital last night. That man had been healthy. Strong. This man was pale, looked sick. His shaved head had dressings round it, with two drains protruding from the bandages, both filled with blood. It was horrific. This wasn’t my Colm. It was someone else.

  Then he forced open his eyes, pulled that crooked smile and whispered, ‘Hey m’darlin.’ And he was my Colm again.

  I stroked his face, his eyes, put my fingertips to his mouth, as if I needed touch to reinforce that he was there. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like a guy took a saw to my head.’

  ‘Nothing gets past you,’ I said, genuinely smiling for the first time since the day we’d walked into the opticians shop in Richmond nearly two weeks before. His sense of humour was still there. That was a win.

  He was fine. It was all going to be fine.

  ‘How long can I stay?’ I asked the nurse, who’d introduced herself as Karen when she’d come on shift an hour before.

  She looked at her watch. ‘Visiting is in an hour and lasts until 9 p.m., so you can stay until then. I’ll pull the curtains closed to give you some privacy. I’ll be bringing some food shortly – can I get you something?’

  ‘No thank you.’ It somehow felt wrong to impose, when I could just nip down to the coffee shop on the ground floor later. Besides, I didn’t have much of an appetite.

  Colm slept for another twenty minutes, waking – in a stroke of perfect timing – just as Dr Miller walked in the door.

  ‘Mrs O’Flynn,’ he greeted me pleasantly, before turning to the person who mattered. ‘How are you doing there, Colm?’

  ‘Good. Yeah, good. I think.’ His voice sounded husky and I wondered if that was from the surgery. Had there been a tube down his throat? Or did that just happen in ER and Grey’s Anatomy?

  ‘How did it go?’ I said, not even sure what I was asking. Were the results quantifiable? Would he already know the outcome?

  ‘Well, there are many positives.’ Many positives? Did that also mean there were negatives?

  ‘I’m not dead,’ Colm croaked.

  ‘Yes,’ Dr Miller almost laughed, ‘that would be the main one. Other than that, we got out everything we could see. Now, that doesn’t mean that we got it all. The very nature of this kind of mass means that there were almost certainly cells left behind. And as I said before, we won’t know the nature of these cells until they’ve been examined.’

  He took a pen out of his pocket and held it up in front of Colm’s nose.

  ‘Colm, I want you to follow this pen and tell me when you can no longer see it.’

  He ran it to the left, to the right, up and then down, stopping each time when Colm gestured that it had gone out of sight. My heart was in my mouth, as a watched his reactions, praying that he’d pass whatever test the doctor was setting.

  ‘Okay, the good news is that you still have your central vision, but part of the tumour was attached to the optic nerve. That’s what was giving you the incidences of loss in your peripheral vision. I’m afraid the damage on your left side is considerable, perhaps permanent, but the positive there is that – with no new tumour growth – it won’t get any worse than it is now.’

  No worse. That was good. Great.

  I watched as Colm moved his eyes from side to side of his own accord, then up, down, circle. ‘I can handle that,’ Colm said. His positivity made me want to weep.

  ‘Other than that, there seems to be no paralysis, no weakening of body function or loss of cognitive skills. All in all, I think we’ve had the best result we could hope for so far.’

  Happiness soared from the centre of my chest and I wanted to punch the air. Best result. I’d take it. But I still had questions.

  ‘Mr Miller, Colm said this morning that personality changes are a possibility?’

  ‘That’s true. This has been major surgery to the brain, and as I’ve said before, it’s not an exact science. Post-surgery personality variances are impossible to predict, but something that we see in many cases.’

  I didn’t care. I honestly didn’t. He was here, he was almost in one piece. That was all that mattered.

  My next question was the one that had been on my mind since he walked in the door. ‘Can you tell what type of tumour it was?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. It’s been sent to the lab, but results will take up to a week.’

  I’d researched the subject so intensively over the week of sleepless nights that I now felt like I could give discussions on the many varieties of brain tumours. The range was vast, from benign to malignant, from low grades to high. The symptoms and effects depended on where they were situated. The occipital lobe, like Colm. The frontal lobe. The parietal lobe. The temporal lobe. The brain stem.

  Then there was the biggest variant – the specific type of tumour. There were over 120 different kinds, but for some reason, a few of them stuck in my mind. Meningioma. Ependymoma. Oligodendroglioma. And the one that came with flashing red lights, the glioblastoma. That was the one with the lowest life expectancy and the lowest long-term survival rate. Some patients got six months. Some got eighteen. Some longer. Very few of them got anywhere near years in the double figures. But thankfully, those were rare, especially among men of Colm’s age. The facts backed up Mr Miller’s earlier summation, that the likeliest outcome was a benign and treatable mass, one that would have little or no effect on his life expectancy. I’d take that one, please.

  ‘So what will happen in the meantime?’ I asked.

  ‘All going well with his recovery, Colm will be fine to leave here in three or four days. I’ve made an appointment for you at my clinic a week from tomorrow to discuss the results.’

  ‘So we won’t know anything until then?’

  ‘No.’ He turned back to Colm again. ‘For now, just concentrate on healing and building your strength up. We’ve had a good result so far – I don’t see any reason for that to change.’

  It took a whole sentence to deliver just one word. Hope. That’s what he was saying. Hope Colm had no post-op complications. Hope he healed well. Hope the tumour was benign. Hope we could get our lives back. Hope he didn’t die.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you now. If there are any problems, the team will call me, but I don’t expect that to be the case. I’ll see you on my ward round in the morning. Well done. It was a good day.’

  ‘Thanks, doctor,’ Colm said, his voice a little stronger now.

  ‘Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate what you did for him today.’ My eyes filled up again, and I furiously blinked the tears away as always. I’d cried more in the last two weeks than I’d done in my entire life, but after everything Colm had been through in that time and today, I resolved that there would be no tears here tonight. Colm was still here. We still had him.

  Laughs. Humour. Denial. Optimism. Say it again.

  The nurses came round with food as promised, then ran some quick tests on Colm’s blood pressure, temperature and pulse, marking the results on a chart. Next they pulled back the bedsheet.

  ‘See you kept your tights on,’ I teased.

  ‘They kept me alive today,’ he fired back, grinning. I didn’t care if he wore those tights for the rest of his life, as long as he was with me.

  The nurse checked his reflexes, then ran a pen-like rod along the soles of his feet. I’ve no idea what she was hoping for, but she seemed happy with the result. Outside the door, we saw visitors arriving for the patients in the other rooms and wards, some clutching flowers, presents, kids. Real life. All of it here.

  I was back at the side of the bed again, one hand in his, the other playing with a loose thread on the blanket.

  ‘So I’ve been thinking…’

  ‘Oh God. Will it cost me money?’

  ‘Quite probably. You know that conversation we keep having?’

  ‘T
he one where you say I’m the biggest shag you’ve ever seen?’

  He was bringing out all his favourite lines and I’d never been so happy to hear them, but I still needed to have a different conversation.

  ‘No, the other one. The one where we talk about our work/life balance.’

  ‘Ah, that one. My second favourite after the shag one.’

  ‘There has to be a lesson in all this, Colm. All these years, we’ve been working night and day, putting everything else off just to pay bills and survive. It has to change, babe. I want to enjoy life again. I want to do things, go places, spend time with each other and Beth, and Davie and Joe, just doing nothing. We need to look at this as a chance to change things. A lesson learned. I don’t want to waste another day of our lives.’

  I felt my voice cracking, so I stopped. Composed myself. Waited for one of his usual wisecracks. It didn’t come.

  ‘I know you’re right,’ he said. ‘This morning, when I was waiting downstairs, I just kept thinking about the last few years and all the shit that’s happened. I know it needs to change. You, me, Beth, the boys… I think we lost sight of what matters, going after a life that we don’t really need. I let you take way too much pressure, left everything on you.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I told him.

  ‘It’s not. It’s really not. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You don’t have to be sorry for anything.’

  ‘We both know I do. When this is all over, we’re going to make sure we have great lives. The five of us. Nothing else matters.’

  Maybe it was the after-effects of the anaesthetic, but this new Colm was saying all the right things and sounding like he meant it. He’d spent his whole life keeping everything jocular on the outside, but perhaps it took something like this for him to take stock, to realize that we’d gone down the wrong road and needed to back up.

  The daylight had dimmed outside when the bell rang for the end of visiting and I kissed him for a long time, reluctant to leave, desperate to just crawl into bed beside him and hold him all night.

  Only when the lovely nurse had popped her head in the door for a second time, did I say goodbye. ‘I’ll be back in the morning. They’ve said if you’re still in this room and not moved to a normal ward, then I can stay all day.’

  I could see he was getting sleepy again, his eyes dropping. When they closed, I silently left the room and headed outside. I’d come in first thing this morning terrified and devastated, now I was leaving exhausted but relieved. He was okay. He was going to be fine.

  I waited on the lift with hordes of other people, then drifted out to the far corner of the car park where I’d left the car. I got in, closed the door, put my seat belt on and rested my head against the headrest, replaying the last few hours, seeing his face, hearing his voice.

  ‘When this is all over, we’re going to make sure we have great lives,’ he’d said.

  The positivity I’d felt when he’d said that returned… but only for a second, before it was ambushed by another thought, the one that had been gripping my heart in a vice all day, while I ignored everything it was saying, determined not to let it take hold.

  Now it was loud and clear.

  What if we didn’t get that chance? What if the results of the tests showed that this was the kind of brain tumour that didn’t give second chances?

  20

  2008

  When Shauna Returns To Where It All Started

  ‘What time is Vincent picking you up at? And is he still single? Open to a bit of an illicit affair?’ Annie asked me, with a twinkle in her eye.

  ‘Gran!’ I feigned outrage. ‘He’s picking me up at nine and I’m a married woman!’

  Her turn to feign outrage. ‘I know, dear. I was just hoping he might be interested in a wild fling with an older woman.’

  I laughed so hard I almost dropped my tea. Visiting her tonight had cheered me right up. I tried to get over at least once a week, but with the twelve- and fourteen-hour days we’d been putting in, sometimes seven days a week, I didn’t always make it over. It had only worked this week because we were catering a fortieth birthday party in a very grand home in Wimbledon, not far from Annie’s little cottage. I’d left to come here as soon as the food was served, and Vincent had stayed behind to oversee the clear-up.

  I had absolutely no idea what I’d have done without him. Vincent was the kind of guy who showed up. No bullshit excuses. No erratic crap. He pitched in. Made it work. Teaming up with him was the best business decision I’d ever made and it was beginning to pay off financially.

  ‘Seriously, I do like that boy. He’s got honest eyes.’

  ‘Gran, he’s thirty-one. But you’re right, he does have honest eyes. He’s a really decent guy too.’

  ‘Does Colm not get jealous?

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Oh come on, ma love, there isn’t many that would kick that lad out of bed for making crumbs with his custard creams.’

  I giggled. ‘You are so shallow but so right. And no, Colm never gets jealous. He was born without the capacity for jealousy, worry and cleaning dishes. Besides, he knows I have zero attraction to Vincent.’

  ‘Are you dead? Shauna, he’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Yeah, but I just don’t see him that way.’ It was true. Vincent made me laugh and I enjoyed his company, but he had zero effect on my libido. I appreciated the whole ‘Younger Ben Affleck On A Good Day’ thing he had going on, but I’d honestly never wanted to jump his bones.

  ‘He’s my friend, gran. He’s never been attracted to me and I’ve never been attracted to him. It’s called “platonic”. And “loving my husband”.’

  ‘Aye, well there was never anyone else for me but my Ernie, God rest his soul, but I might have made an exception for this one. Anyway, how’s my boy Colm doing?’ Gran loved my husband. They had that same irreverent, quick, dark humour. ‘If I was forty years younger and he needed specs…’ she said every time we discussed him.

  ‘He’s doing great. He’s thinking about setting up a company, going into partnership with Dan. A management consultancy.’

  She paused, Bakewell Tart midway to mouth. ‘And what do you think of that?’

  ‘I think it’s a great idea. They work together now anyway so I don’t have any worries about their partnership. I know there have been warnings about the economy, but business in that sector is still booming. Only thing is that it’ll force our hand with the house. We’ve been renting up until now, but if we’re going to buy we’ll have to do it before he becomes self-employed or we’ll struggle to get a mortgage.’

  Annie took this all in. ‘You’ll work it out and do the right thing, love. You always do. You’re the smartest of all of us, especially that feckless father of yours.’

  ‘Gran, that’s your son!’ I don’t know why I was protesting. She’d made her disapproval of my father perfectly clear to me my whole life. Like me, she kept everything amicable on the surface, but that congeniality floated on a pool of disapproval. Years ago, after a few too many sherries, she’d explained why. ‘Can’t stand the way he treats you, Shauna. Selfish. All he cares about is himself and that mother of yours. I don’t understand it. That’s not the way he was raised. His father was a decent family man, God rest his soul, and after he died I taught our Jeff better than that. Don’t know where I went wrong with him, but by God, I did.’

  It was the one and only time she’d ever gone deeper than calling him a ‘useless lump that’s far too fond of himself’ and I never probed further. All that I cared about was that she loved me and I loved her back. She’d brought me up, been more of a mother to me than Debbie ever had. We had an understanding. A likeness. ‘Two peas in a pod, me and you,’ she always said. ‘But thank Christ you didn’t get my legs.’ Then she’d roar with laughter, lift her skirt above her knees and do a jig across the kitchen.

  ‘And what about, you know, the other thing.’

  ‘Gran, why can’t you say it?’

  ‘Because I don’t want
to upset you.’ The situation upset me. Annie talking about it didn’t.

  ‘Thanks gran, but avoiding the word “pregnant” doesn’t make a difference when we’re actually talking about me not being pregnant,’ I told her, keeping my tone light as I helped myself to another square of her beloved Turkish Delight.

  ‘S’pose,’ she said, pensive, before starting again. ‘So. Pregnant yet?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I promise you’ll be the first to know. After Colm. And the rest of my street, who’ll be alerted by the brass band and the Red Arrow display.’

  She wasn’t buying my joviality. I could see the concern in her eyes. ‘Och, pet, it’ll happen. It took a long time for me too, and I only had the one. Makes it all the more upsetting that he turned out to be a useless lump that’s far too fond of himself.’

  And there it was. When I’d stopped laughing, I got back to the subject of the discussion. ‘I’m thinking of trying IVF. It’s been almost four years since I came off the pill and nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I love the twins, but I want one of my own, gran. Does that make me selfish?’

  ‘No, of course it doesn’t, love.’

  We’d had this conversation a hundred times before so I knew her answer, I just needed to hear it again. That was the toughest thing about this whole process – I struggled to find anyone else to talk to about it. My mother wasn’t in the least interested. I didn’t think it was fair to wallow over the subject with Rosie, when she too desperately wanted kids but couldn’t get past the relationship that lasted longer than two years stage. Lulu and Dan were absolutely resolute about not wanting children because Lulu claimed, in her words, that she was having ‘no part of anything that required the wearing of clothes that didn’t need dry-cleaning’. Yes, she was glib, but her sentiment was honest. Kids just weren’t something she was interested in. She trotted out dismissive lines for people who asked her at dinner parties, but the truth was, she’d announced when we were about twelve that she didn’t want children, in case she ‘fucked them up the way our lot had fucked with us’. I wasn’t sure that that angry young girl had ever left Lulu’s soul.