Is There Anything You Want?

by Margaret Forster

  There is a bed against the wall, with a sheet of thick, coarse paper spread along the length of it. She climbs on to the bed, and stares at the curtain drawn across the end. The curtain used to be blue with tiny white dots on it. She used to try to count the dots. Impossible task, though once she got to 350. She thinks it was 350. Perhaps she cheated. Perhaps she wasn’t seeing the dots distinctly at all, such was her fear. But now the curtain is pink. They changed it two years ago. A very pale pink with grey squiggles running vertically down its length. It is rather soothing to follow each squiggle up and down. Better than dots. It’s thinner material. Not quite transparent, but she can see shadows through it. Nurses, doctors. Consulting notes, fetching things. The ceiling was painted when the curtain was changed. Not white. It’s a cream colour. Magnolia, maybe. A deeper shade than the walls. She knows the walls are not proper walls. Just hardboard. There is talking going on next door but she can’t quite distinguish the words. Some woman rabbiting on to a nurse. She herself doesn’t talk to the nurses, beyond saying thank you and that yes, she is quite comfortable. And she is. Very comfortable. She could fall asleep if it were not for her pounding heart. Her face feels flushed. She wonders if it is. How strange she must look, with a bright red face above a pearly white body. Harry once said that, he said her skin was beautiful, pearly white. Pearls aren’t actually white. She’d said that to him.

  The curtain is pulled back so suddenly that she jumps. ‘Hello, Mrs Green, how are you? I’m Dr Fraser.’ He isn’t the consultant, nor the registrar. She knows that is a good thing. They only look at the serious cases. Once, she was serious. She always saw the consultant. Then they down-graded her and for several years she saw the registrar. And now she doesn’t quite know who looks her over. The lowest of the low, probably, except they are all qualified, there are no students in this clinic. This doctor is the hearty sort. Looks like a rugby player. Ruddy face, thick buttery yellow hair. She takes an instant dislike to him. She loathes heartiness. She doesn’t want her doctors to be jolly. She prefers them quiet and serious, like Mr Wallis himself. This one is smiling in an inane sort of way. He will want to be chummy. He does. Stuff about the weather, stuff about the lunch he’d just had. She doesn’t respond, just smiles, vaguely. He asks a couple of standard questions, about how she is feeling, and then he says let’s have a look at you, then. She lets the robe fall open. Here come his hands, big hands, here come his fingers, thick fingers. She braces herself. They all examine differently. Mr Wallis has such a light, delicate touch. He never prods, just seems to let his fingers glide over her body, smoothing it down, soothing it. His touch is so gentle it almost tickles. She guesses this one will prod and push. He does. Quite hard, especially round her neck, digging his fingers in. He keeps saying good, good, fine, fine, but she is ignoring him, distancing herself. He asks her to sit up. She sits. His face is very near. He’d used aftershave liberally, a gingery scent coming off him. She closes her eyes, not wanting to meet his.

  He is finished with her neck and armpits. He tells her to lie down again while he feels her tummy. She hasn’t much of a tummy. She is slim and, lying down, her stomach is almost concave between her hip-bones. She thinks of the big fat woman who’d sat beside her. Her tummy would be vast, how could anything be felt in such a mass of flesh? A doctor would need big hands, thick fingers to examine it, he would need to prod and push. Right, he says, everything seems fine. Seems? Why does he have to be so equivocal, sowing doubt in her mind? Well, she knows why. They can never be certain. They have to cover themselves. He is picking up her notes again. He says he wants her to have a blood test. He says she should have had it before he saw her, but that everything is topsy-turvy today, nobody has been sent for their blood tests, but it doesn’t matter, he is sure it will be fine, he’ll only contact her if there is any cause for alarm, all right? No. It is not all right, but she is afraid to say so. Letters could go astray, phone calls fail to be made. She needs to know the result of all tests, whatever they are for. But he is still talking, talking and looking at his watch. He is saying something else important. He is saying that next time, next year, she is due for an X-ray, and then if everything is fine, as he expects it will be, she will be discharged. Discharged? She is shocked. The shock sounds in her voice. He looks puzzled, says yes, discharged. She would be reckoned to be clear of cancer after ten years without any further trouble. Doesn’t that please her, doesn’t it please her to think she wouldn’t need to come to this clinic again, or does she love it so much that she can’t keep away? He says the last bit teasingly, but she won’t be teased, she ignores his flippant remark. She sits on the edge of the bed clutching her robe and asks, her voice tremulous, how, if, in a year’s time, she is discharged, she isn’t seen at this clinic after that, how will she know? He frowns, looks again at his watch, and says know what? That nothing is wrong, she says, that it hasn’t started again, because I’m not cured, am I? I’m in remission. He looks embarrassed. He doesn’t know what to say. Finally, not meeting her stare, he explains that ten years is a long time. Her tumour had been tiny and of a low malignancy with no spread. She was one of their success stories. ‘But that doesn’t mean I’m cured,’ she repeats, timidly, ‘does it?’ He hesitates. She’d got him there. What will he say? What has he been taught to say? He hadn’t been prepared for her question. ‘You’re as good as cured,’ he says, sounding irritated. Where this disease is concerned long-term remission counts as a cure. ‘It doesn’t,’ she says, quietly, shaking her head. He’s had enough. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘maybe you should talk to your GP.’ ‘Why would I do that,’ she says, almost in tears, ‘he knows nothing, he didn’t even find the lump, he wasn’t even going to refer me, I had to insist. I need to be checked out here, at this clinic.’ He says he is sorry but that they can’t go on checking patients who are perfectly healthy and symptom-free after ten years, there isn’t time, there aren’t the resources, and there is no need. He says he has to go, he has other patients.

  *

  She didn’t thank him. He left. She sat quite still. She heard him pull the curtain aside in the next cubicle. She heard talking, low and indistinct. A nurse came in, surprised to find her still there, and asked if she was all right. She didn’t reply but slowly she got up from the bed. The nurse screwed up the paper on the bed, the noise violent, and spread a clean sheet. Another nurse came in, carrying a slip of paper, telling her to trot along with it to haematology. She asked if Edwina knew where that was but didn’t wait for an answer, said follow the yellow line back to the entrance hall, then follow the red line. Edwina took the paper, retreated to the changing part of the cubicle, dressed herself. She didn’t feel hot any more, didn’t put her jacket on top of her sweater. She unsnibbed the door. The clinic was so full that some people, men, were standing. There must have been some kind of commotion. Nurses were clustered round a woman sitting huddled on the floor. Edwina walked past them, found the yellow line, followed it, though she had no need to, she knew the way. That Friend was still standing, lording it in the entrance hall. She went behind her, picked up the red line starting at the reception desk. She’d no need of that line’s guidance either, but she followed it, looking down dully at it as it turned corners and shot down corridors. She arrived at haematology. She knew the system. Little numbered tickets came out of a machine, like they do at the deli counter in a supermarket. Take one, sit, keep an eye on the screen flashing up the numbers. She was thirty-seven. They were at twenty, but she knew things moved with speed here. They did. In no time, she was on her feet, moving to the door where a nurse took the slip of paper. It was a long, narrow room. It always reminded her for some reason of a shoe shop. The only shoes in sight were on people’s feet, but the atmosphere was like a busy shoe shop, slightly frantic, chaotic. Something to do with how the seats were arranged, all along one wall, with arm-rests to the right of each one. They were all men, the technicians who took the blood. She thought they were some sort of technicians, not nurses, though they wore white coats.
Did she mean laboratory assistants, she wasn’t sure. No one ever told you anything. They were too busy to talk. It was all sit down, bare your arm, small prick. So busy. Blood pouring out of everyone into phials. Don’t be silly, not pouring, tiny amounts, dribbling. The man in the middle of the row was free. He beckoned to her. Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly. She went to him. Sat. He tightened the rubber thing round her upper arm. Asked her to clench her fist. The vein came up nicely. He was skilled. The needle went in easily. She watched the blood, her blood, squirt into the test tube. It looked rich. It looked good blood. And then the man said something. He patted her arm, the arm he’d taken blood from, and said, very quietly, almost whispering, now you take care, dear.

  Did she smile? Did she acknowledge his little bit of kindness? Did she say that yes, she would take care? She had no idea. She could hardly see for tears, hardly gather up her strength to leave the room. Her progress from the room was unsteady. She couldn’t see the red line to follow. Twice she lost the way to the entrance hall, twice turned corners into corridors unfamiliar to her. Miles of floor stretching in front of her, sign after sign directing her everywhere but to the exit. She had to stop and collect herself, breathe deeply. Then she felt a hand on her arm. ‘Are you all right, dear, can I help you, where are you going?’ She tried to say she was fine, but the words wouldn’t come. She coughed to cover her confusion. The coughing helped, it cleared her head. She saw it was that woman, that Friend, the one who waited for prey in the entrance hall. She pulled herself away from the helpful arm and said she was perfectly well, thank you, just a coughing fit, and strode off briskly. She could see the exit sign now. She passed swiftly through the big entrance hall and as soon as she was outside, found a bench and sat down.

  She felt better. Tired, but no longer in a panic. Taxis drew up, people got out. An ambulance shrieked past. People milled about, the comings and goings were tremendous. They came from so far away to this hospital, the biggest in the area. She had 30 miles to travel home and couldn’t yet face making her way to the bus station. But the terror had finally faded. She’d been in its grip all day. She ought to feel elated, joyous even, the clinic visit over for another year and all well. More than all well. She had the prospect before her of having done with clinic visits for ever. In a year’s time, she might never have to follow the yellow line again. It should thrill her, but it didn’t. Elation, joy, was not what she felt. It was the fault of that kind man who took her blood. Telling her to take care. Exactly. That was what depressed her, all the care she needed to take, all the time. Taking care meant battling with her fear, grappling with pessimism, blanking out images of cells in her body grouping and splitting and gathering into tumours. They might be anywhere. They might be in her bones already, cosily sleeping, waiting. Waiting for a year, till she was discharged from the clinic and then waking up and getting to work. Nobody would know. It didn’t matter how much care she took, she wouldn’t know until the pain began. It wouldn’t be like last time, the tiny crumb of a hard lump giving the game away. Her own care then had saved her. Mr Wallis had congratulated her on her vigilance. But next time it wouldn’t be like that. The secondaries would steal through her bones or creep into her liver or drain into her brain, and no amount of vigilance would prevent them. That was how she reckoned it would be.

  The burden of her dread was so heavy. She couldn’t sit here all day. She wished she had her car, but she hadn’t trusted herself to drive. She got up and trudged along to get the bus home, feeling dragged down by melancholy. It weighed as heavily as a bag of stones. She told herself that tomorrow she would feel relieved. She would, it was true. The glorious relief of the clinic being over would start as pin-pricks of happiness, a physical thing. She’d feel them in her skin, the skin of her face first. It would relax, the tautness would slacken. Then they would trickle through her whole body, these minuscule jolts of energy, and she’d feel suddenly vibrant. Harry would say she was looking particularly well. He liked saying that. She would hold herself back from any bitter remark about wondering why that was, had he not remembered she’d just been through the ordeal of the clinic. No, she wouldn’t say that, or anything like that. He’d only want to know how she’d got on, and when she told him he’d beam and say what brilliant news. Brilliant!

  She couldn’t cope with his euphoria. Best to keep quiet. Always best.

  *

  Chrissie dreaded the walk across the clinic floor, though she hoped her dread was not apparent. She tried to look cheerful, smiling, making her walk brisk and bouncy, and forcing herself to look to right and left, nodding a greeting to anyone who looked her way. She knew she didn’t look as a doctor was supposed to look, but she couldn’t help it if her appearance didn’t conform to the stereotype. Mr Wallis looked as people wanted a doctor to look – tall, imposing, serious – and, in different ways, so did Ben Cohen and Andrew Fraser. They didn’t have Mr Wallis’s dignified bearing, and they were not immaculately dressed as he was, but each in his own fashion inspired confidence. She did not. It wasn’t just that she looked schoolgirlish, or that her hair was always coming loose from the combs holding it up and making her look untidy, or even that her clothes (grey skirts, black or grey tops) made her look dowdy, but that her whole demeanour was somehow apologetic. It made her despair. She’d catch sight of herself in mirrors sometimes and think who is that funny little woman scurrying by like a squirrel. So she tried to counteract the impression she knew she made by always smiling; she tried to radiate friendliness.

  God knows, these patients needed friendliness. The atmosphere in this waiting-area was always dreadful. She smiled and nodded, but there were never any smiles or nods in return. Faces were frozen, expressions fixed, and who could blame them. Today, especially, there was an air of settled misery. It had filtered through by now that Mr Wallis was on holiday, and Dr Cohen ill, which left only her and Andrew. Somehow, they were going to have to cope. What was worse was that officially she was in charge, because she’d been in Mr Wallis’s team a year longer than Andrew. It didn’t make any difference, really, they would both share the load, but she felt apprehensive. She’d never done a clinic without Mr Wallis in the background, always there to be turned to. She should be pushing for promotion herself by now, but she didn’t want it. Andrew would make registrar status before her, and she didn’t care. He’d probably become a consultant within five more years, at some other hospital if not this one, and she never would. Her mother used to say lack of real ambition was her fatal flaw, but she didn’t see it as a flaw. She felt dedicated to her work but not to reaching the top of her profession. Making decisions was always hard for her and if she became a registrar, never mind a consultant, she’d be turned to all the time for advice. She didn’t want that.

  It was a relief to leave the patients behind and arrive in the other part of the clinic. It was like a maze, this part, the other side of the cubicles. The dividing walls were hardboard, the general impression one of a shanty town, everything waiting to be swept away by a bulldozer. Two little rooms had been created at one end of the corridor, one for Wallis, one for Cohen, and another makeshift area, without even a door on it, acted as a staff-room. It was a very old hospital waiting to be knocked down and rebuilt. Plans were in progress, building rumoured to be starting next year, but meanwhile this shoddy arrangement had to be put up with. There was no proper space for anything. The corridor that ran between the curtains of the cubicles and the outside wall of the building was especially narrow and awkward, with the flimsy shelf that ran along under the windows further reducing what space there was, and making passing backwards and forwards like an endless excuse-me dance. The lighting was ridiculous, so poor that to read notes you had to hold them up high to catch the best illumination. The whole place was a shambles, and yet their work there was a matter of life and death.

  Andrew was waiting for her, slouched in the sad, old leather armchair he found so comfortable and which she herself avoided ever sitting in. ‘You’ve he
ard Ben’s ill?’ he said. She nodded. ‘We’ll be here all night,’ he said. ‘You’d think they’d have arranged an extra pair of hands.’ It was a silly thing to say, so she didn’t reply. Sister Butler came in with the lists. She extracted folders from the trolley she was pushing and dumped them on the table, almost knocking over Andrew’s coffee. ‘Hey, steady on,’ he protested. The pile was huge. Andrew stood up, divided it into two, and asked which did she want, the right-hand pile or the left one. She said it didn’t matter, so he took the left lot. Sister Butler, in such a bad temper she could barely speak at all, said that the division couldn’t be done like that, and they should know that the folders had to be arranged according to the times of the appointments, or there would be a riot. She started shuffling through the folders, checking them against the list in her hand. Chrissie and Andrew watched. When Sister Butler had finished, the table had ten small piles on it. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘you’d better get started.’ She swept out, and Andrew raised his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head. ‘Who’d believe that woman,’ he said.