Something Like Happy

by Eva Woods

  “I know,” Annie said, feeling it sink into her, too, like a lead weight around her ankles, pulling her down.

  George ran his hands over his face, pulling on the skin. “I mean, they said it was hopeless but we didn’t believe it, I guess, or...she seemed so well. You saw her. Didn’t she seem well?”

  “She did. But I think...maybe she was trying to convince herself, too. That if she just kept going it wouldn’t catch her.” And now it had. Annie realized she’d closed her eyes to it, too. Polly gasping for breath. Her back pain. The weight that seemed to melt off her overnight.

  George was looking to Annie for answers, like a small child wanting to know why, why, why. “Do you think he’s right? Are we really out of options?”

  “I...” Annie could see Dr. Max at the end of the corridor, bashing the vending machine in irritation. “I think he is right, yes. Let’s leave her be for now. She’s going to have a lot to come to terms with.”

  DAY 40

  Be honest

  “She doesn’t want to see anyone today.” Dr. Max shook his head, closing the door of Polly’s room behind him.

  “She seemed so well,” Annie said again, knowing how pointless it was. As if some stubborn part of her brain kept on insisting Polly couldn’t be dying. She’d been up and laughing just days ago. How could she have so little time?

  He ran his hands through his hair, making it stick up. “It was the tumor, Annie. She hadn’t accepted it at all. That’s how it works. Your mind sort of shields you from taking it in at first. People can keep going for a long, long time on autopilot. Hope is the last thing to die.” He tucked his hands into the pockets of his white coat. “I’ll see you.”

  It was there between them, the awkwardness of the night of the concert, pushing them apart at the moment Annie most needed him. “Listen,” she tried. “I’m sorry about...what happened. You know. That night.”

  “Oh.” He looked down at his feet. “It’s nothing, Annie. You just seemed like you needed a hug. No big deal. Bye.”

  She stood looking after him as rain lashed the windows of the corridor and she realized Polly was dying, really dying and really leaving them, on the other side of that door. And somehow the rest of them would have to find a way to keep on going.

  DAY 41

  Go outside

  “Where are you taking me?” Polly said sulkily. “I’m not allowed to leave this prison.”

  “Dr. Max said you can go outside for half an hour.” George was pushing her in a wheelchair, Annie following behind laden with bags.

  “I don’t want to go outside. We’re in Lewisham, it’s horrible.”

  “Just come. You might be surprised.”

  They pushed her out the back of the hospital, past the maternity wing and outpatients and over a small bridge, where suddenly they were confronted with a small river and a wide-open field. “What is this place?”

  “Ladywell Fields,” said Annie. “I used to come here a lot. It’s beautiful.” It was near where she and Mike had lived, and had been one of Jacob’s favorite places. Even though they knew he wasn’t old enough to have favorites, not really.

  “Hmph. Well, you’ve changed your tune, Little Miss Sunshine.”

  George and Annie exchanged glances. This was going to be harder than they’d thought. “Come on,” said George, easing Polly out of her wheelchair. “Put your arms around my neck. Bit harder.”

  Her arms hung limp, with barely the strength to hold on. “I used to carry you when you were a baby,” she said. “And now you have to lift me. I dropped you on your head once actually. Probably explains a lot.”

  Once they’d spread out the picnic rug Annie had brought, they arranged the food on it. “Look,” coaxed George. “Your favorite, Roquefort. And there’s olives, and ham, and all kinds of picnic swag.”

  “I can’t eat that, duh. I’m on high-level infection control.” She sat hunched in her cardigan, smearing sanitizing gel onto her hands. “It’s like I’m pregnant, only I’m not and I never will be now. I’m pregnant with a big old tumor instead.”

  “Listen, P...” George began. “I know this is a setback—”

  “I’m dying. That is kind of a big setback, yeah.”

  “Nothing’s changed,” Annie said quietly. “You told me when we met you were terminal.”

  Polly stared down at the rug, with its cheery shades of pink and blue. It was sunny outside, and nearby some children waded in the river, shrieking as the mud squelched between their toes. It was a happy scene. Wrong somehow. “I know. It’s like...I knew it in my head, but not inside me. Not really. I thought I’d just get through these hundred days and then think about the rest after that, and then maybe by then there’d be some new treatment or something. But it’s too late. I’m out of time.”

  “It’s not over yet,” George said. “Dr. Max said—”

  “Dr. Max. What’s the use of him? What has he actually been able to do for me? Two months ago I was totally fine and now look at me. I can hardly even pee by myself.” She screwed her face up tight, as if she was trying not to cry. “What do I do? What do I do now?”

  “You keep going,” said Annie. “What else can you do?”

  “But what’s the point? I have so little time.”

  “You said you wanted to help people. You’ve already helped me, Poll. You can do more. Milly said the social media stuff’s really taking off, loads of people commenting, and—”

  “Social media. What does that matter? I’ll never meet any of those people. They don’t care if I live or die.”

  Annie held up her phone. “Scroll. Go on.”

  She watched Polly read the screen. “These are all donations?”

  “Yep. A hundred yesterday alone. And look, they’ve all put comments, too. People do care, Poll. Even if it’s just an illusion that they know you. You’re making a difference to them. Look, they’ve started posting their own happy-days things.”

  George stretched back. “Someone chose ‘cleaning the bath’ as one, can you believe it? These people need you, P. Show them how to actually have fun.”

  “We need you,” said Annie. “Have you seen what I’m wearing today?”

  “Yes,” Polly said grudgingly. “Did you get lost on your way to an ABBA tribute concert? I mean, really, Annie—fringes?”

  A brief flare of herself, back from under the suffocating fug of despair. Dr. Max was right. It wasn’t over yet.

  “All right,” Polly said after a while. “I’ll try. I don’t know if I can but I’ll try. If you do something for me in return, George.”

  “I’m not doing that dancing thing again. Not without class-A drugs.”

  “It’s not that. I want you to stand up to Mum. Tell her once and for all that you’re gay, and as such you and Annie won’t be getting it together anytime soon.”

  “She thinks that?” Annie felt herself blush.

  George sighed. “She keeps dropping hints about how well we get on. It’s just—I mean, she knows it, really. I’ve tried to tell her. But she doesn’t want to know. She still thinks I’ll meet the right girl and settle down, buy a house in Surrey, get a BMW.”

  Annie looked between them. “But...your parents are so cool. They can’t have an issue with gay people, surely?”

  George said, “Oh, Mum’s just...she thinks she’s so liberal, but really she wants everything to be picture-perfect. This wonderful happy family, complete with cute grandkids. Before Poll was sick, the pressure was off me to reproduce, but now...”

  “Now I won’t be giving her any,” Polly supplied. “It’s down to Georgie here. She’s not homophobic, not really. George being gay just doesn’t fit into her dream family.”

  “Nor does me being a failed actor.” His smile twisted.

  “My God, your family’s good a
t denial,” Annie murmured.

  “Well, she’s about to lose a child, so that should put paid to it,” said Polly. A short silence. “Please will you just stand up to her, Georgie? Life’s too short to lie. I would know.”

  “Okay, then. In the same vein, are you ever going to call Tom?”

  She scowled. “George, don’t.”

  “He deserves to know.”

  “He doesn’t deserve anything. Come on, take me back in.”

  Annie knew better by now than to ask who Tom was. Besides, she already had a pretty good idea.

  On their way back in, they saw a lone figure in Lycra jogging around the hospital buildings. “Dr. Quarani!” Polly shouted. “Dr. Quarani!” Except her voice came out as a croak, and he didn’t hear, and soon he was gone, leaving only dust at his heels.

  DAY 42

  Do something spiritual

  “Amazing. Did you ever see Bowie there?”

  The sound of a hacking cough. “Oh, yeah. He was a regular, so he was. Say hi to him when you get up there, will you?”

  “Oh, I’d be far too starstruck.”

  Polly looked up as Annie stood awkwardly in the door of her room. An older man was in the chair beside her, wearing black silk pajamas. He was so thin. Annie blinked, trying not to stare. “Hey! You’re better.” Polly seemed composed, in contrast to the weeping mess of previous days.

  “Just about. Dion, this is my friend Annie.”

  She raised an awkward hand. “Hi.”

  Dion stood up, which took a while. Annie could see the ridges of his spine under the silk of his pajamas. “I’ll leave you to it, lovely girl. The eye-candy nurse is bringing the meds around soon—don’t want to miss that.” He blew Polly a kiss. As he passed Annie he quickly rearranged her pink scarf into a sort of snood. “There you go. Looks much more chic that way.”

  “Um, thanks.”

  Polly patted the chair, managing a smile. She looked terrible—dark bruises under her eyes, her skin gray and wan. Annie could see how thin her hair was, the scalp showing underneath. But she was smiling. That was something. “Dion used to work in costume design at the Old Vic. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about clothes.”

  “What’s he in for?” Annie sat down, noticing that the teddy bear she’d brought was propped on top of Polly’s heart monitor.

  “Oh, it’s a fascinating story. He was the fourth person in the UK to be diagnosed with AIDS. In 1984. Imagine!”

  “Wow, and he’s still alive?”

  “Just about. It’s starting to attack his brain, and he forgets things a lot. All his friends are dead, two of his boyfriends—you name it, everyone gone. Can you imagine?”

  “That’s sad.” Polly’s mood was clearly swinging back up, buoyant as a balloon. Annie waited to hear why.

  “I mean, can you imagine living like I am now, thinking every day’s your last, only for twenty years? He’s got no savings. Can’t afford his rent now they’ve cut his benefits. No family, most of his friends dead.” Polly patted a book on her bedside table. “He’s given me this to read. Man’s Search for Meaning. It’s by this guy who was sent to Auschwitz and his wife and family died, but he still says it’s possible to be happy in any situation. That we can always control our response to anything, inside ourselves. Do you believe that, Annie?”

  “Sure.” Annie didn’t. There were some things she just didn’t think you could get past.

  “And have you seen the fundraising site? So many comments from people doing happy things. I need to keep doing stuff. Whatever happens to me. I need to keep going with the hundred days. But I’m stuck here. I can’t leave the hospital until they’ve shrunk this new tumor down. Did you know I had an exciting new tumor? I’m going to call this one Frank.”

  “Yeah. I knew. Listen, George and I can do the happy-days stuff, if it means so much to you. Costas, too.”

  “Really?” Polly raised the place where her eyebrows used to be.

  “’Course. I mean, as long as there are no marine animals involved.”

  Polly laughed, which turned into a storm of coughing. “I’ll...just ring SeaWorld and...cancel. Would you really do that for me? See, if you could film yourselves doing things, we can upload it to the fundraising site, and Milly reckons it’ll help ‘drive traffic’ or whatever. That’s good, isn’t it? That would mean something. Some kind of...legacy.”

  Annie wondered what would happen if Polly gave up on the plan entirely. The energy of it seemed to be the only thing holding her together. “Of course. Listen, I can’t stay long, sorry. I’ve missed so much work recently, and I need to see my mum.”

  “Oh, can I come with you?”

  “Er, you’re bedridden.”

  “I’m not. Push me in the wheelchair. Pleeease. I’m so bored here.”

  “Well, okay, if you think a trip to the geriatrics ward is fun.”

  “In my world, this is what passes for a night out clubbing.”

  “Stop trying to get sympathy. Shall I call a nurse?”

  “No, no, they’re busy saving lives and stuff. We can manage it.”

  With much shuffling, Annie got Polly out of bed and into the wheelchair, which was sitting in the corner. She weighed so little Annie probably could have picked her up in her arms. “There. Where to, miss? I’m not going south of the river, not at this time of night.”

  “Is there an Uber wheelchair option? Maybe I can start one from my deathbed.”

  Annie wheeled her into the lift and they went to Geriatrics. As she squeaked Polly down the hall she nodded to people she recognized: the handsome pediatrics registrar, the motherly woman who pushed the books trolley, the receptionist from Patient Records. You could get used to anything, really. A hospital could start to feel like a home. A stranger could start to feel like your very best friend. And your mother—well, she could become a stranger.

  “She’s sleeping,” said Dr. Quarani, barring the way. The ward was quiet, the only sign of the patients the tiny mounds in the beds. Funny how you shrank back into yourself, at the end.

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine, I think. Earlier she thought I was Omar Sharif, but apart from that...”

  “Oh, my God,” Annie muttered, mortified. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s quite all right. She seemed rather pleased to meet me. Asked me to join her in a hand of bridge.”

  “Er, my face is down here,” Polly said from her wheelchair.

  He looked down. “Hello, Miss Leonard. Should you be out of bed? I understood you had a secondary and were on bed rest awaiting radiotherapy.”

  Polly pulled a face. “You make me sound like a garden or something. I can’t just lie there. I have to do something.”

  He frowned. “Does Dr. Fraser know you’re up?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he does. On some level. Anyway, enough about me. How are you?” Annie could have sworn that Polly was trying to bat her eyelashes. Not that she had any. She leaned her cheek on one hand, the one with the catheter still in it.

  “I’m rather busy.” He started reaching for the ward phone. “I really think I should speak to Dr. Fraser...”

  “Oh, leave it, please. He’s so grumpy. Tell me more about you. You have any family over here or...?” Annie looked away. This was totally cringe, as Polly would say.

  “Family? No.” He looked at his watch. “Miss Leonard—”

  “It’s Polly, please. I’m not a defendant in court. Not yet, anyway, ha-ha. What about back in Syria, family there or—”

  Dr. Quarani snapped his chart shut. “Please. I must ask you to go back to your ward. The nurses will be looking to take your bloods and if you’re not there it just creates extra work. Ms. Hebden, your mother is stable for now. I suggest you get some rest, attend to your own job and come back tomorrow.
”

  Polly stared as he strode from the ward. “Hold the front page, I think we have a new contender for grumpiest doctor of the year award.”

  Annie started wheeling her away. “Seriously, Poll, what was that? Were you flirting with him?”

  “So what if I was? Just because I’m in the hospital doesn’t mean I’m dead inside.”

  “But he’s a doctor, and you’re—”

  “What? I’m sick? I know I’m sick, Annie. For God’s sake. Is that all I am to you?”

  Annie pushed her faster, hissing through clenched teeth. It was hard to argue with someone when they were in front of you. “You know that’s not true. It’s just...not appropriate, that’s all.”

  “But it’s fine for you to flirt with Dr. McGrumpy?”

  “I do not flirt with him.”

  “‘Oh, Dr. Max, show me more brain scans. Oh, Dr. Max, someone should really iron your shirts and make you a decent meal!’”

  “I don’t sound like that.” People were starting to look up at the sound of their bickering. Annie pushed faster. “Come on. Back to bed with you. Unless you want me to see if they can check you into some kind of ward for inappropriate behavior.”

  “I have a brain tumor, I’m allowed,” Polly said, folding her thin arms.

  “It’s hard to tell what’s the tumor and what’s your personality, sometimes.”

  “Oh, charming. Shit! Dr. Max! Reverse, reverse! Duck in there! Quick!”

  “But that’s the—”

  “Now!”

  Annie turned the chair sideways, and shut the door behind them. She looked about them at the quiet, warm space, the light filtered through a blue stained glass window. They were in the chapel. One place in the hospital she had always refused to go, even when her mother asked to be taken. She just couldn’t. Her hands clenched on the rubber handles of the wheelchair. “Come on, Poll, let’s go.”

  “Why? Let’s just sit for a minute. It’s nice and quiet.”

  She was going to be late for work yet again. Reluctantly, Annie parked the chair and sat on one of the wooden pews. It didn’t feel like part of the hospital. You could hardly hear the rushing feet outside, and the smell of disinfectant was overridden by a gentler one of incense.