The Mistake

by Katie McMahon

  I nodded. I thought of Bec. Then I thought of my parents. I decided to say nothing.

  ‘So – and this is the bad news – we are unfortunately now at the stage where amputation is our only curative option.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Amputation. What? What? What?

  He gave me such a tender look. Tender as a father, as a lover, as a best friend.

  ‘Kate, my advice is that the best chance of your long-term survival lies in amputating your right arm above the elbow joint. But I would advise you to seek a second expert opinion before we proceed, and I will refer you for that today.’

  ‘To cut off my arm?’ I said. The rest of the room had gone dark. It was only me and David Rowe. He nodded into our quiet.

  ‘Yes.’

  I sat for a bit. The next thing I remember is that he talked to my parents. He knew their names.

  Mum said, ‘Could the tumour have already spread into her body but just not showed up on the scans yet?’ She’d obviously been talking to Bec, because that was one of the blue-ballpoint questions.

  David Rowe told her that ‘micrometastases’ were a possibility and said that I’d need a scan of my body every six months for eight years. We’d all need to cross our fingers, he said, without any irony at all. But he crossed all eight of his own fingers and looked at me, and he made a face as if he really was hoping for the best.

  Dad spoke. ‘If it spreads, then what would be done?’

  ‘If this tumour spreads beyond Kate’s arm, then we would certainly be dealing with a terminal illness.’

  ‘So, you’d want to do it soon? Get it out of Kate before it spreads?’ I could tell Mum was upset, but only because she had used the word ‘get’ to a virtual stranger. Mum believes there is always an alternative to ‘get’. (‘Remove it from Kate,’ for example.)

  David Rowe said, ‘That’s right.’

  Maybe he made eye contact with me first. I can’t remember. I just remember the way he looked at my mum, and how gentle his voice was as he said, ‘I would propose we operate as soon as possible. Certainly within the fortnight.’

  Mum reached out and took my hand in hers. BFG put his arm across Mum’s back. David Rowe said something about a referral letter and began to type.

  I squeezed Mum’s hand, very, very hard. What with all that squash-ball training, I could do it without even thinking.

  *

  I woke up in Recovery again. I felt remarkably happy again. Even though, this time, I knew that on the edge of the happiness, there was something very bad. I kept with the happy feeling, and pushed the bad thing away.

  Animated voices came. I opened my eyes. Quiet, efficient people were doing things. I was, apparently, breathing like a trooper. My blood pressure was good. The intravenous line was functioning really well. Blood-clot-preventer stockings were in place. I knew none of that really mattered though. And, this time, I could tell by how nice everyone was being that no one else thought that stuff was what really mattered, either.

  Bec and Mum were waiting when I got back to the ward. I had a private room at the end of the corridor. The orderlies heaved me off the metal wheelie trolley onto my bed. A nurse plugged me in to a new drip and said more things about pain control. Finally, everyone went away except Bec and Mum. Even though I’d wanted all the staff to go away, I suddenly wanted them to come back. I didn’t want Bec and Mum to see me. I so very much didn’t want them to see me.

  ‘How are you?’ said Bec.

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Are you allowed to eat?’ said Mum.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bec and I together. ‘But I’m not hungry,’ I added.

  My arm – stump – such a horrible, horrible word – was under a baggy hospital gown thing. I didn’t want to look at it, but at the same time, I wanted to be alone with it, to inspect it, to look at my new self in a full-length mirror. To see the worst. But I wasn’t allowed out of bed yet.

  ‘I’m pretty tired,’ I said. ‘Can you just stay here while I sleep?’

  ‘Of course!’ they said, in exactly the same voice.

  When I woke up, after I don’t know how long, they were, of course, still there.

  *

  This is what I remember about the week after:

  A kind resident who made me a cup of tea and moved the box of tissues to where I could reach it easily.

  A mean nurse who said, ‘It shouldn’t hurt that much!’ when she was changing my dressings. We called her Mean Mandy after that, even Mum, who doesn’t believe in ‘labelling’ people.

  David Rowe – David, I seemed to be allowed to call him, but everyone else, even Mum and Bec, and especially all the junior doctors, called him Mr Rowe – coming to see me every day. Sometimes he even came without his retinue. He’d pull a plastic chair alongside my bed and sit down. ‘Everything’s tracking along as well as we could have hoped,’ he’d say, as if he knew that that wasn’t particularly great.

  Bec coming to say goodbye, on her way to the airport. She had to get back to work. I pretended to be asleep, for a whole hour. I just couldn’t face it.

  The first time I saw it in the mirror. I didn’t cry, or vomit, or faint, or do any of the things I thought I might do. I just stood there, with my remaining hand holding onto the edge of the sink. I looked at my face. Even under the hospital fluorescent, there was not a blemish, not a wrinkle, not a visible pore, not the tiniest imperfection.

  *

  I stayed in the Melbourne hospital for eleven days. Mum stayed at a hotel thing nearby. Apart from Mean Mandy, the main nurses were Blonde Mandy, Nice Cindy and – I was much meaner about people’s looks in those days – Fatso Liz. (Fatso Liz was also very nice. She was not at all pretty, though. If she’d lost weight, she would still have been, in fact, remarkably ugly. She also didn’t have any sense of humour. Few natural gifts, to be honest, apart from her kindness, which I was then too young and too stupid and – somehow, even at that point – too unscathed to appreciate.)

  At one point, we decided Mum should learn how to do a dressing change. I turned my head away so I wouldn’t see her face when Blonde Mandy unveiled the remnants of my right arm.

  ‘I see,’ said Mum, to Blonde Mandy. ‘And is it OK to use plain tap water when we need to clean it?’ She managed to make her voice so matter-of-fact that I was able to look over at her while Blonde Mandy explained about tap water (fine), itchiness (normal), pus (a cause for concern) and disinfectant (to be avoided at all costs; it would impair healing.)

  ‘Pay attention, won’t you, Kate, darling,’ Mum said. ‘In case I forget something. You know what my memory can be like.’ Mum has a memory like a steel trap. (I mean it’s sharp and accurate, and never lets anything go. Not rusty or harmful to native animals.)

  ‘I’ll try, Mum,’ I managed to say, in the same business-like tone.

  That was the first time I looked at it uncovered. It was very swollen and red, and the stitches were sort of straining across the closure. It was just so ugly that I found it hard to believe that it was part of me, to be honest.

  Shortly after, BFG came to visit for the weekend. Bec had planned to come, but at the last minute she’d gone to New South Wales. She had an interview at Northmead Hospital on the Monday morning. It was for a paediatrics residency and apparently a very big deal.

  ‘How’s my beautiful girl?’ BFG said, when he bent down and hugged me. I started crying, because it was Dad, and because that was the first time since I was about thirteen that either of my parents had called me beautiful. (I think they decided early on it would be better not to praise me for something out of my control. Or that enough people were calling me pretty and I should be developing other aspects of myself. Something like that.)

  My dad hugged me tighter for a moment, then kissed my forehead.

  ‘Chin up, Kate-o,’ he murmured, as he pulled away.

  I said, ‘There’s shortbread here.’ Nice Cindy had brought it in for me. ‘Want some?’

  Later that week, the agency had
flowers delivered. (‘Bloody hell, they’re gorgeous!’ the kind tea-and-tissues resident said, and then apologised for her language.)

  And a few days after that, Alison sent a letter saying Prance wished me all the very best but would ‘of course’ no longer be ‘in a position’ to represent me. It was the ‘of course’ that upset me the most. (I guess things would be different nowadays. Maybe Alison would’ve negotiated me all sorts of contracts to do with everybody-is-beautiful activewear, and I’d have an Instagram account about resilience and organic smoothies and overcoming obstacles by meditating on the beach. Maybe if I was twenty-something again, I could even model normal stuff; maybe my lack of arm would simply be my unique selling point. But anyway, back then it definitely wasn’t. Back then, it was just the end of my career.)

  A little while after Alison’s letter, David Rowe told me it was almost time to go home, and that he’d see me in four weeks at his rooms. ‘And you’ll be all healed up and well into your rehab by then, fingers crossed,’ he said. Still no irony on the finger-crossing thing, but no one’s perfect.

  I could tell he thought I’d be glad to see the back of him, but actually it felt as if I was losing a friend. It’s possible that I fell a little bit in love with David Rowe, in hindsight. There’s probably a name for that – some syndrome for being attracted to the person who amputates your limb. Or maybe it’s just that if we’d met in other circumstances, we would have hit it off. He was attractive, smart, nice. He wouldn’t have been the first surgeon in history to take up with a good-looking younger woman. But it was very obvious that he felt nothing but compassion for me.

  Mum and BFG both came to take me home on the day I was discharged. We went straight from the hospital to the airport. People noticed me, which, in a way, I was used to. But that day was the first time there was the different kind of noticing. Not a kind I liked.

  *

  At first, I thought I’d do anything to look normal. At first, I believed it would be possible.

  ‘That sounds so great, Kate,’ Bec said. We were back at Mum and Dad’s, lying on our childhood beds. ‘Won’t it be good when it’s all fitted? Not saying you’ll be able to magically move on, or anything, I don’t mean it’ll be like a miracle, but it’ll help, won’t it?’

  ‘Of course it will!’ I said. A prosthesis was the answer, and prostheses, as I told Bec, were getting better all the time. I could afford the best, what with my fashionista earnings and my yet-to-be-finalised settlement. (There was an almighty brouhaha between my lawyers, my income protection insurance company’s lawyers, and Mr Cartwright’s medical indemnity insurance company’s lawyers. In the end, I came out of it well, but only because my lawyers were like the shark in Jaws.)

  In any case, I could have a fantastic new kind of prosthesis from America. I could choose a cosmetic one or a functional one. I could have a special sort – with fixed grippy fingers – that was especially for bike riding, just in case I ever wanted to take up cycling. I could have several! One for every occasion. It was really just like buying bras!

  ‘And I think I’m moving on already. Christine says I’m doing really well.’ Christine was my occupational therapist. She had told me that virtually all activities of daily living could be mastered with practice, but that it was just a matter of prioritising what was important to me. Christine always emphasised that it was all my choice, as if I was a visitor to some sort of exclusive spa instead of a day patient at a pale-orange-brick rehabilitation centre that smelled of rancid oil. I remember its frosted windows all had heavy mesh over them, perhaps to protect the walking frames, fit-balls and parallel bars from roaming gangs of disabled master criminals who just couldn’t get enough physiotherapy during normal working hours.

  At one point Christine and I talked about getting dressed. ‘Well. I don’t do tights. I wear stockings,’ I said. Christine’s greying, unshaped eyebrows spasmed up in a way that made me think of a high school boy having his first orgasm. Then she gazed into the middle distance and said, ‘Well, Kate. We could probably get some suspender belts adapted. Velcro.’ I said I’d rather eat my own head, but that turned out to be a good idea.

  In addition to organising my Velcro’d suspender belts, Christine was helping me get a special knob put on my new car’s steering wheel so I’d be able to drive again. I was learning to chop apples and carrots and cheese on a special chopping board that had a little fence around one corner and a spike on the other end. I had a squeezer thing for my teabags and a series of balance exercises so I didn’t list to my left, like a boat that was heavier on one side.

  When it was time to see about the prosthesis, Bec waited outside while I had my appointment. I had just turned twenty-six.

  ‘When?’ I demanded of the rehab doctor. His name was Dr Flannery, and he had chapped lips and very red hair.

  ‘Well, there are a number of factors to consider—’

  ‘Yes, you said. But when do you think? Best guess.’

  ‘Six weeks.’

  ‘Six weeks.’ That would be summer.

  ‘Minimum.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s just, as I said, if we go too early, before the swelling’s settled . . .’ and then he said a whole lot of stuff about irritation and skin breakdown and infection and pain. He looked at me properly, the whole time, with his pale eyelashes and inflamed-looking eyelids.

  ‘Darling, just do remember what Dr Flannery said,’ Mum reminded me, six weeks later. We were on the way to what I thought was going to be the final fitting. I was convinced I was going to sail out of the Prosthetics Centre that very afternoon with a right arm that was pretty much as good as new. Maybe just a bit hard and stiff, but basically fine.

  ‘Sure, it’ll take a bit of getting used to. I’m prepared for that,’ I said. I looked behind me at Bec, who was in the back seat, in an isn’t-Mum-neurotic? way. Bec gave me a tight, encouraging nod.

  ‘Meeeeessh,’ said the prosthetist. His name was Rufus and his job was to fit fake limbs to people’s dismembered bodies. He had eyes like a seagull. ‘I’m not altogether happy, Kate. It’s OK if I call you Kate?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Not entirely happy. See how it’s not quite hugging your stump there? You don’t want skin abrasion.’

  I nodded again. The use of the word stump in connection with my arm – I wasn’t used to that.

  ‘Could lead to infection and you don’t want that. Stump infections, they can be nasty.’

  That time I couldn’t even nod.

  ‘We’ll need to do another cast,’ he said. It would be another chunk of weeks.

  On the way home in the car I shouted at Mum and Bec to put the fucking windows up. It was one of those chilly, sunny days that make parked cars unexpectedly warm.

  Bec immediately started rolling up her window, but Mum said, briskly, ‘Stop throwing your weight around, Kate, darling.’ She wound her own window down even further. ‘I know you’re very disappointed, but you’re not the only one in the world with problems.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I said. Mum put on the brakes and pulled over in a no-standing zone.

  ‘If you speak to me like that again, then you will need to get out and make your own way home,’ she said. Very calmly. When I didn’t say anything, she drove us back to our house, still very calmly, and made everyone tea. She brought out home-made muffins, which I realised later she would have woken up early to make. They were banana and cinnamon, with no horrible sultanas, currants or dates: my favourite.

  Dear Mum. She is an absolute force of nature. I would be dead without her, no doubt.

  *

  At a later fitting I went to, I met a doctor called Dr Darcy who apparently hadn’t reviewed my file. He happened to be quite attractive, so I kept thinking about Pride and Prejudice. (The BBC series. I had not, at that point, read the book.)

  ‘What did psych say?’ he said. I can’t remember now why I was even seeing him, only that it was almost autumn by then and it was late in the afternoon on a Friday
and I still didn’t have my prosthesis.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Have you seen a psychiatrist?’ As if I was an imbecile.

  ‘Yes. Once.’ David Rowe had organised it, while I was still in the Melbourne hospital. ‘For what it’s worth,’ David said. He shrugged, a bit apologetic. ‘It’s routine in cases like yours.’

  (The psychiatrist wore an egregious maroon sarong-skirt. David Rowe told me later that she pronounced me to have an ‘intact personality’. ‘Whatever that means,’ he said. He’d rolled his eyes in a way that had cheered me up enormously.)

  ‘And . . . ?’ Dr Darcy pressed, that warm Friday afternoon. I was wearing a low-necked T-shirt and I sat forward so as to show him my Sports Illustrated-worthy cleavage. He kept on twiddling his ballpoint between his thumb and index finger, like he was itching to record my response.

  It was as if I hadn’t even moved.

  ‘And what?’ I switched to my best imperious voice, the sort I used to use on shoots when I suspected anyone thought I was an airhead blonde. But to be honest, I was gutted that he hadn’t cared to look at my breasts.

  He sighed. ‘Did the psychiatrist recommend follow-up?’

  ‘She did not.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of trying something? That’s what I’m getting at.’ He looked at me – through his long eyelashes and the sort of trendy tortoiseshell glasses men of his demographic wore then – as if suicide would be just the sort of thing a tiresome girl like me might attempt.

  ‘Trying what?’ Innocent as an ice cube.

  He glanced down at the folder in front of him, to remind himself of my name.

  ‘Kate,’ he said. He was still twiddling his pen. ‘You’re not thinking of hurting yourself, are you? Cutting or anything?’

  ‘No, Doctor,’ I said, very sweetly. ‘If I was to decide to commit suicide, I’d do it sensibly and put a gun in my mouth.’

  This unfortunately triggered an avalanche of questions that sounded as if they were designed to cover his no doubt attractively muscled butt in the event of my shooting myself. Eventually I said, ‘I have no intention of self-harming at the present time, Dr Darcy.’