“What do you mean?”
“This. Us. Together. It’s not working, is it?”
He frowns. “I don’t understand.”
I take a deep breath and let the oxygen fill me with strength for what I need to do. “We rushed into this too quickly, James. And the timing, obviously, is just all wrong.”
“You can’t control when you fall in love, Ava. We both know that more than anyone.”
“I know. And I wish more than anything in this world”—I give a small smile—“more than I wish for world peace even, selfishly, that things were different. But they’re not. And I think we both need to accept that. You need to live your life, James, and I need to focus on myself, and my…health. Something I haven’t been doing.”
He doesn’t angrily protest my words, which I rather expected and half hoped for. I was prepared for that. I wasn’t prepared for him to walk away from me and stand by the window, his back to me. He says nothing for the longest time and I wait, wary, for his objections to come. They don’t.
“Last night,” he says finally, “I thought I’d lost you. When your eyes went all blank and you just stopped responding, I thought the life was draining out of you right in front of my eyes, and I was scared. More scared than I’ve ever been in my life. Even more than when my mother…” He trails off, his voice shaky. “I didn’t know it was possible to feel the pain I felt before you came back to me. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head or my heart since.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. I am.” He turns back around. His eyes are haunted with pain and my heart breaks at the sight of them. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough. I thought I was, but maybe I’m not. I just don’t think I can survive this again.”
I smile through tears that flow faster than I can wipe them away. “James, you’ve made these last few months the happiest of my life. The memories we’ve made together will keep me warm in here”—I touch my chest—“until I take my last breath. But I agree. I don’t want you to stick around for what’s coming. I might only have weeks left, and it’s not going to be pretty. I don’t want you to see me at my worst. I want you to remember me how I am.”
“I will never forget a second of my time with you, I promise you that.” His voice is raspy with emotion.
“And I will not be the reason you miss out on the biggest opportunity of your life.”
“Opportunity?”
“The job in the jungle. Take it, James. It will be life-changing for you.”
“No. I don’t know.” He shakes his head.
“Take it. I’m not advising you, James, I’m telling you. Take it. I don’t want you here anymore. I want you to go, and do great things for both of us, because I’ll never get that chance. I want you to go and to live the best life you can. For me.”
“How can I just walk away from you?”
I remember my question to my father on the beach, Kate’s question to me. We are all scared of the same thing.
“You can, and you have to. Just don’t look back.”
He crosses the room to the bed and with an angry howl he presses his forehead against mine, his breath hot on my face, our tears mingling together. He kisses me, and I feel a million lives lived in just that one kiss. A million futures together, a million roads traveled. Then he pulls away and leaves the room without looking back.
Chapter Forty-One
I can’t eat. Or talk. I barely breathe. When I move, it hurts. Not physically; the pain medication takes care of that. But every movement is a reminder that I am still alive, and he has gone.
My family and friends are worried. They come and they gather around my hospital bed and they beg, plead, and cajole me to take “just one mouthful.” But what is the point of food if not to sustain life? And I don’t want to sustain mine. Even if I did, the cancer has taken that decision away from me. I have no sense of control over anything, except this. So I don’t eat.
The doctor puts on a stern voice and tells me I will be fed through a tube if I don’t force myself to eat the food the lady in a blue smock plonks on my tray while he is there at dinner time on the second day.
“I know it’s not the most appetizing food in the world,” he says, poking at the brown stew on a plate, with unidentified meat and packet mashed potato that has gone hard around the edges. “But it is food nevertheless.”
“That’s the biggest understatement, and overstatement, that I’ve ever heard,” Amanda mutters. “You can’t call that food. I wouldn’t feed that to a dog.”
I nibble enough to keep them happy and the tube away. They try to tempt me with takeaways. French fries, pies, pizza. One night Kate brings Thai, and then sits there bewildered while I cry and wail and throw the rice and curry on to the floor.
“I thought she liked Thai?” she mutters to my mother as they mop it up with paper towels.
“It…was…our…last…meal…together,” I howl.
All the resolve and determination I had when I told James to leave promptly dissolved the next morning. I was wrong, I needed him. I was trying to spare him from the pain of watching me die, but I miss him too much, and I am too scared and selfish. I call him. I call him over and over and over, but every time his phone goes straight to voicemail. I don’t leave messages because I don’t know what to say. I just know I need him.
When he doesn’t return my calls and doesn’t come back to the hospital, I realize that, unlike me, he has not changed his mind. I go numb. My parents, Kate, and Amanda are quite rightfully confused as to why James has disappeared. I can’t bring myself to explain, so I say he has gone out of town for work. They know I am lying. I do a bad job of hiding it.
I can do nothing apart from lie on my hospital bed and look out of the window. With James gone and the wedding canceled, I have nothing to look forward to.
Occasionally, I am wheeled from the room for scans. I see no point in them now but lack the energy to protest. They won’t change the outcome. I barely listen when they rattle off results, treatment plans. None of it matters anymore. I have fought, long and hard, but now I am tired.
Intervention comes in the form of my mother, as always. She arrives on the Thursday morning, four days after James left, two days before I was supposed to have the wedding day of my dreams, pushing a wheelchair into the room in front of her.
“Get in,” she says.
“What? No.”
“If I have to lift you in I will.”
I don’t doubt her. But still, I don’t move. I am weak and tired. When I try to sleep, I see his face, so I force myself to stay awake until exhaustion takes over and plunges me into a dreamless slumber that does nothing to ease my fatigue.
“I mean it,” she says, crossing her arms and looking at me sternly. “Get up.”
“Why?”
“Because despite how you’ve been acting, you haven’t lost the use of your legs.”
“Then why did you bring a chair?”
“Because, smarty, you’ve barely eaten so I’d be surprised if you have the strength to walk very far without fainting. Now come on, hurry up. You’ll get bedsores if you don’t move soon.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will once you get them. Nasty, smelly things, I’ve heard.”
“Stop trying to shock me into doing what you want, Mum.”
“Is it working?”
“No.”
She sighs. “Ava, I don’t know what’s really going on with you and James, but any fool can see how much you’re hurting. And I’ve allowed you to wallow, I have, but it’s been four days now and you’re not snapping out of it. If anything, you’re sinking deeper. Normally I’d leave you to have all the time you need to work through whatever it is you’re working through. But time is a luxury we don’t have. So get off that goddamn bed this minute, and get in the bloody chair.”
I know how unrelenting she can be, so reluctantly I do as I’m told and shuffle off the bed, pitifully lowering myself into the chair she thrusts out
triumphantly.
“Where are we going?”
“Wait and see.”
I slouch down low and stare at my stockinged feet as she wheels me along corridors, through doors, and eventually into an elevator.
“I’m getting out?” I ask hopefully when I see she pushes the ground-floor button.
She grimaces. “No. Sorry. I should have realized you might get your hopes up.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
When the elevator doors open she pushes me out and across the reception area, toward the big glass automatic doors. I look up at her, confused. “I thought you said…?”
“You’re not going home. Not yet.”
The fresh air hits like I’ve walked into a wall of perfume, only the opposite: sweet, natural air, so much softer than the harsh, recycled air inside that dries out your mouth and skin, leaving you scaly like a lizard. It’s warmer too. She takes the path that leads to the seat where I met the old lady, all those months ago. It is different now, surrounded by the lush green growth of summer. My father, Kate, and Amanda are there. They have a rug spread out on the grass and are sitting around it.
“Surprise,” Dad says, scrambling up to kiss me on the cheek when he sees me. “We thought you might like a picnic.”
“Thanks. It’s a nice thought, but I’m not really hungry.”
“Suit yourself,” Amanda says. “More food for us.”
There is an edge to her voice, though, that belies any joviality her words suggest. I see Kate give her a sharp look.
“Come on, Ava,” she says cajolingly. “Surely you can manage a sandwich? We bought your favorite cheese.…”
“You guys can have it.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Mum snaps, causing us all to look at her in surprise. “Right. It’s time for some tough love.”
“Do you really think that’s the right appro—” Dad gingerly asks but is cut off.
Mum tips up the back of the wheelchair, causing me to plant my feet on the ground to prevent myself from falling.
“Hey,” I protest.
“Hey nothing. You’re quite capable of standing, sitting, and walking by yourself still, Ava. And I won’t stand by and just watch you give up. Not while you still have strength in you.”
“I haven’t given up.”
“Really? Because that’s how it seems to us. We’ve watched you retreat further and further into yourself this week, not eating, barely talking. It’s like you’re pulling away from us, the people that love you.”
“You heard what the doctor said, Mum. It’s in my brain. How long until I don’t even recognize you any more?”
“You can’t think like that.”
“Of course I can,” I yell loudly, not caring who might hear. I haven’t given voice to the fear I’ve been feeling since my admission, but it’s unleashed now, and I let rip. “How can I not think like that? How can I not imagine the worst?”
“I don’t know,” she yells back, and I realize she is worrying about the exact same things. “I don’t know.” She looks at me so helplessly I lose any aggression I feel.
“I just hate the not knowing,” I say, quieter now, panting. “I have no idea what to expect and I’m so scared. And no offense to you all, because you know how much I love you, but the one person I really need here to reassure me is gone. And I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”
“Talk to us,” Kate urges, pulling me into her arms. “That’s what we’re here for. Where is James?”
So I tell them. How I told him to go for his own good, that I thought I was doing the noble thing. How he didn’t fight me on it. That he was just as confused and scared as I was, and I couldn’t fault him for that.
As I finish explaining I see Dad shaking his head, his mouth set in a tight line. “That coward,” he says.
“He’s not a coward, Dad.”
“He is. He’s abandoned you, right when you need him the most.”
I look at Mum. She looks sad. “I was hoping he’d be stronger than this,” she says. “For your sake.”
“Please don’t blame him,” I plead. “It’s as much my fault. I told him to go.”
“Yes, but he would have known you were just trying to spare his feelings,” Dad says. “He didn’t have to walk away. That was his choice.”
“Put yourself in his shoes,” I tell them. “He watched his mother die, his own mother. He was still a kid, barely a teenager. Imagine how hard that must have been. And then for him to find me, and develop feelings for me, only to have to watch as I leave him in the same way?”
Dad’s expression softens. “Doesn’t seem fair, does it.”
“No. It doesn’t. It’s not.”
“I guess I can understand why he’s scared,” Dad admits. “But I’m still angry with him. I don’t like seeing you hurt.”
“Oh, Ava,” Mum sighs. “What a mess, eh? Have you called him?”
“So many times. He’s not answering. I think he’s gone overseas.” I don’t tell them about the job offer, because I promised him it would stay between us.
“Goodbyes are never painless,” Kate says softly. “Even when they’re necessary.”
“I just didn’t think it’d be the last time I saw him,” I say through tears. “And I can’t bear the thought that it was.”
“As hard as it is to hear,” Amanda says cautiously, “maybe you were right. Maybe it is better this way. Now, he’ll always remember you at your best.”
“Maybe.”
I close my eyes and lift my face to the sky, letting the warmth of the sun dry the tears on my cheeks. Strangely, it does feel cathartic to talk about it. I should have known they wouldn’t just leave me to wallow in self-pity.
“You have us,” Mum says. “Always. No matter what’s coming. We’re here till the end.”
“I love you guys.”
“We love you too.”
I sniff loudly and smile bravely. “Now, did someone say something about cheese?”
Later, when they have deposited me safely back into my room and departed for the night, I sleep easier for the first time since James left. I haven’t stopped missing him, and I never will, but I have been reminded that there are others who love me just as much, and I owe it to them to give this last bit of life everything I have. I can either dwell on the unfairness and the uncertainty, or I can focus on what I have, and all that is still good in my life. I have to hold on to the belief that I made the right choice, that James is out there right now, doing what he loves, making the most of his moments.
Chapter Forty-Two
Wake up, wake up, it’s your wedding day,” Amanda squeals, throwing herself on to my bed.
“Go away.” I kick out at her. “That’s an awful thing to joke about.”
“I’m not joking.”
I lift my head off the hospital pillow and peer at her. “What?”
“Surprise!” Kate beams, waving her hands around madly.
“We’re breaking you out of here.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Do the doctors know?”
“Yes. And they’re all for it. They were going to let you go home tomorrow anyway, so once we explained how important today is they agreed one day wasn’t going to make much of a difference. You just have to promise to take it easy and rest when you need to.”
“I’ll promise your firstborn child if it means I get out of here. Where’s Mum?”
“Finalizing things at home.”
“For what?”
“The wedding. Like I said.” Amanda rolls her eyes as if I am being dense.
“Wait, I thought we canceled it all. Or postponed it or whatever.”
Kate shakes her head. “We decided not to, just in case. And, as it turns out, we made the right decision. That is if you still want to go through with it today. No pressure if you’re not feeling up to it.”
“Well…” I exhale slowly. I’d just assumed that the whole thing was off. Could I really
do this today? Without James present? I look at Kate and Amanda’s expectant faces and think about how much work has gone into this. And I know that if I don’t do it today, there are no guarantees that I’ll get another chance. I nod. “Let’s do it. I might not feel like partying, but I could do with the distraction. Besides, I know family and friends will have traveled from all over for this. I don’t want to let anyone down.”
“They will understand if you’d rather not.”
I turn and put my feet on the floor firmly. “No. I’m not letting this damn disease take another thing away from me. Let’s get out of here, but I need to make a quick phone call first.”
Some of the doctors and nurses gather to see me off, a few with tears in their eyes. They give me a card, wishing me all the best for my big day. I am grateful to them all, but I hope, on a professional level, that I never have to see any of them again. The ride home from the hospital is bittersweet. The countryside seems brighter, but my heart is definitely sadder. My father has outdone himself and breakfast is the full monty. Eggs—both scrambled and fried—crispy bacon, golden crunchy hash browns, fried mushrooms, toast, sliced avocado, some salmon slices and hollandaise sauce. I pick and taste what I can. I still have no appetite, but I know I will need my strength.
Sophie and Kelly arrive at ten, giddy with excitement. Seeing them, I feel affection for them both; they are lovely women who only want to see me happy. As do so many. Amanda shows me the Facebook page. There are thousands of posts wishing me all the best for the day. I feel a twinge of sadness that I was unable to take them all up on their offers of help or things for the wedding, but I just have to hope they will understand. Something tells me they will.
When Sophie and Kelly have finished working their magic I look—not healthy; I am too skinny for that—but still beautiful. I head into the bedroom alone to get dressed. Someone has placed two bags on the bed. I unzip the larger bag, the familiar one, and smile sadly as the first sliver of material is revealed. Although I have a beautiful dress hanging in the wardrobe that has been modified to fit me perfectly, this morning when I found out the wedding was going ahead I had a change of heart. There was really only one dress I wanted, and that was the dress I wore on the farm, the day James and I went for a swim in the river. So I called Sophie from the hospital and, luckily for me, I had damaged it enough that she couldn’t return it to the designer, and it was still in her office. It has been dry-cleaned, I notice, because when I sheepishly handed it back to Sophie that day it was with a few grass stains around the bottom and a small tear from where I had left it draped over the tree branch. There’s no sign of the tear now; whoever repaired it has done it so expertly that I can’t even see where it was. I lift it to my face and inhale, hoping to catch the scent of him, but there’s nothing, of course. Laying it carefully on the bed, I turn my attention to the other bag. Inside I find a beautiful pair of shoes, cream colored to match the dress. They are like ballet flats, but delicate and with an intricate lacy pattern. They are very pretty, and definitely more me than a pair of stilettos would have been.
Photos of You (ARC) Page 24