99 Days With You

by Catherine Miller

  There was no escape from it though. Nathan had told her repeatedly, from early on, what he’d expected would happen. But that didn’t for a second take away from the hurt she was feeling right now.

  ‘Nathan’s going to die.’ Saying it out loud didn’t make it any easier.

  ‘What? What do you mean? Is he unwell again? I thought the surgery was all he needed.’

  Emma had previously told her mother it was a lump and they hoped it was a type of skin cancer. It was what she had thought and hoped too. How was it sometimes the smallest things ended up being the most terrifying?

  ‘The lump is a spread of his cancer. They don’t even know where it’s spread from. They have to find the main cause. They’ve kept him in to investigate.’ With that sentence having streaked out of her, there wasn’t anything left. If her mum had more questions, she wouldn’t be able to answer them.

  Even without knowing the source of the metastasis, Emma knew whatever news lay before them wasn’t going to be good. She knew it in her gut. There was no happy ending to their story. They’d known it all along.

  ‘There might still be things they can do. It might not be as bad as you think.’

  Emma rested her head on her mother’s knee while her mum smoothed her hair. It was like being a little girl again, only not. There was no amount of stroking her head that would make the pain go away.

  And because the bubble was one that was so easily pierced, every inch of reality came crawling in and overwhelmed her. Every sob came so fast she wasn’t able to recover from the last. She was barely able to breathe with the knowledge of how unfair her life was. If her own battle wasn’t enough to face, now she’d managed to fall in love with a man who may only have months to live.

  Then there was no air. The more she tried to draw it in, the less there was. The bubble was out of oxygen and she had to move or she’d be the one dying.

  Emma headed for the back door and took a lungful of air like it was her first – the most important one, the one essential for survival.

  The cold air hit her insides like sharp shards of ice. None of this was news. It wasn’t a bolt from the blue. And yet it was, and it hurt and it was unreasonable and unforgiving, and every part of her burned with the knowledge.

  She tried to harvest a sense of calm from the atmosphere and focus only on one breath in and one breath out. Then all at once, without warning, her stomach purged its contents, which landed on the grass.

  She still didn’t feel better. Still it was hard to breathe. However many days she had left in this life, she wasn’t sure they would ever be enough to get her through the pain she was feeling right at that moment.

  There would never be enough days to make this better.

  Nathan’s Diary

  What scares a person can be revealing. There is only one thing that has ever scared me, and that is being alone.

  That’s quite strange considering I’ve spent a lot of my adult life alone. My grandparents passed within a couple of weeks of each other. My grandfather first and then – of a broken heart, it was said – my grandmother. I was eighteen and interpreted it (and the inheritance) as a sign to take on the world. To travel round it and do everything possible this life was offering me. I have kayaked through rapids in New Zealand. I have trekked to temples in India. I have thrown myself out of planes on repeat. But all of it was alone. I made acquaintances along the way, but I was on my own.

  That’s one thing this dream has gifted me: fearlessness. I have no fear of the usual things that people come out in a cold sweat over. The dark, heights, flying, spiders, snakes… I’m down with all of them. I’d go ahead and arrange a party involving all five.

  But the dream has also gifted me my own fear – the fear of being alone. Not in the way in which some people can’t exist unless they’re part of a couple, but of being alone when it happens – when my time on earth is done. It makes me happy to think that, at this portion of my life, I have found good people to be around me. The concern is somehow less pressing when you know you are loved.

  I’ve always thought that was it. That this was my only fear. That when I pass will be the time at which I will face my fear.

  And yet here it is in a different form – one I hadn’t expected to worry me.

  An MRI scan.

  It sounds simple enough. They’ll take an image of my entire body. The scan will determine which parts of me are diseased. It will paint the picture of how thick a web the cancer has woven.

  In the dream, I’m not alone, and that provides me with reassurance. The thought of someone not being there is what scares me.

  I guess it is a rare thing to be truly alone in the world. It’s not often we are left with no one to call on, though of course there are those times when we might not wish to. But I have people who’ll be there for me. I know I do.

  Perhaps it’s time I let those people know what’s going on. Tell my friends how poorly I really am.

  But that won’t help me with my new fear. No one is allowed in with me for the scan. They’ll be no hand to hold. Just me, staying still, for as long as it takes.

  It’s about as alone as it gets.

  Forty-Three

  Nathan

  Day Thirty-Seven

  The noise was chugging away and the earplugs Nathan had been given weren’t doing much to protect his eardrums from the sound. Its consistency was making him feel sick. Like he was on a ship and the ebb and the flow of the waves was going to set him off.

  ‘Everything okay?’ The radiographer was talking to him through the speaker.

  It was far from okay. He was here being investigated for a disease that should belong to a much older man, and he was colder than he’d ever been in his life.

  ‘I’m only twenty-seven you know.’ He said it like it was what she’d been expecting to hear.

  ‘I guess you didn’t expect to be here,’ said the radiographer. There was sadness in her voice. Maybe she was able to see some of the results on the screen already.

  ‘On the contrary, I really did. That’s probably the reason they’re scanning me so thoroughly.’

  ‘Okay, well, if you’re comfortable, I’m going to make a start.’

  The idea that it was only just starting – when he thought it had begun already – made Nathan feel nauseous all over again. ‘Let’s get it over and done with.’

  ‘Just press the buzzer if you have any problems, and I can hear you if you need to talk to me.’

  ‘Grand.’

  It was so not grand. It was like the waiting room all over again, only worse. Another opportunity to fill his head with all the things he hadn’t managed in his lifetime. He’d already made that list long enough… He didn’t want to add to it any more.

  Instead he thought about his time with Emma. About how her bedroom smelled of sweet perfume and the coconut shampoo she used. About how when they cuddled she would nuzzle into him before settling. About how they’d made love quietly and slowly and perfectly in her bed. For a while, they’d managed to exist in a time and a space outside of the hospital. It was weird to think this was where they’d first met. Where they’d spent more time together than anyone would ever care to. He didn’t want to think about whether it was where they would say their goodbyes.

  He needed to think about something nicer – like the puffin, and Emma’s expression when she saw it. He needed to think about how that single puffin, waiting for its mate to return, was defying odds to be there. It was too early in the season. It was ignoring the weather conditions to somehow be on the edge of the cliff, like it owned the place. It wasn’t going to let something like a bit of wind get in its way. Maybe that was the attitude he should take. Maybe, once they knew exactly what was going on, he should let them throw everything at him to see if he would come out alive. Would he end up defying the odds to be somewhere he shouldn’t? What if he stopped believing the dream and started to imagine what twenty-eight looked like? Would it be worth putting himself through it for even the slimm
est chance he would get to spend more time with Emma?

  If it wasn’t for the fact Nathan had been told not to move, he would kick himself. How was it that all his thoughts came around to the same thing? He was supposed to be thinking about a cute puffin. He was supposed to be thinking about the way it had made Emma smile.

  Puffins. Puffins, puffins, puffins. He would daydream about them even if it was a bit nuts.

  ‘Is everything okay in there?’ the radiographer said over the speaker system.

  ‘Yes. Just trying to think about puffins, rather than… Well, puffins are just a nicer thing to think about.’ Nathan was going to explain in further detail, but it would only bring him back to the problem of not wanting to focus on that topic. So, puffins.

  ‘I’m not sure if you realise, but you were talking out loud. I need your mouth not to be moving for the scan. Are you okay to keep still for the next part?’

  Had he really been talking out loud? ‘Sure,’ Nathan said, pretty certain he hadn’t been moving, as per the instructions.

  Puffins. Puffins are cute. Puffins are fluffy. Emma loves puffins. He kept thinking it on repeat.

  He repeated the phrases in his head so they matched the rhythm of the machine. It was a sweet lullaby pulling him towards sleep.

  And then, there he was again.

  In a hospital room…

  Struggling to breathe…

  Only this wasn’t the room from his dreams.

  There was no baby crying.

  This was a theatre.

  And there was an open wound. A scalpel. Searing pain.

  This time, he was awake in the middle of surgery.

  Forty-Four

  Emma

  ‘What’s wrong? Can I go in?’

  The screams were clear from where Emma was waiting, and she instinctively knew they were Nathan’s. Not that they sounded like him… They were more like what she’d expect to hear from a tortured, injured animal.

  She wasn’t even sure who she was talking to. There was no one around in the waiting room other than a half-interested receptionist stuck behind her desk.

  Emma pushed open the double doors, ignoring the hazard signs and instructions not to go in.

  ‘You can’t go in there,’ the seen-it-all-before receptionist said.

  ‘Try and stop me!’ Emma said, with greater determination than she’d ever said anything before.

  In the room, there was a sense of panic and more racket than Emma was able to register all at once. There was a frantic beeping noise, like the control panel of the machine in the room had completely lost all ability to function.

  That noise was barely audible under the sound of Nathan’s screaming. It was high-pitched and could have been almost ethereal if it weren’t for the distinct note of pain being emitted.

  Emma froze to the spot. It was like she’d switched to another dimension. Nathan was being hauled out of the MRI, but not with the help of medical staff, as she might have expected. Instead he was being manhandled by some security guards as if he was there to make trouble. Like anyone would ever choose to be here and then kick off.

  ‘Don’t cut me!’ Nathan shouted as he tried to fight those who were trying to detain him.

  ‘Nobody’s trying to cut you, Nathan.’ It should have been one of the staff trying to comfort him, but Emma found it was her mouth the words were falling from.

  ‘It hurts.’ His eyes were those of a wild animal, unable to focus. Unable to recognise any of the things around him and know who was friend and who was foe.

  ‘You need to go outside. We’re waiting for more assistance and then he’ll need sedating to finish the scan.’

  There was something not right about this scenario. Nathan wouldn’t normally act up in this way. It was his unseeing gaze that made her realise what the problem was.

  ‘Don’t sedate him. He’s not awake.’ Emma knew Nathan’s normal temperament and this was nowhere near it.

  ‘He seems lively enough to me.’

  ‘Have you ever met him before today?’ Emma was fed up. She was well and truly no longer down with this shit. ‘Has he ever been your patient? Do you know anything about him?’

  The radiographer looked flummoxed. It was unlikely she was paid anywhere near enough to come to work and have people flip out at her. Emma immediately felt guilty, but she wasn’t going to stand aside and let them sedate Nathan again. Not after what happened last time.

  ‘Put some music on. Play Smashing Pumpkins. You need to wake him up, not sedate him.’ Surely it wasn’t so hard to tell that the way Nathan was acting now wasn’t because of some new psychotic state; it was because even though he was moving, he wasn’t awake. An adult stuck in the middle of a night terror.

  ‘Can I ask you to leave?’ It was one of the security guys now wading in on matters.

  ‘No. You absolutely cannot. Someone here needs to be Nathan’s advocate, and seeing as no one else here seems to be doing that, I’m staying put.’

  ‘Look, love, you can see he’s kicking off. There’s equipment here worth a lotta money and it’s here to help a lotta people. Last thing we need is him smashing it up and causing the hospital a lot of bother. We’ve got everyone’s best interests at heart so why don’t you do us a favour and let us get on with our job? We wouldn’t want to have to call the police.’

  ‘His name is Nathan. Play some Smashing Pumpkins and he’ll wake the hell up.’ Emma wasn’t the kind of person who usually got into arguments with security guards, but then there were a lot of things she wouldn’t have done until more recently. It was amazing how brave a bit of cancer was making her.

  Nathan was still writhing about while being held by the security guards. Every now and then he let out another goddamn awful wail that sent a sharp shiver down Emma’s spine.

  The security guard grumbled under his breath and did a bad job of trying to disguise the fact he’d sworn. From his back pocket he wrangled out a phone and before long he was looking up YouTube videos. He pressed play on a Smashing Pumpkins video. ‘Now you can’t say that I haven’t been reasonable.’

  Even if this didn’t do the trick, she was going to do whatever it took to stop Nathan from being sedated. Not unless there was some kind of anaesthetist present who was able to guarantee that it wouldn’t send him into a coma again. And even then she wouldn’t be happy about it. ‘Put it on louder,’ she ordered.

  It was obvious the guy was going to be very quick to give up on his token gesture of kindness.

  He pressed a button a couple of times. ‘That’s as loud as it gets.’

  Emma held her breath. She didn’t know what else to do to try and wake Nathan. If this didn’t work, she was all out of ideas.

  Fortunately it was the same song Nathan had for his alarm. Thank goodness for YouTube algorithms that knew which tunes were the most popular.

  Almost as quickly as the tune had come on, Nathan focused completely on Emma. He stared into her eyes, opened his mouth and started speaking. ‘I know what happens.’

  Forty-Five

  For all of Emma’s declarations that this was out of character for Nathan, it didn’t help that now he seemed to be awake, he was saying strange things.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘I see everything.’

  ‘Can you step away from the lady, please, sir?’

  Emma didn’t want him to go away. She wanted him to come back to her. She didn’t know what to make of what he was saying.

  ‘They got it all wrong.’ Every statement coming from Nathan was more disjointed than the last.

  The security guard took a deliberate step between them, as if Emma was under some kind of threat.

  ‘Who got what wrong?’ Emma asked, hoping she might be able to coax something a little more coherent from him.

  It was hard to keep eye contact with Nathan now there was a six-foot man in her way.

  ‘Are you going to lie down so we can finish your scan, Nathan?’ The radiographer was obviously hopeful that, no
w he’d finished screaming and shouting, they might be able to continue. But the radiographer didn’t fully understand who Nathan was, otherwise she would have known something was different. He might have woken, but it was a worry that he was now coming out with statements like he was the son of God.

  ‘Yes, but I already know what it’ll show you.’ Nathan wandered back to the MRI machine and lay down like none of the last few minutes had even happened.

  Emma really hoped it was a temporary glitch, like before. When he was in the coma she’d thought she’d lost him, but then he’d returned to his true technicoloured self. She didn’t want to witness a gradual peeling away of his character. It was all too much as it was. She didn’t want to face it without Nathan. Perhaps even Jesus Nathan she could cope with.

  ‘Do you want us to stay?’ one of the security guys who’d been restraining Nathan asked the radiographer.

  ‘If you could hang around for a while. Just in case.’

  ‘Just don’t let him fall asleep again,’ Emma pointed out, like she was selling some magic secret formula.

  ‘You can wait outside,’ the radiographer said to Emma.

  ‘Did your mother never teach you to say please?’ Emma wasn’t going to be spoken to like that. She was no longer one for being a pushover. Everything was different now.

  Emma was given a look from the radiographer that said: ‘My mother taught me how to say fuck off.’ The temptation to say something in response was overwhelming.

  But not as overwhelming as Emma’s need to puke.

  This time it came without warning and was unapologetic in its delivery. One heave and it was all over the security guard. Another and it splattered onto the radiologist’s shoes.

  ‘I knew that was going to happen,’ Nathan said, like it was all just a comedy of errors. As life kept proving, nobody knew what was going on. Not even the people in charge.