Elizabeth couldn’t quite meet Alice’s gaze then, but she did squeeze her hand a little. “We both love him, Alice.”
“It’s not the same, though, is it? It’s different for a parent and child. You two are lovers. You’ve loved each other for a lifetime.”
“Anything else just isn’t worth it,” said Elizabeth.
* * *
It was five that afternoon when the knock came on the door. They had been moved into a side room, and Tom appeared to be settling in quite well, ordering Alice and Elizabeth to position his belongings in wakeful moments, and giving instructions for a list of shopping to include his favorite biscuits and sweets, Hobnobs and Jelly Babies. Some Bourbons too, if they could be found. The new drugs had made a huge difference, and every now and again Alice shared a look of optimistic surprise with Elizabeth. It was quite the turnaround, but she didn’t want to hope for too much.
From the window you could see a garden, planted with roses, accessible from the cafeteria. It was quiet in comparison to the shared bay they had been in before the CT, and with a gentle trickle of autumnal sunlight through the window it was warm and comfortable, nature’s beauty propping them up. Elizabeth would always remember the soft smile of the nurse as she entered, asking if it was all right to come in. A second nurse was carrying a couple of extra chairs, and just behind them was a doctor they had never seen before. An older man, maybe in his fifties, wearing a nice suit that didn’t fit very well. A tie tucked into a space between his shirt buttons. Hair as bright and white as the moon when the skies above Porthsennen were clear.
“Good afternoon,” he said. He was quick to shake hands with both Alice and Elizabeth, even quicker to reassure them that there was no need to get up. Tom was sitting in his chair, his dinner almost untouched. Somebody had been in earlier to shave him. It made him look tidier, which Elizabeth liked, but also slimmer in the cheeks, which she didn’t. He pushed himself up, used his frail hands to smooth his hair into place.
“Afternoon, Mr. Hale. I’m Ricky Jones, one of the chest doctors.” He slipped his arms out of his jacket and draped it over the end of the bed. “I’m the consultant in charge of your care.”
“Nice to meet you,” Tom said, his mouth dry, his words croaky. His voice was quiet and soft, almost childlike with nerves.
“I’m sorry that we haven’t had the chance to speak before now, but I know that Nathan has been keeping everything in order.”
“Yes.”
Dr. Jones sat alongside Tom on the edge of the bed. They all watched, Tom included, waiting on his next words. “I wanted to come and tell you about the results of the CT scan.” He turned to Alice. “This is your daughter, I assume.”
“Yes,” Tom whispered. His voice shook. “And my Elizabeth.”
“And we can talk freely in their presence?”
“Yes,” said Tom. Elizabeth felt her pulse racing. Alice thumbed at a wedding ring Elizabeth had never noticed her wearing before. One of the nurses smiled at her; Elizabeth didn’t like that smile in the least.
“Right. Well, as you know, prior to this CT scan the chest X-ray was highly suggestive of a cancer growing in the lung.” Tom nodded. “The CT scan identified that quite clearly, and now there can be no doubt about what we are facing.”
Elizabeth watched Tom. He was doing all the right things, humming and agreeing in all the right places, but he wasn’t there with them. His fingers were fiddling at the edge of the table, and there was a lack of focus in his eyes, micromovements, darting about left and right, like a small animal looking for escape.
Dr. Jones spoke clearly, every word considered. “Additionally, the CT scan also provided us with some new information.” He paused; his voice softened. “We found evidence of the cancer in the adrenal glands, the kidneys, and the brain.”
Tom registered something with that. “The brain?” The brain was bad, they all felt it. Maybe you could be all right if they took a kidney, maybe even one of the other glands, whatever they were. Adrenal something. You could even endure an uncomfortable existence with one lung, Elizabeth suspected. But you couldn’t live without the brain. One of the nurses took a step toward her and rested a hand on her arm. She didn’t flinch, waiting for the doctor to continue.
“Yes,” Dr. Jones confirmed. “The nurses tell me that you have had some problems with your coordination, with the fork and with walking.” He pointed to a walker that somebody had brought up earlier as proof. “What we found in the brain explains these additional symptoms. Also the neurological findings, like your eye and lip being a little weaker than usual.”
“The brain,” Tom said again, but this time to himself. He looked up at the doctor. “Will I need surgery?”
Despite all his experience, it looked as though the doctor took a moment to compose himself. Elizabeth snuck a glance at Alice, who she could tell was trying her very best not to cry. She fished a tatty old tissue from her pocket and dabbed it at the end of her nose, her gaze all the while fixed somewhere permanently ahead.
“At this stage, with what we know from the tests and about what’s been going on with you, we have some important decisions to make. One such decision, as you so correctly raised, is the possibility of surgery. Is that something you would have wanted to do?”
“Well I don’t want cancer, that’s for sure,” Tom said, just a little bit incredulous, as if Dr. Jones was making a bad joke.
“I understand that,” Dr. Jones said, shuffling on the bed. “Such surgery, especially on the brain, is a big strain on the body. It is not without risk, and there are several severe complications associated with the kind of surgery that you would be required to undergo. The same applies for other treatments, like chemotherapy or radiotherapy. They all have benefits, but equally all carry risk. And with everything we know at this stage, I don’t think that the best course of action for you would be to rush to undertake any more procedures that are going to potentially cause you discomfort. I don’t want to put you at risk of any unnecessary complications. Surgery and even the bronchoscopy we had planned are not going to add anything at this point, or indeed make you feel any better. So, where does that leave us? Our aim now must be to focus on keeping you pain free and as mobile as we can, so we can get you back on your feet and home as soon as possible.”
Ironically, Tom got a burst of life, his voice raised, his arms up in disbelief. “But what about the tumors?” Elizabeth loved him for it, she really did. Either he didn’t want to see it, or he just couldn’t bring himself to accept what she understood the doctor was telling them. She stood up from her chair and moved close to Tom. His gaze weaved up to her, wide-eyed and a little teary. “What does he mean, go home?”
“Mr. Hale,” Dr. Jones said, resting a hand on Tom’s forearm, “the cancer that we have found presents us with a very difficult decision. It’s not very amenable to an operation. We can’t just cut it out, and I believe that the risk of other treatments outweighs any benefits they might potentially offer. I think to try to treat you would make you feel a lot worse, for a very limited benefit. You have an advanced cancer, and it has already had quite an impact on your physical abilities. There is no treatment that we can give you that is going to be what we call curative.”
It was the final word that did it. Curative. It made sense to Tom, the idea of a cure, or rather the lack of it. Now he understood what Alice and Elizabeth had understood right from the start of this conversation: not only did he have cancer, but it was going to kill him.
“There’s nothing they can do,” he said to himself, but also to Elizabeth. He looked up at Alice, who was lost somewhere in a thought no child should ever have to contemplate. A single tear escaped to his cheek, which Elizabeth hurried away with her tissue.
“There’s a lot we can do, Tom,” Dr. Jones pushed. “We can treat you with medications, pain relief, get you walking properly. We can really improve the quality of your life.”
“But not quantity,” he said.
“No, I’m afraid
not.” The doctor leaned forward. “And because of that there is one more thing that I am obliged to raise with you, especially now, while your family is here. It’s important that they are involved in this decision. We must decide, on the back of what I’ve told you, about what we should do if an emergency with you was to arise. In your notes I see that you’ve had some heart trouble in the past, a heart attack if I’m not mistaken.” Elizabeth looked at him; he had gone ashen.
“That’s right.”
“And do you ever get any chest pains now?”
Tom was struggling to focus. After a while he rejoined the conversation. “Sometimes. I have my puffer spray, and that helps if I get a twinge.”
The doctor took a deep breath. It was quick, but Elizabeth knew he was finding it hard. She didn’t suppose you ever got used to having to tell people that they were going to die. “Well, if while you are here with us you were to have any further issues like that, we would have to know in advance to what extent you would want us to treat you. For example, if you were to have another heart attack that led to a cardiac arrest, whether or not we should try to resuscitate you.”
Tom sat up a little straighter then, his shoulders back. “I’d want you to do everything you could.”
Again the doctor faltered. He had thought, as had Elizabeth, that Tom had begun to understand where this was going. He reached for Tom’s hand; Tom didn’t resist or try to stop him. That was an indication of just how out of his depth he really was. When you’re drowning, you’ll cling to anything or anybody.
“As your doctor, I would have to say that I believe it would be better if we didn’t try to revive you should such a situation arise. With the location of the cancer you have in the brain, and the extensiveness of it, even if we were able to bring you back, you could be left with a serious deficit in your abilities.”
Tom snatched his hand away. “Not do anything? Well, I’d like to know what my daughter has to say about that.”
All eyes flicked to Alice, who had remained until then remarkably quiet. She had been steeling herself, every muscle tense. Shreds of tissue fluttered like winter snow to her knee from where she’d been wiping furiously at her nose. Elizabeth wanted so much to tell her it would be all right, but it would have been a lie, nothing but false placation. Although Alice was a forty-two-year-old woman, in that moment Elizabeth thought that she could see the fear of a little girl who had been thrust into a world she wasn’t ready for, with decisions to make that were too grand for her to even begin to comprehend.
“I think . . .” she said, pausing for breath. “I think that if the doctors could bring you back and you’d be you, then obviously,” she said, emphasizing the word, “I would want them to. But if you would be different, like not you, then maybe they shouldn’t.”
Tom stared at his daughter, his eyes wide and wet. His words were soft and sorry. “Shouldn’t even try?” he whispered.
Alice was trying so hard to fight the tears, trying so hard not to let her father feel that she had given up on him. “No, Dad,” she said, her voice breaking, the tears coming. A nurse stood up, rushed to her. Alice didn’t stop her when she reached an arm across her shoulders. “Not if you wouldn’t be you,” she stuttered.
Tom didn’t say anything for a while, then slowly turned to the doctor and spoke very quietly. Elizabeth could almost see the fight diffusing from him, like mist clearing after a storm. She thought of Kate again, how much she wanted her there, how time was running out. “Then we should do what you think,” Tom told him, and with a quiet nod the doctor stood up to leave, stopping only briefly to reach for Alice’s hand. She and the doctor shared a brief exchange, but nobody else heard what was said. In that moment Tom turned his head into the wing of the chair, closing his eyes.
“Shall I get everybody a cup of tea?” the nurse proposed, her words soft and well intended. Elizabeth nodded, and the nurse left the room. Alice moved to the window, tears streaming down her face. Elizabeth reached for her hand, but Alice moved away at the last moment, knelt by the side of Tom’s chair.
“I’m so sorry, Dad,” she said, burying her face against his arm. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Elizabeth saw his eyes flicker open for just a moment. He glanced at his daughter as a tear broke free from his eye. And for a while after that nobody said anything else at all. Elizabeth turned to the window and gazed down into the garden, where a young couple watched as their baby played on the grass, smelling the scent of a bloom of winter roses while her parents sat on a bench nearby.
Then
The first part of the journey home was completed in silence, their travel the slow speed of a funeral procession. Unapproachable space had grown between them, as if James were stranded on a calving iceberg and she had no choice but to wait and watch as he drifted away into an arctic future of unknowns. His plans had been whipped out from underneath him, and the guilt smothered her. Without any intention of hurting him, she had ruined his future. But even then, amid the pain of her choices, she knew the only other option would have been to hurt Tom, and she could never, ever do that.
“I am truly sorry, James,” she said as they turned back onto the road that would lead them to Porthsennen and the conversation she needed to have with her father. “When I first met you, I really did think you were a lovely man.”
He nodded, but it was with a sense of tenacity. “It’s not your fault. I always knew you were young. The young are notoriously frivolous.”
Elizabeth wasn’t sure she fully understood his answer, but she had a feeling that she wasn’t entirely keen on the concept he was proposing. “You think that I feel this way because of my age?”
The tires skidded as he pulled the car over to the side of the road. It was just on the brow of the hill, overlooking the cove. The sea had picked up, whitecaps breaking across the shallows of Longships reef like a bottle of spilled milk.
He silenced the engine and turned to face her. “What could it be if not that?”
“Love,” said Elizabeth, without any of the doubt his certainty intended to raise.
The sigh that followed was deep and philosophical, conveying all the weariness of an age he was decades from reaching. Raindrops appeared on the windshield. “I want to tell you a story, Elizabeth. I too was in love once.” It was strange to hear him call her by her full name. Something had changed between them, both a relief and bizarre at the same time. “I was eighteen, halfway through national service, and ready to run away with a young girl I met near where I was stationed.” A little lost in the memory, he smiled to himself while his fingers played aimlessly at the wheel, stroking back and forth. “The thought of her was the only thing that got me through my time away in Malaya.” He paused, and in that moment, she realized just how much there was she didn’t know about him. Yet that silence granted her a brush with his history, the irrecoverable way that war could change a man. “Wilhelmina,” he said wistfully. “Her family wasn’t wealthy like mine, but I didn’t care. My father did, though.” When he looked up, all memory of that happiness faded. “Her family used to own a farm, but after my father did what he did, that all changed. I never saw Willie again.”
“What did he do?”
He paused for a moment, looked to the sky. “In a small village, Elizabeth, it takes little effort for rumor to become fact. My father planted the seeds, said he’d seen something inappropriate happening between a young girl and Willie’s father. I’m sure you can imagine the rest.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Perhaps. But that doesn’t change the fact that my father was right. How could I have built a life with poor Willie? We would never have survived London, my years of training. We were so very different. You and I are the same, Elizabeth. A life with you is everything it should be. Everything I want: secure, certain, predictable. We match, like a ship to water, or dark to the night. I only hope your father can help you to see that when you tell him of your plans.”
The thought of telling James that Tom was
everything she could ever imagine needing in her future came to her as they drove down the hill. But then she saw the police car parked alongside her house. James slowed when he saw it too.
“What are they here for?” she asked him. They shared a glance of concern for what had transpired that might bring the police to her doorstep.
“We’d better go in, find out.” He parked the car and they hurried into the house.
Panting when they arrived in the living room, they happened upon Mrs. Clements, her face ashen as winter snow, huddled next to Elizabeth’s father, who was sitting with his head in his hands. A police officer stood beside him, broad shoulders, an expressionless face. He shifted as he saw Elizabeth and James approach.
At the sight of his daughter, Dr. Davenport stood up and rushed forward, taking Elizabeth in a tight embrace. Tears streamed down his face and fear filled her, for she had only ever seen him cry once before, on the night her mother had nearly drowned. Her hands hung like dead weights at her sides, unsure how to respond to the shift in current, the riptide that had caught her and was dragging her out to sea. Then the slow mumble of James’s voice broke through, his tones soft as he asked the policeman for answers, the words she would never forget.
“Found out on the reef,” said the policeman. “Nothing they could do.” Her mother had drowned, and somewhere inside her, like an almost undetectable expulsion of energy, steam rising from a cooking pot, part of her was irrevocably lost.
* * *
Her father had to go with the police. They needed to create a clear picture, even though the officer conceded that it seemed obvious enough what had happened, especially when a couple of hours later an old fishing boat taken from the harbor had washed up on Gwynver Beach, spat from the water by an offended tide, with one of her mother’s cardigans still on the seat.
James strengthened the fire against the rain waxing against the window, which framed the grayest of skies. He drew the curtains against it, made tea and sandwiches from cold chicken, then insisted that Elizabeth needed to eat. Later, he positioned her on the settee with her feet on a stool and a blanket over her knees, his arm warm across her shoulders. And when the shadow of night descended on the earth, the sky little more than a specter sinking into the sea, he went upstairs and ran a bath, guided her to it. He stopped short of helping her undress, closing the door softly behind him when he left.
Little Wishes Page 18