by Lindy Dale
“More than likely.”
I hang up the phone and once again I begin to ponder, or could it be over-analyse, what the last comment meant.
Chapter 32
All hands on deck. It’s moving day. If you’d told me a year ago that I’d have lost my breast, my boyfriend and my house within the space of a year, I’d have probably laughed but as I stand here, in the midst of the jumble of boxes and unpacked cutlery, I see that this is what my life has come to. Endings.
There’s no getting away from it. At the beginning of this year, I had a long-term partner and a relationship future. I’m loathe to blame the cancer for Brendan’s departure, and I absolutely don’t want him back, but the fact I have only one breast has to have had some impact on his decision to mess around with my former friend. From the day I came home from hospital that first time, he was different. And even though he put on the façade of being the concerned boyfriend, it’s clear his concern couldn’t overcome his need for things to be flawless. Who knows, maybe the thing with Melinda would have happened anyway but that doesn’t stop me feeling a little resentment towards the cancer. And a bit of thankfulness too. If I hadn’t had it, I might still be with Brendan. I might have still been accepting his faults and putting up with his anal approach to perfection.
I take the last of the knives and forks, securing them with a rubber band before stowing them in the box. Two months ago, I was close to using them as stabbing implements and not on a roast. I’m proud of how far I’ve travelled in that respect. I’m satisfied that I can look at them again and only see a tool for eating. I write ‘Kitchen’ on the lid and run some packing tape along the flaps. I remember the day we moved in, the day I unpacked those forks and chose which slot of the drawer would be their home. I remember Brendan and his pantry-organising and I smile a little to myself at the way I teased him, suggesting that maybe we should put each item in height order as well. Even though it annoyed me, his obsession was kind of useful. At least I knew where to find stuff.
Jeff comes in with the trolley. Seeing my melancholy mood, he offers to take me for a quick spin around the family room but I decline, citing his poor driving skills and my need to remain in one piece as an excuse. So he stacks the boxes I’ve now finished packing and wheels them along the corridor, leaving me alone in the empty kitchen.
“It’s not too late.” He chuckles as he reaches the front door. “One last lap up and down the street to give the neighbours something to talk about after you’re gone.”
“I think they have plenty enough to talk about already.” The neighbour across the road has been seen on numerous occasions dressed in his wife’s lingerie while she’s out. Not to mention that couple down the street, who have those strange parties where people put car keys in a bowl. This is a respectable suburb but you never know what goes on behind closed doors.
I shoo Jeff out with a tutt about his juvenile behaviour. He knows I don’t mean it, though. He knows I’m supremely grateful for the team of willing men he’s assembled to help me move house today. After the costs have been paid and the lawyer’s hefty bill settled, I’ve barely enough for Rory and I to live on, let alone pay for a removalist. Every spare cent is going towards the next round of surgery. Thank heavens, this lot’s working for the price of a cold beer and a burger at the end of the day.
With a sigh, I head to Rory’s empty bedroom, where I check his wardrobe for anything left behind. I pull the curtains and pause for a moment in the middle of the room, looking at the glow-in-the-dark frieze I spent hours sticking to the ceiling above his bed, so it would look like a night sky. I remember making Rory’s bed for the first time in this house, and then putting him to sleep in it. He wasn’t quite three. His curls had framed his little cherub face as it lay against the pillow and I’d taken a photo of him, one that still remains a favourite today. We’ll have to create new memories now, in our new house. I walk to his door and close it for the last time.
Now, I’m back in the family room, and it’s empty. It feels cavernous, like the soul has been taken away but I can picture Brendan, sitting on the sofa, with Rory cuddled on his lap. I can see us clinking a glass of champagne the night we arrived. I can even feel his lips, kissing my forehead and telling me he loved me. In his own way, I know he did. How things change.
And now, for some reason my mind has moved to babies. Coming from a family of one, I always wanted a gaggle of children running through the house. As I move to secure the locks, I look out the window, staring at the backyard Brendan and I created for that very purpose. This cancer has changed me so drastically inside, I probably won’t be able to have more children. Not for the next five years until I finish taking Tamoxifen, anyway. And by then, I’ll be almost too old. The gap between Rory and new siblings would be too wide.
I’m starting to get hormonal and teary. I can feel the emotions getting bigger and bigger and there’s nothing I can do to control it. I hate this medication. I hate what it’s doing to my body and how it’s messing with my head. Okay, I don’t hate that it’s keeping the cancer away, but sometimes the positive doesn’t outweigh the negative.
Putting the heels of my hands to my eyes, I attempt to press away the tears. This isn’t fair. I feel so lost, so alone, even with my friends and family supporting me, I am so utterly alone because not one of them can truly understand the way I feel. I wonder what I did to deserve this and as I do, I cry silently. I’m shuddering with the force of keeping my tears in check. I’m feeling the grief of everything that’s happened, the grief I’ve not let out until now. The emotional rollercoaster after the failed reconstruction was bad, but this? This is like I’m dying, like my body is heaving its last breath.
“Sophie?”
I take my hands away from my eyes to find Jared standing in the doorway, looking at me with concern. The sun is shining behind his body in a sort of halo effect, which is so appropriate for the heavenly entity he is. It’s so nice he came to help today. He certainly didn’t need to. But as he’s already explained three times, as my ‘boyfriend’ it’s probably expected that he help me move house. So who am I to argue? He can bend over and show off his bum or flex his muscles by lifting boxes the entire day, for all I care. It’s no hardship to my eyesight. And as a new friend, he wants to help. That’s something I can respect. I may have lost some old friends in the cancer process but I’ve gained a very valuable new one and I’ve learnt to love my remaining ones even more.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“A few goodbye tears,” I say, wiping my hands over my eyes.
He walks into the room, stopping about half a metre from me. His t-shirt is clinging to his torso from the sweat he’s built up and his hair is dusty where he crawled under the house to make sure nothing had been left in Rory’s hidey-hole. I try not to stare but it’s difficult. I mean, I can see every muscle in his stomach through that shirt and clearly, squash is not the only type of exercise he does.
“Anything I can do?”
I look up into those friendly green eyes and give a sniff. “Say something funny?”
Jared moves closer. He’s invading my personal space, but I don’t care. The tangy male scent of him is making my insides flutter. My mind has gone utterly blank. Shit. This isn’t good.
Think of bad things, Sophie. Think of those TV shows with blood and gore that make you cringe.
“Now you’ve put me on the spot,” Jared jokes. “You think I can be funny on demand? I’m a doctor. Funny isn’t in my job description.”
And that’s enough to send me over the edge. I collapse against his chest. I sob into his t-shirt and, as I do, feel his arms move to cradle me. I want him to pull back but I don’t. I want to be friends but I don’t. I have no idea what I want any more. My brain has been rendered so incontinent from the Tamoxifen and the smell of his body; I don’t even know why I’m crying.
“I know I need a shower.” His voice is so soft and soothing. “But I don’t think washing me with tears is going to get rid
of the perspiration smell.”
I smile wetly against his chest and begin to relax. With his strong, muscular arms about me, I begin to calm down.
“Tell me a joke,” I say. Anything to take my mind off the images that are being conjured in my dirty little brain.
“Why didn’t the skeleton go to the ball?”
I move my face from his chest, and look up, past the manly profile, into his eyes, “That’s your idea of a joke?”
“I have children. I have to keep it clean.”
So, I humour him. At least, I’ve stopped with the crying. Almost. “Okay. Why?”
“He had no body to go with.”
“Seriously?” I begin to laugh. I laugh so much my stomach starts to hurt and I forget I was sad. Jared laughs too. It’s a deep, gutsy sort of laugh and one that I find I’m awfully attracted to.
And that’s when the other insane thing happens. As our laughter abates, we become still and something changes. He’s looking at me, not like a friend, but like a lover. He’s bending his face towards mine and after a brief pause, perhaps to consider if the following action is wise, his lips move towards mine.
“Okay, you blokes. Time to get this show on the road.”
Jeff has appeared in the doorway. For the first time in history, I see a look of awkwardness on his face. His eyes are as big as golf balls. “Holy shit. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Jared and I spring apart like we’re magnets repelling each other. He runs a hand through his dusty hair and bends to pick up the last box by my feet. I hope he doesn’t feel he’s made a mistake by almost kissing me. I don’t think it was a mistake. I could burst out laughing at the absurdity of it.
I glance at Jared out the corner of my eye. He’s now at a safe doctor-patient-friend distance, which is made more obvious by the box he’s hugging to his body, like a suit of armour. He’s adopted the detached, yet empathetic, look of the surgeon.
“We’re doing a final check,” he replies. “Making sure the windows are locked and we haven’t left the dog behind.”
Jeff lets out a huge belly laugh. “Sure. Right. Thank Christ, you didn’t say you were getting something out of Sophie’s eye. ’Cause there’s not a hope in hell I would’ve believed that.”
Tension diffused, we do a final pass of the house. Then I lock the door on my old life and get in the car and as I do, I can’t help but wonder what this new development means. I’ve closed the door — literally — on the past three years and now a new door is opening.
*****
The packing boxes have been left in their respective rooms for unloading and the furniture is in a type of order throughout the house. Well, the beds are in the bedrooms and the sofa is in the lounge. I’m not happy about it though, the positioning is wrong. I’ll have to move it.
With moment’s reflection as to how Brendan may have subliminally influenced my sudden need to put the sofa in another spot, I bend my knees and take hold of one of the arms. I’m tired. Even though I haven’t been moving boxes, this day has been exhausting both emotionally and physically. If I get this sofa where I want it to be, I’ll be able to relax. Then I can tackle the task of feeding these men.
Completely forgetting that I had major surgery on my stomach a couple of months back, I give the sofa a hefty push and as I do, there’s a sudden tightness in the left side of my stomach, right near my navel. It feels like a very large, five-course dinner is lodged in my intestines and is trying to escape. Either that or I’m giving birth to a litter of puppies from my belly button. I rub my hand over the spot, hoping it will disappear like it has in the past but as my hand slides over the huge lump, I know it’s got no intention of doing that. In fact, I think I may have made it worse. I let out an anguished groan.
Lifting my t-shirt, I take a good look at the thing in its stretched-skin glory. There’s an egg-shaped bulge extending from my navel to somewhere near my groin. I try to poke it back in which, of course, doesn’t work. So, I do the only thing I can after a day of emotional upheaval, I flop down on my nicely positioned sofa and wail.
When is this torture going to be over? Am I such a revolting person that I must be constantly punished like this? Can’t my life go back to some semblance of normal? Not that I’m even sure what that is anymore.
By the time Jeff, Jared and the other two men have finished unloading the outdoor setting, I’m lying on the lounge room floor, praying that the bulge disappears so I can walk around the house without looking six months pregnant. I had surgery to correct that cosmetic fault, thank you.
“What are you doing, Sophie?” Jeff asks, as he escorts his team of helpers into the kitchen, where I’ve left a slab of cold beer in the fridge. “I’ve heard of lying down on the job, but that’s taking it a bit literally.”
“I think I may have a hernia,” I say. “My stomach feels like it’s going to explode.”
“How did that happen?”
“It was there before, but I tried to move the sofa and I think I made it worse.”
There’s a good deal of grumbling about women wanting to be independent before Jared, beer in hand, comes over to where I’m lying. He squats down beside me. “Do you want me to take a look?”
“If you two are going to get up close and personal again, I’ll take the boys outside,” Jeff comments.
Jared rolls his eyes and holds out a hand to help me up. “Come into the bedroom.”
“And isn’t that the phrase every woman in Perth wants to hear from you?” Jeff jokes. Then sees my glare of disgust and promptly suggests he might fire up the barbecue as Angela will be arriving shortly with the kids.
In the bedroom, Jared instructs me to lie down on the bed and unzip my shorts. He’s put his professional hat on and I can see he’s taking this very seriously, so I’m not uncomfortable, despite the fact that I’m lying on my bed and he practically had his lips locked on mine an hour ago.
He puts his beer down on the floor beside the bed and peers at my side. “May I?” he asks, indicating he wants to touch the spot.
“Of course.”
He places his fingers gently on my skin and a flash of chemistry darts from my navel setting fire to the muscles in my stomach. I wriggle against it but only because I’m trying to hide that his touch is turning me on.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks.
“No, I’m fine.”
As long as I don’t contemplate the idea of wanting to grab him and pull him on top of me.
Jared moves his fingers closer to the top of my leg where he presses again. I can feel the heat in his fingers. I can see the concentration on his face as he asks me to clench my stomach muscles and watches to see the alien springing from my side. Then he gives a doctorly nod.
“It’s a hernia.”
“But how?”
“You’re stomach muscles must have been weakened by the Tram Flap surgery. Moving the couch has caused it to open further. It’s a common occurrence.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Easily. Ring my rooms on Monday and make an appointment. We’ll schedule you in for a repair.”
“But my other mastectomy? The implant surgery?”
How many more am I going to need? The tally is almost in double digits.
Jared stands to look out the window as I zip up my pants as pull myself to sitting on the side of the bed. “We’ll sort it out when you come into the surgery. This is a minor blip, believe me.”
“But I look like I’m pregnant! And it’s so uncomfortable.” I know I’m whining and he’s being very patient with me.
“Monday,” he says, facing me again. “We’ll discuss it Monday.”
I let out a sigh. “Okay, but can I ask you a question? Something personal?”
“Yes.” He swallows. Well, it’s more of a nervous-type gulp actually.
“Did you really sleep at the hospital when I was in ICU?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Jared’s quiet. His eyes are on th
e carpet. He seems to be contemplating his answer. “It wasn’t about you as a person. It was more about me as a surgeon. I wasn’t brought up to fail. My parents put enormous pressure on me to be the best and even when I thought was, I had to keep proving myself. Straight A’s on a school report weren’t enough.”
This isn’t exactly what I want to hear. “So you don’t ‘like’ me like that? You just felt you’d failed after the surgery didn’t work and you were trying to fix it?”
“That’s more than one question.” His voice is jokey but I can tell he’s tense about the answer.
I give him my best ‘don’t be smart’ look.
“I have feelings for you, Sophie. You must have worked that out by now. As a doctor, I know I shouldn’t and I’ve felt so guilty because of it. I convinced myself my feelings clouded my professional judgement, in regards to your care.” He walks towards me and looks down. His legs are so close to my knees we’re almost touching. “I’ve worked hard to be the best surgeon I can, to show everyone I’m not as useless as they think I am. Then I let this happen.”
God, I’m confused. Is he talking about me or the surgery now? Am I just ‘something that happened’?
“When things went pear-shaped,” he continues, “the self-doubt came back. I don’t like to fail, Sophie. I don’t fail. I couldn’t face what I’d done to you, especially with my personal feelings appearing at the most inappropriate times — like in the operating theatre. The only way I could do my job was to remain at a distance. I couldn’t even look at your face.”
I want to reach up and hug him to me, to take away the terrible pain in his eyes. Instead I stand, bridging the gap between us. It’s almost another invitation for him to kiss me. “And that’s why you were acting weird after the surgery? I hadn’t done anything?”
“Yes. I mean, no. You know what I mean.”
I mull this over for a second. Strangely enough, I can understand his reasoning for everything. It must be hard to have to be that person all the time, to always be striving to prove something to the world. Still, I’m not sure I want another man like that in my life. One obsessive-compulsive was enough. “So you’re a perfectionist?”