by Eva Woods
Outside the geriatrics ward, Dr. Quarani was running sprints up and down it, resetting his Fitbit each time.
“Not joining in with the fundraising?” Annie asked.
“I do not have time for that. Only five minutes between rounds.” His white coat flapped out behind him as he ran the length of it, counting under his breath, every muscle rigid and controlled.
* * * * **
After she’d finished her visits, Annie went to the bus stop again. Jonny was in the same clothes. He must only have one set, she thought, then realized how stupid that was. Where would he keep the rest of them? He literally had nowhere else to go. “Hiya,” he said. He was turning the pages of a Terry Pratchett book.
She pointed to it shyly. “I’ve read that one, too. It’s good.”
“Oh, yeah. Gives me a laugh, anyway. How are you today?”
“I’m okay.” Compared to him, she had to say that she was. At least she had a home to go to, and friends, and a job. She wished there was something she could do for him. “Um, do you like cake?” she said awkwardly, holding out the brown paper bag. Cake was a small thing, in the scheme of things, but she knew from her first meeting with Polly that it was still something.
DAY 47
Meet new people
“You look so much better.”
Polly beamed at herself in the hand mirror Annie had propped on her bed tray. “I do, don’t I? Just as well, that whole cancer pallor thing wasn’t doing much for my complexion. Pass me the eye shadow.”
“Which one?” Annie had Polly’s massive vanity case open in front of her.
“The sparkly green one. I feel in a sparkly green mood today.” She shut her eyes. “You do it. My wrist strength isn’t what it was. But don’t spread that about, okay? I don’t want the boys hearing.”
“Polly. You really want me to do it? I’m hopeless.”
“You have to learn. I won’t be around forever to do your makeup and pick your clothes. Although I’m liking this ensemble. Let me see.”
Self-consciously, Annie stepped back to let Polly admire her suede skirt and boots, worn with a stripey Breton jumper.
“Nice. Very nice. You won’t even need me much longer.”
“Shh now.” Annie didn’t want to talk about the end. Not today, when Polly had color in her cheeks—and not just from the generous application of blusher. Not when she seemed better, even if it was just another of cancer’s cruel tricks. “There you go. Hope you like the ‘drag queen having chemo’ look because that’s what I’ve given you. I’ll need a few more makeup tutorials before...” She’d almost said, before you go. As if Polly was just setting off on a long cruise or something. It seemed impossible, however many times Annie reminded herself, to take in the fact that her friend would not be coming back from the final journey. And that it was almost upon them; maybe not today, maybe not even this month. But soon.
The door opened in a whiff of Chanel. “Darling, how...oh, hello, Annie.”
“Hi, Valerie. We’re just getting Polly all dolled up.”
“That’s good. I think George is around somewhere. I’m sure he’d like to see you.” Annie just nodded. George clearly hadn’t had “the talk” with his mother yet.
Polly said cheerfully, “Did you bring me more of those anticancer herbs, Ma? Because I have to tell you, they taste like horse pee.”
“Er, Polly, darling, you have a visitor.” Valerie was wearing an ankle-length cardigan today, her makeup fresh and her hair shining, but she looked exhausted all the same. This was taking its toll on everyone.
“Who’s that, then? Milly? I told her, no more cancer videos for a while. Positive things only. The fundraising site’s doing fine on its own—twenty thousand uniques yesterday!”
“It’s not Milly. Er. I think...I think you should be on your own for this, darling.”
Annie got the hint. She started packing up the vanity case. “I should go, anyway.”
Polly’s hand snaked out and grabbed her arm. “Don’t go. You just got here. Unless it’s Ryan Gosling visiting, in which case, Annie, don’t let the door hit you on the arse as you go.”
Valerie was twisting her hands together. She sighed, then stepped back, holding the door open. She spoke to whoever was outside. “Go in. I’m not getting involved.” She was replaced in the doorway by someone Annie had never seen before. A man, in a suit that was obviously expensive—none of your polyester here. Polished shoes. Red tie. Tall, handsome in a catalog-model kind of way, with short dark hair. Big arms and chest. A gym-goer.
Polly was staring at him. Her hand was still clenched on Annie’s arm, and the color was draining from her face, leaving the makeup on top like a gross joke. “Fuck.”
“Hi,” said the man. His voice was croaky. “Are you...? Christ...you look... I’d no idea.”
“I’m fine. I’m totally fine. What the hell are you doing here?”
“What am I... Christ. Have you any idea how worried I’ve been? I didn’t even know you were alive until I saw your bloody fundraising site!”
Annie tried to bolt for the door but Polly hung on to her for dear life. “Don’t go.”
The man moved closer. “Poll. Please talk to me. Please. You can’t just drop a bombshell like that and take off.”
“I can do anything I want, I have cancer,” she said in a strangled voice.
The anger between them seemed to erupt then, like someone throwing a grenade and running off. “Cancer. It’s not the cancer, it’s you. You always did exactly what you wanted. Painting the house. Going on holiday with your mates. What about me? What about what I wanted?”
Annie’s head swiveled between them. Who was this? What was going on?
“I don’t care what you want!” Polly barked it out, as if she was using up the rest of her voice and strength. “Just get out of here! You’ve got no right! You didn’t want me, so you don’t get to stand at my bedside when I’m dying. I have other people for that.”
“What, some weirdo you’ve only just met!” Annie blinked. That was a bit harsh.
“Annie’s my friend, and she’s been here for me, unlike some people—”
“Oh, like you gave me a choice!”
“Close the door, Annie,” Polly said shakily.
“Er, wh-what?” Annie stammered.
“Shut the door on him. Kick him out. I haven’t got the strength to do it myself but I can’t listen to this.”
Right. So she would just kick out the six-foot-tall, gym-honed man who was glaring at her like she was something nasty on the pavement. “Um, I’m sorry. Polly isn’t supposed to get tired out, so if you could just—”
“Who the hell even are you? What gives you the right?” He turned to Polly. “Look, please, I really need to talk to you. You can’t just send me away.”
“I can,” she said in a small voice.
Annie lifted her chin. “She wants me here. And she doesn’t want you. So...” She held the door open for him. “Like she said, don’t let it hit you on the arse as you go.”
He went, slamming it hard behind him. Annie sagged. She’d really done it. “God. What was all that about?”
Polly was gray-faced, panting for breath. “Thank you. You were...amazing.”
“Are you okay?”
She nodded as a storm of coughing shook her frail shoulders. “I bet he’s never been thrown out of anywhere in his life.”
“And...are you going to tell me who he is?”
Polly sighed, and lay back on the pillows, closing her green sparkly eyelids. “Urgh. That is...” She broke off to cough again.
“Tell me, Polly. It’s not fair otherwise. Oh, God. He’s not a doctor or something, is he? I haven’t just kicked out the chair of the hospital or something? Tell me.”
“All right! G
od, let me draw breath. That, Annie...that was Tom. My husband.” And her face crumpled in on itself, and Annie realized that Polly was crying.
* * *
“Okay,” Polly said when she could talk without wheezing or sobbing. “I’m going to tell you what happened. But only because you told me all your stuff, and we have no secrets now.”
“We have some secrets.”
“Well, whatever. But I need to say it all the way through without you interrupting, okay? Even to say, ‘God, that’s so awful,’ or, ‘Poor you,’ or anything like that. It’s just what happened. It’s not a tragedy, or an epic story, or even important. It’s just what happened to me.” Her breath hitched. “Because I can’t do this. I can’t spend any more of my life crying about it. I don’t have time.”
“Right,” said Annie. “I won’t say a word. Er. After this.”
* * *
She sat quiet on the orange plastic chair, while Polly heaved herself up on the pillows. “Okay. Chapter one. I got my cancer diagnosis like most people do, kind of out of the blue. Busy life. Couldn’t possibly happen to me. I was—well, you see what Suze and that lot are like. She has an app to rotate her pants drawer and Milly schedules in sex with her husband six months in advance. I was like that. Up early, kale smoothie, Blackberry on the commute, press press press, angle angle angle. PRing the hell out of things. Yoga. Meditation. Weekends in Cornwall and Val-d’Isère. Out at plays, exhibitions, the latest restaurant where you get your food in a minihammock or something. That was my life. And I had the husband to go with it. Handsome, rich—stockbroker in the city, of course. Some might even say I married my dad—a man who’d always work even more than I did. We were headed down a one-way freeway that led to one or possibly two overscheduled children, a holiday house in Devon and me going freelance while he raked in his bonuses.”
Annie nodded, trying to follow. Polly was gasping for air. Her hands were clenched in the blankets. “And then suddenly I was sick. I was at home after the results, getting myself in character—brave cancer sufferer, noble expression, that sort of thing. In total denial, of course. Can you blame me? And then, well—my life fell to pieces. I could almost hear the sound of it, you know? Shattering around my ears.”
“I know. What happened?”
“I’ll tell you.”
* * *
Was that the door? Yes, he was home. Jesus, why was she so nervous? She smoothed her dress over her knees. As soon as she’d got in from the hospital she’d showered for a long, long time, until her skin was pink and raw, then put on her favorite dress, the one with the sprigs of cornflowers on it. She found herself running her hands obsessively through her long blond hair.
Tom was in the hallway, staring at the smeary screen of his phone. Shoulders hunched in his Saville Row suit. “Did you ring the plumber? That bloody toilet’s still leaking. What are you doing in there?”
She’d even lit a candle for some reason—perhaps thinking it was finally a moment worthy of the forty-eight-pound Jo Malone mimosa-and-cardamom one. She was sitting in the living room in her nice dress, makeup done, instead of her usual yoga pants and skiing socks ensemble. Maybe if she looked nice, the universe would realize it had the wrong person. She was too busy for this. She had appointments all the way to next Christmas. Move along, please, nothing for you here.
He looked up briefly. “Have you not started dinner yet? I’m starving.”
“I’ve been out.” Part of her thinking, He’s going to feel so bad when I tell him. “Could you come in here?” Calm. Noble. Rising above such petty issues as a leaking loo and a late dinner.
He opened the door—crumpled shirt, tie askew. Hair graying over the temples. And she thought, How did this happen? How did we lose each other like this? “What? I need a shower—the journey was hell as usual.”
“I had my appointment today. Remember?” She’d told him, but in a passing way that she knew he wouldn’t register. Because it was going to be nothing. Everyone got headaches, even if it was every day, even if she hadn’t been able to see the display board on the train on her way to the hospital. She’d almost canceled the MRI when the meeting about the cereal account ran over. She probably just needed to try glasses or drinking more water or sleeping or Nurofen or acupuncture or decluttering or quitting work and starting a blog about it.
“Oh.” His face—guilt immediately hiding in defense. “You should have reminded me.” Tom didn’t realize how bad the headaches were, or that she was having to write down everything she did each day so she wouldn’t forget to brush her teeth or put her shoes on. He wasn’t worried. Not yet.
“It’s okay.” She sat there, poised. Pulse hammering like she was almost excited. Waiting to shatter their lives. “I... Sweetheart...” (She never called him this but it seemed like something her new noble self might say.) “They found something. In my brain. The headaches...”
“What?” His eyes had already swiveled to the phone again. She would have liked to stamp her foot on it. Listen while I give you my noble speech, you selfish bastard.
“They think—it doesn’t look good.”
His face. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I have a brain tumor.”
“Shit. Really? What?”
So she said some words: “Stage four glioblastoma. Very aggressive...rapid growth...”
“Shit. Shit. Poll, there must be something—”
“They’ll try things. Chemo and that. But he wasn’t hopeful. He looked...kind of grim.” That was the right word, she decided, for the grouchy consultant she’d seen. Grim.
“Oh. Shit.” Tom put his hands—the phone still surgically attached—on his head. “I’m so—Shit. Shit. Why now?”
“Is there ever a good time?”
“I’m sorry. I need—” And he bolted from the room. Maybe he was just overwhelmed, with love, with pain. She waited. Her own phone buzzed on the table and she picked it up. Thinking: How will I tell everyone? Facebook message? Brave cancer diary? Whatsapp group?
It was from him. It said, Shit. Bad news here. She’s sick. Really sick, I think. Need to sort things out.
Clearly, in his sorrow, he’d sent it to the wrong person. It was meant for his mother, maybe.
And she might have overlooked it, not realized what was going on, because she was a tiny bit distracted, after all. If he hadn’t made the effort, gone the extra mile he never went for her anymore. I love you, I promise.
He came back in, still holding his phone. He’d been crying. His shirt was untucked. “I can’t believe this. I can’t. Is it—is it true?”
She held up her own phone. She was still in orbit around cancerland. Calm. Noble. “Who is it you love, Tom?” Because she knew it wasn’t her. She’d known it for a long time, she realized.
His face collapsed like wet paper. “Oh, shit.”
* * *
“Wow,” Annie said after Polly had told the whole sorry tale of how she’d come home with her cancer diagnosis, and Tom had accidentally texted the woman he was having an affair with. “Sorry. Am I allowed to say ‘wow’?”
“Yeah. He didn’t want to tell me, but I played the cancer card—very useful card, that. Eventually he came out and said:
“Yes, he had been seeing another woman.
“Her name was Fleur.
“Yes, when he said ‘seeing’ he meant ‘fucking.’
“Yes, he had ‘thought about’ leaving me.
“Yes, Fleur was in her twenties.
“She was a yoga teacher and interpretative dancer.
“She worked at the gym I made him join.”
Annie nodded slowly. “So you just left him?”
“Without another word. If life’s too short not to burn the Jo Malone candle, it’s certainly too short to worry about my cheating iPhone-addicted husband.
So I went, moved back in with Mum and Dad, and I spent approximately two weeks in bed sobbing my eyes out. Like I wasn’t even crying about the stupid cancer. I was crying about him. Him and her. Isn’t that daft?”
“Not at all,” said Annie. “Sometimes our brains can’t take in the biggest thing. It sort of masks it, to protect us. I once cried for three hours because I couldn’t find my left shoe.”
“I hear he moved her into the house as soon as I was gone. Nice, huh.” Polly stopped, wheezing. “So. That’s it.”
“Um, am I allowed to give my verdict now?”
“Yes, you may speak. My tale of woe is finished.”
“I... Jesus, Poll.”
“You better not say what a brave cancer sufferer I am.”
“I wasn’t going to. I was going to say, well done. You win the ‘most pathetic story’ competition. You just have to be best at everything, don’t you?”
She was relieved to hear Polly laugh-cough. “You better believe it, Hebden.”
“So, the day we met, when you seemed so happy...”
“I was fucking miserable, Annie. I’d just left my husband and I had cancer.”
“So what...?”
Polly smiled. The smile Annie recognized, the one that said, Aha, look at what I’ve taught you. “Of course I wanted to be angry, and miserable, and impatient...like you, my dearest Annie. But I have so little time left. I wondered what would happen if I just didn’t. If I just made myself be happy, despite everything.”
“And that works?”
Polly spread her arms, indicating her tubes and monitors, her wasted body, her balding head. “Do I seem miserable?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Happy is a state of mind, Annie.”
Annie’s head was a mess. The Polly she’d met at the reception desk forty-seven days ago, that woman’s life had just been crushed to pieces, too? She couldn’t believe it.
Polly lay back. “I hope you’re taking note of all these inspirational sayings. I expect at least four memoirs about life with me, after I’m gone.”
DAY 48