by Eva Woods
DAY 69
Cut loose
“Annie!” Costas was standing outside Polly’s hospital room, flapping his hands in agitation. “Thank God you are here. We have a problem, Houston.”
“What’s the matter? Is it Polly?” Annie tried to see over his shoulder but he was blocking the way.
“Annie, I have done a bad thing.”
“I’m sure it can’t be that bad.”
He raised his arms over his head in surrender. “You look. Go and see. Is very bad.”
Inside the room, Annie could see the back of Polly’s head, poking out the window she had open. Not that it was doing any good, because the room stank of weed. George was sitting in the nearby chair with his eyes shut. Annie turned back to Costas, who had closed the door behind them, his eyes wide with fear. “You got them this?”
“A friend at work has some... I did not know they would smoke it here, Annie! We will get in big trouble!”
“Lighten up, Costas from Costa,” Polly slurred from the window. “I just wanted to get high one last time. What’s so wrong with that?”
“You’re smoking,” Annie hissed. “In a hospital! When you have a tumor in your lung! Would you come inside?”
Polly ducked her head back in, a fit of coughing racking her ribs. “It’s hardly going to give me another tumor, is it.”
“That’s not the point! Look at you. You’re freezing.” And she was, shivering and goose-bumped, her eyes bloodshot and swollen in a way Annie recognized from boys at school who used to smoke behind the bike sheds.
She chivvied Polly into bed, plucking the glowing joint from her fingers and dousing it in a glass of water. “Come on, get yourself warm. George, how you could let this happen?”
No answer. “Er, Annie,” said Costas. “He is...sleeping.”
She turned to see George slumped in the chair, apparently out cold. Costas was fanning him with his hands. “Oh, for God’s sake. Costas, go and find Dr. Max.”
“No!” wailed Polly from the bed. “He’ll shout at me!”
“With good reason. Go, Costas.”
He went. George let out a loud snuffly snore. Annie stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at the tiny figure in the bed. “This was your idea, I suppose.”
“I just wanted to do it...one last time,” wheezed Polly. “To feel alive. To feel normal. Stop being such a Betty Buzzkill, Annie.”
“Polly, I’m worried about you. Listen to your breathing.” It was rattling like a penny sucked up into the vacuum cleaner.
Polly coughed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m dying, anyway. What does it matter if I take drugs, or drink myself into a stupor, or shag everyone in the hospital? Tell me that, Annie. What difference would it actually make if I lived as hard as I could for the rest of the days I have?”
Annie tried to think of something. “Well, no one wants to die with cystitis,” she said.
Polly let out a loud sound, half sob, half laugh. Annie had heard a lot of this cry-laughing over the past few days. Then Polly was just cry-crying, her face twisted and wet. “Shit, Annie. I’ve already had my last times. To get high, to get drunk, to get laid even. I’m never going to do any of that stuff again. I’m never even going to lie in bed with anyone ever again. I’m going to die here, in this horrible hospital room with these sheets that are definitely not four-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton.”
Annie thought for a moment, then slipped off her Converses. “Budge over.”
“What are you doing?”
“Getting in beside you.”
“Huh. No offense but I was thinking more along the lines of Ryan Gosling.”
“Well, you’ve got me. So, tough.”
The bed was narrow, but Polly had shrunk now to the size of a child. Annie lay beside her, thinking of sleepovers with Jane and the girls as a teenager, trading secrets in the dark, giggling so hard Jane’s mum would come and bang on the door to get them to be quiet. Polly’s breathing was labored, the sheets damp from her tears.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. No harm done. Well, probably.”
“Will Dr. Max be cross?” she asked pathetically.
“Yup.”
“Maybe you can reason with him. He likes you, you know. Like, a lot.”
Annie didn’t want to think about that now. “Shh. It’s okay.” She stroked Polly’s hair, or what was left of it, off her shrunken face. She looked like an old woman, the skin stretched tight over her bones. Melting away, minute by minute.
“Annie,” Polly said in a very small voice. “You’re my best friend now, I think. Did you know that? Thank you for—thanks for being here. Will you stay?”
“Of course. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Because I need you. To get through this. I know I’ve been selfish, and awful, and... I’m sorry.”
“Shh,” she whispered again, swallowing the lump in her throat. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Even though it wasn’t.
“What the hell’s been going on?” The door flew open and Dr. Max barged in, followed by an anxious Costas. He had a crease down his cheek as if he’d fallen asleep on his desk.
“Shh.” Annie raised a finger to her lips. “She’s sleeping.” Because Polly’s breathing had calmed, and her eyes had closed. Her fists were curled under her chin like a child’s.
Dr. Max lowered his voice. “Is she really sleeping or just pretending so I don’t shout at her? Smoking weed, for God’s sake! Is she okay?” He approached to check her vitals, lifting her limp wrist to feel her pulse. Annie lowered her legs off the bed and got up.
“I am sorry,” Costas said, wringing his hands. “She is okay?”
“Well, she’s no worse than she was. But seriously—we can’t have that here. Understand? I’d have to call the police next time.”
Costas looked like he was going to cry. “I don’t think he realized they’d do it here,” Annie said. “He was just trying to help.”
“With illegal drugs.” Dr. Max raised one of Polly’s eyelids, very gently.
“You’ve never dabbled? Come on. Give him a break.”
“Not in a hospital, and not when I had a tumor in my lung.” He relented. “I suppose there’s no harm done, but really George should have known better, and—eh, where is he?” They all turned to look at the empty chair, and the open door to the room.
“Skata,” swore Costas.
* * *
George, however, hadn’t got very far. The three of them stood over him, where he was slumped on the ground by the vending machine, one arm inside it. “I’m stuck,” he said mournfully.
Dr. Max knelt down. “I don’t know, George. What will we do with you? First drugs and now trying to steal a KitKat?”
“I paid for it. It didn’t come out.”
“Aye, I know that feeling. Let me see.” Dr. Max squinted into the coin slot, pressed a few buttons and held out his hand to catch the thing that was spat back out. “Well, you see, George, here’s your problem. This machine doesn’t take gym locker tokens.”
“Oh,” said George. “Um, can you help me?”
Dr. Max rolled up his sleeves. “Aren’t you lucky that you’re here with the world’s foremost expert in vending machine extractive surgery?”
“Surgery?” His lip trembled.
“Aye. Nothing for it but taking the arm off, lad.”
George started to cry. Dr. Max rolled his eyes. “Lord, people take things seriously when they’re high. Come on, grab his legs. Costas, you’re skinny, see if you can get your hand inside there.”
A short time later, with some pushing and pulling and George whimpering like a puppy, he was free, minus a KitKat but at least in possession of all his limbs. “That was horrible. I thought I was going to die.”
; “Maybe you should knock off the drugs, lad. Seems you don’t have the temperament for them.”
Costas was kneeling beside George, tenderly examining his swollen wrist. “Please, George, you must be more careful. You will hurt yourself.”
George squeezed his good hand over his eyes. “It was her idea. She wanted to cut loose one last time, she said. How could I say no? Oh, God. How can it be the last time? My sister. She’s my sister. I’m going to be a...a...what’s the word for like an orphan but not an orphan?”
Annie and Dr. Max exchanged looks. “An only child?” she ventured.
“It’s not fair.” George was crying again. “It’s not fair. Why Polly? She’s a good person, she’s so smart and alive and amazing, and now she’s dying. It’s not fair.”
Costas hugged him, murmuring words in Greek. Annie looked at Dr. Max, and a strange current seemed to run through her from her head to her toes. A sweep of blood so powerful she was surprised she was still standing, still fully clothed. He scratched his head, blushing in a way that she knew meant he could feel it, too.
“Listen,” she mumbled, unable to look him in the eye. “About Scotland. I don’t know if I ever said sorry about...everything. But I am. Really. You were such a good friend to me, and that’s how I repay you.”
“A friend.”
“Well, yes. You were.” And she wanted him to be more, much more, but she didn’t know how to say it, how to find space in her heart around the huge boulder that was Polly dying. “I...”
There was a moment of silence, stretching on longer than she would have thought possible. “It’s fine,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s get young George here into a bed so he can sleep it off.”
DAYs 70 to 80
Let go
Toward the end, during Polly’s last days, Annie felt like a cave dweller. She only went home to shower and change, and otherwise spent all her time in the hospital, shuttling between one bed and another.
Jane was discharged, with her baby strapped to her chest, still crying and begging Annie to come and visit. Mike repeated the offer, though rather more nervously. Annie said of course. And maybe she even would. It was hard to see more than one day in the future at the moment. For now, she was letting them go, Jane and Mike and their baby, letting them drift out of sight like a boat sailing over the horizon. And that was enough.
The MRI machine they’d bought for the hospital was delivered, paid for with money raised online and through the charity concert. It was unveiled and the local press came and Dr. Max awkwardly cut the ribbon, and Milly pitched the story to the Guardian, who did a piece on how inspirational Polly was. The machine had a plaque on it that read Donated by Friends of Polly Leonard. Polly herself was too ill to get out of bed.
Annie began to catch her mother looking at her suspiciously, as if she was in some kind of unconvincing disguise. As if she recognized her, but the name was gone, on the tip of her tongue...
George got another audition for the chorus of a West End show—Guys and Dolls this time. He mentioned he might not go to it because Polly was ill, and at Polly’s request Annie threw grapes at him until he changed his mind.
Costas was named Employee of the Month at Costa and got them all free pastries. Most days he sneaked in Buster to see Polly, until Dr. Max noticed that his gym bag was woofing and banned it. “Fascist,” Polly wheezed.
Milly brought in her twins, Harry and Lola, who scribbled all over the walls of Polly’s room with eye pencil, then ate the chocolates Polly had been sent until Harry was sick behind the heart monitor. Suze came with neck pillows and hot water bottles and her latest terrible boyfriend, Henry, who ran a start-up coffee company in Shoreditch (Polly whispered, “My dying wish is that you will never again date anyone who runs a start-up anything”). They had to ask people to send donations to the fund instead of flowers, as there were so many Dr. Max grumbled he felt like he was in The Day of the Triffids.
There was Valerie, brushing Polly’s remaining tufts of hair and putting cream on her dry skin. Holding scented tissues for her to cough blood into when spots of it began to come up, scarlet as poppies. “There you are, darling. Cleanse, tone and moisturize, that’s what they say, isn’t it?”
There was Roger reading to her from women’s magazines. “Here we go now. Top ten mistakes you’re making with mascara—good God, what is this rot?”
The two of them were practically camped out, bringing clean pajamas and books Polly couldn’t read and home-cooked food she couldn’t eat, but notably they were always there at different times.
There was Dr. Quarani, too, who seemed to be on Polly’s floor a lot considering he worked on a different one entirely. “How is she?” he asked Annie whenever he saw her.
Annie just shook her head. “Still here. For now.” There was nothing else to say. One day at a time.
Annie passed Dr. Max most days in the hospital, buying quadruple espressos in the café, checking charts, feeling pulses, asking patients to follow his fingers with their eyes, peering at scans, shaving in the loos, eating Twixes, sitting on gurneys reading medical books or Jilly Cooper. There was, she felt, a lot that needed to be said between them—enough to fill one of those massive books he read—but for now she could only see a few paces in front of her, like walking in fog at night. She could only get up, and shower, and change, and try to take care of Polly and her mother.
Then there was the day Polly sweet-talked the man who ran the hospital radio—“DJ Snazzy Steve”—into playing “Is This the Way to Amarillo,” and made everyone in the ward—staff, visitors and any patient well enough—do a conga up and down the corridor, weaving in and out of rooms until they got a visit from the bemused security staff, who Polly then somehow inveigled into joining the end of the conga.
And there was the day she ordered pizza for everyone in the hospital, delivering it to their beds in a Santa costume even though it was May, George wheeling her chair and dressed as an elf.
And there were visits. From Dion, who’d been discharged, and came gaunt and elegant in a pale gray suit and carrying a polished cane. From Polly’s stylist friend Sandy, fashionable and almost as thin as Polly; she smuggled in Amaretto in a hip flask and told scurrilous tales from the catwalk. From friends old and new and real and fake and crying and laughing and stoic and selfish, and the whole thing went by, because that’s the thing about time. It always goes. It always runs out, eventually.
DAY 81
Make your peace
“I don’t understand,” said Tom. “Why are you here?”
Annie tried to be understanding. It was, as she knew, quite disconcerting to have a strange woman turn up on your doorstep. “Polly sent me. She’s ready to talk to you now.”
Tom was wearing a navy toweling dressing gown, although it was 10:00 a.m. on a weekday. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, either, and he scratched at his beard as he stood there. “But...last time she sent me packing.”
“I know. She wasn’t ready. She is now.”
“I don’t even know who you are.”
“I’m—look, does it matter? I’m her friend. I haven’t known her long, sure, but... I’m her friend. And I really think you should come with me now. Trust me. You’ll regret it otherwise.”
He looked back into the hall. “I’m not dressed. I—well. I took a bit of time off work. They sent me home actually. After what happened at the hospital, last time. I wasn’t myself. There was...a bit of scene. I smashed something.”
“You did? What?”
“A coffee cup. And, er, a photocopier. I was a bit...frustrated.”
Annie knew that feeling. “Is she here—Fleur, was that her name?”
He shook his head. “She—she moved out. I was too much of a mess, she said.”
Annie sighed. So many casualties in this ongoing war. “Why
don’t you have a quick shower and get dressed, and come with me. Polly’s really sick, Tom. This is it.”
She watched the news hit him, percolating down like milk into coffee. “Oh. I thought somehow—shit. I’m not ready.”
“I don’t think anyone is. But it will happen. Soon. So come with me, and make amends with her. It’s the least you can do.”
* * *
Annie waited in the kitchen while he showered. It was messy, with dirty plates stacked around the sink and takeaway pizza boxes piled by the bin, but she could see how nice it had been before all this. The floor was tiled in gleaming marble, the furniture carefully chosen antiques. One wall was covered in pictures of Polly and Tom’s life, in a variety of shabby-chic frames. With her parents, with George. She recognized Milly and Suze in another shot, wearing bridesmaid dresses. No chiffon and puffed sleeves here, just sheer slips of red silk. In the center was Polly, in her wedding dress. She looked so beautiful Annie could hardly take it in. Like a film star, her hair in a messy braid studded with daisies, the lace dress clinging to the curve of her hips. It was hard to believe this was the same woman in that hospital bed, shrunk down to the size of a small child, bald and pale and covered in a scaly rash. Annie swallowed down a lump. She’d been right—Polly had had the perfect life, before the cancer, at least on the outside. But all the same it wasn’t perfect. Not at all.
“That was our wedding day.” Tom was in the doorway, smelling of lime and dressed in gray jeans and a thick navy jumper. Catalog man again. The perfect husband, too.
Annie didn’t know what to say. “It looks lovely.”
He rubbed his eyes. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“I know. But it is. Let’s go.”
* * *
“Are you staying?” Tom hovered in the doorway of Polly’s hospital room, looking supremely uncomfortable. She hadn’t opened her eyes when they went in. Her breathing was slow and noisy, the machines beeping and humming around her.
Annie said, “I’m sorry. She asked me to—she’s struggling to talk these days, with the ventilator, but she’s told me what to say. I know it’s hard.”