Good News

            The walls flow down from the ceiling, pooling on the floor and seeping beneath the patterned carpet.  There are cracks in the lino that skirts the edges.  I find that the cracks look like the outlines of continents, or maybe the trajectory of rivers.  There are places where they seem more like lightning, and I can imagine them infilled with gold glitter.

            Then I remember that I should be paying attention.

            The doctor has a bushy, oversized moustache.  It looks as if a hairy caterpillar crawled up on top of his lip and made itself at home.  I keep focusing on the way it moves instead of on his words.

            “… if you have a look at the two scans, you can see the difference…”

            Dad reaches out and puts a hand on my arm, squeezes gently: it’ll be okay.

            “Good news,” says the doctor.  He explains: “The tumour has shrunk.  Looking at this I’d say it’s shrunk maybe 50 or 60%.  Right now, I’d say you’re in remission.”  He gives me that hopeful smile they all give me.

            Dad’s smile takes apart his face.  “Great,” he says, “this is great.  Well done, Josie.”  As if through some miracle of my own devising the tumour has retreated around the edges.

            I see the scan as well.  What I see is the core of the thing.  Still dark and sticky and thready.  I can already imagine it spreading its tendrils again, sinking those threads into new, healthy tissue and corrupting it, replicating itself, restoring itself to its former glory and then galloping on apace, just delayed a little bit by these assaults of radiation and chemistry.

            Doesn’t anybody else see that?

            Dad.  He grins.  He thanks the doctor effusively.  He’s wilfully blind.

            He tells me we’re going out for ice cream to celebrate.

            #

            The same place.  Always.  He went here when he was a kid with Granddad.  They’d sit in this same booth and he’d order a caramel doughnut sundae, Granddad would order a lemon cake pudding with French vanilla ice-cream.  Granddad’s gone, and so I take over his dessert; Dad clings to his caramel.

            He tells the waitress.  “We’re celebrating today.  Her cancer’s in remission.”

            “Oh, that’s good news.”  She gives me that smile.

            I nod.  I feel dizzy.  I feel as if the world is pressing in on me with steely, uncompromising fingers.  There’s a sense of unreality, a crystallising of colours.  My sense of time: distorted and condensed, picking up on all the nuances, seeing all the shades in the tablecloth, noticing all the curls in the waitress’s paisley shirt.

            Just me and Dad.  The way it used to be just Dad and Granddad.  Grandma having died so barely into her life that even Dad can hardly remember; and I have only photos and stories.  Mum: somewhat more recent.  I can recall her face, I can recall her delicacy, the way she cried at times, the way she tried to pretend she hadn’t been if I saw her.  Her breezy, desperate smile.  The way she reached for me and comforted us both.  I can’t imagine how she could have coped with the Diagnosis.  I’m almost glad at times she didn’t live to hear it.  Then I think about what that means and feel flattened by guilt.

            I’m confused.  Nearly all the time.

            I don’t really know how to process what’s happening to me.

            “Ah, this is good,” Dad savours his ice cream.

            Mine tastes like lemon and ashes.  I eat it.  I manufacture a smile.

            #

            Night is hard.  Night is dark and reminds me of death.

            There’s times when I lay awake most of the night, just being aware of the dark.  I imagine I can feel it pouring into me, cold as ice, thick like syrup.  I imagine I can feel it sinking into my skin, cold-bruising it, dyeing it a dusky, thunderstorm colour.  There’s nothing but silence.  Just me and the dark.  The reality hits me like lightning.  I sit bolt upright, consumed by terror, aware that my terror is inadequate to what’s coming for me.

            And then it pours away.  Too big for my mind.

            Suspended disbelief saves me for a while.

            Dad comes to see me to bed tonight.  Never mind that I’m almost sixteen.

            “The doctor sounded really positive,” he says. 

            “He did.”

            “And if the next three months are good, remember, you’ll be a candidate for the drug trial.  It’s just about keeping positive, keeping healthy.”

            “You know me.”

            “I’m proud of you.”

            As if I’m doing more than reacting.  More than burying.  More than trying to keep standing.  I imagine my throat clogged up with cobwebs, with fungus and worms and rotting flesh.  I don’t know why.  And I can’t stop it.

            “Goodnight,” he says.

            “Goodnight Dad.”

            “I love you.”

            I can hold the tears back a little.  “You know I love you too.”  It must be hard on him keeping his eyes so closed.  Some days it must be agony.  Truth must trickle in through the gaps in his stubborn positivity.  It must.

            “It’ll be all right,” he tells us.

            “I know.”

            I don’t.  I lie in the dark, and I feel that extra presence, the imaginary weight of it, its imaginary heartbeat.  I pretend I can feel it as it grows, as it spreads its arms and stretches out.  The night is perfectly dark.  The dark is all without sound.

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work