That Elusive Cure 54

Four months later:

“Come on kids, time to go.” I checked the clock, we were going to be late if they didn’t hurry up.

I dashed upstairs and found Lucy on the footstep examining her teeth in the mirror.

“Are they clean, Mummy Kath?” she asked and leaned in, teeth bared. The mirror fogged up and hid her image. She turned to me and opened wide for me to check.

“They are perfect,” I said and tossed her the hand towel to dry her face. “Come on, you’re going to be late.

Peter was in his room, digging through the mess for an exercise book. “I can’t find my maths book. I’m going to get a lunchtime detention if I don’t have it.”

I couldn’t believe that in three short months, Peter had managed to create so much mess. “Come on, move over.” Kneeling down I shovelled through the clothes and toys and pulled out a blue book. “Here it is!”

“Thanks.” He shoved it in his school bag. “Can you find my English book now?”

Somehow I got them to school just as the bell went. Lucy gave me a long hug then ran off after her brother. Nerves fluttered in my tummy. Today was the day I would finally pass on the key. I put the car in gear and drove off towards the motorway.

Twenty minutes later I pulled into the car park outside the oncology building at Clatterbridge. For weeks I’d been thinking about who I wanted to give the key to. Janie said she’d picked me because I was the youngest one there. Her finder picked her because she looked like his daughter. What was I looking for? A newly retired person? A really sick person? A young person? A man? A woman? It was too much responsibility. Whoever I picked would be lucky and that meant I’d be allowing others to die or face the long battle without the help of the pod.

By the entrance there was the usual scattered group of smokers. One person sat in a wheelchair, hooked up to an IV, pulling her dressing gown around skinny legs with one hand whilst holding a cigarette with the other. Another gaunt man sat on the bench puffing away. His skin had gone as grey as the ash on the end of his fag. I certainly wasn’t going to help one of them. They weren’t even trying to beat this disease. I thought about going straight up to the Delamere Ward where I used to go, but decided what I really needed first was a cup of tea.

Sat outside the café on the ground floor, I realised I was in the best place possible to patient watch. Nursing my tea, I studied people as they came in the entrance and made their way to various destinations in the hospital. Most had a partner with them, a husband, wife, adult child or friend. It was easy to pick out the poorly one.

About half an hour after I’d sat down, and still no closer to making a decision, I watched as a young mum came into the hospital pushing a child of around Lucy’s age in a wheelchair. It was hard to tell whether the child was a girl or boy, they were so thin, so pale, their skin the shade of an antique porcelain doll. The child wore a colourful scarf to cover their scalp, and a drip line snaked out from a sleeve and up to a bag of medicine hung from an elevated hook.

For about ten seconds I thumbed the key, watching as the mother and child went towards one of the downstairs wards. This was it. My heart pounded, my breath grew short. The key now clenched in one hand, I got up and followed them down the hall.