After Cleo (13 page)

She looked weary. I urged her to go home and rest. She pressed her cheek against mine. Suddenly, I remembered the question I really wanted to ask. A simple one, but loaded.

‘How long are you here for?'

The tubes on my legs hissed and sighed. If she was planning to leave the next day my heart would shatter.

‘As long as you need me,' she replied.

My head sank back in the pillow. That was all I'd wanted to hear.

In the days that followed, my room filled with flowers. I felt deeply grateful to family and friends who'd sent them. An outsized card signed by all the women in my yoga group featured, inexplicably, a Siamese kitten.

The circle of women my sister, Mary, had talked about was already forming. They sent cards and emails, which Philip printed out and brought in. Some, he said, had left casseroles on the doorstep at home.

From the capsule of my hospital room, ambitions and deadlines flattened to nothing. A mastectomy is the ultimate reminder that the only thing that really matters is love and kindness.

Regrets? There weren't many, except I'd taken life too seriously on the assumption there'd be decades spare for frivolity. I'd spent countless hours shut away from the world bent over keyboards producing probably millions of words. Instead of living life, I'd spent too much time writing about it.

Lydia, Mary, friends, the yoga group and readers who'd emailed in – sometimes I could almost feel the circle of women around the bed. Their good wishes and prayers seemed to fill the room. Some of the nurses felt it too.

‘This room has a lovely feel. I could stay here all day,' said Nurse May before adding that my hair was a mess.

As she fished through my toiletry bag, I realised, with a creeping sense of shame, that I'd forgotten to pack a comb. Nurse Mary offered to buy one for me from the hospital shop. Returning soon after with the new comb, she stroked it tenderly through my hair. Kindness personified. Unable to sit up and barely able to move my arms, self-grooming was out of the question.

Visitors. An elating, daunting prospect. Even though Lydia spent hours at my side, I didn't count her as a visitor because she didn't demand conversation or any kind of performance from me. She was more a presence, a lucky charm, providing reassurance and serenity by simply being there. She didn't mind if I drifted to sleep. Knowing she was there made it easier to sleep.

I longed to see the family, but not if my hissing legs and bottles of blood draped around the bed like macabre Christmas decorations caused alarm. Two figures appeared at the door that evening. Rob and Chantelle. Armed with bottles of mineral water and fresh limes, Rob knew exactly what was needed. He arranged my bed at the most comfortable angle, made sure the nurse call button was within easy reach, ran a watchful eye over the level of fluid in the drip. My mouth was dry as kitty litter and the mineral water spiked with fresh lime was nectar.

Philip's anxious face appeared regularly. He stroked my forehead, admired the flowers, and asked if there was anything he could do. The best gift he brought was our Bose radio from home. Tuned quietly to a classical music station, it provided bedside companions in the forms of Bach, Beethoven et al. Mozart and flowers. What more could a girl want?

Another indispensible comfort was, oddly enough, a lambskin recommended by a nurse friend who'd been through similar surgery. Cast on my back for days and nights I welcomed its softness, and the way it seemed to let air circulate underneath me.

During a day shift, a young nurse accelerated my drip. Nine litres later my abdomen was bloated with enough fluid to resemble a seven month pregnancy.

Looking down at my distended abdomen bursting out of its corset, it reminded me of how Mum looked in her final days with bowel cancer. I felt nauseous. A ring of concerned nurses appeared.

‘What's your pain level on a scale of one to ten?' one of them asked.

My stomach was a sack of broken glass. I felt on the edge of passing out, but didn't want them thinking I was a whiner. To be conservative I said six.

The nurses looked at each other. One of them said ‘As much as that?'

I was in too much pain to reply.

‘It's subjective,' the senior looking nurse said to the others. ‘If she thinks it's as high as six that's what it is.'

Nurses will sometimes talk as if you're not in the room, calling you ‘she', which gives you an opportunity to eavesdrop and find out how sick you really are.

They decided it was nothing to worry about and gave me an injection. Greg's corset was exchanged for a softer body stocking. A few hours later, May appeared and wiped me down like a distressed baby who'd fallen out of its pram. She smoothed the sheets and settled me for the night. The woman deserved a sainthood.

Greg, a regular visitor, appeared soon after and announced his gardening efforts had succeeded. The transplant was thriving. I thanked him. He said it was the first time he'd seen me without my hair all over the place. The flatterer.

Encouraged, I ticked boxes for tomorrow's menu. Mediterranean Pasta with Spinach and Parmesan followed by Crème Caramel for desert. It looked haute cuisine. Hospital food's the same everywhere, though. The main course turned out to be made of cardboard, the Crème Caramel unapproachable.

Next morning, some drainage tubes were removed and the catheter was tugged out with a sting. I'd rather hoped to hang on to it. A permanent catheter would simplify plane trips and visits to the theatre no end. And now I had to hobble, bent double like a hag in an old fairy story, to the loo.

Not only that, it was now necessary to confront the lonely fear of ‘sitting out'. Perching on a chair next to a bed sounds simple; hardly even an activity. Good for you too, according to the nurses. It opens your lungs and gets your blood moving in directions it never goes when you're lying down. The sitting out chair was hard. My tailbone hurt. I stared longingly at the bed, willing it to glide over and envelop me. Twenty minutes of sitting out was more than I could achieve. I pressed the buzzer after a few minutes and asked to be helped back to bed.

Then there were the arm exercises the hearty physio insisted I did ten times a day. Standing facing a wall and creeping my fingers up the wall was barely possible.

I hadn't cried yet. Was something wrong? Philip brought Katharine, looking pale and falsely jolly. She wanted to show me a video on her camera of her school music concert. I agreed just to humour her. But as young soloists launched into the opening bars of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water', just missing the top notes, my chest contracted.

The song reminded me of the pain that has always accompanied the challenge of being human, and the saintly beings who give solace through music and their own translucent purity – or (in some cases) hospital-strength medicine. For the first time since the last phone call with Lydia, I wept uncontrollably. Not the desperate barking of the previous episode but with the steady flow of an underground river.

Hospital time was both urgent and meaningless. The difference between going home on Monday or Tuesday could mean tears or elation. The woman two doors down who'd had surgery the same day as me was going home a day earlier. She was officially ‘doing better' than me. I didn't envy her. The idea of going home and learning to look after myself, specially with two drainage bottles attached, had no allure.

On some of her visits, Lydia helped me hobble bent double in a tangle of tubes and drainage bottles along the corridor. If I was feeling adventurous we'd catch the lift downstairs. I'd venture into the hospital courtyard and gulp gallons of fresh air. Tainted with cigarette smoke, it was raw and exhilarating.

Days became cycles of routine – the sulky Eastern European woman with her cornflakes, then pills, surgeons' visits, temperature and blood-pressure taking. It's surprising how quickly the adjustment's made. Probably the same thing happens in prisons. Comfort sprang from unusual sources – the tea bag sheathed in its blue envelope; diced tinned fruit I'd never eat at home.

It was almost impossible to sleep with the hissing tubes massaging my legs. There was no point counting the hours of restless wakefulness. Four a.m. was much the same as 4 p.m., except there were no visitors.

Of all the night noises keeping me awake, the one that was most irritating was the sound of snoring across the corridor. How dare anyone indulge in the luxury of uninterrupted sleep?

On the third night, I became engrossed in a programme about English architecture on the tiny TV high on the wall in the right-hand corner of my room. Admiring the Royal Crescent of Bath, my thoughts drifted to something that's a milestone after any operation. The first bowel motion.

I summoned Nurse May, who helped me creep to the loo, hanging on to her elbow. Draped with drainage bottles and wheeling my drip, I made sedate progress to the bathroom like a 110-year-old woman. Clutching the stainless steel rail, I lowered myself on to the seat. May slid the door discreetly shut and said to press the buzzer if there were any problems. I sat anxiously enthroned while the television presenter continued his erudite description of how the city of Bath became extremely fashionable in the 1700s and how the stone chiselled from nearby hills contributed to architectural masterpieces.

Unfortunately, the commentary wasn't accompanied by any architectural masterpieces of an intimate nature on my part. Where was May anyway? There were no rustles or throat-clearing sounds from the other side of the door. She must've hurried away on some nursey business. I was alone and suddenly frightened.

A wave of dizziness. The harshly lit bathroom, along with the television presenter's carefully enunciated praise for the architecture of Bath, merged into a sickening blur. With a clatter of bottles and tubes, I spiralled off the seat toward the floor, just managing to press the emergency buzzer on my way down.

The door slid open. A forest of nurses, including May, appeared above me.

‘Get the commode!' snapped an authoritative voice.

‘She's anaemic,' said another. ‘She's been pale ever since she came out of theatre.'

‘Sleep deprived too,' said a third.

The old ‘she' again. Thanks for letting me know, girls.

‘Her oxygen levels are okay, though,' said May.

I was wheeled back to the room to be lowered painfully into bed. Glumness hovered for a while. The bedside phone screeched. In no mood for the Herculean task of answering, I flipped the receiver off with my hand and lowered my head into position.

It was the breast cancer surgeon, loud and a little breathless. Results were just back from pathology. She was confident the cancer had been removed. The growth was even larger than they'd thought. Another six months and it would've been absolutely everywhere, she said.

Absolutely everywhere. Wasn't there a rock song with a name like that? Thank goodness I'd ignored the GP who'd suggested I take the slow track to breast screening.

Wonderful news. So good I made her repeat it three times. To celebrate I was allowed to summon bedpans for the rest of the night. Pure luxury.

Next morning when I was ushered into the bathroom, I produced a masterpiece worthy of the Royal Crescent of Bath. Pale green, it was the colour of Play-Doh, and probably a result of the pre-surgery scan when they'd pumped me full of radio active dye. Bending uncomfortably to flush it away, I issued a silent apology to the environmental engineers who ran the municipal sewerage ponds. The last thing they wanted was radio active poo.

After breakfast, Nurse May hauled me out of bed and helped me into the shower. She said she'd seen the fear in my eyes in the bathroom the previous night, but I'd turned a corner today. When May said she liked the perfume in my hand cream, I made a mental note to send her some when I got home.

How painful it must've been for wounded soldiers, young and frightened with holes shot through their bodies. Almost every one of them must've fallen for a nurse. I was half in love with them myself, the competent ones at least. Good nurses are angels, kind and strong. I loved their gentle strength when they lifted me in their arms to rearrange my pillows or help me stagger across the floor.

Soon, however, I was going to have to get by without them. Very soon.

Entrapment

Never swear you're not getting another cat

Clutching Philip's arm and creeping down the hospital steps, I entered a world of eye-stinging colour. Winter grey streets and footpaths pulsated with vibrancy. The red of an advertising sign glowed so aggressively I was forced to look away. Maybe being in hospital had heightened my senses. Or I'd forgotten to notice how vivid everyday life is.

Lydia and Katharine trailed behind us like anxious bridesmaids carrying my bags and what was left of the flowers.

It felt too soon to be going home. My abdomen was still swollen and a drainage tube somewhere below my right ribcage remained attached to its Christmas bauble bottle. I'd rather have stayed tucked up in hospital until they'd removed that thing. But the nurses had made it clear enough. If I'd insisted on roosting in their airless corridors I'd have been ignored, pretty much. There were new patients to tend to..

Six nights in hospital is long enough anyway: the food, the noise, the awful artwork. Presumably the nearly seven centimetres of high-grade cancerous growth removed from my right breast was now floating around in the clouds over our heads, merging with other particles and about to be drizzled down on the city. Technically, I had a pert new breast made from tummy flab and a reduced and lifted left breast to match. Somewhere underneath the bandages and swelling was a new woman. In reality, I was a patchwork quilt and felt a wreck.

Driving home, Philip abandoned his usual Roman-taxi-driver-on-steroids technique and nursed the car along as if a bomb was lodged under the bonnet. When he pulled into our driveway, I looked up at Shirley. It was good to see the old girl. In my previous life I'd barely noticed the slope up to the front door. Today it looked like the path to Everest Base Camp. As I hobbled up the paving stones, drain sloshing inside a discreet pink drawstring bag, my lungs sucked and puffed. I felt like a building due for demolition. One nudge in the basement and I'd crumple.