Chapter 22 #3
‘For most of this year, I’ve been having treatment for breast cancer.’
‘What?! Mum! Why didn’t you say?’ I turned my gaze on Anneka. ‘Why didn’t you say?’
She opened her mouth, but Mum spoke first. ‘Anneka wanted to tell you. I told her not to.’
‘But why? I don’t get it. I could have helped. I should have helped! This is so fucked up!’
‘I thought you had enough on your plate with the wedding. I was going to tell you afterwards. But then, well, there wasn’t an afterwards, was there?’
‘You thought wrong, Mum!’ I quickly withdrew my hands from Mum’s frail grasp and buried my face in them.
In the pocket of darkness created by my palm-cave, I re-appraised the last year through this new lens.
Mum had never been hot on communication, but this year she had been more distant than usual.
And no wonder they’d both seemed unmoved when they heard about the wedding being cancelled: Mum had cancer, for fuck’s sake.
Shit, does she still have cancer?
I re-emerged into the harshly lit reality.
‘Wait, was the treatment successful?’
Mum flashed a tight smile. ‘Yes, I had a lumpectomy towards the start of the year and then some radiotherapy after that, which blasted the leftover bastards away.’
‘Oh, thank God.’
‘Mum…’ Anneka’s tone was admonishing.
Shit, there’s more.
Mum sighed. ‘Fine. I’m not quite out of the woods, yet. I have to take some medication for a few years and have regular check-ups but, for now, the doctors reckon I’m probably cancer-free.’
‘“Probably”?! Oh, Mum.’ I buried my head in her shoulder and she stroked my hair slowly – the first time she’d touched it in about twenty years.
‘But why didn’t your hair fall out?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t need chemo, love. We caught it nice and early. That’s thanks to Anneka.’
Anneka leaned her bum on the bed next to me and rested her head on my shoulder. ‘I felt the lump when I was fake tanning her for last year’s Halloween party, and practically dragged her to the GP the next morning.’
I had so many more questions – including what kind of Halloween costume required fake tan to be applied to the boob region – but now wasn’t the time to ask them.
‘You should have told me, Mum.’
‘It is what it is.’
‘No, it isn’t. You can’t keep stuff like this from me, okay?
’ I looked between them with as hard a stare as I could muster.
‘And I’m talking to both of you. I know you probably think you’re protecting me, but if you keep sheltering me from this kind of thing it’s going to end really badly – for all of us. Understood?’
They both nodded, like two wide-eyed schoolchildren who’d been caught forging their parents’ signatures in their homework diaries.
After a few beats of loaded silence, during which I focused on making sure as much oxygen as possible was entering my bloodstream, a nurse arrived. He detached Mum from the drip and removed the IV from her arm.
‘What’s going on? Surely she’s not been discharged already?’ Anneka asked.
‘She is. It’s fine.’
‘But—’
‘Let’s talk about it in a second, okay?’ I angled my head towards the nurse, who was running through the discharge form with Mum, which she signed.
‘Well?’ Anneka said, after the nurse had left.
‘Right. The doctor quickly got to the bottom of Mum’s symptoms when you weren’t here, and she has something called’ – I checked the discharge notes – ‘cytisine poisoning, which is totally unrelated to cancer and is easily treatable.’
‘What the fuck is… sittizine?’ Anneka asked, frowning.
‘It’s the toxin in Kentucky coffeetree pods, which Mum has been eating ever since she found them in Central Park.’
‘What?!’ Anneka glared at Mum, who was blushing furiously, some colour finally returning to her face.
‘We’ll be laughing about this soon…’ Mum said, but I could tell her heart wasn’t in it.
‘Listen, you two, we can talk more about this – and everything else – back at the hotel. But we need to get going,’ I said, authoritatively.
‘Already?!’ Anneka asked.
‘Mum has no insurance, Anneka. And I’m assuming you don’t, either?’
‘Ummm…’
‘That’s a no, then. I’ve got annual multi-trip cover through my bank account, but it only covers me, so that’s not helpful.
The doctor told us what medicines to buy and the paperwork is all signed.
We need to head back to the hotel and free up this hospital bed.
That’s if you’re feeling up to it, Mum?’
‘I am feeling a bit better – I think those IV fluids have helped.’
‘Yeah, and you’ve probably vomited a lot of the poison up,’ Anneka offered.
‘That’s exactly what the doctor said. Okay, so here’s the plan: we’ll slowly get you upright and decent, Mum.
Anneka – you go ahead and flag down a cab so it’s ready and waiting.
I can jump out of the car when we’re close to the hotel to pick up the medicine.
Anneka, which pharmacy did you go to the other day? ’
‘It was just one block behind the hotel – really easy to find.’
‘Perfect. Right, shall we do this?’ I asked, looking between them.
Mum and Anneka looked at each other, and then back to me. They nodded, and we got to work.