Chapter Two
Anika had jumped on the train from Victoria to Denmark Hill and headed straight to the A&E at King’s College.
It’s the hospital where she was born, and nearish to her flat, so she reasoned that the journey there was swift enough for urgent.
The word whirrs around and around in her brain.
It at least provided all the explanation necessary for her line manager.
When Anika called Kate Friern, the situation must have sounded sufficiently intense that her boss just quickly assured Anika she should ‘go and take care of things’.
Anika still doesn’t actually know what the issue is.
Nurses have drained her blood into numerous glass phials, and there have been lots of repetitive questions from different medical personnel about how she’s feeling and if she has any pain while they eye her closely.
They made her recline while they prodded her abdomen behind a papery green curtain.
Then there was a change of scenery while Anika was sent for a scan.
So far everyone’s been chipper yet cagey, but the fact that she’s not been dismissed to go home is what’s really giving Anika pause.
She’s the last of the patients who were in the A&E holding area that afternoon.
Even the drunk who wandered around in a hospital gown due to soiling his own clothes has snuck away with a mate and a vodka bottle.
Grudgingly, Anika pockets her phone as the display informs her she has eighteen per cent battery left, even on low power mode.
She rummages through her handbag for her book, despite having finally finished it thirty minutes ago.
At the bottom of her bulging leather backpack, her fingers close around the spine of something else – her old five-year diary.
She retrieves it, careful not to jostle the needle port that was sunk into the vein of her right arm four hours ago.
Studying the diary’s smooth blue surface, she presses her fingers into its padded cover.
More than even a place to offload or vent her early-teenage feelings, this diary was somewhere to record the fact that she lived each day.
That she was here on earth. It’s something she still thinks about to this day. But what if my days are …
Anika swallows, pushing a dark thought away.
She flips open the diary, flicking through the pages and observing the scrawls of different inks as the years progressed.
It was designed so that the user could fill in the dates themselves in the space at the top of each page: _____ _____ 20___.
As a twelve-year-old, that seemed so hopeful – her teen years spanning out ahead of her.
She thought things could only get better.
Hah. When Anika bought the diary, she and her mum, Nella, were living with Clive – her mother’s then-husband.
Anika thought being dragged to East Sussex, a place that might as well have been Timbuktu compared to south-east London, to live with some white man her mum had only known a matter of months, was the worst it could get.
Her finger pauses on an entry in the diary from March 2004.
Today an actual miracle happened. I found a record player to match my one from Dad – in a jumble sale of all places. I begged Mum for it, and she actually caved!
Anika has been DJing ever since – to her empty living room.
Not so long ago she even cracked out her credit card to buy some long-coveted second-hand Technics decks and a mixer for her new place.
Having her vinyl collection not crammed in piles on her bedroom floor but neatly shelved in her very own flat was one of the highlights of the move.
She purses her lips, remembering again the record that Len lost.
She’d received it a few days after her tenth birthday – her dad was late, as usual.
But she shrieked with delight when she saw him pull up in the concrete car park of the block where she and her mum lived.
Just having her parents together in the same room with her felt like a treat, it happened so rarely.
Nelson Lapo’s tall frame folded down into their old charity-shop sofa with a loud sigh, flipping his flat cap off his head, knees wide like a king sat in their living room.
He placed a big, unwrapped cardboard box on his lap.
Anika was giddy with glee when he gestured for her to open it and she saw the big, square machine with a clear plastic lid nestled over a round disc inside it, even though she had no idea what it was.
‘This, my dear,’ her dad had said, ‘is a record player.’ He pulled something out from underneath it. ‘And this is a record for you to play on it.’
Al Green – I’m Still in Love With You.
She’ll never forget the feel of holding the album, the suggestion of the weighted disc inside, the smell of it. It felt like a pause, full of the possibility of what was contained within. A magical object.
‘With this …’ Her father patted the box. ‘You take your time. You really listen. You feel it!’
He left soon after, his leather-and-wood scent lingering like a memory. Anika played ‘Love and Happiness’ over and over again, learning how to drop the needle back into the groove in a way that would later become second nature. Her father was right. Anika never felt anything like it.
A few days later, she overheard her mother on the phone to Nelson, complaining to him in a hushed tone.
‘Just giving your old cast-offs as birthday presents? You get money for move to some big new house, but not for us? This na you own pikin too, Nelson. We need money, too.’ Back then, Anika didn’t like to think about her dad having another family. The one he lived with.
His real one.
Anika’s phone bleeps with a group-chat message, pulling her out of the memory.
She checks it even though she’s meant to be conserving battery.
Shamz and Tina are exchanging memes in the group chat.
She didn’t want to worry them, so Anika hasn’t yet mentioned her sojourn to the hospital.
Just as she finishes typing a half-heartedly amused response, an older-looking doctor in faded wine-red scrubs enters the small room, holding a clipboard.
‘Anika Lapo?’
She stands, relieved that something is happening. ‘Yes.’ She tries to ignore the swimming in her head as she moves.
‘Ah, great, hi, Anika.’ He has a large, soft, greying moustache and a light accent that sounds like her old Egyptian neighbour’s from when they lived in East Sussex, the only other ‘ethnic’ on their road.
‘Shall we just sneak over here for a moment?’ His tone is kind and Anika suddenly feels both comforted and overwhelmed.
She draws in a trembling breath and picks up her bag to follow him through to the examination area again, where he props himself against a wall, standing, but gestures to a chair.
‘If you like?’ he says. She shakes her head.
Her twists brush her hot, damp back heavily and she reaches behind her neck to lift them away.
‘So, OK,’ the doctor says, scanning his notes on the clipboard.
‘Oh, I am Dr Elachy,’ he says, looking up again and smiling at Anika as he presses his other hand to his chest, the fingers still gripping a chewed pen.
‘Now, they have handed your notes over to me because we can see there is some kind of blockage, a mass, in your abdomen.’ He indicates an area on his own torso.
Anika’s eyes fall on his hand then flick back up to meet his gaze.
A mass. In her abdomen. ‘OK. So!’ he continues chirpily. ‘We do not yet know what this is.’
She nods. The doctor’s kind hazel eyes behind his glasses are helping a little bit, as is his calm, slightly dismissive air, like he’s just told her she has a particularly puzzling hangnail. ‘Right,’ she says.
‘Good.’ He nods, like they’ve just made a pact. ‘For now, I am going to recommend some IV antibiotics for overnight in order that we can reduce the inflam—’
‘Er, hang on,’ Anika says, suddenly cottoning on. ‘Do you need me to stay here?’
He blinks slowly. ‘Uh, yes. Yes, we will need to admit you. This is very serious, this blockage. It can cause a sudden, catastrophic perforation of the—’ He halts as Anika’s eyes widen, realising what he is about to say is far more life-and-death – one more than the other – than she ever imagined.
What? She thought the biggest stress in her life right now was her ‘relationship’ ending, not her …
existence. Anika’s breathing turns more ragged.
Dr Elachy looks at her with concern and shakes his head.
‘Let us not worry about that at the moment, because what is most important is that you are here now, eh?’
I am here now. And yet, apparently, with the snap of some invisible fingers, she could disappear. She presses her lips together and nods mutely at the doctor, her mind scrambling. Looks like she will have to let the girls know what’s happening, because she’ll need supplies and …
How long have I been carting a MASS around in my ABDOMEN that could be CATASTROPHIC?
Anika’s thoughts dart around everything she’s been doing for weeks – months? – while all this has been happening inside her. They land on the memory of that morning, on the train platform, going to work like any other day.
It feels like a million years ago.
‘But good news,’ Dr Elachy is saying. That’s all relative.
‘It looks like we have a room for you all to yourself on the ward, OK? Rare, believe me!’ He chuckles and she actually smiles a bit, too.
‘So!’ he says again. ‘I will leave you here with my colleague, Reya – she is the chief nurse for the department – and I will see you in the morning so we can figure it out, yes? And do not worry, Anika. This is my specialty.’ He pats his stomach again and she likes the way he says the word ‘specialty’ like it has a soft ‘e’ sound before it.
‘I am a gastroenterological specialist. OK, we go and see the nurse …’
Anika follows him and Dr Elachy smacks the small admissions desk lightly with his palm as he deposits her with another nurse before strolling away.
The nurse – of course – sends Anika back to the waiting room.
Now seems a good time to utilise the last eighteen per cent of her phone battery, though, so instead of going straight to the little room of slow torture with plastic chairs, Anika edges into the hallway to make a call.
She runs a finger absently around the corner of a poster about flu jabs as she dials, feeling strangely numb.
‘Shamz?’ she says when her friend picks up.
‘Babe! Hi!’ Anika can hear the television in the background – EastEnders already? She really has been there a long time. ‘How you doing?’ Shameeka asks. ‘Has that twat been in touch with you today?’
‘Erm, no—’
‘Good riddance.’
‘Listen, Shamz, I’m at King’s College Hospital …’
She hears the sound on the other end of the line quieten a bit and she pictures Shameeka sitting up. ‘What? Are you OK?’
‘Er … well. I’m not sure to be honest, babe.
They called me in because there was something weird with my blood test from the weekend and now they’re saying there’s some kind of …
’ She draws in a breath and exhales the words.
‘Blockage in my abdomen. A mass, and that it could cause some kind of perforation that could be bad.’ As she says it, the concept already feels inevitable and familiar.
‘A mass? A perforation? What does that mean?’
‘I don’t exactly know yet. But they want to keep me in overnight and give me some antibiotics or something.
’ Anika takes a breath, feeling suddenly woozy, and remembers again how little she’s had to eat.
‘Um … but listen, can you bring me some bits? Toothbrush, headscarf, something to change into … Oh, and a phone charger, and—’
‘Course, course.’ Shameeka’s quiet for a moment.
‘OK. Yeah. D’s already in bed and Maia’s home, so I’ll come straight over there.
I’ve got you.’ Anika exhales in relief, mainly that her edges won’t frizz.
And for more. She closes her eyes for a second, but then opens them quickly when Shamz asks cautiously, ‘Erm … Neeks, have you called your mum?’
It never even occurred to her. ‘Nah. But it’s fine. I will, but for now I’ll … I’ll just … It’s fine,’ Anika says. She needs a minute to get her head around all this. She can’t quite deal with Nella right now.
She quickly finishes the call as she hears the nurse calling her name exasperatedly.
‘Here,’ Anika calls weakly and the nurse comes around the corner to where she’s now leaning against the wall, a fine film of sweat prickling her upper lip.
‘Erm, my friend is gonna bring some stuff for me,’ Anika mumbles, pressing her eyelids together to clear her vision as she looks at the tall blonde woman in dark blue scrubs.
‘OK, darling. For now, let’s just get you upstairs, eh? Can you walk?’
‘Yeah?’ Anika replies, wondering why she’d even ask. She draws in a breath and pushes away from the wall, stumbling a little until the nurse takes her elbow.
‘Right …’
Anika is only vaguely aware of being lowered into a wheelchair that has appeared. Then what seems like moments later, she’s being wheeled into a lift while the nurses chatter at her, and more needles and drips are shoved into her arm …
The world moves gradually back into focus.
Anika realises she must have fallen asleep.
She notices a darkened room around her and looks down to see she’s wearing a thin, white, cotton hospital gown.
She vaguely remembers changing into it. Looking around the room, she sees her handbag on a bedside cabinet and, with some effort, she hoists it over onto the bed.
Her phone is on two per cent and she wonders vaguely if Shamz has made it there yet.
It’s not as late as she thought, but Anika is still exhausted.
She’s strangely relieved to find the old diary still in her bag and opens it again.
She finds herself flicking forward to those last words, written late on the night of her seventeenth birthday.
I wish I could just skip ahead, far far ahead, and pretend as if none of this miserable stuff ever happened.
The blankness of the pages after that seems apt. Anika wishes the same now.
Suddenly, she latches on to something about the day she stopped using the diary, on her birthday. Or rather, that night …
There was something good there, if only for a brief, bittersweet shimmer of time. Her mind clings to that memory, raising an unexpected smile on Anika’s face even with the news she’s been given this afternoon still hanging like an unresolved chord.
It’s complicated, and sad and scary – but that night when she turned seventeen was one that showed Anika it’s possible to make a connection in the strangest of places and with the most unexpected of people. The type of connection she’s craved ever since.