Chapter Six
‘Fuuuucking Overground delays,’ Tina exclaims as soon as she walks into the hospital room later that day, dumping her bag on the floor and rushing over to Anika’s bed to crush her into a hug.
Her delicate features are creased into a frown, her dark skin smooth even with minimal make-up, and the soft hairs of her long, kinky-straight wig tickle Anika’s nose as she inhales the familiar floral scent of her friend’s perfume.
‘How are we doing?’ she asks, walking over to where Shameeka is sitting on the sole plastic chair, pecking her friend on the cheek and then perching on her knee. ‘I’m not heavy, am I?’
Shameeka exchanges an exaggerated raised-eyebrow look at Anika, then playfully squeezes Tina’s thighs. ‘You know I like ’em thick.’ They all laugh as Tina slaps Shamz’s wrists.
‘I’m good,’ Anika tells her. ‘Just, you know. Waiting it out.’
Tina nods, then glances at her Apple watch. ‘Shit, it’s kick-out time on visiting hours soon, yeah? Sorry I couldn’t go and fetch your laptop, hon. I had to wait for that bloody drinks delivery at work. I thought being a manager would mean less of that shit …’
Anika waves a hand in the air. ‘I’ve got my phone, babe, I can manage. I’ll probably be loopy tomorrow anyway, with any luck.’
‘Have they said yet if the surgery’s been scheduled?’ Tina asks.
‘Not yet,’ Shamz answers, giving Anika a reassuring smile. She left her office early to hang out – the perks of her high rank in the PR company she works for, presumably. ‘By the way,’ Shamz continues. ‘Don’t surgeons usually go by “Mr” not “Dr”? How come that Elachy guy doesn’t?’
‘I reckon if I’d earned a PhD and whatnot, I’d want everyone to know about it, too,’ Anika says musingly. Even as they joke some more, a wave of nostalgia hits her for a time when the three of them were almost worry-free.
To be fair, she never knew Shameeka not to have her shit together.
They met at a book signing for a memoir by legendary chanteuse Chaka Khan.
Anika was convinced the icon’s publicist must have made a mistake in having the book tour stop in Coventry, and she and Shamz were by far the youngest in the queue, but Anika knew immediately that this was a woman with impeccable taste.
They struck up a conversation and realised they were both at uni nearby.
Shameeka was doing a Master’s in Communication, while Anika was in the second year of her media and creative studies degree.
Both shared reservations about their experiences at the university and quickly formed a powerful bond.
Tina was Shamz’s childhood friend, so they soon folded Anika into their tribe when they were all back in London.
Having grown up without siblings, Anika was so grateful to have these women in her life who felt like sisters.
She sighs at the memories, which causes her friends to turn towards her with concerned looks. ‘I’m good. Sorry. All of this is just long.’ Anika lightens up, letting out a snicker. ‘I mean, the cruelty of having a surgical scar to contend with right when we’re going into crop top season!’
‘Babes. Please.’ Tina breaks into a grin. ‘I’ve got nightgowns shorter than the tops I’ve seen you wear.’
They all laugh again, but worry hovers over them, plucking away at their mirth. The nurse lets them know that visiting hours are over for today, and Anika savours the love of her friends as they hug her goodbye.
Even though Shamz brought over a couple of books, or she could watch Netflix on her phone if she wanted to, Anika instead pulls out her earphones again, queues up Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun album and skips past the aggressive funk of ‘Penitentiary Philosophy’ to get to the next track, settling in to hear Ms Badu croon about stopping to observe her emotions on ‘Didn’t Cha Know’.
Anika feels like that’s what she’s doing – watching all her strange, frantic, whirling feelings assail her mind from a distance.
But this isn’t happening to someone else.
Squeezing her lids shut, she tries to imagine what’s happening inside her body, willing it to be well and …
Anika’s eyes fling open again as she feels someone looming over her. She startles, pulling her earbuds out as she catches her breath, but it’s just a nurse. Somehow dusk has settled. She must have dropped off to sleep.
The nurse’s pale, round face glows moonlike in the low light of the room.
‘Sorry, dear, I didn’t notice you were listening to something!
’ She checks the drip of antibiotics going into Anika’s vein.
‘I was saying, how are you getting on? You don’t have any pain, do you.
’ Less a question, more a statement. Anika purses her lips at the assumption she’s not hurting, which often seems the case for some reason she doesn’t want to examine too hard right now.
‘More obs, I’m afraid,’ the nurse continues.
‘And actually, I’m told Dr Elachy is just on his way to have a chat with you … ’
Anika sits up in the bed quickly. ‘Er, the doctor’s coming now?’ she asks, wondering if something is wrong. The nurse nods, slipping the pressure cuff around Anika’s arm and then yawning open the small blood-oxygen monitor to clamp shut around her fingertip.
‘Yes, they want to speak to you about … Ah, here he is!’ she says, nodding towards the doorway, where Dr Elachy and his usual handful of trailing colleagues appear.
‘Anika! Hello.’ He strides into the room and leans against one of the walls casually, as seems to be his manner.
‘Tomorrow we can take you into surgery,’ he says, with no preamble.
‘First thing in the morning – so, Nurse, nil by mouth from midnight, please,’ he adds.
That won’t be too much of a challenge given the unpalatable nature of the food in the hospital, Anika thinks.
Not to mention the obstruction in her guts.
‘So, you’re taking this thing out tomorrow?’ On my birthday. My thirtieth birthday. This is real. This is really happening. Anika tries not to think about a scalpel slicing into her flesh, or of the risk of death on the anniversary of her birth.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Dr Elachy says, smiling and gesturing to one of his students, who hands over Anika’s notes. ‘We see the antibiotics are working, the inflammation is reduced and that means we are ready to get going.’
Anika tries to absorb some of his confidence as the doctor flicks through more paperwork, explaining that she’ll need to sign a waiver.
Apparently absolving the surgeons and anaesthetists of expiry-on-the-operating-table is standard.
Should it occur, her death won’t be on their hands.
Holding the pen with trembling fingers, she signs and hands it back.
‘Right. So … I’ll see you tomorrow then,’ she says.
After all the medical personnel file out of the room, Anika puts her mother, Shameeka, Tina, Wendy – who she broke the news to earlier that morning after her former flatmate had jokingly forwarded a Refinery29 article about the dangers of solo living – onto a group message.
She tells them she’ll be going into surgery first thing, not wanting to repeat herself or speak to any of them right now.
Nella confirms that her flight from New York is due in mid-morning, and, amid their well-wishes, Anika emphasises that she’s fine and planning to head straight to sleep so she’ll call in the morning before she goes in.
Fuck. I’ve never even been under anaesthetic at the dentist. Anika exhales hard and settles back onto the deflated pillows, playing around with the controls that angle the bed up and down to try to distract herself. My life can’t end here – I haven’t done anything yet …
She stares around the sparse hospital room and takes a sip of water, knowing soon she’ll have to stop drinking altogether.
What’s bothering her isn’t the thought of dying.
She thought that would be her main fear, but that’s not it.
The real fear Anika can’t shake is about how far away she is from the things she really wants from her life.
She’s held all her dreams at arm’s length.
Reaching down under the scratchy covers, Anika smooths a hand over her stomach.
Her gut. It’s trying to tell her something, isn’t it?
That must be what this is all about. An internal vision slowly clears the fog of her consciousness and she realises she needs to put it out into the universe: I will be here tomorrow.
Anika sits up and tries it out in her mind. It’s not enough. She says it aloud, a whisper into the silence.
‘I will be here tomorrow.’
But that’s not enough either – it’s too intangible.
I need to write it down.
Anika reaches for her bag on the bedside, planning to find a pad, a piece of paper …
But her hand closes around her old five-year diary.
Anika pulls it out and stares at it. She stopped writing in it on her birthday thirteen years ago.
There are six months’ worth of blank pages left in it to fill up, she realises.
That would take her to the end of this year. She could pick up where she left off.
She could answer that question of how to change her life.
With a hospital-branded pen gripped in her fingers, Anika opens the diary. Looking at the next blank page, she starts to write in today’s date but then stops. That’s not right. She needs to project to tomorrow. What would she want the summary of her birthday, the first day of her thirties, to be?
Clicking the pen, Anika begins to write.
Tuesday 3 Wednesday 4th July
My 30th Birthday! While it is undeniably shit to be spending it in hospital, the good news is that the surgery went better than anyone in the history of medicine could imagine. I DID NOT DIE, obviously. Completely fine, no complications whatsoever. It’s all just been a little tiny bump in the road.
Oh, and the hospital also insisted that I’m moved to a luxury room in the private wing of the hospital while I recuperate from the surgery, and everything has been miraculously taken care of. All in all, I’ve actually had worse birthdays. I mean, for God’s sake, remember 23 … ?
Anika stops writing, chuckling darkly to herself.
She did get mugged on her twenty-third birthday and shat on by a pigeon.
Thirty might be heading towards trumping that, though.
She clicks the nib of the pen in and out, then continues scribbling, her expression more serious now.
Something vital and urgent and yes, maybe something desperate, overwhelms her, and Anika feels just how important this moment could be – for the past she wants to repair, for the present she wants to feel comfort in.
For the future she wants to control. Her skin tingles with goosebumps and she senses the air moving in and out of her lungs, her heart thrumming hard in her chest.
I’m going to survive this, and from here on things will be different for me.
I’m going to chase what I want. I won’t listen to the word ‘should’ any more.
I’ve spent too long holding things in, holding myself back.
I’m going to make my dreams real. Work on what I really want to do, say the things I really want to say, get the things I really want out of my life.
It’s all very ‘live, laugh, love’, but another smile, surprising her, lifts the corners of Anika’s lips as she reads her words over.
It’s what she wants. She hears herself at seventeen years old, back on that fateful night, speaking words of spontaneous ambition that she’s not articulated out loud since.
A fire ignites in her gut, right where that blockage will soon be gone entirely from her body.
All of this has to mean something.
She’s not sure what, though. She closes the diary, and then her eyes, and tries not to let any slivers of dread overwhelm her dreams.