what reason, visitor or patient, the strained glances as they wait to be seen, wait for news they don’t want to hear, the feeling they would rather be anywhere else than in the hospital.
Arjun seemed impossibly small in the grey metal bed, propped up on flat white cushions, a blanket tucked up under his chin.
We had waited a while for his hip to be X-rayed and I’d offered to stay the night. You can pay for a room in the hospital. It’s normally used for first-time fathers, I think, but it was late and one was spare and I think they felt sorry for me. That can happen a lot now. I gave them my most pathetic, widowed look: it has to be good for something.
Despite the place I was glad to be there with Arjun the next morning. There was muttering: they wanted the radiologist to see him, and the radiologist then requested a consultation with the oncologist. We shared a look then, we both know what that department meant. I felt bile rise up in my throat and swallowed it down. The oncologist was a young woman with large brown eyes and a soft voice.
The moment she looked at the X-ray her mouth moved into a thin line and I recognised the expression from all the appointments we had attended together. It wasn’t going to be good news.
‘There does seem to be a shadow.’ She indicated an area on the X ray that to my eye looked like a grey cloud in the shape of a tulip. She kept talking. Arjun was doing his pretend nod, the one he did when you used to talk him through the plot of Poldark. His eyes had misted over as she spoke, using big words and promising further tests.
I felt a stone lodge in my stomach and throat, a dead weight as I watched her leave. Arjun met my eye and gave me a weak smile, shoulders lifting in a small shrug.
‘I had wondered, recently—’
Cutting him off I stood. ‘It’s good they’ve caught it now,’ I blurted, already feeling awkward and wrong-footed. You would have known what to say, Cora, you would have made him feel comforted. Instead I found myself standing up, offering to get him a coffee he didn’t want and wouldn’t drink. I miss you so much at times like this. Why, Arjun? He’s so utterly full of life. Why does this dreadful illness go after the best of people?
I left the room and went into the corridor, walked across to the coffee machine and then walked straight past it and out of the electric double doors, as if I was just going to keep walking and not have to go back there and be brave for him. I stood on the concrete slabs just outside the hospital, a man younger than me in a gown clutching his drip for support as he inhaled a cigarette, two women not much older than Lottie sitting on the low brick wall in earnest conversation. All these stories, all these lives. I looked at the people passing in the street beyond holding carrier bags, talking on mobiles, the cars and buses inching past in the early morning traffic. I wanted everything to stop. Stop still so I could think.
My mobile beeped. Luke had called and left a message, checking on Arjun, such a thoughtful boy. What would I say to him? Nothing had been confirmed and yet it felt everything had changed. I forget how much loss Luke has seen already, and yet he has this incredibly joyful air about him – perhaps that is part of the reason why.
I know I need to head back into the hospital, back to Arjun. He’ll need me, hopeless as I am. I know it might not all be doom and gloom and a grim prognosis, but the optimism I used to have about these things has extinguished since you.
I love you, Cora. I miss you and I love you and I wish you were here so I could hold you and stroke your hair and you could give me the strength to be the kind of friend I need to be.
Teddy x
Chapter 18
Love is not always found where you were looking
SAMUEL, 77
‘Remember we have an evening of parlour games tonight,’ Luke called as I pounded down the stairs for the third day of a trial that was sucking all the energy from me. A complicated case with a never-ending stream of witnesses, none