The C-Word by Lisa Lynch Read Free Book Online Page B

accompanying me and Prof – I loved how she called him ‘Prof’ – to a clinic round the corner so that I could be injected with the radioactive dye that would determine whether the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes (known in the trade as a ‘sentinel node biopsy’, fact-fans).
    ‘So how are you feeling?’ Prof asked, as the three of us climbed into a people carrier that was parked outside the front of the hospital.
    ‘Oh, y’know.’ I grinned. ‘I’m fine. Great.’ I smiled a little wider, wondering whether it was the dread that was forcing me into being so cheery, or the fact that this man was about to remove from my body the tumour that was threatening to see me off before I’d even hit thirty. Probably the latter, I figured. (Hell, if you can’t be nice to the man who’s about to save your life, you’ve got to wonder whether your life is worth saving at all.) ‘How’s
your
week been, anyway?’ I asked, keen both to force normal conversation and to suck up to my surgeon. ‘Have you been working every day?’
    ‘Oh, not every day,’ he said. ‘I had a day at Wimbledon this week.’
    ‘Ooh! Me too! I went yesterday!’ I squealed. ‘Who did you see?’
    ‘Ladies.’ He paused. ‘I can’t understand why they grunt like that,’ he said, as I basked in the appreciation of being able to enjoy a chat about grunting tennis players immediately before the most worrying event of my life. ‘There really is no anatomical reason why they need to do it,’ he continued. ‘It’s off-putting, don’t you think?’
    I nodded emphatically. ‘Absolutely,’ I concurred. ‘Ab. So. Lutely.’ (I suspected I’d have been agreeing with him just as forcefully if he’d suggested removing my breast with an ice-cream scoop, or that chopping off my left leg would improve my chance of survival.)
    ‘And you? Who did you see?’ he asked, turning his head to acknowledge me on the back seat.
    ‘I saw Nadal,’ I told him. ‘It was brilliant. We had such a fantastic time. My old boss gave us the tickets in the hope that it would take our minds off today.’
    ‘And did it?’ he wondered, raising his eyebrows.
    ‘Definitely,’ I said.
    ‘Well, that’s good.’ He smiled. ‘And have you felt okay for the rest of the week?’
    I glossed over the tears and the tapas and the terror, instead telling him that the past few days had been ‘weird’. I joked that breast cancer had so far felt like having a
Groundhog Day
birthday, complete with wonderful gestures, breakfast in bed, cards, calls, letters, gifts, flowers, vouchers, cakes, visitors, chocolates, drawings from kids and a seahorse-shaped helium balloon.
    ‘You’ve got a good team around you, then,’ he replied, still smiling.
    ‘Yep. At home
and
at the hospital,’ I said, narrowly resisting the urge to wink.
    The three of us continued to exchange beams and banter at the clinic as the professor drew markings on me in blue pen – one circling my soon-to-be-deceased nipple where he’d be accessing the inside of my breast, another underneath my armpit where he’d be collecting the sample of lymph nodes for my mid-op biopsy, and a final six-inch- long oval on my back, where he’d be taking some muscle that would form the basis of my new surgery-crafted tit.
    ‘You’re doing really well,’ he said as he injected my underarm with radioactive dye.
    I blushed, making as many dumb jokes as the situation allowed in the hope of coming across as girly and grateful rather than terse and terrified. The nurse gave me a caring rub on the shoulder as she helped me into my dress before we headed back to the hospital. ‘Here we go, then,’ I said with a shrug as we waited for the lift, the nurse and professor both staring at me with what I could only assume was compassion in their eyes.
    ‘We were talking about you yesterday,’ said my professor in his surgery gear, gesturing to the nurse as he pushed the button to the ground floor. ‘And I have to say, I’m