Authors: John Marrs
My scar was healing and my hair was gradually growing back from stubble when I found myself with my face covered in wet plaster bandages. Staff at the hospital’s radiotherapy unit had to make a mould of my head to create a Perspex mask before my treatment began.
Once it was complete, I sat with my mask in my lap, tracing the mirror images of the curves, crevices, lumps and bumps of my head. It was then attached to a table; my head slotted inside it and I kept perfectly still while, every Thursday for eight weeks, a machine blasted my dent with a ten minute burst of radiation.
The sessions often left me nauseous so I was never more than a few feet away from a bucket. But mostly I was just exhausted. And as a result, I lost interest in anything that didn’t involve me.
I couldn’t be bothered to read newspapers, listen to the news or Radio Four’s Play For Today. Instead I dipped in and out of OK! Magazine and This Morning for my fix of world events.
The seventeen types of tablets I took each day controlled when I ate, what I drank, when I woke up, what time I napped and how far away I could be from the nearest toilet. I hated them but by controlling my life, they were saving it.
But nothing I read on the Internet warned me of how much cancer treatment could drain your femininity. Lack of regular exercise and steroids gave me a moon-face and made my weight balloon. Make-up only highlighted how ugly I’d become and made me look like an unconvincing transvestite. So even the basics like lipstick and mascara were left to gather dust on the dressing table. In fact my entire beauty regime was given the heave-ho.
I hadn’t coloured my hair for so long, it looked like I’d taken to wearing a silver skullcap. My legs resembled the Forest of Dean and the skin on my left cheek near to the radiotherapy zone was corrugated and sore.
The pricey moisturisers I’d bought on my trips to Paris were boxed up and put into a cupboard and replaced with E45 cream and Aloe Vera. I avoided my beautiful wardrobe of Gucci and Versace outfits and asked Selena to order me a selection of brightly coloured, elasticated leisure suits. I went from couture to velour.
And I all but ignored my own reflection. I wouldn’t give that bloody bathroom mirror the satisfaction of seeing me in such a state.
***
Monte Falco
July 27, 1.30pm
Our family crammed so many memories into the time frame we’d been allowed.
A former colleague of Luciana’s father with a shady reputation secured me a forged British passport of my own. So the four of us flew from city to city across Europe for weekend breaks and explorations.
And when the short bursts of chemotherapy on Luciana’s kidney and stomach weakened her resolve, we hid indoors and watched old Jimmy Stewart and Audrey Hepburn DVDs instead.
A large proportion of her hospital appointments involved tests and scans. They could be fraught affairs and not only because many were invasive, but because each time, her disease had advanced that little bit further.
The shame I felt over my earlier plan to abandon her and teach God a lesson pushed me to double my efforts to be there for her. So I became more than just Luciana’s chauffer and helper; I was also part of her treatment team.
I never missed a single appointment again, and even when her doctors and specialists probably didn’t welcome my presence, I sat by her side and irritated them with questions and suggested drug trials and treatments I’d read about on the Internet. I didn’t care what they thought of my silly ideas. She was
my
soul mate; not theirs.
The side effects of Luciana’s treatment were often undignified – occasionally she’d soil herself; sometimes the palms of her hands felt like ice blocks and I’d rub them hard in mine to make her feel human again. Or she could spend days in bed pole-axed by crippling stomach pains. All I could do was fill her plastic beaker with water or brush her thinning hair aside as she vomited. It was heartbreaking to witness and feel so useless.
Madame Lola frequently flew from Mexico to stay with us for weeks at a time. Sometimes Luciana wanted both of us around her, and other times, it was just one of us. And occasionally she took herself down to the vineyards to sit alone on a patchwork blanket her sister had crocheted and watch the grape pickers come and go.
Whatever made her happy, made me happy.
***
Northampton
October 8, 1.10pm
“It’s looking good, Catherine, it’s looking good,” nodded Dr Lewis as he examined my last x-ray against a light box.
I didn’t feel it, I thought, but I kept quiet for fear of sounding like an old whingebag. My checkups with him were the only highlight of my miserable weeks. Sometimes, the dishy doctor dropped by on treatment days to say hello and offer words of encouragement. He’d pat me on the shoulder each time he left and I’d always get goosebumps.
I’d had no significant other in my life since Tom. I holidayed alone; I shopped alone; I went to parties alone; to Selena’s wedding and Olivia’s christening alone; to Emily and Robbie’s graduations alone. I’d been on dinner dates with several men over the years; sometimes set up by friends and others who I’d met through the boutique. But there was nobody who’d reacquainted me with romance. Or maybe I just hadn’t given them much of a chance.
I’d spent so long throwing myself into my businesses and my children’s lives that it didn’t give me time to think about what I might be missing. Now I was spending time at home recovering and I began to realise what I’d been missing out on. I was lonely and fed up of being everybody’s single friend.
Dr Lewis was the first man who’d turned my head in some time. Albeit a bulbous, dented, head. So I made a deal with myself. If I could make it through my treatment and get a second shot at life, I’d throw my hat in the ring, open myself up and start taking a gamble.
***
Monte Falco
November 18, 9.45pm
Luciana insisted on taking care of all the details of her birthday party herself. Despite my protestations, nothing was going to prevent her from leading the team of caterers and planners she’d hired to throw a lavish fortieth birthday party.
“I am bored, Simon, I need to do this,” she explained with a passion I thought her disease had extinguished. “I need to have one day where we’re all thinking about the present, not the future.”
I decided against arguing with her. Friends, our children’s playmates, our staff, their families, the doctors and nurses who treated her, and villagers joined us as we threw open the doors to our home.
Waiters served drinks as ice sculptures slowly melted into lawns; a casino in the dining room made temporary millionaires out of some while others danced to a twenty-five-piece swing band playing Rat Pack classics on the terrace. There was so much laughter whooshing around the halls and gardens that it became unrecognisable from the restraint we’d grown used to.
Mid-evening, I searched high and low for Luciana until I found her perched on a stone wall, her bare feet resting in the infinity pool that overlooked the valley. I placed my arm around her shoulder and she rested her head on it as we stared into a distance we could never reach.
“It’s not working,” she whispered.
“Of course it is; there are two hundred people behind us having the time of their lives.”
“No. The treatment. Sometimes at night when I’m trying to sleep, I can feel the disease finding new bones to dine on.”
I shivered. “No, it’s your imagination. I’ve read about it, plenty of people with cancer think they can hear it growing but…”
She gave me a gentle look that asked me not to doubt her. “You know this party isn’t just to celebrate my birthday don’t you? It’s my way of saying…”
“Please don’t,” I interrupted, my throat tightening.
“I’m ready Simon.”
“I’m not. Please don’t go without me.”
“I have to. And we have two wonderful children who need you.”
“But I need you.”
“And one day, by God’s good grace, we will find each other again. But for now, let’s enjoy the time we have together, shall we?”
She rose to her feet and moved her hand towards mine. We linked fingers and I wrapped my other arm around her skeletal waist as we swayed together for the last time. And as if on cue, the band began to play the opening bars of ‘Let’s Face The Music And Dance.’
***
Northampton, Two Years Earlier
April 9, 10.55am
Radiotherapy had ravaged my looks, zapped my strength and ruined my wardrobe, but fourteen months after my diagnosis, it gave me back my life.
“The tumourous cells have entered a phase where they’ve stopped growing or multiplying,” explained Dr Lewis, with a broad smile on his face. He looked like the news was going to change his life, not mine.
“I’m really pleased, Catherine.”
I slumped down into my chair and nearly screamed with relief. He might have delivered news like that to a thousand patients over the years, but Dr Lewis could never possibly have known just how much it meant for me to hear I was going to live. It meant God had listened when I’d asked him for more time; that now I’d have the chance to see my granddaughter grow up, watch my children get older and do all the things I’d never made time to do on my imaginary wish list.
“It doesn’t mean the cells will never appear again,” he warned, “but it could mean the tumour has been destroyed and the area it occupied in the brain is composed of only dead tissue.”
“So what you’re telling me is I’m brain dead,” I replied.
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Now you won’t need to come back to see me for another three months.”
I stood up to leave, and was about to thank him for all he had done when I remembered the promise I’d made to myself about taking a gamble.
So instead I asked: “Does it have to be that long until I see you again?”
***
Monte Falco
April 9, 1.40pm
The end came too close to our beginning.
The most gifted Italian specialists money could hire were unable to prevent the cancer from wreaking havoc on her body. The tumours wouldn’t shrink, but the three years we’d been promised, had. And once they infected Luciana’s lungs and seeped into her bones, there was very little any clinic could do but send her home so we could make her remaining weeks comfortable. Drugs eased her pain considerably but transformed her into a vacant, slumbering shell.
Our children had already bid farewell to the mother they’d known and a diseased impostor took her place. Hearing and observing her obvious discomfort began to scar them, so I encouraged them to embrace their youth with their friends and shun death’s waiting room. Only when she slept would I allow them into our bedroom to visit.
I employed a round-the-clock staff of nurses to attend to Luciana’s needs, but for the most part, I took care of her myself as best I could. I had not wanted to admit how vulnerable she was but begrudgingly I’d accepted that was exactly what she’d become. The emaciated frame that barely dented our bed sheets bore little resemblance to the enigma I’d loved. Her angular bones jutted out of her paper-thin flesh. Her olive skin had greyed and her eyes remained glued tight.
I felt her burning as much as anyone watching a loved one in physical distress could. It hadn’t mattered what dose of anaesthetic the syringe driver regulated her body with; it simply wasn’t enough.
After one awful night in our crepuscular hole, she clasped my fingers tightly as lucidity made its slight return.
“You know what to do, Simon,” she groaned, opening her eyelids to reveal whites pricked with brown flecks. She referred to a conversation we’d never had, yet both understood.
‘Please don’t ask me to do this,’ I yearned to reply. But if you truly love someone with every ounce of your being, you’ll die for them, or you’ll help them to die if waiting for the inevitable is too much for them to bear.
“You are sure?” I hardly needed to ask.
She nodded slowly. “Tell our children I love them. And promise me that before you join me, you will make things right with God and with Catherine. She must know what you did and that you are sorry.”
She felt my hesitancy and squeezed my fingers again. “I hurt too much to live,” she continued, “but I’m terrified to leave in case I never see you again. You must give me your word.”
She stared at me with such expectation that I knew I couldn’t make my last promise to her a lie.
“You have my word,” I replied.
The corners of her darkened lips rose very slightly before her eyes closed one last time.
*
My legs were heavy as I walked from Luciana’s bed towards the medicine trolley in the bathroom. My hands shook as I followed her nurse’s instructions on how to prep a syringe.
Then I drew triple the required amount of morphine from the vial and went back to her. It took all the courage left in my heart to place the needle tip into a near invisible vein in her forearm. Then I reluctantly pushed the plunger until the glass barrel drained.
In less than a minute, her agony made way for sweet relief.
As she lay before me, I climbed onto our bed, placed my head on her chest and listened to the ever-quieting sound of her heartbeat. Its gentle, diminishing rhythm eased me to sleep where I dreamt of the day my own would do the same.
When I awoke, I was alone in the world again.
***
Today, 6.40pm
It was the first time in twenty-five years either of them had a true understanding of the other’s suffering.
Being with Luciana at her worst allowed him a much clearer impression of what Catherine had been though when she was sick. Maybe God’s wrath hadn’t only been directed at him, but at all those he’d touched too. He regretted she’d not had a soul mate to take care of her. She’d had the support of their children, but if he and she were anything alike, she’d have shielded them from the worst of it and carried her pain alone as best she could.