Chapter Forty-One

I can’t eat. Or talk. I barely breathe. When I move, it hurts. Not physically; the pain medication takes care of that. But every movement is a reminder that I am still alive, and he has gone.

My family and friends are worried. They come and they gather around my hospital bed and they beg, plead, and cajole me to take “just one mouthful.” But what is the point of food if not to sustain life? And I don’t want to sustain mine. Even if I did, the cancer has taken that decision away from me. I have no sense of control over anything, except this. So I don’t eat.

The doctor puts on a stern voice and tells me I will be fed through a tube if I don’t force myself to eat the food the lady in a blue smock plonks on my tray while he is there at dinnertime on the second day.

“I know it’s not the most appetizing food in the world,” he says, poking at the brown stew on a plate, with unidentified meat and packet mashed potato that has gone hard around the edges. “But it is food nevertheless.”

“That’s the biggest understatement, and overstatement, that I’ve ever heard,” Amanda mutters. “You can’t call that food. I wouldn’t feed that to a dog.”

I nibble enough to keep them happy and the tube away. They try to tempt me with takeaways. French fries, pies, pizza. One night Kate brings Thai, and then sits there bewildered while I cry and wail and throw the rice and curry onto the floor.

“I thought she liked Thai?” she mutters to my mother as they mop it up with paper towels.

“It…was…our…last…meal…together,” I howl.

All the resolve and determination I had when I told James to leave promptly dissolved the next morning. I was wrong, I needed him. I was trying to spare him from the pain of watching me die, but I miss him too much, and I am too scared and selfish. I call him. I call him over and over and over, but every time his phone goes straight to voicemail. I don’t leave messages because I don’t know what to say. I just know I need him.

When he doesn’t return my calls and doesn’t come back to the hospital, I realize that, unlike me, he has not changed his mind. I go numb. My parents, Kate, and Amanda are quite rightfully confused as to why James has disappeared. I can’t bring myself to explain, so I say he has gone out of town for work. They know I am lying. I do a bad job of hiding it.

I can do nothing apart from lie on my hospital bed and look out of the window. With James gone and the wedding canceled, I have nothing to look forward to.

Occasionally, I am wheeled from the room for scans. I see no point in them now but lack the energy to protest. They won’t change the outcome. I barely listen when they rattle off results, treatment plans. None of it matters anymore. I have fought, long and hard, but now I am tired.