Katy Carter Wants a Hero (16 page)

At three thirty, Year 11 thundered out of my room and I was left to restore order to a scene that equalled Beirut on a bad day. Posters flapped sadly from the wall, at least two chairs had a drunken list and copies of
Macbeth
were scattered across the tables. Ollie, who’d come in to tempt me out for a quick smoke, soon found himself fetching tissues and chocolate.

‘You went through all that on your own?’ he asked, breaking off a chunk of Galaxy and shoving it into my mouth. ‘Didn’t you think to call somebody?’

I refrained from mentioning James and Alice. Ollie was likely to go round and smack him.

‘Nobody else to take.’

‘What about me? I’d have come with you. Anyway, what did the doctor say?’

‘He says it’s probably fine,’ I said. ‘I’ve got all these leaflets saying lumps are really common. Nine out of ten are benign, apparently. But what if I’m unlucky? What if—’

‘Don’t even go there!’ Ollie said, folding me into a big bear hug right there and then in the middle of my classroom. Two passing Year 11 students whistled and one called, ‘Sir fancies you, miss!’

‘There goes your street cred.’ I pulled away and wiped my eyes on the back of my hand. ‘And Miss White in the Drama Department will be heartbroken.’

Poor Ellie White has fancied Ollie since the start of term. She always tries to sit next to him at staff meetings and has even taken up early-morning swimming in the hope that he’ll notice her. She really must have it bad. Unusually for Ol, though, he hasn’t bothered to return the smouldering looks and invitations to accompany her on school trips. It’s most out of character. He must be really into Nina.

‘I can handle it,’ said Ollie. ‘Anyway, Ellie really isn’t my type.’

‘Why not?’ I asked in mock amazement. ‘She breathes!’

He took my hand and squeezed it. ‘Quit the jokes and be serious for a minute. What happens now?’

I told him about the Daffodil Unit and the fourteen-day wait. I didn’t need to tell him how I felt about that, because Ollie knows me well enough to realise that I’ll be practically in orbit by then.

‘I can’t go private,’ I said when he suggested this. ‘It costs a fortune. I looked on the internet and believe me, I’d need to either rob a bank or go on the game to afford it. Private care costs serious money, Ollie. At least a hundred quid just to see the consultant, and the tests would be really expensive. It’s over two hundred pounds for a blood test.’

‘But for your peace of mind it would be worth every penny.’

I think about all the bank statements sitting unopened under the sink in James’s flat. If it wasn’t for the annoying minus sign, my account would have been doing well, ‘It’s a lovely idea,’ I agreed. ‘But it’s not an option. There’s no point even thinking about it. I’ll just have to wait two weeks. Everyone else does.’

‘It’s disgraceful!’ Ollie raged, really angry on my behalf. ‘How can you possibly get on with your life if that’s hanging over you for two weeks? It’s insane.’

Auntie Jewell had thought the same when I’d phoned her. I’d tried to get hold of my mum, hoping she could swing a few crystals or beam some white light in my direction or something, but she’d gone on a spiritual retreat to get in touch with her guardian angel.

I just hoped she bumps into mine.

I’d called Jewell while I walked from the doctor’s back to school and blurted out my news.

‘Darling,’ Jewell had gasped, and I could picture her, long grey hair drawn back from her lined face, one bony hand pressed against her chest. ‘That’s the most ghastly news. My poor girl! How ever will you bear the not knowing? It would drive me simply wild.’

I love Jewell to bits, but when God gave out empathy she was right at the back of the queue. One better than Mads, I suppose, who didn’t bother turning up at all.

‘My darling, I simply can’t bear it for you. It’s too awful. I could cry. I really could.’

I haven’t told many people about my lump, but the way they react tells you loads about
them
. Ollie, for example, has been amazing. He’s listened, made me fantastic meals, mopped me up when I’ve cried, rented chick flicks and not moaned, allowed me to drive the Sky TV… the list just goes on and on. Mads cried and said that she’d get Richard to put me on the prayer list, Jewell was dramatic but positive (‘Who needs breasts anyway, darling? Nasty things! Get in the way of trampolining!’) and Frankie refused to even talk about the C word. He was quite simply terrified.

I shift on the sofa and wince at the sharp stab of pain in my breast. I can’t wear a bra, a nightmare in itself, because I have two stitches on the underside of my breast and an enormous pad of wadding covering them. Honestly, I look ridiculous, like I’ve borrowed one of Jordan’s boobs.

Still, I’m not complaining. I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be happy to feel sore and bruised, but life is full of surprises. Like on Tuesday evening, when I took a phone call from a Mr Worthington, consultant in oncology at the Nuffield, to tell me he’d had a cancellation on Wednesday morning. When I tried to explain I was an NHS patient, he calmly told me that all my medical costs were being taken care of and that the referral had already been made.

Good old Jewell. She really is my fairy godmother. I make a mental note to call her again to say thanks, although that doesn’t even start to describe how grateful I am. She’s not answered her phone for the last two days and I’m bursting to thank her. It’s truly the kindest thing that anyone has ever done for me. I mean, the lump is still there and it’s a hideous experience, but at least it won’t drag on for weeks.

Maybe I do have a guardian angel after all.

That’s what I told Ollie, that Jewell must have paid for the private appointment and that I owed her the most enormous favour. Ollie said that anyone who loved me would have done it in a heartbeat, which was kind but blatantly untrue. My parents love me, but apart from being mad they are totally broke, and as for James… well, the less said about him the better.

The phone is still silent. I wander into the kitchen and fill the kettle, absent-mindedly munch on a fistful of peanuts and chuck some moulding veggies into the bin. Ollie’s been so kind, the least I can do is muck out the kitchen for him. He even came to the hospital with me when I had my core biopsy, which is way beyond the call of friendship.

That was fun. Not. Next time I’ll opt for something less painful, like root canal surgery without anaesthetic, for instance, although hopefully there won’t be a next time. I pause in my tea-making, struck by the hideous thought that there might be a whole host of other unpleasant medical experiences to come if I’m really unlucky. I’m the first to admit that I’m a big coward when it comes to pain. Heaven help me if I ever give birth; I’ll probably need a general anaesthetic. I passed out when I had my ears pierced!

Ollie knows all this, which is why he insisted on coming with me to the Nuffield. Just as well really, because I’d been up all night surfing the internet and growing more agitated with each website I visited, until by the time dawn arrived I was a ginger jelly. Without Ol to make me breakfast and get me there, I’d probably still be going around and around on the Circle Line, trying to pluck up the courage to go to the hospital.

I mash my tea bag and glance at the clock. It’s two thirty now. Surely the lab tests are all finished and my results are through? My pulse is racing and I’m so awash with adrenalin that my hands are shaking. Well, either that or I’m suffering a caffeine overload.

‘Just bloody ring,’ I say to the phone.

The Nuffield’s oncology suite was all sunny yellows and swirly pastel curtains, an abrupt burst of colour at the end of a pewter-grey corridor. Once through the swing doors and past reception, all standard-issue hospital furniture was banished, and instead a collection of women sat on squashy sofas, sipping coffee and flicking through glossy magazines, which their gazes slid over like ice. A coffee percolator pop-popped to itself in the corner of the waiting room, but apart from that all was still and reverential hush. It was like being in church, and I half expected Richard Lomax to glide past in a swirl of robes and incense.

Ollie and I squeezed on to a soft peach sofa and prepared to wait. Nurses walked past clutching fat folders of notes, and occasionally doctors strolled by, identifiable only by the stethoscopes slung casually round their necks. Some people looked healthy, others were thin and wan. Partners sat there too in support, holding their loved one’s hand or murmuring soothing words in a desperate attempt to ease the papable air of tension.

Ollie thumbed through a copy of
Hello
!. Pearly-toothed celebrities with smug smiles beamed out from their immaculate sitting rooms. Envy me! their expressions said, and at that precise moment I did. But then again, I envied anyone who wasn’t waiting in this eerily still room.

‘Katy Carter?’ A wizened woman appeared at my shoulder. She had the bright, intelligent gaze of Mrs Tiggywinkle. ‘I’m Dr Morris. I’ll be doing your examination today.’

What was I supposed to say to that? Oh goody? She made it sound like I was going for a facial.

‘If you’d like to follow me,’ she said, ‘we can make a start.’

Abruptly every fibre of my being wanted to run; a novel experience for a girl whose idea of a healthy lifestyle is eating a chocolate orange.

‘Your husband can come too,’ Dr Morris added, turning to smile encouragingly at Ollie. ‘That’s perfectly fine.’

She thought Ollie and I were together! How funny was that? Ollie was on his feet and practically bounding into the consulting room. His breast obsession is getting out of control, I thought grimly.

‘He’s not my husband,’ I said, and my voice sounded shrill as it scraped the silence. ‘He’s just a friend.’ No way was I taking my kit off in front of him.

‘I’ll wait then,’ said Ollie.

‘Go and get a bun or something.’ I tried to sound bright and cheery, but sounded instead like someone on the verge of hysteria. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘I’ll wait here,’ said Ollie, in the tone of voice he normally uses with stroppy adolescents. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

As I entered the consulting room and lay back on the bed, I felt dangerously close to tears. Actually, I’d have liked nothing more than for Ollie to come in with me, hold my hand and tell me silly stories to take my mind off it all, but that was a boyfriend’s job, right? Watching me being cut open was too much to ask of him; it didn’t feel right to expect it. To even want it moved our friendship into a really weird space.

Everything in my life was shifting and changing, solid ground was turning into quicksand, and I didn’t like it one bit.

‘Lie back on the couch,’ said Dr Morris, switching on what looked like a giant television. ‘Just slip off your bra and top.’

I did as I was told. Moments later, cold jelly was smeared across my breast and a nurse was dimming the lights. I half expected the Pearl and Dean music to begin.

‘This is the ultrasound,’ explained the doctor, running an instrument over my skin. ‘It allows us to see inside the breast and get an idea of exactly what we’re dealing with. There’s no point doing a mammogram in women your age because the breast tissue is too dense to see much.’

I looked at the screen, which resembled a snowstorm. All it needed was Santa and his elves.

‘There!’ said Dr Morris, when a dark patch appeared amid the wiggly grey lines. ‘That’s the lump.’

She moved the ultrasound a little. A frown crinkled her brow.

‘What is it?’ I asked. My pulse went up a gear.

‘It’s not a cyst, I’m afraid. It has a blood supply.’

It did? I sat up in panic. What was in there? Dracula?

‘Which means,’ Dr Morris continued, ‘that we’ll need to take a tissue sample so we can ascertain what the nature of this tumour is.’

‘Do you think it’s cancer?’ I whispered.

‘I really can’t tell you much just by looking at it.’ The lights went up again and the nurse rummaged in a cupboard. Rustling green plastic packages containing what looked horribly like needles were piled up by the sink. ‘Parts of it appear smooth, which could indicate a fibroadenoma. ’

I’d read those bloody leaflets so many times, I was now an expert. That was the benign fleshy tumour that grew from breast tissue. I’d stopped praying to win the lottery and was hoping I’d got one of those instead.

‘So it’s fifty-fifty,’ I said. ‘It could all be fine…’

‘Best to be sure,’ said the nurse, who was swabbing my breast. ‘Try not to worry.’

Yeah, right.

‘We’re going to numb your breast with some local anaesthetic.’ Dr Morris was busily filling a syringe. ‘Then I’ll make a small incision and collect the sample. You’ll hear a click, a bit like a staple gun, and that will mean that I’ve taken some cells.’

‘Are you all right with needles?’ asked the nurse, presumably because she’d seen the look of horror on my face.

What kind of question is that? Who enjoys needles? The thought of injections makes me all but pass out. I haven’t been to the dentist for years because I’m such a chicken. It’s like Stonehenge in my mouth.

‘Can’t you knock me out or something?’ I asked. Cold sweat started to break out between my shoulder blades. The idea of being conscious while she cut into me was hideous. I’d much rather snooze through it all.

‘Are you a bit squeamish?’

That was possibly the understatement of the decade. I faint at the sight of rare steak.

‘Just a bit,’ I said.

‘This procedure is unpleasant, but it won’t take long.’ Dr Morris tapped the syringe with her forefinger. ‘I’ll be as quick and as gentle as I can. Just lie on your left side and raise your right arm above your head.’

‘Are you OK?’ asked the nurse. ‘Do you want to hold my hand?’

I thought about this for a moment. I knew that it was pathetic, that compared to lots of other treatments that were probably going on in this very hospital at this very moment mine was fairly minor, but I was really scared. That needle was looking more like a harpoon by the second, and the long silver instrument that would collect the tissue wouldn’t have been out of place in a medieval torture chamber.