The Tumours Made Me Interesting (5 page)

I remembered my stool-top cancer speech and I felt anvils of shame flatten me. I remembered tent girl coming to my aide and wiping the puke from my face. That means… if she did have sex with me, it was out of sympathy. This possibility sat very poorly, and I began instinctively scrubbing at my body with a cracked bar of soap. It wasn’t right. I’d used my cancer like a divorced man uses his children to attract women. I’d become somewhat desirable by virtue of my impending demise. I wanted to throw up again but my stomach was too empty to wretch up anything other than foam. I needed to lie down. I needed to go to sleep and bypass waking up. All of a sudden, my death couldn’t come too soon.

4.

B
ed was really kind to me, hugging my body in all the right places and cocooning me from the world in general. This made the shrill ring of my phone all the more frustrating. I ignored it at first, adamant that whoever was trying to destroy my warm bliss would lose the fight. I remained still with my eyes stubbornly closed for what must have been 15 minutes. Then I started counting the incessant rings. 90 minutes and over 500 rings later, I gave up. I caught a glance at my bedside clock. It was 2pm and it was a work day. This sped my pace dramatically. I couldn’t believe I’d allowed work to slip my mind. I had only ever been late for work once and that was because my home was invaded by Spaniards. This was a case of getting shitfaced and sleeping in. This wasn’t on. I dived for the phone (although, after nearly two hours of ringing, the last minute dash seemed inappropriate). I snatched the receiver and held it nervously against my ear. It wasn’t an angry supervisor like I expected. Instead my ears were being caressed by a gentle, measured female voice.

“Hello, may I speak with Bruce Miles please?” asked the voice.

“This is him.” My voice sounded like it was broadcast from ham radio, fighting its way through a hangover static.

“Hi, Bruce. My name is Fiona Sinclair and I’m a counselor calling from the Bad Bowel Institute. I understand you recently received some very difficult news.”

“Umm… Yeah, I guess…” I might have hung up right then if her voice hadn’t been so soothing. Why did she have my number and what business was it of hers?

“I’d like to meet up with you, Bruce, and discuss your options.”

“Options?” I scoffed. “I was led to believe I didn’t really have any.”

“We all have options, Bruce. We can investigate the potential for treatment or at the very least, I can help prepare you.”

“Prepare me for death?”

“That’s right,” she responded. Her voice maintained the calm.

“How did you get this number?”

“Your GP. He was concerned about you.”

I laughed so hard that the mouthpiece became coated with saliva. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy? The doctor I saw was a bit of a bastard.”

“Look, Bruce, I’d love for us to meet tomorrow morning and have a chat. You don’t have to go through this alone. There is help out there.”

I thought back to the night before. Me on the stool, regaling a room of strangers with my tales of woe. I’d had enough of cancer talk. All I wanted to do was live my life as normal until my body gave out. When the time came, I’d hide away in my bedroom with a boxset of
Jem
cartoons and fade out. What else was I going to do? I wasn’t so naïve that I believed there was genuine hope for me. Cancer doesn’t just happen. It grows inside you. When it first strikes, it does so without warning and remains within you as a clandestine intruder, sucking away your life in order to make it strong. I wasn’t coming out of this illness. I had no doubt it would take me as it had taken so many others before.

“It’s a very nice offer but I’ll have to pass,” I said with determination.

Before she could get another suspiciously soothing word in, I slammed the phone down. The last thing I needed was to sit down and discuss the tumours in my arse with another stranger, no matter how soothing her voice was. Maybe meeting up with this Fiona woman wouldn’t result in an attack of invasive fingers, but it would still be invasive, and that’s exactly what I didn’t want.

I was in a mild panic. It was nearing 4pm and I still wasn’t at work. I had been pacing my apartment compulsively until a short knock on the door broke my trance. I approached my door like it was a sleeping guard at the entrance of a stronghold. I flung it open in one swift motion then realised I was still naked. I instinctively fell to my knees and found a bouquet of bark leaning against the entryway. I snatched it up and commando rolled back inside, knocking awkwardly into a floor lamp and cringing as it began to fall. As it did, it struck the top of my head. I could feel the developing bump inflate. I allowed the pain to subside and cast my attention toward the bark bouquet. An envelope was attached stating that it was ‘a bouquet of bark’. There was a letter inside from my supervisor, Kerry. It read:

Bruce,

We all chipped in and got you bark.

I couldn’t be sorrier about the cancer if I tried (and I have).

Jerry wrote a song about you but it’s not very good. It’s called ‘Bruce’s Triumph’.

Take all the time you need unless you need more than the allotted sick leave allowance specifies. If this occurs, I’ll submit an E95 leave extension request on your behalf.

We’ve found a trio of meerkats that are happy to do your job until you return.

Warmest everything,

Kerry Cartwright-Mueller

I was torn between anger toward Jerry for spilling the beans and elation at the feeling of freedom my absolution from work inspired. I’d never been given the green light to stay at home before. Once I had a five day weekend but that was only due to a front door malfunction at work. If my hangover hadn’t been so severe, I may have attempted a little jig. But then there was that part of me that couldn’t help but conjure absurd scenarios relating to office gossip about my bleeding arse. I imagined contorted, laughing faces, bowel cancer impersonations, but maybe worst of all, the feeling that half my co-workers were asking the inevitable question,
who the hell’s Bruce?
I wondered how much the bark bouquet had cost and what the average contribution per employee was. I wondered how fond of the meerkats my coworkers would become. I wondered if I’d ever live long enough to find out.

I had an urge to go back to the tent-themed bar and find the tent girl who quite possibly fucked me. Shame at my drunken behaviour prevented this urge from sprouting. Instead I recalled the ambiguous nipple that my mouth had so gratefully sucked upon. I hoped like hell it was hers. The phone rang again. I picked it up straight away.

“Tent girl?” I asked.

“I urge you to reconsider, Bruce. We should talk.”

It was that Fiona woman again. She was a persistent sort. “I don’t think there’s anything to talk about,” I said honestly.

“That’s where you’re wrong. If you’d just give me ten minutes of your time. It won’t cost you a cent.”

“If I accept, will you stop calling me?”

“Of course I will.”

“Okay, fine. Whatever you want.”

“Fantastic! Thank you, Bruce. I can’t stress enough how much you stand to gain from this.”

I wrote down all the details and agreed to meet her the next morning. I wasn’t going to do it of course, but it got her off my back. I had become the centre of morbid attention and although it was exhausting, I kind of liked it. I wondered what Fiona meant when she said I stood to gain from meeting her. It was probably just some manipulative way to trick the dying into adhering to mandated process.

It wasn’t until the third time I caught myself staring at Fiona’s details that I knew I was falling victim to the insincere promise it provided. A reality wherein these details would lead to an eventual cure wasn’t something I could believe in. Determined to retain freewill, I scrunched the paper into a ball and tried to swallow it. It lodged in my throat like smoker’s phlegm and I began choking violently. I slammed myself back-first into the wall, improvising what I understood the Heimlich maneuver to be. Three fruitless slams later and I’d crashed right through the wall into the neighbouring apartment.

Assuming I was a particularly unsubtle burglar, the man of the house, Vince Stotson came down on my chest with a golf club. The ball of poorly swallowed paper flew from my mouth and clung to their ceiling. I was naked, covered in rubble and clutching my chest in agony.

With his adrenaline subsiding, Vince attained enough lucidity to realise it was merely his quiet neighbour writhing on his floor.

“Holy flip, it’s you, Bruce!” he said, coming to my aide. “What did you come through the wall for? It’s not a particularly sensible way to enter a domicile”

“Accident,” I wheezed. “Very… sorry… to have… disturbed you…”

“Rhonda!” yelled Vince. “We got ourselves a situation here. We’re gonna need bandages and some Vaseline.”

My eyes fluttered open with the speed of hummingbird wings. Vince and Rhonda had their faces uncomfortably close to my own. I was wrapped in a blanket and contorted on their couch, which was far too small to accommodate a full-grown man at full stretch.

“Two questions,” said Vince while holding up three fingers.

I gave a slight nod.

“Why are you naked and why did you break the wall? We’re not angry, mind. We’re just intrigued. This isn’t something one expects to experience on any given day.”

“Umm…”

I was a mess of verbal stasis. Sub primal sounds escaped my mouth that couldn’t be attributed to any language.

“Oh, leave him alone, Vince,” said Rhonda. “We’re terribly sorry about the little cancer situation.”

I stared hard at the two of them. It was only now that I noticed the leather bondage gear they were wearing. In my opinion, they were both a little too overweight to pull it off. Rhonda was perhaps the shortest woman I had ever seen and Vince was quite possibly the tallest. The extremity of their physical opposition somehow made them a perfect couple in my eyes. Like most of my neighbours, I hadn’t talked to the Stotson’s much. Occasionally I’d bump into Vince during a rooftop walk and we’d discuss the weather or something equally as superficial. Truth be told, I quite liked these people. If I were a more socially apt person, I’d have no problem envisioning a friendship between us. Although, it seemed reasonable to suspect that my positive feelings toward the Stotson’s had more to do with their propensity toward leaving me alone than anything else. Right now though, I was dumbfounded that they somehow knew of my cancer.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“It was on the news,” replied Rhonda.

“The news?”

Vince started to chuckle. “Yes, it’s a new preventative measure apparently. They figure that they’ll publicly shame the cancer. The logic goes that if the news networks spend ten minutes each night naming cancer sufferers, the cancer will feel so ashamed and embarrassed that it will cease attacking people such as your good self. There was some massive write-up about it in yesterday’s paper. The results of a trial were published and even I, cynical as I am, had to admit that the findings were very convincing. They chose five volunteers, all of whom were definitely not suffering from cancer and for three weeks they were subjected to a barrage of reports about new cancer diagnoses. Guess what? At the end of the three weeks, only
two
of them had developed cancer. That’s less than half!”

“Your cancer was mentioned right toward the start,” interjected Rhonda. “Vince and I were aghast at the horrible news. At the same time, we couldn’t help feeling a bit star struck. And to attack your backside like that! Nasty. Simply nasty.”

I was immediately infuriated. I didn’t give those fucks permission to publicly broadcast my illness. Whatever happened to patient confidentiality? How many people now knew? The indignity of it all stole my breath. Then it hit me like an abusive father – what if my mother had been watching? Since confirmation of the cancer, I hadn’t even contemplated how I was going to tell her. She was the only person who would actually care. My mother was someone who, without any shadow of doubt, loved me and cared about my wellbeing. The news would be crushing and the thought of her finding out via the repulsive, fake smiles of plastic news presenters enraged me. The throbbing pain in my golf club-beaten chest dissipated, the hangover fog whistled out of my ears. I was lucid – perhaps for the first time in weeks. It was enough to deal with the cancer but to have to deal with this shit too? It was too much. If I was going to die, couldn’t I at least enjoy a modicum of privacy?