Everything Has Changed (On Hold)

CHAPTER 13: HOW FAR WE'VE COME

CHAPTER 13: HOW FAR WE’VE COME

“Get up, now! All of you! We are late.”

I wake up to Anne’s screaming. How lovely. Apparently we are late to some event that I don’t know of.

“We are going to miss the doctor’s appointment if you don’t hurry up and get down here!” Anne screeches again.

The doctors’ appointment, of course. How could I forget? Dressing without much thought, I end up in a t-shirt, floral printed leggings and green saltwater sandals. Then I remember I’m in England and I grab my baggiest hoodie.

Harry and Tess clearly didn’t know about the appointment as when I come down they are looking half asleep, dressed worse than me, and eating toast at the kitchen bench.

“So what’s this appointment thing?” I ask as I help myself to a piece of toast.

“Mum finds out whether or not the cancer has gone after her treatments.”  Harry says eyeing me, trying to figure out whether to be mean or nice.

“Wow, that’s exciting!” I say.

“I think mum’s nervous, she’s freaking out. I understand though, what would happen if it hasn’t gone? She will have to get more treatments and the likeliness of getting through another year would drop and she only just got both of you guys back!” Tessa says quietly.

“is she waiting in the car?”

“Yeah she is,” Harry speaks up, “Let’s go.”

*****

“You guys look atrocious, actually, it’s just Tessa and Harry that look bad, Grace I love those leggings on you!” Anne rambles as she drives.

“Eyes on the road please mum!” Tess yells.

“Pfft, if you insist…” Anne grumbles laughing at our shocked faces. “I was KIDDING!”

Harry starts doing this really loud laugh that sounds so ridiculous I start laughing as well. Soon Tessie joins in and we are all cackling at Anne who is grinning like crazy as she drives.

Anne just rolls her eyes, giggling, “Oh you three little laughers, you remind me of when I used to laugh with my brothers and sisters as kids. Then we grew up and nothing seemed to be worth of our laughter, sadly, the world is a sad place through grown up eyes.”

Anne sighs aloud as she pulls into the car-park. “I guess it’s time to face the music.”

*****

“You are her children yes?” A bald headed doctor with chubby arms and a beer gut comes out of the room Anne has been in for 20 minutes.

Harry speaks up for us all, he was the most composed. I have never been one that’s good under stress. “Yes, we are her kids, do you have good news for us?”

“I do, but first I would like to bring yous in and show you how far we’ve come since the start of Anne’s cancer journey.” He opens the door to the room where Anne is sitting in an armchair.

There are multiple x-rays on the light box and a projector is projecting onto the wall a graph with multiple numbers and figures, that I’m assuming have something to do with Anne’s treatment and recovery.

“So if we all take a seat for the moment, let’s look at this first bar on this graph; this was when Anne had her first test. She had positive results of the cancer, in her lungs of a low quantity. This was the x-ray we did at the same time as those tests. These spots here are the cancerous spots and they were quick weak but we needed to see if they were spreading, so a week later we took the same test again. This first bar here shows how much cancer there was, this bar shows hows concentrated the cancer was. This x-ray shows the spread, compared to previous one the cancer had nearly doubled in quantity. So we began treatments, this next set was after one week of treatment, then we proceeded to x-ray and record info every month of chemo. I am proud to say that this treatment was success. Your mum has fought hard and kicked that cancer in the butt, quite hard I must say! Though it’s over for now, I want you all to remember, it’s possible it comes back, but also for you kids, it’s in your genetics to be vulnerable to cancer, even your kids will have to get regular checks if you ever have kids, so just keep it in mind. Now please go out and celebrate, for this is a wonderful occasion, I will say.”

“Okay then,” Anne says her voice breaking; it must be hard for her. She had to endure the pain and the suffering and the uncertainty of life. While we just have to look at some pictures on a screen and some numbers, for Anne those numbers was everything, completely critical to her survival. It would never be hard for us to see these numbers, but Anne had to remember and these numbers showed how far she’s come in the past years.

“Let’s go kiddos, we’ve got a dinner to attend,”

*****

Once we had changed into appropriate clothes that actually matched and we didn’t look like hobos that had gotten dressed in the dark like we had this morning.

Tessa and I look quite incredible to be perfectly honest. Tessa was wearing a tight pink skirt, that looked amazing against her long legs, a low cut teal shirt with lots of tiny pink, green and purple flowers with a subtle ruffle around the neckline. She has these little silver strappy heals on.

I on the other hand am wearing my favourite skirt of the moment; it’s an off cream colour with large pastel pink flowers on it, over a white low cut top, with my tan belt and a dusty pink blazer. My bag is my favourite little purse, it’s dusty blue, and has a chain strap and the cutest detail on it.

Harry wears his usual pop star clothing, what a loser. He thinks he’s really cool with his tight jeans and some very posh dress shirt. He aggravates me, even with his clothing choices.

We rush out the door to a reservation that Anne made this morning.

*****

The dinner was spectacular. Well, food wise at least. Tessa was interesting as normal, Anne was nice as normal and Harry was being an attention hog, as normal.

What a pig. These little girls came up to him at one point during the dinner, and quietly asked him for a photo, bloody harry had to make it a big deal by announcing very loudly that he was in the middle of a family dinner but might as well have a photo with them now. What. A. Jerk.

It made the car trip quite interesting; Tessa was ignoring Harry completely and talking to me. Anne was shushing Harry every time he tried to talk to her while she was driving. Serves him right the little bastard.

I flick through my phone, seeing my friends photos on Instagram. I get a notification of the dreaded day, the horrific moment, the one of lifetime opportunity that I can’t pass down because I will get killed; Harry’s tour starts tomorrow.

Lovely.