"If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make."
― Douglas Adams
:October 16, 2020:
Ronnie is painfully used to the blue, cold glow of fluorescent lighting. It's been a pretty much constant part of her life ever since she was four and she'd been rushed to hospital with what her GP (admittedly, an idiot) thought was mono but had then turned out to be run-of-the-mill bout of angina. She was five when Chloe was born and she sat in the waiting room with her Dad, who told her stories about flying piglets and chicken with teeth. She was fourteen when Chloe got pneumonia and she had to sit by her bedside and hold her hand while their mum fed her soup. She was eighteen when, during her orientation week at university, her tutor had taken her group to hospital and blatantly told them: "This is where you'll feel like you want to slit your own wrists on a day to day basis. Get used to that feeling now, because it doesn't go away. Ever."
He was right.
She was 22 when her Dad died, she was 24 when she delivered her first baby, she was 26 when Chloe got her first seizure, she was 30 when she nearly got attacked by an angry, desperate father in the bathroom of Glasgow Infirmary, she was 36 when she lost her first patient.
It's like her whole life is a series of waiting, crying and hurting under fluorescent lights.
She's now 46 and it's the first time she's been diagnosed with breast cancer.
It's like the worst kind of deja-vu. She's seen millions of papers with results just like these, she's seen the faces of women when she told them the news, she's given her shoulder to be cried on, but now it's happening to her and she can't quite process it, not yet.
She doesn't even have the simple comfort of a shoulder.
Ronnie went to a private oncology clinic instead of Abbott. She doesn't trust Michelle not to guilt her into doing something stupid - like telling Prince about it before she's had time to process it. If she ever does.
Oncology clinics, they're busy places - understaffed and underpaid, one nurse does the job for seven. Ronnie knows. Now she's on the other side, stuck in this sea of people, drowning, feeling completely, utterly alone.
She reads over the sheet of paper again. You can't make up numbers. You can't misread them. They either are or they aren't. And these very definitely are.
Ronnie can't keep her eyes open anymore, it feels like the cold light is pushing skewers into her eyeballs. Vision blurred, she stuffs the papers in her bag and wills herself to get up but it doesn't work. It's like she's welded onto this uncomfortable chair, as if her body hasn't betrayed her enough today.
She's suddenly overwhelmed with an intense and burning anger, a why now anger, a why me anger.
Why anyone?
Unable to contain it, she shrinks even tighter into herself, covering her face with her hands. She needs to get a grip. She's got a preschooler waiting for her Mommy to pick her up, she's got a hyperactive toddler who's most likely tried to dress the cat up in one of her dresses (again) waiting at home, she's got a husband, who will kiss her and see her face worry and read her like an open book.
But she can't. This once, she can't get a grip, and it's scary and new and she hates it.
It's Prince, really, him and his way to unfurl her just with a look, with a wobble of his bottom lip, with a gentle touch. Even after all these years, she's not even slightly immune to it and it makes her feel weak. It's not something she's used to.
