Cancer.
That's a word no one ever wants to hear. It's a word that you never seen coming, no matter how prepared you may be. Even if it's just in the realm of speculation, you don't want to hear it uttered. Why would you? It could bring everything crashing down around you.
I know that they're better at curing it these days. So many adverts on the television, leaflets in the doctor's surgery, positive true stories on blogs on the internet. They tell you to catch it early and there's a higher chance of everything going to plan. That even if you suspect the slightest hint of something deemed cancerous, that you need to go to the doctors. I know we did that. And I know they're going to run tests. I know all of this.
Everything in my body tells me to panic. To take this whole thing seriously. Think of the worst case scenario, what life would be like if this were to be real. If the words that leave the doctors lips after running the tests were to be the words I fear so much. What would I do? What would we do?
But I can't. I'm just too positive for my own good. This couldn't possibly happen to us. We aren't going to be that couple you read about that have to cope with something like this. We won't have to call our friends, our family and loved ones, and tell them the words that we didn't want to hear in the first place. Why would we? She hasn't got cancer.
I don't care what anyone says. Clara hasn't got cancer. This is all just some big misunderstanding. Some blip in the results. You hear about it all the time. Specialist make mistakes all the time. You think you've got cancer, tell all your friends and family, lots of tears and plans made. And then you get a phone call with a very apologetic person telling you that it was all a mishap in the results. That it was someone else's blood test. Someone else's bone marrow results. Someone else's chart.
This is what has happened to Clara. They got her name mixed up. It wasn't her results. So when we receive today's results in however long it will take to come back, then we'll look back at this and laugh. 'Remember the day we thought you had cancer?' That's what we'll say. And no one will ever have to know.
Clara isn't so optimistic. She won't listen to my logic. She won't listen to anything I have to say, in fact. She's distant and cold, something that I've never expected from her. I understand that she's afraid. I would be too in her shoes. But this isn't something we need to worry about, because it isn't true. She hasn't got cancer. Why worry about something that isn't there?
Sat here in the waiting room is unlike the last time we were here. Pregnancy scare. I say scare. We weren't scared. We were slightly excited at the concept. We've never really discussed having children, seeing as we're nowhere near the stage of marriage yet. Marriage and children come hand in hand, after all. But when a drunken night resulted in a lack of usual precautions, we thought it would be in everybody's best interested to have her checked out.
I'm not sure if I would be ready to be a father. I lost mine recently, and that was a lot to handle. Stomach aneurysm. Fucking horrendous. I wasn't even given the chance to say goodbye. A quick phonecall on February fourteenth is all I got to let me know that he was even ill. And the next thing I knew, he was gone. Just a memory in my mind and an empty shell here in the real world.
That's a scary concept, isn't it? To think that someone so dear to you can be ripped away in the blink of an eye. That someone who brought you into this world is no longer there to hear your whining. The one you look up to is now simply an echo. Your guiding light has dimmed, only glowing in your heart at the thought of his past life. And for some reason, that gives me a slice of doubt in the idea of ever becoming a parent. I wouldn't want to be torn from my child's life before the good Lord intended. Death is not something you play with. And certainly not something I'm willing to risk parenthood just now. Not whilst the memory is still raw.
