The Art of Starting Over

Chapter 19 - Stupor

I have cancer.

I have cancer.

I have cancer.

I kept hearing it. Over and over and over. Resounding. Continuous. Noxious.

Sometimes I heard it in Millie's voice, sometimes in my mother's. But it was all I had been hearing for the past two days.

I have cancer.

I was already losing track. I wasn't living so much as existing, drifting from one moment to another, barely able to distinguish between memories and reality. My past had come back and moulded itself into my present in the cruellest of ways.

I had thought it was over. That was the one thing that had consoled me after my mother left. It was over. It was finally over. No more fighting. No more cancer.

I was wrong.

I couldn't believe I was back at the start of this horrendous waiting game.

I kept thinking of her. My mother's face had been calm and attentive as she said, "The results are out. It's not good."

We had sat together in our grey and purple living room. She had held my hands, just like Millie had. She had waited for me to fall apart, careful, ready to put me back together, but I hadn't. I couldn't, because I hadn't known what cancer meant. But I had so many questions.

Will you need chemo? Will your hair fall out? Will it grow back if it does? Where is it? What is it? When will it go away?

My fourteen-year-old self hadn't been able to grasp what those three words meant or how life-changing they would be. I couldn't fathom how it would not be okay, even though my mother had said over and over that it would. How she couldn't fight it and she wouldn't get through it despite all her promises.

But when Millie had said those exact same words, I didn't have any questions. My brain hadn't had room for questions because it already had all the answers.

I have cancer.

I knew exactly what that meant now. I knew what it was and how it would turn our lives upside down, inside out. I knew that it would not go away and that we would not be okay. I knew how hard and painful it was, and I knew exactly how bad taking the treatment would be. I knew that even though she would fight very hard—because that was what Millie did, she fought—she might not make it, and there was nothing she could do about it. There was nothing I could do about it.

And what left room for little else in my brain, in my lungs, was the crushing pain and the emptiness I knew I would feel when it was over.

"I'm sorry, can you tell me where the toner is?"

What?

I struggled to focus on the hazy silhouette in front of me until a very tall, very pretty woman with long brown hair and a slightly irritated expression materialised. Pop music exploded in my ears as though somebody had just unmuted the radio. A sharp pain shot through my right ring finger and, looking at my hand, I realised I was bleeding. I had been biting my nails again.

I looked around and remembered I was at work. I quickly hid my hand behind my back.

"I'm sorry. What did you say?" I asked the pretty lady.

"Where are the toners?" she repeated, a little too slowly and a little too loudly.

"They're right here by the moisturisers, Miss," Sandra replied, rushing over to save the day again.

I lowered my eyes to the floor, vaguely embarrassed that this was the third time it had happened today.

"What is wrong with you?" Sandra hissed, pulling me to the side. "You have been completely out of it. I know something happened between you and Sosa, but whatever it is, snap out of it! I'm not going to keep picking up your slack. Even if you are The Boss's new pet."