EPISODE 5 - THE BIG C

I couldn’t face spending the night alone. I couldn’t face spending any nights alone but when you’re single in the big city, you don’t really have a choice —people have shit to do. No one can simply drop whatever they’re doing and come hold your hand because you have a tumour. They have work in the morning.

Luckily, Chaos was able to spend the previous night with me. Chaos is an acclaimed novelist who doesn’t have to bend herself to a 9 to 5. Though she’s forever talking on the phone about deadlines or dealing with her publisher, agent, proofreader and fellow writers in crisis, she still gets to make her own kind of music, sing her own special song. Chaos is in her late—very late—thirties but much like everyone else in her generation, she looks ten years younger. She dresses like a German DJ and has a real penchant for animal prints. A penchant she’s hung onto since we met in the late—very late—2000s. Then she was an aspiring writer going to university and honing her craft, and I was a lowly English teacher on a part-time contract trying to make ends meet. She rented a flat in the city centre, a flat I fell in love with the minute I stepped inside. It had three double French doors opening onto tiny balconies, the living room had one bright orange accent wall and the place just… vibed. You could sit on beat-up sofa cushions, found God knows where, and lean against the rusted railing of the balcony, beneath you the city never ceased and, on a lucky day, you could hail a cute guy and convince him to come up.

“I’m in love,” I said to her probably fifteen seconds after we had met. “When can I move in?”

“And your name is?”

“Sorry, I got carried away. This flat is so awesome. How much is the rent?”

“And, once again, your name is?” She was clearly amused.

She left the flat to me when she moved away.

That night, she held me as I cried myself to catatonia. There is a kind of crying that you only see at Italian funerals where professional mourners in black lace veils throw themselves at a coffin while the entire village sobs in unison. This ritual weeping of chest beating and calling out the deceased’s name always felt a bit much —and I’m the one saying that. They’re putting on a show, it’s cathartic —I get it. Yet this kind of torment, the kind where you feel like your soul being ripped from your body, becomes frightening when no one is watching. It felt like I wasn’t the one crying, my body had a will of its own. It was exorcising the agony. My eyes would suddenly tear up manically, almost possessed; my hands would shake and in the pit of my stomach there was a weight dragging me all the way down to hell. My body was a prison trying to escape itself. Inside of me were rats nibbling at my bones. There was no escaping that.

That’s how I felt, every time I remembered. That’s the thing with pain, it doesn’t let you get used to it. It slips away as you bite into a piece of cake or as someone kisses you. It allows you to take a breath, to regain control of the tremors. A TV show, a few pages of a book, a good meal, a friend making you laugh and you forget. It never lasts long. Blissful forgetfulness is a privilege I no longer hold. The pain, the grief, the anger, the unfairness of it all vomits out of me when I least expect it.

“Take a breath. I’m not going to tell you it’s going to be ok because I don’t want you to bite my head off but we do not know yet. That’s what the biopsy is for, so that we can know. A tumour doesn’t have to mean cancer.” As she spoke, I stared at her in disbelief.

What did she say? Did she say cancer? What the fuck is she talking about?

“You’re looking at me like I just punched a puppy. What’s going through your mind?”

“You said cancer.” I had stopped crying. “Why did you say cancer? I have a tumour.”

“That’s what having a tumour means babes! A tumour is cancer.” She looked dumbfounded.

“I… I never linked the two together. I just assumed a tumour was something else.”

“What did you think it meant?”

“I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. Until about a week ago I never gave any of this any thought. Have you?”

“No, I haven’t. I don’t think anybody does unless they have to.”

As we lay side by side on my bed, I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t think she did either. I stared at the dark. I wanted to be held. I wanted my husband to be there. I wanted him to tell me we were going to fight this together. It had been nine months since he left. I never felt like I needed him more.

I finally drifted into sleep.

The next morning, I found Chaos asleep on the sofa.

“Morning,” I whispered.

“I’m not asleep. I just like keeping my eyes closed.”

“What are you doing on the sofa?”

“I couldn’t sleep so I decided to write some and fell asleep in the middle of a paragraph.”

“Want some coffee?”

“Got any green tea?”

We drank in silence, looking at the blueness of the sky. ‘There would be no more snow,’ I thought. I had seen the last of it.

“I have a lot to do today. Are you gonna be ok?”

“Go, fly! Live your incredible life and don’t you worry about queer old me.”

“You can call me anytime, ok?”