Jess stared up at the ceiling. Haematology and Oncology. She rolled the words around her mouth. It didn’t sound awful, but she knew what it meant now. It meant cancer. It meant leukaemia. It meant tests. Many, many tests.
Jess watched as a young boy was pushed past her room in a wheelchair. He was bald and hooked up to a drip. She turned her head to look at the ceiling. It was safer, less frightening. She didn’t want to see bald kids. She didn’t want to hear the crying parents, the screaming children and the soothing nurses. She wanted to close the door, lock it and put ear plugs in to block out the noise. Her head ached.
How could your life change so much in just a week? She’d had millions of blood tests and then they said she needed blood transfusions ASAP. Apparently she was very low on red blood cells so they’d pumped her full of ‘good blood’. She felt cold and scared. The nurses covered her with warming blankets and Mum had held her hand.
As the week went on she had lots more tests – blood tests, bone-marrow aspirate, a lumbar puncture, chest X-rays – and there were lots of hushed conversations.
A few days ago, after yet another test, Jess had pretended to be asleep and listened as the doctor told Mum and Dad that she had a rare subtype of AML.
‘Acute myeloid leukaemia. We call it AML … high-risk category … based on cytogenetic and molecular features … unfortunate … chemotherapy … activating mutations … haematopoietic cell transplantation, more commonly known as bone-marrow transplant …’ Dr Kennedy spoke quietly and Jess strained to hear what he was saying and take it in.
She didn’t understand it all, but she heard Mum gasp and Dad say a really bad word. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands to stop herself crying. Chemotherapy? She knew that was bad. She’d seen the movie My Sister’s Keeper: the girl in it had chemotherapy and she was bald and sick and … God, it was so scary.
Why was this happening? How did she get it? Where did cancer come from? In the first few days Luke had kept telling her that she was ninety per cent okay, and so did Piper, but when they heard it was AML they stopped saying that.
Jess wasn’t supposed to Google anything. Mum and Dad had banned her from using the internet, but Jess knew from everyone’s reaction that AML was bad. She also knew that ‘acute’ was not good. She was terrified. She wanted to know but she didn’t want to know. She knew there was one person who would tell her straight. She texted Nathalie and asked her to come on Sunday night, when she hoped she could see her alone.
Bobby, who didn’t understand that AML was bad, just kept going on and on about the fact that it was great they didn’t live in Hungary. Granddad squeezed her hand, kissed her head and coughed loudly into his handkerchief.
Jess loved her family, but sometimes they were too much. Their worry sort of passed over into her and she felt a big weight on her chest. She preferred when it was just her and Mum, sitting quietly, watching movies, or when Mum read to her. That was when Jess felt safest.
When Dad came to see her in hospital it was always kind of stressful. He’d hug her really tightly and then he’d go out and shout at the nurses and doctors, telling them his daughter needed more attention. His phone would ring and beep all the time and he’d go in and out of the room to talk to work or to Jenny – he usually argued with her – and then he’d be back all stressed. When Dad came to visit, Mum usually left them alone. Jess would have preferred her to stay.
Dad would try to cheer her up by telling her stories about when he was a kid, the goals he’d scored and the ‘funny things’ he’d done in school. But Jess found it all kind of boring. She knew he was doing his best, but every time he left she always felt exhausted.
Tomorrow was D-Day. They’d put the Hickman line in yesterday and tomorrow she’d be starting chemotherapy. Dr Kennedy told her that the Hickman was ‘an intravenous line that facilitated drawing blood and administering medications, including chemo’. She had nodded as if she got it, then watched as they inserted it under the skin on her chest, and the attached tube went into a vein near her heart.
They had told her that getting it in wouldn’t hurt, but it did and it felt weird. Jess wanted to pull it out. It felt like an alien in her chest. When she looked in the mirror, she could see the bump under her skin. She looked like a freak. She hated it.
Her mum had squeezed Jess’s hand really hard when the doctor said chemotherapy. Jess knew she was freaking out but pretending she wasn’t. It was silly, really. Jess could see her red eyes and she’d heard her crying on the phone to Granddad and to Maggie when she’d thought Jess was asleep. She was getting very good at pretending to be asleep – it was the only way she could hear people talk honestly and escape from Dad’s stress and noise.
On Sunday, Granddad, Bobby and Luke came to visit while her mother went home to shower and catch up on some paperwork. Granddad brought her a holy medal for luck. ‘It’s the medal of St Raphael, the archangel and the saint of sickness.’
‘Why is he the saint of sickness?’ Jess asked. She was happy to get the medal – she wanted all the help she could get. She had to beat the cancer. She had to get better. She wanted to get out of this stupid hospital and go home. She wanted it all to be a bad dream. She wanted to wake up and be normal.
‘Because in Hebrew the name Raphael means “It is God who heals”.’
‘Thanks, Granddad.’ Jess held the medal to her chest, touching it against the Hickman line.
‘It’ll protect you, my little pet, and keep you safe.’
‘Is all your hair going to fall out?’ Bobby asked. ‘Mrs Lorgan said that chemotherapy makes your hair fall out but that it grows back again. She said you’ll look weird for a bit but that I’m not to say anything about it and pretend that it’s just normal that you have no hair. She said it’s worser for girls to lose their hair cos girls have long hair. She said –’
‘Thank you, Bobby, I think Mrs Lorgan has said quite enough,’ Granddad said.
‘It’s okay, Granddad. Yes, Bobby, I will probably lose my hair but the doctor and the nurses said it grows back quickly.’ Jess was amazed that her voice sounded casual when inside she was panicking about losing her hair.
‘I’ll love you just the same whether you look like an alien or not,’ Bobby said.
Luke turned his back on them and Jess saw him wipe his eyes.
‘Thanks, Bobby.’
‘I miss you, Jess. I’ve no one to talk to at night, and when I try to tell Mummy my new facts she says, “Not now, Bobby,” all the time.’
‘Your mother has enough going on, Bobby,’ Granddad said. ‘You need to be helpful and leave her in peace.’
‘You can tell me your facts,’ Luke said.
‘You’re always in your room with your earphones in or on the phone to Piper or else training or studying or helping Granddad in the café. I’ve no one to talk to now Jess is stuck in here with stinky cancer.’
‘Tell me something now. I’m listening,’ Jess said.
Bobby went over and stood beside her. ‘Well, in 2013 Belgium had 1,714 robberies for every one hundred thousand people, so it’s a good thing we don’t live there.’
‘Yes, it is.’ Jess smiled at him.
‘I always knew that the Belgians were a strange people.’ Nathalie walked in, holding a book.
Damn. Jess had wanted her to come when everyone else was gone.
‘I brought you a book of poems.’
‘Cheerful ones, I hope,’ Granddad muttered.
‘Yes, George. They are poems of love. When Jess is sitting ’ere she can look out of the window at the blue sky and read a beautiful poem about love and it will make her less … How you say? Sorrowful.’
‘She’s not sorrowful, she’s fine,’ Luke insisted.
Nathalie rolled her eyes. ‘She ’as cancer. Of course she is sorrowful. Everybody is a bit sorrowful. It’s part of the ’uman nature.’
She was right. Jess did feel sorrowful, very sorrowful. But, most of all, she was tired and frightened.
‘Bullshit,’ Luke said. ‘Not everyone is sorrowful. I’m not, Granddad isn’t, Bobby isn’t.’
‘I am, actually,’ Bobby said. ‘And you are too, Luke. I heard you crying in your room last night and Granddad pretends to blow his nose all the time but he’s really crying into his hanky.’
Luke and Granddad glared at him.
Nathalie patted Bobby’s head. ‘It’s okay. It’s normal. Why do men always pretend everything is fine? Of course you are worried about Jess. You love ’er and you want ’er to be well. It’s good to cry. It’s bad to block the emotions.’
‘Mrs Lorgan said I need to control mine,’ Bobby said. ‘She said I have waaaaaay too much anger inside. She said I should ask Mummy to take me to kickboxing or karate so I can channel it.’
‘Mrs Lorgan needs to keep her opinions to herself,’ Granddad muttered.
‘Tell ’er she is wrong,’ Nathalie told Bobby. ‘It is very important to let the emotions out. If you want to scream, scream. Cry? Cry. Be depressed? Be depressed. Always ’aving the ’appy face like a clown is ridiculous. Nobody is ’appy all the time.’
Granddad got up from the chair beside Jess’s bed. ‘Well, thank you, Nathalie. It’s always fascinating hearing your cheerful thoughts on life.’ He raised an eyebrow at Jess, who grinned. ‘However, I think that’s enough French philosophy for one evening. Jess needs her rest.’
He bent down and hugged her, careful not to squeeze the port. ‘Best of luck tomorrow. I’ll be praying for you, my little pet.’
Then Luke hugged her. ‘Hang in there, sis, you’re going to be fine. Love ya.’
Bobby reached up. ‘I love you, Jess. Come home soon.’
Jess tried really hard not to cry. She wanted to cling to them all. She wanted to tell them how scared she was, but she didn’t. She put a clown smile on her face and pretended she was stronger than she was.
As they turned to leave, Nathalie sat down beside her.
‘Come on, Nathalie, out you come,’ Granddad said.
‘I will stay a little bit longer.’
‘No, you won’t.’ Granddad made his way over to her.
‘It’s okay, Granddad. I want her to stay,’ Jess said.
‘Are you sure? She’s not known for making people feel better, ever.’
Jess smiled, a real smile. ‘Let her stay five minutes.’
Granddad didn’t look happy about leaving Nathalie with her but, thankfully, he didn’t argue and the boys all left.
As soon as they were out of sight, Jess turned to Nathalie. ‘Well, did you Google it?’
Nathalie hesitated. ‘Yes. Are you sure you want to know this?’
Jess sighed. ‘Yes. Everyone’s blocking me from getting information, but that’s freaking me out. The doctors have tried to explain it to me. They said that AML is where too many immature white blood cells are made. The cells are not right and can’t grow into normal white blood cells. So the chemotherapy I have to have is to kill the leukaemia cells and allow normal blood cells to come back. I think that’s what they said anyway, but my head hurts and I find it really hard to concentrate. But I want to know more. I want to know what the percentage chance is of me getting better. Not knowing is making me think the worst.’
Nathalie fished around in her handbag and pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘Okay. So I look up the cancer websites for AML. It says … “As with many cancers, the AML leukaemia survival rate has increased in the last decades due to advances in medical knowledge and technology. The general survival rate for children under fifteen years of age is sixty point nine per cent” – so it’s good news, basically you have a sixty-one per cent chance to be better.’
Jess gripped Whiskey’s soft paw tighter. Her heart was pounding. Sixty-one per cent. It was closer to fifty than one hundred. Oh, my God, I could die. I really could die. Why had she asked Nathalie to look it up? She shouldn’t have. Mum was right: she was better off not knowing. She began to cry.
Nathalie took Jess’s hand in hers. ‘Jess, you could die in a car crash. You could get ’it by the lightning. No one knows what is in the future. You at least understand what is wrong with your body and you ’ave the best doctors looking after you. You will get the strong medicine tomorrow and you will be well again. You will fight the cancer because you are a brave girl with a beautiful spirit. You are lucky because you ’ave a family who love you very much.’
Nathalie handed Jess a tissue to wipe her tears. It was the first time Jess had really broken down in front of someone. She sobbed and let all her fears and worries out. For some reason, she didn’t mind crying in front of Nathalie. She knew Nathalie wouldn’t try to cheer her up or distract her with silly stories. Nathalie was comfortable around sorrow so it wasn’t awkward to be upset in front of her.
Nathalie dabbed Jess’s left cheek with a tissue. ‘My mother loves ’er stupid dog more than me and my father is only interested in ’is son, who is only seven but is an incredible player of the violin. So even though you ’ave the bad luck with the cancer, you ’ave the good luck with the family.’
‘What about your grandparents?’ Jess asked.
‘Dead.’
‘Sorry.’
Nathalie shrugged. ‘This is life. Sometimes it ees sheet.’
Yes, Jess thought, sometimes it is ‘sheet’. She cuddled into Whiskey’s soft comforting face, closed her eyes and, before Nathalie had even left the room, she was fast asleep.