‘Mummy, you’re squeezing me!’ Beth squealed, giggling, before her attention was immediately distracted by the sight of her best friend, Marcy.
‘Marcy! Marcy!’ she yelled. ‘Wait for me!’ Marcy immediately ran towards us, and I reluctantly let my girl go. How could I tell her that I just wanted to stay there, hugging her – just freeze time and feel safe, warm, giving nothing else the opportunity to hurt us.
Last night as I lay in bed next to a sleeping Colm, all I could think about was how would I tell her if something was wrong? How would this change her life? Hurt her? She was five years old and I couldn’t bear the thought of anything causing her even a single second of pain or unhappiness. At four a.m., I’d given up trying to sleep, gone into her room and lay next to her, listening to every breath she took. This had to be okay. It had to be. Not for us, but for her and her brothers too. They were nineteen, almost men, but still guys who would roll around play-wrestling with their dad. They needed him. We all did.
Now, I spotted Marcy’s mum, Lina, waving at me but I pointed at my watch and made a rushing gesture. She nodded and put her hand to her ear to mimic making a phone call. I could go speak to her now but I didn’t trust myself to talk to anyone without dissolving into an emotional mess. Instead, I jumped back behind the wheel, and drove off, Colm silent beside me.
There had been a lot of silence this week.
Every day had been surreal, like some crazy TV show had taken over our lives and transformed them into something I didn’t recognize. The morning after we’d been to the optician, the doctor’s receptionist had called first thing with the news that there was a cancellation at the hospital that afternoon and they’d agreed to see Colm instead. The immediacy put me right in the middle of a seesaw of comfort and terror. I’d had to stay away from Google. I wasn’t going to look up papilledema. Or brain tumours. Or anything else that would freak me out even more.
‘Today? I can’t make it today, love. Sure, I’ve got the accountant coming in and then a meeting at the bank.’ On the other end of the “freak out” scale, Colm wasn’t worried in the least. And his nonchalance wasn’t in any way for my benefit – he just refused to even contemplate that there could be anything serious wrong with him.
‘Cancel them, Colm.’
‘I’m not…’
‘Cancel them. Or get Dan to take them. If you don’t do it, I will.’
‘Okay, I’ll go but we’re not telling Dan or anyone else, Shauna. Let’s not make a fuss. It’ll be nothing. Come on, what’s for breakfast? If you make me bacon rolls I’ll love you forever,’ he’d joked. Joked. This may be the single most terrifying moment of my life so far and he was joking.
But then, perhaps he was right and this was the way to handle it. Denial was clearly working for him and who was I to burst his bubble? So I didn’t. I slapped a smile on my face, made two bacon rolls, and then called on a couple of my regular girls that I could trust to cover my bookings for that day. We could do without losing the money, but I’d make it up somehow.
The consultant neurologist, Mr Clyde, welcomed us with a curt smile and an invitation to sit, before introducing a liaison nurse and a junior doctor who were both observing the meeting. Introductions over, he asked Colm to go back to the start and explain everything that had happened, taking notes as he listened.
I tried to read his face, but he was as impassive as Colm was relaxed. A casual onlooker would have guessed they were talking about the weather. Or football. Anything but a potentially life-changing health issue. Colm downplayed everything, essentially telling the truth, but delivering it in a way that suggested there was nothing to worry about. The headaches? Sure, but they were just migraines. His mother suffered from them too. Distortions in his vision? Again, those were definitely caused by the migraines. Weird audio sensations? Not much of an explanation for that one, so he glossed right over it.
‘Sometimes he staggers,’ I blurted, unable to keep quiet any longer. I’d been determined not to say anything, to let him deal with this in his own way, but the doctor needed the full facts. He raised one eyebrow in question, but Colm jumped right back in with, ‘Only when I’ve been on the beer.’
Another joke.
‘No, not when he’s been on the beer,’ I countered softly, uncertainly, caught once again between terror and the determination to treat this the same way Colm did. If we acted like everything was going to be fine, then it would be. That’s what worked for him.
When the conversation was over, he asked Colm to sit on the edge of the leather bed positioned against the wall and took a hand-held implement from the counter beside it, using it to look into Colm’s eyes, one after the other. Another ten minutes of tests followed, reflex checks, reaction timings, balance studies, and with every one of them I willed Colm to do it perfectly. The doctor showed no sign of whether he had.
Eventually, he sat back down on his swivel chair and Colm rejoined us in the seat next to mine.
‘Mr O’Flynn, I can’t say for certain what’s causing your symptoms but there are certainly abnormalities in your reactions.’
‘What could it be?’ I blurted again, unable to control myself.
I appreciated that he didn’t seem irritated by my interruption.
‘Many things. It could indeed be severe migraines. It could be a virus. But we can’t rule out the possibility that it could be something more serious.’
I was suddenly overwhelmed with dread. Colm just listened, still saying nothing.
‘So I suggest we organize an MRI scan as soon as possible. Jenny, can you see to that now for me?’
The liaison nurse rose and headed out of the door, leaving a stunned silence behind her. Colm eventually spoke. ‘So it could be just the migraines though, couldn’t it?’ I could have wept for the quiet desperation in his voice, the absolute need to have a best-case option that he could hang on to.
‘It could be,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘But it needs further investigation.’
I looked from Colm to the junior doctor and read nothing in their expressions. Was it just me who was sensing the doctor’s underlying tone of gravity? Was I imagining it? I wondered if they taught that reluctance to commit in medical school, although, I absolutely understood why he was being vague. It was the Colm school of optimism. Don’t think about the worst until it was an incontrovertible reality.
The liaison nurse, a forty-something lady with a soft voice and an air of efficiency, returned clutching a sheet of A4 paper. ‘They’ve added an extra slot, so they can fit you in first thing on Friday morning. Does that suit?’
I could see Colm was about to object so I cut him off.
‘It suits. Thank you. We’ll be there.’
He realized from my definite tone that there was no point arguing.
An extra slot? And only a couple of days from now? What happened to NHS waiting lists, to all those stories in the press about appointments that took months to arrive and double bookings that caused chaos with patient care? This felt like it was the NHS equivalent of a flume – in at the top and rushing towards the end result. Too soon. Too fast. Too high a risk of drowning.
I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe, but then I looked at Colm. Perfectly calm. Grinning at the doctor as he shook his hand. Thanking him, like he hadn’t just advised him of the possibility that he could have a chronic, perhaps even deadly, ailment.
Optimism. Bravery. Or denial? I wasn’t sure which.
We made it into the car park before I stopped him, faced him. ‘You okay?’ I asked.
He smiled, kissed me. ‘Shauna, it’s going to be fine. Look, if there was something really wrong with me, I’d know. I’d feel it. This is going to turn out to be nothing.’
So that’s how it was going to be. I could have argued, discussed the alternatives, forced him to open up, but I realized that wasn’t what he needed. There was a pleading in his eyes that told me he needed me to go along with him on this and I decided there and then that’s what I had to do.
If he wasn’t going to worry, I’d act like I wasn’t worried either.
If he was going to minimize it, I’d make it all seem insignificant too.
If he was going to joke, I’d joke right back.
This was Colm’s head, Colm’s health and the terrifying possibilities were his too – I had no right to claim them or fall apart or think about how I was feeling. This was his game and I had to take whatever role he needed me to play.
So I had.
Since that moment until now, I’d adopted a façade of normality. We’d laughed, we’d worked, we’d moaned about bills. Just another normal week, people. Move along. Nothing to see here. In front of Colm, I acted like I didn’t have a care in the world. Only when he was asleep or out, did I find myself in the kitchen, clutching on to the side of the kitchen worktop, my heart beating wildly, gasping for breath as some unseen force squeezed my throat.
There had only been one flashpoint, that first night, after I’d cleared away the dinner plates, and read Beth two stories in bed. On a normal night, I’d hope she’d fall asleep quickly so I could get back to work, or cleaning, or doing one of the other dozen things I’d yet to tick off my to-do list for that day. That night, I’d have read to her all night if she’d let me. When her eyes closed, I lay still for a moment, trying to calm the fears that were making the muscles in my stomach clench. Only when I was sure I could pull off something approaching normal, did I kiss my sleeping Beth and head back downstairs. Colm was still sitting at the table, his laptop open in front of him, brow furrowed.
‘Colm, I think you have to tell Dan.’
He was adamant as ever. ‘No. Christ, Shauna, he has enough on his plate with Lulu and the business. The last thing he needs is something else to worry about. This will be fine, I’m telling you. No point in creating a huge drama for nothing.’
I felt tears prick my eyes. Frustration, panic, fear, worry… I wasn’t even sure what was causing them any more. I blinked them back. The last thing this situation needed was wailing and drama.
‘And I don’t want anyone else to know either. What’s the point? In a week, it’ll all be clear and we’ll have forgotten about it.’
How could I tell him that I had a horrible feeling it wouldn’t be? I couldn’t explain it. It was a sense. A dread. But he didn’t need the negativity, so I chose not to argue.
So that was it. Case closed.
Only now, with every junction and set of traffic lights, we got closer to the hospital for the results.
His hand rested over mine in the centre console of the car, neither of us up for speaking until the barrier rose at the entrance to the car park.
‘I’m taking you out tonight,’ he told me. ‘We’ll ask Lulu or Rosie to babysit Beth, and we’re going out. There will be drinking and dancing and wild sex afterwards,’ he promised, with a smile that wasn’t quite convincing.
So we were doing the light-hearted humour thing again. Okay, I could play along. ‘For the worry you’ve put me through this week, there had better be diamonds too.’
‘Always suspected you’d turn out to be high maintenance,’ he said, his words punctuated by kisses.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him properly, softly, like it could take us back to the days when just being together, like this, entwined in each other, were all that mattered.
Too soon, we stopped, looking wordlessly at each other for a few seconds, before he smiled, kissed the end of my nose. ‘You ready?’
‘Yes,’ I told him.
‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘And please stop looking so worried. It’s all going to be fine, I promise, okay?’
Every particle of my being silently screamed no.