The Girl Who Cried Wolf(4)
‘I’m seventeen!’ I blurt out crossly, and now it is my turn to fold my arms. I glare at him, convinced he is completely out of his mind.
Mr Raj places some paper in front of me and asks me to draw some shapes and then continues to ask more ridiculous questions.
He shines a light in my eyes, particularly my right one, and does the knee-tapping thing that makes your leg stick out. I’m subjected to similar tests to those Dr Braby carried out. Lying flat, tummy prodded, asking me to lift my legs in turn … squeeze his finger (I silently pray he doesn’t have the same sense of humour as Miles), smile, half smile, stick your tongue out, and it just goes on and on. God, Mr Petri must really hate me.
I had not even noticed the door opening, but as he asks me to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed, I see a plump nurse sitting a little way to the left of us. She smiles at me.
‘Anna, if you could take your jumper off, please, I need to listen to your chest.’
A cold wave of despair washes over me as I realise I’m wearing my sexy lace bra, the one with a sparkly red heart over each nipple. “Damn you, Boux Avenue” is my only anguished thought as I pull my jumper off and stare furiously at the nurse’s sensible shoes.
When it’s finally all over I find myself back in Alice in Wonderland’s chair.
‘Dr Braby was right; you seem to have some weakness in your left side, along with headaches. You say you wake up with them sometimes?’
I nod.
‘I’m also seeing a little swelling on one of your optical discs …’
He continues to look at his notes and starts tapping away on his keyboard.
‘Do you ever suffer from deja vu, Anna?’
‘Didn’t you ask me that earlier?’ I smile but he carries on, ignoring my hilarious joke.
‘Do you ever feel dizzy or uncoordinated?’
‘I don’t know.’
I’m starting to feel very hot, not to mention uncomfortable and I cannot tell him how much I want to get out of here and down to the Whistling Duck where Jules and Miles are waiting for me.
‘Mood swings?’
I flick my hair over my shoulder and tell him, ‘I’m a woman, Mr Raj; it is my prerogative to have mood swings.’ My returning feistiness brings with it a little comfort.
Taking his glasses off again, the stranger opposite me tells me that he is booking me some scans and further eyesight and hearing tests.
‘Why do I need them? I’m not really ill, you know. I’ve just been a bit under the weather. You know what it’s like … a few too many sick days, but do I really need a full MOT? Surely you must have real patients to see to? I’ll get out of your hair. Sorry to have wasted so much of your time.’
I go to shake his hand but his arms remain folded, leaving me hanging, so I clamp my arm back to my side.
‘Anna, some of these tests are highlighting factors that could relate to brain malfunction. I don’t want to alarm you, and it may be nothing serious, but you need to attend these investigative procedures. I’ll send you the information you’ll need for your scan then we’ll meet again when I have your results.’
He heads back round to his side of the desk and sits down, replaces his spectacles, and bids me a rather curt, ‘Good day.’
I take my cue to leave and jump down from the chair with pleasure. I exit his room, department, and hospital as fast as my shaky legs will allow me.
***
It takes four ciders to convince myself that everything is going to be fine. Jules and Miles laughed uproariously when I lifted my jumper and showed them the bra I was wearing. They agreed with enthusiasm that this was all a wicked plot to teach me a lesson, and by cider number six I realized that of course Miles was right. Mr Raj was not a real doctor; he was an actor hired by Petri to enhance this elaborate scheme.
***
I spent the next week trying to convince myself that everything was going to be all right. Sleep became impossible, so I perfected a regime of raiding my mother’s wine stash each night, only to pass out and wake around dawn with an increasingly torturous headache. I existed on paracetamol and the odd slice of toast, occasionally supplemented with a can or two of Red Bull to get me through the abomination of school work. Had I known what was to come, I need not have bothered showing up for my classes ever again.
It only took one rather frightening CT scan and a similarly disconcerting MRI to convince Mr Raj that I had a grade-three tumour, nestled snugly in the frontal lobe of my brain. Everything that I had attributed to too little sleep and too much alcohol was in fact caused by a malignant mass of cells, growing steadily with each day.
The shaking, the dizziness, the headaches, forgetfulness, tiredness, and numbness were not caused by self-anaesthetising with cider and the occasional joint. I had cancer.
‘I’m sorry, what?’
He looks at me steadily while handing out this death sentence and the plump nurse sits solidly to my left, offering to hold my hand. I ignore her entirely and direct my gaze back to him. The room gets smaller. I feel as though I’m struggling to breathe as he asks me if there is anyone I would like him to call. I feel very sick, and as if on cue, the tumour causing my headaches sends a marching band through my brain, an excruciating stamp on every nerve just in case I did not get the message.
You have cancer! It pounded into me.
I do not fully remember the next few minutes. I wished I hadn’t excluded my mother. I suppose I cried with shock and fear. The nurse ignored my protests and put her arms around me. It was a surprisingly comforting gesture. If she had dallied about or been the slightest bit hesitant I would have imploded, but she held me firmly and stroked my back with confident hands.