The Girl Who Cried Wolf(6)

‘Aren’t I too sick to go home?’

‘I talked to your mother earlier and she will take care of you at home for a little while. I think being away from here will do you good. Try to regain your appetite, get plenty of rest, and we’ll we see where we are then.’

‘Am I going home to die?’

I heared my mother let out a tiny cry but I was sick of beating around the bush.

‘Anna, look at me. You are a very stubborn and determined girl. I strongly advise you to use this to your advantage and be determined to get through this. I have practiced medicine for many years and have seen people with worse prospects get well again. But we will need to operate to remove the tumour before it causes any further damage. I would have liked it to be smaller but that’s not happening, so we will work with what we’ve got. The operation will carry risks; I’ve explained those to you.’

‘Tell me again.’ I wasn’t going to make this easy on him and I wanted the gory details. I was beyond terrified, and making this man feel uncomfortable was the only power I had. ‘I have a right to know exactly all the risks.’

‘Anna, please try to stay strong.’

‘Tell me!’ I shouted, making him jump. Ha, that got him. It pleased me to see that he looked shocked and annoyed. It really ticks me off that some doctors choose to behave like they are so above you. They tell you things on a-need-to-know basis and I was not having it. It was my tangled brain and for me this was life or death. For him it was just another tricky operation that afterwards he could literally wash his hands of, saying he’d tried.

He composed himself and looked me right in the eye. ‘As you know, the tumour is large and growing. It is located in a dangerous place and we can’t be sure till we operate how close it is to the cerebral lining. Its position also increases the risk of a haemorrhage. The operation has a thirty-seven per cent complete success rate. It can commonly cause paralysis, speech impairment, memory loss …’

Thank God he’d stopped talking as he sees my face and my mother’s sobs grow louder.

‘Anna, people do survive these operations and make good recoveries. Please focus on that, and my team will do their very best for you. I need you strong before we can attempt anything, so for once listen to your mother –’ (he seemed to know a bit too much here. I glared at her) ‘– and let her take care of you.’ He paused and looked at his chart. ‘I see you’ve lost a great deal of hair.’

Where the hell had that come from? I reached my hand up to my head and realized I had been too out of it lately to notice.

‘I’m sorry, does that bother you?’ I said heatedly. ‘Would you like me to hop on the bus to the nearest Vidal Sassoon and see if they can do something with it?’ I grabbed a few strands that came away in my hand and held them in front of my face while Mum cried gently. It angered me even more that she was crying. I’m the one who’s losing my hair, my mind, my life. I started to shout at her hysterically, telling her to stop looking at me like that. ‘Get out! Get out! GET OUT!’

At that point I saw someone tall standing in the doorway watching me, and through a blur of tears, I started screaming. A nurse pushed past them and tried to hold me down and I felt like I wanted to explode with rage. I was crying so hard it was difficult to breathe. Another person entered the room with a small tray of medication. But the fight had left as quickly as it came, and I had no strength left as she held my arm down and administered a now redundant sedative.





Chapter Three:


A Little Kindness


I must have been out for a while, because when I open my eyes they are all gone. My sister is next to me, and I see she is reading one of those awful celebrity magazines we pretend to despise but secretly love.

‘It says here that Taylor Swift weighs eight stone seven.’

At the sound her voice, I try to pull myself out of the drug-induced sleep.

‘That’s seven pounds more than you.’

For the next few moments, I forget I have cancer.

‘I’m thinner than Taylor Swift?’

‘According to your hospital records.’

‘Let me see that.’ I snatch the clipboard that should have been hooked on the bed rail from her grip. ‘God, it’s true. Annabelle Winters, height, five foot six, weight … eight stone. I’ve never been eight stone! I’m positively gaunt.’ I almost cry with happiness. ‘Who else is in there?’

‘Cheryl Cole, no make-up. Kim Kardashian in frock-horror shocker, and Rhianna, before and after the maple syrup diet.’

‘Ooh, let me see.’ I grab the magazine off her and we enjoy a few more minutes analysing who has had Botox and who needs it.

Sometime later, Dr Braby sticks her head round the corner.

‘Are you feeling better, Anna? It certainly sounds like it.’

She said it nicely but there was a tone to her voice I could not quite place. Possibly fear.

‘Do you mind if I talk to you for a few minutes?’

Isabel jumped up like a rocket saying she needed to go to the café and did I want some chocolate brought back?

‘No thanks, but maybe some juice?’ I had learned that if I added a drink on the end of ‘no, thank you’ every time I was offered something to eat, I was less likely to get a lecture.