We Own the Sky(29)
Anna and I both leaned in. “Can you see this lighter part here?” We bent over and nodded. I had expected the tumor to be more spherical, better defined, but it was just an amorphous shadow, as if a photograph had been overexposed.
“It looks like Jack has a tumor called an astrocytoma, and his more specific type is called a pleomorphic xanthoastrocytoma. Quite a mouthful I know, so we call these PXAs.”
The room started to spin and I wanted to rewind, to play the doctor’s words back, because nothing he was saying made any sense.
“Let’s talk about the next steps,” he said, writing something on his pad. “Now, I do want to focus on the positives—and there really are many positives here.”
Dr. Kennety pulled a plastic model of a brain out of a desk drawer. “So,” he said, putting it down in front of us. “Here are the two temporal lobes on the side.
And here on the left side is where Jack’s tumor is. Now, the harder-to-reach tumors are much deeper in the brain, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here.
That means it will be much easier for the surgeon.”
“So he will need to have an operation?” Anna asked, the first words she had spoken.
“Sorry, yes. I’m jumping ahead of myself here. Yes, surgery to remove the tumor.”
“And would that be it?” I said. “He wouldn’t need any more treatment?”
“Hopefully, that would be it, yes,” the doctor said. “In the cases where there is a complete resection—meaning where the surgeon manages to get out all of the tumor—we’re looking at a cure rate of 80 or 90 percent.”
Eighty or 90 percent. One in five, one in ten.
“And if the surgeon doesn’t?” Anna said, her voice clinical and clear.
“Well, that gets a bit trickier, but let’s not think about that now,” he said, clasping his hands together. “From the scans, it looks like it would be no problem getting it all out.”
“That’s good,” I said, and it was, but the words still felt like razor blades in my throat.
“I know the waiting is horrible,” Dr. Kennety said, “but we’ll know so much more after the operation.”
We both nodded because what else could we do?
“I’m going to book you an appointment with a neurosurgeon. Her name is Dr.
Flanagan, and she’s really the best in the business. Of course, you’re welcome to do your research and find someone else, but this is who I would recommend.
And I will of course need to see Jack to give him a thorough neurological exam.”
Dr. Kennety looked from side to side, demonstrably making eye contact with us. “Okay then,” he said softly, and I watched his hands, small and childlike, pecking at his keyboard like a hen.
*
We walked quickly down Harley Street toward Oxford Street. I crossed the road without looking, powering ahead of Anna. You didn’t normally notice life going on around you—it was just a hum, a murmur in the background. You could unsee it, push it from your mind. But suddenly, now, it was shrill, like a dog whistle in my ear. Schoolgirls in split skirts eating potato chips, swigging from Coke cans; delivery drivers shouting instructions, angry that something was late, that someone was in their way; a slick of Soho advertising types guffawing outside a wine bar.
We just kept walking, quick strides, as if we were racing, but we didn’t know where. My head was full of numbers, percentages, 80, 90—the chance of my son staying alive.
“Can you wait? Can you please wait?” Anna said.
I stopped. We were standing on Cavendish Square, in the gardens under a
bronze statue, and it had started to rain.
“I just can’t believe it,” I said. “I don’t understand. Does he look like he’s got a...”
“No,” Anna said. “No, he doesn’t.” She shook her head, and her chin began to dimple and then quiver and then, in the afternoon drizzle, she began to cry.
“I wish it were me, I just wish it were me,” she said, and I put my arm around her and pulled her closer, and she rested her head on my shoulder and we stood like that, her tears wet on my shirt, listening to the sounds of the city, the sounds of other people’s worlds.
“We should get back,” Anna said suddenly, her face a ghostly white. The rain was beating down now, gasoline rainbows in the gutters, a dark blanket of cloud suffocating the city.
I needed to see Jack. To take him in my arms and feel his warm skin on mine.
I didn’t want him to be alone. Once, when he was three or four, he said that he was sad because Peppa Pig didn’t want to be his friend. It broke my heart. I could not bear to imagine Jack’s loneliness, like the feeling, as a child, of wetting the bed in someone else’s home.
*
Jack ran toward us when we got home. I picked him up and swung him around.
He looked so alive that evening, boisterous, oversugared by his grandmother.
Anna’s mother could see it in our faces. “So how was it, any news?” she said.
“We can talk about it later,” Anna said quickly. Janet narrowed and then
widened her eyes, like a puppy wanting a treat, and I wanted to scream at her, can you just wait, can you just fucking wait.
“Well, Jack has been a very good boy,” Janet said, ruffling his hair. “We’ve been reading stories.”