We Own the Sky(41)

A faint alarm beeped from somewhere within Dr. Flanagan’s desk.

“I know it’s easy for me to say,” she said, as she was showing us out, “but please do try to stay positive. These are very survivable tumors, and there’s a reasonable chance that we’ll get it all out and that will be it. Please try to remember that.”

“Thank you,” we both said, but her words sounded empty, as if they were

merely an afterthought.

“Good. So I will see you on Tuesday for the operation. You need to sign some forms regarding Jack’s hospital stay, but Suzie will take you through it on reception.”

We shook hands with the doctor and went back to the reception. Jack was in the kids’ corner playing Super Mario Cart. He was leaning into each corner, nearly falling off the beanbag.

“You okay, matey?” I said, when he had finished his game.

“Yeah, the driving’s really good.”

“It looks cool,” I said. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Dr. Flanagan had said, her concerns about the shadows on the scan.

Jack looked up from the beanbag. “Daddy, why do you look so sad?”

I smiled and reflexively wiped my eyes. “I’m not sad, I’m very happy.”

Jack looked skeptical and then handed me the controller. “Do you want to play the driving game? Maybe it will cheer you up.”

“Okay,” I said, sitting down on the beanbag next to him. “They have two-player mode so we can race if you want.”

“Cool,” Jack said.

We played a few games, and I forgot for a moment that we were in the

doctor’s waiting room. I turned around, looking for Anna, and she was sitting on a chair, watching and smiling at us both, patiently waiting for us to finish our game.





epsom downs

do you remember that day, jack? mummy was at work and we braved the traffic to go to epsom downs and you took your pictures, practicing zooming in and out, and then we ate our packed lunches in the car, looking out over the city. you’ve probably forgotten what happened on the way home, but you needed to pee and wouldn’t do it by the side of the road because you said you’d get in trouble with the man and go to prison, so you just held it in, all the way home. you were so funny, jack, grimacing a little, your legs crossed, complaining every time i went over a bump.





11

We had gone out to get some supplies: Jack’s favorite cartons of orange juice, Jaffa Cakes, his superhero magazines. We had left him with Anna’s mother and when we came back, she was sitting on his hospital bed, leaning back on the pillows, with Jack cuddled up next to her.

“Can we do the whale again?” Jack asked.

“You like that one, don’t you?”

Jack nodded, and Anna’s mother began the story again, how Jonah had

angered God and brought on the storm before the sailors threw him into the sea.

And then it was God, in all his righteous mercy, who sent the whale to save him.

Since we had got to the hospital, there had been a constant stream of visitors to Jack’s bed: surgeons, junior residents, various nurses. Jack was examined and reexamined and prodded and poked. They took his blood, swabbed under his tongue, hooked him up to an ECG. This morning, they took him for an MRI to map his brain and he emerged, his head shaved, with little doughnut-shaped stickers attached to his scalp to guide the surgeons.

“That was very nice of God after Jonah was naughty,” Jack said.

“Well, that’s what God is like,” Janet said, with an eye in my direction. “He will always help you. He helps everyone. And that’s what He does in heaven.”

I looked at Anna with incredulity, expecting her to say something, to tell her mother to stop, but she was silent, thinking about something else.

“Janet,” I said quietly, as the nurse was busy with Jack. “Please don’t talk to him about these things. These Bible stories about death and heaven.”

“Why on earth not?” she said. “He loves the stories.”

“He might do,” I said, lowering my voice, “it’s just that we don’t want to talk to him about heaven or anything like that...”

“Well, Anna never said anything,” she said, avoiding my gaze. I looked at Anna, but she was tidying Jack’s bedside table, mopping up some spilled drops from the water jug.

In the last few weeks, Janet had been making noises about Jack getting

baptized. Now was the time, she said, cautiously at first, feeling her way, but then, as she saw Anna wavering, her lobbying became more intense. I thought Anna would eventually falter, the daughter of missionaries, all those years spent at Bible class and Sunday school, but she didn’t. Absolutely not, I had said, expecting an argument, but to my surprise, even though I knew it still gnawed at her, Anna acquiesced.

As I was thinking how to respond to Janet, Lola walked in with India and a huge bunch of balloons. Jack’s face lit up, because they weren’t just any balloons, but plump and swelling as if they were about to burst, in a rainbow of carefully assorted colors, with bespoke, plaited wool strings. Emblazoned on the side of each one was #JackStrong.

“Hello, darlings,” she said, kissing Anna on both cheeks. “And hello, lovely,”

she said, kissing Jack on the head.