Chapter 55 — The Prognosis

When you key in the word, you get 'stages, symptoms, and prognosis.' The latter looked the better word, and I clicked that even though I didn't quite know what it meant.

I quickly understood what the word meant, and when reading about 'large cell lung cancer,' the reading was painful. When I read of 'small cell lung cancer,' I was numb.

You don't move. You stare. You don't think. You stare. You stare and you don't stare.

The prognosis at Stage 4 was weeks. I could still hear the gun-filled game Alex was on; I could still hear Danny and Rebecca laughing at a comedy film; I could hear my soul crying. I couldn't bear to be in the room, and I made some pathetic excuse to leave, and I took out the dogs into the night and into the descending dusk of the woods, and for the first time, I cried.

I didn't sleep, and the next morning, I had to get out of the house. Alex had gone to school, and Rebecca and Danny were carrying on with their normal lives as best they could, as they were a little unnerved because Anna had cancer, but knowing she'd be okay.

When I got to work, there was nobody there, and I made a coffee. Some minutes after, Rakiya arrived, and I knew then, at that moment, she'd keyed into Google the same information as I had done that previous and dreadful evening.

She looked at me and spoke with loaded anticipation, 'How are you, Karl?'

There haven't been many times I've cracked up in tears, but that was the worst. Rakiya knew what I knew, what we both knew, and this anagnorises as they say in Greek, this recognition of fate, is unendurably unbearable. I cried and Rakiya comforted me. I didn't work that day, and Rakiya sent me back off home.

It was ten o'clock in the morning when my mobile rang, and it was Anna calling.

'Karl, don't come to the hospital early but leave it until four, as they're going to tell me what they have to do to treat the cancer.'

I stifled my emotion, as Anna didn't even know her condition, and her voice was so full of hope when mine was drowned in a sea of catastrophe.

When we set off for the hospital, Rebecca and Alex knew something had changed. They could smell the change in atmosphere; they could tell.

When we arrived at the hospital, the nurse thought it better for Rebecca and Alex to wait in the room adjacent to the one Anna was in.

A soft-sounding woman pronounced those little words, which ripped away any shred of hope.

'You have small cell lung cancer, Stage 4, and it's incurable, Anna.'

Anna was matter of fact, and she didn't really take in the full impact of what Fate was about to present her with. When the two medical team left, she cried, but she was still adamant and full of fire that she was going to 'fucking fight this cancer.'

I said nothing. And, I suppose, that was the start of my own denial.

In the car, on the way home, my mood must have been palpable, as Alex asked, 'My mam's going to be all right, isn't she, Dad?'

Outwardly I answered, 'Yes, your mam will be fine,' but inwardly, I was choking.