Before I Die (24 page)

‘I promise.’

Thirty-four

They swap like porters. Dad comes every morning. Adam comes every afternoon. Dad comes back in the evening with Cal. Mum visits randomly, managing to sit through an entire blood transfusion on her second visit.

‘Haemoglobin and platelets coming right up,’ she said as they hooked me up.

I liked her knowing the words.

But ten days. I even missed Easter. That’s too much time to lose.

Every night I lie in my single hospital bed and I want Adam, his legs entwined with mine, his warmth.

‘I want to go home,’ I tell the nurse.

‘Not yet.’

‘I’m better.’

‘Not better enough.’

‘What’re you hoping for? A cure?’

The sun hoists itself up every morning and all the lights in the town wink off. Clouds rush the sky, frenzied traffic dips in and out of the car park, then the sun plummets back to the horizon and another day is over. Time rush. Blood rush.

I pack my bag and get dressed. I sit on the bed trying to look perky. I’m waiting for James.

‘I’m going home,’ I tell him as he examines my chart.

He nods as if he was expecting this. ‘Are you determined?’

‘Very. I’m missing the weather.’ I point at the window just in case he’s been too busy to notice the mellow light and the blue-sky clouds.

‘There’s a certain rigour needed to maintain this blood count, Tessa.’

‘Can’t I be rigorous at home?’

He looks at me very seriously. ‘There’s a fine line between the quality of the life you have left and the medical intervention necessary to maintain it. You’re the only one who can judge it. Are you telling me you’ve had enough?’

I keep thinking about the rooms in our house, the colours of the carpets and curtains, the exact positioning of furniture. There’s a journey I really like making from my bedroom, down the stairs, through the kitchen and into the garden. I want to make that journey. I want to sit in my deck chair on the lawn.

‘The last transfusion only lasted for three days.’

He nods sympathetically. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘I had another one this morning. How long do you reckon that’s going to last?’

He sighs. ‘I don’t know.’

I stroke the bed sheet with the flat of my hand. ‘I just want to go home.’

‘Why don’t I talk to the community care team? If I can get them to guarantee daily visits, then perhaps we can reassess.’ He clips my chart back onto the end of my bed. ‘I’ll phone them and come back when your dad gets here.’

After he leaves, I count to one hundred. A fly grazes the table. I reach out my finger for a touch of those flimsy wings. It senses me coming, sputters into life and zigzags up to the light fitting, where it circles out of reach.

I put on my coat, drape my scarf round my shoulders and pick up my bag. The nurse doesn’t even notice as I walk past her desk and get into the lift.

When I reach the ground floor, I text Adam:
REMEMBER YR PROMISE
?

I want to die in my own way. It’s my illness, my death, my choice.

This is what saying yes means.

It’s the pleasure of walking, one foot in front of the other, following the yellow lines painted on the floor of the corridor all the way to reception. It’s the pleasure of revolving doors – going round twice to celebrate the genius of the person who invented them. And the pleasure of the air. The sweet, cool, shocking outside world.

There’s a kiosk at the gate. I buy a Dairy Milk and a packet of Chewits. The woman behind the counter looks at me strangely as I pay her. I think I might glow a bit from all my treatments, and some people are able to see it, like a neon wound that flares as I move.

I walk slowly to the taxi rank, savouring details – the CCTV camera on the lamppost swinging on its axis, the mobile phones chirruping all about me. The hospital seems to retreat as I whisper goodbye, the shade from the plane trees turning all the windows to darkness.

A girl swings past, high heels clicking; there’s a fried-chicken smell about her as she licks her fingers clean. A man holding a wailing child shouts into his phone: ‘No! I can’t bloody carry potatoes as well!’

We make patterns, we share moments. Sometimes I think I’m the only one to see it.

I share my chocolate with the taxi driver as we join the lunchtime traffic. Today he’s on a double shift, he tells me, and there are too many cars on the road for his liking. He waves at them in despair as we crawl through the town centre.

‘Where’s it all going to end?’ he asks.

I offer him a Chewit to cheer him up. Then I text Adam again:
U HVE PROMISES 2 KEEP
.

The weather’s changed, the sun hidden by cloud. I open the window. Cold April air shocks my lungs.

The driver drums his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. ‘It’s complete gridlock!’

I like it – the stall and shove of traffic, the deep thrum of a bus engine, an urgent siren in the distance. I like creeping so slowly down the High Street that I have time to notice Easter eggs still unbought in the newsagent’s window, the cigarette butts swept into a neat pile outside the Chicken Joint. I see children carrying the strangest things – a polar bear, an octopus. And under the wheels of a buggy outside Mothercare I see my name, faded now, but still weaving the pavement all the way to the bank.

I phone Adam’s mobile. He doesn’t pick up, so I leave another message:
I WANT YOU
.

Simple.

At the junction, an ambulance stands skewed, its doors open, the blue of its light flashing across the road. The light even flashes onto the clouds, low above us. A woman is lying in the road with a blanket over her.

‘Would you look at that,’ the taxi driver says.

Everyone’s looking – people in other cars, office workers out for their lunchtime sandwich. The woman’s head is covered, but her legs stick out. She’s wearing tights; her shoes are at strange angles. Her blood, dark as rain, pools beside her.

The taxi driver flicks me a glance in his mirror. ‘Makes you realize, doesn’t it?’

Yes. It’s so tangible. Being and not being.

I feel as if I have sap in my toes, running up my ankles and into my shins, as I knock on Adam’s door.

Sally opens it a crack and peeps at me. I feel a surge of love for her.

‘Is Adam in?’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be in hospital?’

‘Not any more.’

She looks confused. ‘He didn’t say they were letting you out.’

‘It’s a surprise.’

‘Another one?’ She sighs, opens the door a bit further and looks at her watch. ‘He won’t be back until five.’

‘Five?’

She frowns at me. ‘Are you all right?’

No. Five’s too late. I might be completely anaemic again by then.

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s gone to Nottingham on the train. They’ve agreed to interview him.’

‘For what?’

‘University. He wants to start in September.’

The garden spins.

‘You look as surprised as I was.’

I fell asleep in his arms in that hospital bed. ‘Touch me,’ I said, and he did. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Don’t you dare tell me I don’t.’ He made me a promise.

It starts to rain as I walk back down the path to the gate. A fine silver rain, like cobwebs falling.

Thirty-five

I rip my silk dress from its hanger in the wardrobe and cut a gaping mouth in it just below the waist. These scissors are sharp so it’s easy, like sliding metal through water. My blue wrap-dress gets a diagonal slit across the chest. I lay them side by side on the bed like a couple of sick friends and stroke them.

It doesn’t help.

The stupid jeans I bought with Cal never fitted anyway, so I hack the legs off at the knee. I split the pockets of all my jogging pants, gash holes in my sweatshirts and chuck the lot next to the dresses.

It takes ages to stab my boots. My arms ache and I’m wheezing. But I had a transfusion this morning and other people’s blood runs hot through my veins, so I don’t stop. I slit each boot along its length. Two startling wounds.

I want to be empty. I want to live somewhere uncluttered.

I open the window and throw the boots out. They land on the lawn.

The sky is solid cloud, grey and low. There’s a thin rain falling. The shed’s wet. The grass is wet. The barbecue set is rusting on its wheels.

I haul the rest of my clothes out of the wardrobe. My lungs wheeze, but I’m not stopping. Buttons ping across the room as I slash my coats. I shred my jumpers. I lacerate every pair of trousers. I line my shoes up on the window ledge and cut off their tongues.

It’s good. I feel alive.

I grab the dresses from the bed and push them out with the shoes. They tumble onto the patio together and lie there in the rain.

I check my phone. No messages. No missed calls.

I hate my room. Everything in it reminds me of something else. The little china bowl from St Ives. The brown ceramic jar Mum used to keep biscuits in. The sleeping dog with its silent slipper that belonged on Nanna’s mantelpiece. My green glass apple. They all make it to the lawn except for the dog, which smashes against the fence.

Books fall open as I chuck them. Their pages flap like exotic birds, rip and flutter. CDs and DVDs like Frisbees over next door’s fence. Adam can play them to his new friends at university when I’m dead.

Duvet, sheets, blankets, all out. Medicine bottles and boxes from my bedside table, syringe driver, Diprobase cream, aqueous cream. My jewellery box.

I slash my beanbag, decorate the floor with polystyrene balls and throw the empty sack out into the rain. The garden’s looking very busy. Things will grow. Trouser trees. Book vines. I’ll chuck myself out later and take root in that dark space by the shed.

Still no message from Adam. I throw my phone over his fence.

The TV is heavy as a car. It hurts my back. It makes my legs burn. I drag and heave it across the carpet. I can’t breathe, have to stop. The room tilts. Breathe. Breathe. You can do this. Everything’s got to go.

Onto the ledge with the TV.

And out.

It roars, explodes in a dramatic smash of glass and plastic.

That’s it. Everything gone. Finished.

Dad crashes in. He stands for a moment, still and open-mouthed.

‘You monster,’ he whispers.

I have to cover my ears.

He comes over and takes me by both arms. His breath smells of stale tobacco. ‘Do you want to leave me with nothing?’

‘There was nobody here!’

‘So you thought you’d wreck the place?’

‘Where were you?’

‘I was at the supermarket. Then I went to the hospital to visit you but you weren’t there. We were all frantic.’

‘I don’t give a shit, Dad!’

‘Well, I do! I absolutely give a shit! This will completely exhaust you.’

‘It’s my body. I can do what I like!’

‘So you don’t care about your body now?’

‘No, I’m sick of it! I’m sick of doctors and needles and blood tests and transfusions. I’m sick of being stuck in a bed day after day while the rest of you get on with your lives. I hate it! I hate all of you! Adam’s gone for a university interview, did you know that? He’s going to be here for years doing whatever he likes and I’m going to be under the ground in a couple of weeks!’

Dad starts to cry. He sinks onto the bed and puts his head in his hands and just weeps. I don’t know what to do. Why is he weaker than me? I sit next to him and touch his knee. ‘I’m not going back to the hospital, Dad.’

He wipes his nose on his shirt sleeve and looks at me. He looks like Cal. ‘You’ve really had enough?’

‘I’ve really had enough.’

I put my arm round him and he leans his head on my shoulder. I stroke his hair. It’s as if we’re floating about on a boat. There’s even a breeze from the open window. We sit for ages.

‘You never know, maybe I won’t die if I’m at home.’

‘It’d be lovely if you didn’t.’

‘I’ll do my A-levels instead. Then I’ll go to university.’

He sighs, stretches himself out on the bed and closes his eyes. ‘That’s a good idea.’

‘I’ll get a job, and maybe one day I’ll have children – Chester, Merlin and Daisy.’

Dad opens one eye briefly. ‘God help them!’

‘You’ll be a grandad. We’ll visit you loads. For years and years we’ll visit, until you’re ninety.’

‘And then what? You’ll stop coming?’

‘No, then you’ll die. Before me. The way it’s supposed to be.’

He doesn’t say anything. Where the dark filters through the window and shadow touches his arm, he seems to vanish.

‘You won’t live in this house any more, but somewhere smaller near the sea. I’ve got keys because I visit you so often, and one day I let myself in as usual, but the curtains aren’t open and the post is on the mat. I go up to the bedroom to see where you are. I’m so relieved to see you lying peacefully in bed that I laugh out loud. But when I pull the curtains, I notice your lips are blue. I touch your cheek and it’s cold. Your hand’s cold as well. I say your name over and over, but you can’t hear me and you don’t open your eyes.’

Dad sits up. He’s crying again. I hold him close and pat his back.

‘Sorry. Am I freaking you out?’

‘No, no.’ He pulls away, sweeps a hand across his eyes. ‘I better go and clear up outside before it gets dark. Will you be all right if I go and do that?’

‘Sure.’

I watch him from the window. It’s raining hard now and he’s put his wellies on and an anorak. He gets a broom and the wheelbarrow from the shed. He puts on gardening gloves. He picks up the telly. He sweeps up the broken glass. He gets a cardboard box and piles all the books in it. He even picks up the pages that lie shivering against the fence.

Cal turns up in his school uniform with his rucksack and bike. He looks sane and healthy. Dad goes over and hugs him.

Cal dumps his bike and joins in the clearing up. He looks like a treasure hunter, holding each ring up to the sky. He finds the silver necklace I got for my last birthday, my amberlite bracelet. Then he finds ridiculous things – a snail, a feather, a particular stone. He finds a muddy puddle and stamps in it. It makes Dad laugh. He leans on his broom and laughs out loud. Cal laughs too.