“Trust me, this won’t hurt a bit,” the nurse lies, smiling with all her teeth.
What a warmhearted bitch.
I wasn’t always the person I am now. A life of crime has turned me into someone else. I suspectmyheart is cold, and hard, and smaller than it used to be, and I don’t trust anyone. When you have seen firsthand what people are really capable of doing to each other, the way I have, it is only logical to never let anyone ever get too close. Not a lotof people could do what I do for a living. Or see what I have seen. Or feel what I have felt. My job is easier when I feel nothing at all. Self-preservation meant flicking off my feelings the way you might flick off a light, and I learned to see in the dark. There are things I have done because of my job that still keep me awake at night, but I’m good at what I do. Sometimes I think it might be the only thing I am good at.
“Try not to look so worried,” the nurse says, and I imagine taking the pencil from her pocket and stabbing it in her eyeball. I wish she’d stop talking and get on with it. “The MRI machine looks and sounds scarier than it is,” she adds, pushing buttons on the enormous contraption I will shortly be inside.
I am not used to people speaking to me as though I were a child. Nobody ever has. Even when Iwasa child. Before she died my mother often said that I was born old.
I wonder if that means I might die young?
Stop it.
Is forty considered young?
Isn’t it?
I try to shake the negative thoughts from my mind, but they linger and join all the others. Fear can kill a person far faster than anything real so I try to ignore it.
If only I’d ignored the damn letter from my GP inviting me for a routine health check when I turned forty, I’d still be none the wiser and none of this would be happening. That’s a lie. I knew I was ill, but I thought it was just my body reacting to grief. Grief is the Grim Reaper of hope and without hope we are nothing. Blood tests resulted in more blood tests. A CT scan followed. Then there was the call from the doctor, which I have replayed in my mind so many times since.
“Is this a convenient time to talk?” she asked a few weeks ago. The answer was no, but it was never going to be yes, so I told her to tell me. “I’m afraid the CT scan revealed some sinister-looking shadows,” she said, and then there was a pause. I didn’t know whatto say so I said nothing. Life has taught me that the whole world is full of sinister-looking shadows and people are almost always responsible for causing them. I had sinister-looking shadows beneath my eyes as a result of lack of sleep. I thought it might not be as bad as it sounded—
“We’re putting you on the cancer pathway,” she added, interrupting my thoughts.
That didn’t sound good.
“We’ll need to do some more tests. An MRI and some biopsies.”
That didn’t sound good either.
Then she put me on a waiting list, and the waiting began to find out how bad the bad thing might be.
Thinking about the last few months of appointments and anxiety and endlesswaitingmakes my heart beat faster. It feels like someone is pushing down on my chest and I can’t remember how to breathe. I try to get a grip, but my fingers have balled themselves into fists and are clinging to the bottom of my hospital gown. I have an overwhelming urge to get off the bed and run right out of here.
But then I still won’t know what is wrong with me.
Or if I can be fixed.
How much longer is this going to take?
“We just need to go through a few more questions before we start,” the nurse says as though reading my mind. She stares down at me and then at the clipboard in her hand. “Can you tell me your full name again?” she asks.
“Olivia Bird.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“Thank you, but I didn’t choose it.”
She pulls a face that suggests I said something wrong, and I want to say something right to cancel it out. To try to make her like me. I could tell her that my friends call me Birdy but that would be a lie. I don’t have any friends.
“Any chance you could be pregnant?” she asks.
Not unless it’s an immaculate conception.
“No.”
“And you’ve chosennotto have a sedative, is that right?” I nod. “Just to remind you that if you change your mind once you’re inside the machine—people often do—we can still sedate you. But you won’t be able to drive yourself home, and you’ll need someone to stay with you and monitor you for twenty-four hours.”
