Page 121 of While I’m Still Here

“Thank you for attending the official retirement ceremony. Effective seven tomorrow morning, these tits will cease operations.” Danny puts his hand solemnly over his heart. “Your support throughout this difficult corporate transition has been appreciated.”

Marcus's mouth twitches.

I look down one final time. The humour softens and my hands lower. “Goodnight, girls.”

For several seconds, nobody moves.

Colin is the first to lower his hands, setting my phone carefully on the bedside table as though even that requires more consideration tonight. Danny sits on the edge of my bed, his eyes still red from laughing and crying in such quick succession that neither emotion seems to have fully left his face. Marcus remains close enough that I could reach him without taking more than a step, and I'm still standing in the middle of them completely naked from the waist up.

There is no reason for all three men to still be here.

The photographs are finished. The ceremony is over. I've said goodbye. I should pull my T-shirt back over my head, and we should go downstairs, where Danny and Marcus can resume arguing over the sofa, and Colin can pretend he's going to make me sleep while checking the time every twenty minutes because he's every bit as frightened of seven tomorrow morning as I am.

That would be sensible.

Except I don't reach for my T-shirt. I look at the phone instead. At the photographs we have just taken because apparently I needed evidence of my own body before it changes. There are pictures of my breasts from every angle now. Pictures of my stomach and stretch marks and uneven nipples. Pictures of me laughing. Pictures where I forgot to make myself smaller.

I wanted proof, but standing here now, I suddenly hate that word.

Proof.

As though this body is already evidence of something that used to exist. It doesn't used to anything.

Not yet.

My breasts are still here. My heart is still beating underneath them. My skin is warm. I can feel the cold air against my nipples and the carpet beneath my feet and the slight dampness left on my cheeks from crying. Tomorrow morning surgeons will change my body because there is something inside it that could kill me, but tomorrow morning isn't here yet.

I'm so fucking tired of tomorrow stealing from tonight.

For weeks, my body has become something medical. Something discussed in centimetres and margins and procedures. People have examined it, scanned it, marked things on diagrams of it. I've stood in front of mirrors trying to imagine pieces missing from it. I've touched my breasts twenty-four times today alone, not because touching them feels good, but because I've been counting down.

Still here.

Still here.

Still here.

Every touch has been another goodbye. I don't want the last night I have this body to belong entirely to cancer. The thought arrives so suddenly that I inhale. Colin notices immediately. Of course he does. His attention sharpens, but he doesn't ask what's wrong. Maybe because he knows by now that there are too many possible answers.

I look at him, then Danny, then Marcus. Three men who have spent tonight doing everything possible to let me be whatever I needed to be. Frightened. Furious. Ridiculous. Grieving. Topless in my bedroom, holding a retirement ceremony for my breasts.

None of them has asked me to make this easier for them.

“I want to feel something.” My voice is quieter than I expect, but nobody moves. I swallow and try again because that isn't enough to explain the ache spreading through my chest. “Something more than tomorrow, or fear, or anything else.”

Colin's expression changes first, but he doesn't assume. His eyes search mine instead, and somehow that makes saying the rest easier.

“I've spent weeks being frightened of my own fucking body.” I look down at myself, then back at them. “I've spent tonight taking photographs of it because I'm scared I'll forget it. I've said goodbye to my tits like they're already gone, and they're not. They're still fucking here.”

My voice cracks. I press my palm against my chest. “So am I. I’m still here, goddammit!”

The room becomes painfully quiet.

“I don't want tonight to just be the night before my mastectomy.” Tears burn behind my eyes again, but I refuse to look away. “I don't want the last thing I remember about having breasts to be standing in front of a mirror crying because I'm losing them. I don't want to spend the next few hours lying in bed touching them just to check they're still there.”

My fingers curl slightly against my skin. “I want to actually be in my body tonight.”

That is the closest I can get to explaining it.