Page 91 of While I’m Still Here

Nobody can make me. I'll ring them tomorrow and tell them I've changed my mind. I'll keep both breasts. I'll keep the healthy one and the cancerous one, and everything can stay exactly where it fucking belongs.

Then the rest of the thought arrives.

Cancer included.

My stomach turns.

“No.”

I squeeze my eyes shut.

“No, no, no, no.”

Because I don't want that either.

I don't want to die.

I don't want cancer more than I don't want surgery.

And suddenly I am furious.

Not sad.

Furious.

I push myself off the floor so quickly the room tilts, and my reflection is waiting for me when I straighten. Red face. Wet cheeks. Bare chest. Hair stuck to my skin.

“What the fuck did I do?”

The woman in the mirror has no answer.

“What did I fucking do?”

My voice rises until I'm shouting at her.

At myself.

At cancer.

At the left breast I've spent weeks turning into a cartoon villain because murder tit is easier to say than part of my body grew something that might kill me. I hit my palm against the dressing table. “What did I do to deserve this?”

Nothing.

I know that.

Cancer isn't punishment. It isn't karma. There isn't some cosmic administrator allocating tumours according to moral performance. People don't earn cancer. Knowing that doesn't stop me from wanting someone to blame.

“I don't fucking smoke. I don't even fucking tan properly. I wear SPF. I eat vegetables sometimes. I recycle when I remember. I am a perfectly average fucking person. Why do I have to cut pieces off myself just to stay alive?”

My voice cracks on the last word.

And underneath the anger is the thing I've been avoiding since the doctor said cancer.

Death.

Not the funny version.

Not DON'T DIE written in a notebook between buying milk and having lots of hot sex.