‘So, you have a blood type of AB positive, it says here.’
I nod. Dr Rhys is still sporting his pretentious half-glasses after all these years, like some Harley Street bigshot. What’s it been, thirteen, fourteen years? Almost fifteen, actually, since the trundle truck. He still has a tin of lollies on his desk. Will I get one today? I still suck them. We take them into clubs, big baby dummy-shaped ones, sucking them like children. Sweets and E, back to innocence, back to childhood. Pure pleasure.
‘I should update our records here. Do you — um, are you a smoker?’
I nod.
‘Roughly how many a day? Ten?’
‘Twen— ahem — twenty.’ It’s hard to talk quietly sometimes. Have to clear my throat.
‘Alcohol?’
I nod.
‘Units a week?’
I’m not sure what units are. I know pints.
‘Pff—’ I look at the ceiling. ‘Maybe about twenty pints?’ Twenty seems fair.
Dr Rhys writes it in, and then scrunches up his nose. ‘Recreational drugs …?’ Slight involuntary shake of his head, before peering back at me for an answer.
Here we are: we’re here; we’ve got to tell the truth. I don’t mind telling him the truth.
‘Um, grass.’
‘Marijuana?’
I nod.
‘And speed too.’
‘Ecstasy?’
I nod. I’m quite impressed he knows it.
He makes a few notes. His ancient chair creaks as he adjusts his brogued feet between the wooden legs. I’m grateful for his professional silence.
So anyway, I tell him I’m thirsty all the time, going to the toilet all the time, and then there’s the weight loss. I look at him closely. He knows what I’m thinking. He’s got the notes. He’ll be thinking the same. He’ll be thinking about what my dad died of. He’ll be thinking, mmm, family history of early cancer deaths on the male side … what are the odds of … hmm.
‘I’m worried it might be cancer,’ I say. ‘I think that’s why — well, it’s taken me a while to come and see you.’
‘But you don’t think about giving up the ciggies?’ he says, without looking up from his piece of paper.
He must feel the silence beside him, because he looks up at me over the top of his glasses, and pauses significantly.
‘Your symptoms could indicate any number of things,’ he says, looking back down at the papers. ‘Best not to speculate. What I’ll get you to do is take a short stroll down to the blood-test unit, and we’ll take it from there.’
My head’s pounding as the bloods nurse leeches out the liquid. I should tell her. But I need to be strong. I should tell her I’m not feeling so good. The ceiling is bearing down on me, and this place is so hot. It’ll pass, no doubt. I haven’t had any breakfast, and I’m feeling weak and sick, hot hospital, waiting ages for my name to be called.
And those phials, filling the phials full of black. It’s so black. Less red in those little phials, more inky black. And quite smelly. Smells like — like what? It smells like a climbing frame. Unpainted iron climbing frame. Is — is the iron on a climbing frame the same as the iron in your blood? I could ask, but I don’t want— Stupid.
The floor falls away from me.
‘Jean, we’ve got another one.’
‘It’s always the men, isn’t it?’
The results are right there in front of him. Right there, on paper. But all he’s doing is sitting there in his chair, trying to get his mouse pointer to open the right bit on his computer screen. He totally knows my mind is racing away–
Cancer cancer cancer cancer
— and the bottom’s dropping out of my stomach.
He’s punishing me. He’s making me pay for not looking after myself and for taking drugs, and for leeching the NHS of all its resources, because he likes his job to be nice and easy.
Cancer cancer cancer cancer
‘Well,’ he says, exhaling through whistley nostrils, ‘your tests indicate a very high level of blood glucose—’
And you’ve got cancer
‘—which indicates to us that it seems your pancreas, which is a rather important organ situated here—’ and he circles the air around my belly ‘— just, uh, just below your stomach cavity, is not functioning properly—’
And you’ve got cancer
‘Now when your pancreas produces insulin, that insulin gets pumped into your bloodstream to help you absorb the sugars, you see?’
How long have I got? He’s wittering on, and all I want to know is the answer. I should have asked my mum to come with me. I actually want my mum. No joke.
‘Now this is a major change.’
That’s it. He stops and he looks me in the eye, and he says slowly, ‘This is a major change.’
I nod, comprehendingly. What’s a major change?
‘People find it takes a good deal of adjusting to. But it’s largely a matter of self-discipline. Before you know it, it’ll be something you don’t even think about. A little jab — pop — and you carry on just like everyone else.’
‘So I need to inject myself?’
‘Yes, yes, but modern kits make it all very straightforward and easy, and a lot of the time people say they can do it without anyone even noticing. Or if it’s an awkward situation, you know, you can take yourself off to the loos or wherever and sort yourself out there.’
So I’m injecting myself? I have an image of grimacing and straining to pull the tourniquet tight with my teeth and jabbing a hypodermic into my throbbing vein.
‘And then there’s no reason why you can’t live as long and happy and fulfilled a life as anyone else. There are tens of thousands of people living with type one diabetes in the UK, and they all get by just fine. Hundreds of thousands.’
And this is the first time he has said diabetes. I’m completely sure of that.
So it’s not cancer.
I have not-cancer.
‘I was totally shitting it!’ I say, the relief flushing through me at the Queen’s Head as I reveal the verdict to Mal and Kelvin. ‘All I could think was cancer, you know? Cancer or AIDS. I’m telling you, though, if they’d told me it was cancer, I’d be straight up to Hephzibah’s Rock, and I’d take a running jump, straight into the river. I’m not going through all that pain and agony. I would wait for a perfect sunny day. I would leap into the blue, slow motion at the top of the arc of my leap, my face warmed by the summer sun, drop into the Severn and get washed out to sea. I wouldn’t be scared. It’d be hep-hep-hoorayyyyy — splash.’
‘No, don’t say that,’ says Kelvin. ‘Don’t joke about stuff like that.’
‘You’d be shitting it too much to do that,’ says Mal. ‘Unless you were completely caning it on E or something.’
Something about me doesn’t quite like this idea. Knowing that Mal most likely has a pocketful of Es makes it all a bit real. A bit seedy. A bit possible.
‘No,’ he says, ‘you want to slash your wrists, don’t you?’ He draws back his sleeve to bear his wrist and draws along it with the nail of his little finger. ‘What you want to do is cut a line, from here, down to here. Along the arm, see? Most people try and go across, but it just closes back up. Don’t cross the path, go down the highway. Job done.’
‘Ah, Mal,’ says Kelvin, squirming. ‘That’s sick.’
‘What?’ Mal shrugs. ‘Better that than being hooked up to a big bank of machines.’
‘Oh yeah,’ I say. ‘If I’m hooked up to a big bank of machines, just switch me off. I don’t want to know.’