Chapter 36
Mr outranks Dr in the medical world, an anti-title they give to their royalty. Mr gave Edwin Roff’s words added authority; he was surgeon law. His hair was white as prophets’, his cheeks gaunt from the great burden of informing patients of what pathologists saw in their petri dishes. In Tilda’s case they saw a large malignant tumour, a most aggressive, dangerous form. They saw two secondaries from the same breast. The lymph nodes in her armpit had cancer in them as well.
Roff said he was going to speak quickly and directly to get it all said—the facts, the course of action. If I, Colin, would be alert in case Tilda could not take it all in. Becky too please, her sister, sitting the other side of her at Roff’s wide dark-wood desk. There were two schools of thought on such diseases. His was the school that advocated radical action—removal of the full breast. The other school preferred removal of lumps only. ‘I take the view,’ he said quietly, ‘that the radical option is better. Removal of the affected breast, the lymph nodes stripped away: an aggressive attack to match an aggressive cancer. We will follow that up with chemotherapy.’
It was a game of numbers, he explained. Of percentages, of odds. If Tilda’s cancer returned within twelve months then the chances of survival…(he paused to select the right word) fell. If in twelve months it had not returned, well, then there was a fifty-fifty chance it might not return the following year. The odds extend more favourably as years go by.
He permitted his lips to bend into a professional smile of hope and goodwill. Tilda did not return the smile. Roff reached across his desk and spread his long pink fingers in front of us as if to display his wares—his expert tongs for the removal of deadliness. Tilda bowed her head. He patted her forearm and leant back into his black leather chair, his fingertips testing his bow tie’s straightness.
Tilda lifted her head. ‘What about a baby?’
Roff’s smile bent into reverse, into a frown. He jerked forward to look in Tilda’s file. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’
‘No.’
His face unfrowned.
‘But I’d like to be.’
He frowned again. ‘There are two things I would say about that. Firstly, a pregnancy could very likely speed your cancer on. It would also make treatment more limited.’
‘So you’re saying I can’t have children, ever?’
‘I would advise against it, ever,’ he said firmly, then tried to soften the blow. ‘The other issue is the social implication. There are certain social issues, which I’m sure you can imagine.’
Ever was too much of a cobweb word for her to continue the conversation. She waved it from her face and convulsed into a hunchback of tears. Becky and I scrummed her shoulders and uttered useless comforting. ‘It’s all right. It’s okay.’ We kept it up for several minutes, language empty of truth or reason.
Becky began crying. I was not, which made me feel I was misbehaving. Crying is a measure of emotion, or else why do it? It was a measure of love for Tilda given her circumstances, but I could not cry. The miserable wonder of her suffering had me frozen, overawed. To touch her sobbing shoulderblades was to touch death close-up. I knew cancer was not contagious but I wanted to take my hand from her body and stand alone, at a safe distance. Then maybe I would cry.
To compensate I became practical. Roff had caught my attention with a slow nod of his head. He said there were certain questions he would like to ask Tilda and obviously this wasn’t the time. He folded a sheet of paper—a questionnaire—into an envelope for my safekeeping. The questionnaire covered many of his queries, he said. Queries relevant to research, of establishing ‘links and causes’ and ‘correlating patient history’.
I was relieved to have a helpful role. He passed me pamphlets on preparing for a mastectomy; the side effects of the operation, physical and mental. Emotional side effects, the sense of womanhood being challenged. If I could make sure Tilda read them he would appreciate it. ‘Keep her spirits up,’ he said. ‘The next few weeks will test her spirits beyond the ordinary.’
Chapter 37
‘Social issues,’ Tilda said with a contemptuous snort. ‘What have social issues got to do with me?’ This was back at her parents’ place. They were out grocery shopping or getting their crying done in their car without upsetting Tilda.
But Tilda was not upset. She was whistling and laughing. She had turned the TV on and flicked channels for a distracting program. She was fine, she said. Fine. She just wished she knew what exactly was meant by social issues. She stared at me for answers. I tried some I don’t knows to avoid the subject. She was no fool. She had worked out what Roff meant. She was looking for an argument, not answers.
‘He means, if I die, I would leave a motherless child behind, doesn’t he? He means I’m definitely going to die, doesn’t he? He means there is no hope, doesn’t he? My death would be like abandoning a baby. I would be guilty of abandonment. It is so fucking cruel, Colin. Why is this happening to me? I do not deserve this happening to me.’
She paced the lounge room, yelling and pointing at east, south, west, north. At all the women in the world in all directions. ‘Why not that woman or that woman or that woman instead of me? Thousands of useless, ugly bitches breeding like farm pigs to ten different men. Why not them or women in prisons? Give them cancer. They deserve it. Give it to them and take it from me.’
She knelt in a corner of the couch. She wept herself silent. Then wept herself angrier: those vile, revolting tits of hers, they were to blame. She always hated them. Now one was being taken from her. ‘Good fucking riddance to it,’ she punched a couch cushion. ‘Men are lucky. Men don’t have tits.’ She laughed that soon she would be part man. She laughed that she might as well start practising: could I get her a beer, please? Wine is much too feminine for men. She slapped her thigh as if making a manly decision, spoke with her voice forced down an octave: she was going to stop wearing makeup and not wear bangles or shave her legs.
‘My hair will probably fall out from the drugs, won’t it? I’ll be very masculine, very bald.’ She put her hands on her head like a finger cap to tuck her fringe away. ‘What do you think? Will it suit me?’
She got off the couch and came up close to me, peered into my face, my eyes. She let her finger cap go. Her fringe sprang out and pounced at my cheek she was so close. ‘Why don’t you cry? Not so much as a single tear. Everyone else has, but not you. Not a drop.’
I thought it part of her funny male performance. ‘Men don’t cry,’ I smiled.
It was no performance. Her nostrils flexed open and closed with snotty breathing. ‘I know very well why you’re not crying. You’re not crying because you don’t really love me.’
‘Not true.’ I leant sideways to escape her gaze. I may be six foot three but her questioning was intimidating. Plus, if someone has cancer they have privileges over you. You can’t just tell them to settle down or shut up or be reasonable. They have a licence to glower and rage.