Becky Bananas (14 page)

One day when Bryony wakes up she has a pain in her leg. She tells her mum and her mum says she has probably strained it. “Doing all those ballet exercises.” Bryony thinks that maybe it was when she was doing
grands battements.

But she thinks she will be able to work her way through it, because quite often that is what dancers do when they have aches and pains. So that afternoon when she goes to class she tries to pretend that everything is the same as usual and to forget about her leg and how it is hurting.

But next day it is worse and when she goes for class her teacher notices and says
to her that she must rest for a while and not come to class until it is better. She says that she has probably pulled a muscle and it is best to rest it.

Bryony really hates to miss class but her leg is so bad she can hardly bear to walk on it. Also she is feeling quite tired and people start to say how pale she is.

At first her mum doesn’t worry because she has always been pale. Once at school some unkind girls made a nickname for her and the nickname was “Pasty”. But then one morning Bryony wakes up and she has a pain in her other leg as well, and now her mum starts to get a bit anxious and tells the au pair to take her to the doctor. Bryony’s mum cannot go to the doctor with her as she has to be at work. She is a big television star and they are doing some important filming, but the au pair, who is called Rosa-Maria, is quite nice. Bryony doesn’t mind going to the doctor with her.

The doctor is also quite nice. He has been to see Bryony before, when she has had mumps and chickenpox. He says to
Rosa-Maria that she must take Bryony immediately to the hospital to have a blood test so that they can find out what is wrong.

The blood test means having a needle stuck in her arm and a tube of blood sucked out, which is not very pleasant, but Bryony is eleven and so she is brave about it.

When her mum comes home that day she cannot understand why Bryony has had to go to the hospital to have the blood sucked out. She says, “Why does she need to have blood sucked out for a pulled muscle?” Rosa-Maria says that the doctor thinks maybe Bryony might be anaemic. (Which is something else Uncle Eddy said I would have to explain.)

Anaemic means not having enough red blood cells which carry the oxygen round your body and give you energy. If people don’t have enough red cells, then they get tired.

At six o’clock that night the doctor rings up and speaks to Bryony’s mum. He says he has had the result of the blood test and would like to come round to discuss it.
Bryony’s mum turns pale. She says, “l hope it isn’t anything serious?” But the doctor won’t tell her until he comes.

When the doctor arrives, Bryony is told to go and watch television with Rosa-Maria and her little brother Joseph. She doesn’t hear what the doctor says, but afterwards, when he has gone, she sees that her mum has been crying. Her mum tells her that she is anaemic and that is why she has felt tired. She says that she has to go back to the hospital so that the doctors can find out what is causing it.

When they go to the hospital a second time it is a different hospital, it is a hospital that deals only with children, and Bryony’s mum goes with her. Bryony is glad that it is her mum and not Rosa-Maria. She likes Rosa-Maria but it is not the same as being with her mum.

At the hospital they are taken to a room with four beds in it. Two of the beds are empty but in one bed there is a girl of about Bryony’s age. She is sitting up against the pillows and listening to music through
headphones. She is very pretty with blonde hair and a red nightdress with white dots. She smiles at Bryony but Bryony is too frightened to smile back. What has frightened her is that this girl has plastic tubes coming out of her nightdress. The tubes are stuck to the side of the bed and are attached to plastic bags that hang off a metal stand.

You can see inside the plastic bags. One of them has something that looks like blood in it. Bryony feels sick and scared. Is this what is going to happen to her?

The girl takes off her headphones and says, “Hi! I’m Chloë. Are you a new patient?”

Bryony is too scared to say anything at all so her mum has to say it for her. Bryony is a bit of a coward. She hasn’t any bottle. She is even scared of being X-rayed! This is silly, because X-rays don’t hurt. But then she has to have an injection so that the doctor can take a sample of her bone marrow. He has to punch a needle into her hip, and that is nasty. That is
really
nasty. Her mum tells her to be brave and Bryony tries hard but she is scared and trembling all the time even though her mum is with her.

After that she is taken back to the room with the four beds and she has to get into one of the beds and have blood dripped into her from a plastic bag hanging from a metal stand, just like the girl called Chloë, except that Bryony only has one plastic bag. While Bryony’s mum is outside talking
to the doctor, Chloë tells Bryony that she’ll probably have lots once they start treatment.

Bryony is horrified to discover that she is going to have to stay in the hospital. She had thought she was going home! She says to her mum, “But what about my dancing classes?” and her mum has to explain to her that she can’t have dancing classes for the moment. She says, “You have to wait until you’re better.”

Bryony asks how long that will be and her mum looks grave and says, “lt could be a month or two.”

That is the
worst
news.

It is only later that her mum tells her what is wrong with her. She tells her that she has AML and that the doctors are going to give her drugs that will cure it.

After Bryony’s mum has gone and Bryony and Chloë are alone, Chloë tells Bryony that she has leukaemia as well, only hers is a different sort. Hers is called ALL. ALL stands for
acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
She says that to begin with she couldn’t ever
remember the word
lymphoblastic
but that now she can. But she doesn’t know what it means! Not properly. The doctor has told her, but she can’t make sense of it. It is too complicated.

Chloë says that ALL is what most children have. Not so many have what Bryony has got. Bryony doesn’t know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but Chloë tells her not to worry. She says, “They can almost always cure it nowadays. They just give you chemo and then you go into remission.”

Bryony is so ignorant she doesn’t know what chemo is or what remission means! Chloë tells her that chemo is chemotherapy and means drugs. She says, “They make you feel sick but it’s worth it if it puts you into remission.” She says that remission is when the leukaemia goes away and you don’t feel tired any more or get bruises.

Bryony says that she never got bruises, she just got pains in her legs. Chloë says that what she got was headaches and a high temperature. But she says that it’s different
for everyone. Chloë has been in the hospital for a few days and already seems to know everything.

It helps Bryony, having Chloë there to talk to. They become best friends. Best
hospital
friends. When one of them is sad the other cheers her up, or if one of them is frightened the other makes her brave. Chloë has lots more bottle than Bryony but even Chloë gets frightened sometimes.

After a few weeks Bryony is allowed to go home because she is in remission, which means there are no more cancer cells in her blood. Everyone is happy and Bryony’s mum takes her to have a special tea at a smart hotel to celebrate. The hotel is in the West End. It is full of palm trees and beautiful blue carpet and Bryony eats cream cakes, as many as she likes.

She is not worried about being too fat for ballet because she has lost lots of weight and the doctor says she must try to put it on again.

She is told that she can go back to her ballet classes but not as many as before.
Only one a week to begin with. But one a week is not enough! Her mum says, “Give it a while and we’ll see.”

She still has to have chemo and all her hair is falling out. This is because of the drugs. Chloë’s hair has fallen out, too. It happens to most people, but Bryony knows that it will grow again. The doctor has told her so.

One day when Bryony goes to the hospital for her blood test they tell her that she is no longer in remission. The leukaemia has come back and she must go into hospital again. She is very ill and her mum cries and so does Rosa-Maria because they think she is going to die. Everyone thinks she is going to die. Even the doctors and nurses. They think they are hiding it from her but she knows what they are thinking. When her Uncle Ted comes to visit her, she tells him that this is what they think and he says to her, “What do you think?”

Bryony says, “I’m not going to die! I’m going to get better and become a famous dancer!”

And Uncle Ted says, “If that’s what you believe, then that’s what will happen.”

And it does, and everyone is amazed because they didn’t think it was possible.

She dances Odette and is famous and that is the end.

THE END
A book by Rebecca Banaras