Freia Lockhart's Summer of Awful (10 page)

Dad's rooting around in the bathroom cabinet when I go for my morning shower.

“Have you got your toothbrush, Genie?” he calls over his shoulder. “What about hand cream? Will you need hand cream? And dental flo–”

Mum sticks her head out of their bedroom and gives me a can-you-believe-this headshake. “I have everything I need, thank you, Terence. Now please go downstairs and have some breakfast. And no coffee – the last thing you need is caffeine!”

She disappears into the bedroom again and Dad closes the cabinet door. “Morning, Sausage,” he says as he passes me in the hall. He sounds so sad that I don't bother telling him off for using my most detested family nickname.

On my way back to my room I notice that Ziggy's door is still closed. I knock loudly but there's no answer. I know it's not likely that he's up and dressed already, since lately he has to be prised out of bed in the morning with threats, so I block my nose and open the door. A deep snort emerges from the lump under the sheets.

“Ziggy, wake up! We're leaving for the hospital in fifteen minutes.”

The lump groans. “I'm not coming. Close the door and leave me alone.”

“What do you mean you're not coming? Mum's surgery is today.”

Ziggy sits up and rakes a hand through his shaggy hair. “Note to annoying big sister: I'm not the one performing the surgery so I don't need to be there. Dad already said it was okay for me to hang out with Biggie, so don't get your panties in a wad about it.”

“Panties in a wad” is one of the charming sayings Ziggy's picked up from Biggie. Rationally, I know it's the same as “knickers in a knot”, which Mum uses all the time, but there's something about the words “panties” and “wad” together that makes it sound altogether more … unsavoury.

“Fine, we'll be better off without you there,” I say, slamming the door shut.

“What's going on, you two?” calls Mum from her room.

“Nothing,” Ziggy and I chorus.

The Women's Hospital is very, very pink. The carpet is pink, the walls of the corridors are pink, even the lettering on the signs is pink. It's like they're trying to send a visual message: if you're a man, you don't belong here. The look on Dad's face says they've succeeded.

We follow the pink signs to admissions where an efficient woman goes over Mum's forms, double-checking all the details even though Mum filled them in herself last night. Then a porter arrives with a wheelchair that he forces Mum to sit in and leads us via the pink signs to Oncology.

“You're lucky you've got the room to yourself for now,” he says, wheeling her into a room close to the nurses' station and pulling up by the window. “They've given you the bed with the view.”

“Lucky me,” says Mum, eyeing the construction site next door.

I watch as a frail-looking patient wheels her IV stand slowly past the door. “It's better than the view of the corridor.”

“Good point,” says Mum, transferring the contents of her overnight bag to the small cupboard next to the bed.

“Hello, I'm Sally,” says a cheerful nurse around Mum's age. “I just need to check the details on your chart and get you settled in before Dr Bynes comes for your pre-surgery consultation.”

Sally works her way efficiently through the information on Mum's chart. I don't know why she needs to check Mum's name and date of birth and blood type and allergies since Mum only confirmed the answers at admissions fifteen minutes ago, but I'm beginning to realise that going to hospital involves a lot of paperwork.

“Last one,” says Sally, her pen hovering at the bottom of the page. “Can you confirm that your surgery is for a mass in your
right
breast?”

After hearing about Grandma's friend Maisy, I don't know whether to be relieved that she's double-checking, or worried that she has to ask.

Half an hour later Mum is sitting up in bed, wearing a flimsy surgical gown that gapes at the front.

It's almost 10.30 when Dr Bynes finally arrives, by which time I'm questioning how committed to her patients she is if she keeps them waiting for so long. She also seems way too young and way too glamorous to be a top surgeon. I know from medical dramas that surgeons should be old enough to have had loads and loads of experience, and not care about their appearance. They certainly shouldn't wear stiletto heels.

“Good morning, Gene,” says Dr Bynes, leaning to kiss Mum's cheek as if they're old friends. She holds out her hand to Dad. “Good to see you again, Terence. And this must be Freia.” I shake her hand hoping she won't notice how clammy my palms are. They've been sweating ever since we got here.

Dr Bynes goes over the information on Mum's chart again. I'm about to pull Dad aside to ask whether he really thinks this doctor's the best person to operate on Mum if she doesn't know all this stuff already when she looks straight at me and says, “It's ridiculous how many times we have to go through this, isn't it? But it's hospital procedure. You'll hear it all again when the porter comes.”

It's unnerving that Dr Bynes knew exactly what I was thinking, but I am somewhat reassured.

“Okay, Gene,” she continues. “Let's go over the surgery plan we agreed on last week. If you've changed your mind about anything or you want to go over the options again, just say so, okay?”

“Should Freia and I wait outside?” asks Dad.

Dr Bynes nods at Mum. “Up to you, Gene.”

“I think you should stay,” says Mum. “Unless you'd prefer not to know the details, Fray?”

All eyes are on me and I can't work out what the right answer is. I'm the sort of person who changes the channel when they show surgery on TV, so I'm not sure whether I'm ready to hear the gory details of Mum's operation. But will it seem like I'm not interested in what she's going through if I don't stay? And is the look Dad's giving me please-give-me-an-excuse-not-to-hear-this-again or do-it-for-your-mum? I can't tell.

Eventually, Dr Bynes takes my inability to speak to mean that I want to hear about it. She pulls a notepad from her designer handbag and reads from it. “So, the plan is for a complete local excision, with a surgical margin. If there are further masses or microcalcification that wasn't detected by the ultrasound, we may have to proceed to a full mastectomy. We will also do a sentinel node biopsy.”

I haven't understood a word except “mastectomy”, but it all sounds pretty terrifying to me.

“And to put all of that into non-surgical jargon: we're going to remove the lump and a small amount of healthy tissue around it, to make sure we get it all. If there are any other tumours or malignant-appearing calcium deposits in other parts of the breast, we may have to remove the breast entirely. We will also remove the sentinel lymph nodes in your right armpit and send them to pathology to be tested for cancer cells. Is that still what you want, Gene?”

“Yes,” says Mum, firmly. “That's what I want.”

“Good. I'll go and get ready for surgery now. The porter will be along shortly to bring you down to theatre.” Dr Bynes smiles at Mum as if she's just confirmed lunch plans at a nice restaurant. “If everything goes smoothly, you'll be out of surgery by twelve-thirty, and back on the ward an hour later. Your family can come back then.”

“What are we going to do till half-past one?” I ask after we've followed Mum's gurney to the patients' lift at the far end of the floor and said our forcedly cheerful goodbyes.

Dad doesn't speak until the lift doors close. “I don't know, Fray. I don't know what to do.”

In the end, we go to the visitors' lounge down the corridor from Mum's room. It's a small alcove, out of sight of the patients' rooms, with a couple of saggy pink couches, a stack of falling apart magazines and a telly that's tuned to kids' programming. I catch up on the Hollywood gossip from 2007 while Dad stares vacantly at
Play School
. When I get up to grab another magazine fifteen minutes later, he's humming along to the
Bananas in Pyjamas
theme.

“You and Zig used to love this show,” he says when he notices me staring at him. “Back when I was staying home with you every day, I used to park you in front of it so I could work on my novel. B1 and B2 were the best babysitters I ever found.”

He smiles, as if remembering better days. I don't say anything, since Dad talking about his still-unfinished novel usually results in him locking himself in his study for hours, after which he emerges looking despondent.

From one o'clock onwards, Dad nips to Mum's room every five minutes to see if she's back yet. He's led back from his fifth trip by an exasperated-looking nurse.

“Just stay put please, Mr Lockhart,” she says, guiding him to the couch in front of the TV. “I promise someone will come and get you as soon as your wife is back.”

“Sorry,” says Dad, but his eyes are resentful. It's the same expression Ziggy gets when Mum forces him to agree not to do something stupid, like jumping off the roof into next door's pool.

I try to ignore Dad's incessant foot tapping and sighing for the next forty minutes. I've exhausted the magazines and moved on to a jigsaw that I'm beginning to suspect is made up of assorted pieces from two separate puzzles, unless there's a
Jungle Book
story in which Mowgli meets Mona Lisa that I don't know about.

Finally, a woman wearing a pink Volunteer badge comes to get us. On the way to Mum's room she introduces herself as Jenny.

“Are
you
going to be looking after my mum?” I ask, trying to ascertain how much patient care volunteers might be responsible for.

Jenny laughs. “Don't worry, the doctors and nurses take care of all the medical business. We volunteers are here for the non-technical stuff – foot rubs and hair brushing, someone to chat to, that sort of thing.” She stops outside Mum's room. “She's still groggy from the anaesthetic, so don't worry if she seems a bit out of it. She's got a drip in her hand and there's a drain under her right arm – it looks scary, but it's all normal after an operation like this. The nurse will be along in a minute to chat to you.” She leaves us at the door with a cheery wave.