Page 36 of A Found Family at the Cornish Country Hospital

‘I mean you don’thaveto tell us.’ Amy pulled a face. ‘But isn’t there a saying about a problem being smaller when you share it?’

‘A problem shared is a problem halved.’ Gwen shrugged. ‘But you get to choose who you share it with.’

‘I’ve got leukaemia.’ Isla should probably have broken the news more gently than that, and Amy gave an audible gasp.

‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry.’ She enveloped Isla in a hug that almost knocked the hot chocolate out of her hands. ‘But you’re going to be okay. The success rate for treatment is really high and…’

‘I don’t think Isla had finished talking yet.’ Gwen’s tone was gentle as she interrupted Amy, but the words still stopped the younger woman in her tracks.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You know I’m a motormouth at the best of times.’

Isla gave her a watery smile, and braced herself to tell the story she’d been trying to tell herself ever since the diagnosis. ‘I’m lucky because it’s chronic myeloid leukaemia, which as Amy says, has a high success rate of being effectively managed by medication that stops the overproduction of white blood cells. Just tablets for now, that’s all.’

‘There’s nothat’s allabout it.’ Gwen sat down on the other side of Isla, fixing her with a look that made it difficult not to drop her gaze. It was going to be impossible to maintain eye contact, and keep trotting out the lines she’d just spun, makingthis sound like nothing, because Gwen was right, this wasn’t nothing. ‘A diagnosis like that would hit anyone hard. When did you find out?’

‘Almost a month ago.’ Isla’s voice sounded so small, but as a sudden thought struck her, she grasped Gwen’s wrist. Gwen had been friends with her grandparents for a long time and there was a good chance she’d feel they deserved to know. ‘But I haven’t told Nan and Grandpa Bill, and you can’t tell them either.Please, you’ve got to promise me.’

Gwen’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but she was nodding. ‘I promise not to say anything, but you really should, sweetheart, they’d want to be there for you.’

‘I’m scared it will kill them. They’ve already had to go through losing their only son, and I can’t put the burden on them that I could die too. Or on Mum and Lexi.’

‘You coulddie? I thought you said you just have to take a pill.’ Amy looked close to tears now, and this was exactly what Isla had been afraid of. But she’d started now, so she had to finish.

‘There’s a chance I could, if the inhibitors aren’t effective and the cancer progresses through several phases. But even then there are treatment options to move on to, including chemo. It would only be if none of those things work.’ Isla painted on a smile. ‘We’re a long, long way from that yet.’

‘It’s not just the chance of the worst-case scenario that’s worrying you, though, is it?’ Gwen was like some kind of all-seeing eye, and Isla shook her head.

‘No, it’s having to live with it that scares me most. The type of leukaemia I have is usually not curable, so it’s a lifelong condition. Not knowing if and when things are going to change terrifies me. I saw Dad go through it, and watched what it did to everyone who loved him.’ She sighed so deeply, it was as if someone had sucked all the air out of her body, and she had to take another shuddering breath before she could carryon. ‘I thought I was doing better. I’ve been to a couple of counselling sessions, and I’d made the decision to go ahead with the egg donation, and to freeze some eggs for myself too. It’s for insurance really, because if the leukaemia does progress, it might be too risky to delay chemo at that stage for a second egg collection. I thought I had it all straight in my head, but then we had this patient today, Stuart, who’s been living with MND, and it brought back so many memories of what Dad had to deal with. I don’t want to go through that, but more than anything I don’t want my family to go through it again. I’m pinning all my hopes on counselling helping me to find a way of managing all those feelings, but I just don’t know if I can. Not while I’m in a job like this. I’ve been avoiding seeing my grandparents too, because I’m scared I’m just going to blurt it out.’

‘Do you wish you’d never been told that your father was ill?’ Gwen was still looking at her in a way that meant she couldn’t have lied, even if she’d wanted to.

‘No, as awful as it was to know we were losing him, it also made me treasure every minute, in a way I wouldn’t have done at that age, if I hadn’t known we were on borrowed time. He always took every opportunity there was to make memories with us as well, and I think it helped us all to cope.’

‘I’ve always thought that’s the way we should all live, as if we’re on borrowed time. It’s what Barry and I have done ever since I came out of the other side of my horrible menopausal depression, determined to grab life and him, by the short and curlies.’ For the first time Gwen laughed, and Isla found herself smiling again too. ‘None of us know what’s round the corner, my love, not really. No matter how much we might like to pretend to ourselves that we do. So, whatever you decide about telling your family, follow your dad’s example and make as many memories as you can with the people you love. Hopefully your condition will remain stable for the rest of your life, but you’ll never regrethaving done those things if you stay well. But you sure as hell might regret it if you don’t, or if something else happens to take you away from them, or vice versa.’

‘Gwen’s right, we should all be doing that.’ Amy put a hand on her arm. ‘So no more excuses, you and me are booking that trip to Paris we keep talking about.’

‘Why do I feel like you’re using this as an excuse to railroad me in to holding your bag, while you pursue every good-looking man in a five-mile radius of the Eiffel Tower?’ Isla was smiling, and Amy responded with a casual shrug.

‘Can’t something have a double benefit?’ As Amy laughed, it was easy for a moment to forget everything that had been weighing her down, but as her friend started listing all the wonderful things they could do in Paris, Gwen leant forward and whispered in Isla’s ear.

‘Tell your family, you’ll feel better when you do.’ Isla gave an almost imperceptible nod, but she was already giving herself the excuse that she hadn’t made any kind of promise. Part of her might be almost certain that Gwen was right, but she still had absolutely no idea if she’d ever be ready to put her family through something like this again.

21

‘This is such an unexpected pleasure.’ As Isla’s grandmother set the tray down on the table, she repeated the same words she’d said when Isla had first arrived. She hadn’t phoned her grandparents to say she was coming over, because it had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. What Gwen had said had weighed on her mind. Not just her comment about Isla being glad once she’d told them about her diagnosis, but also her advice to make the most of every moment she had with them, regardless of how she responded to treatment. No one was around forever, and they were two of her favourite people in the world, so she should be making the most of every moment with them. But it wasn’t too late, and she fully intended to make up for lost time.

‘I’d hate to see how much food you’d have brought in if you knew I was coming.’ Isla grinned. There was a plate stacked high with biscuits and cookies, and another one with sausage rolls on one side and a brick wall of brownies on the other.

‘You timed it well, coming on a day when I’ve been baking and your grandpa hasn’t had the chance to polish everything off just yet.’ Joy’s tone was teasing, and her husband laughed.

‘I did my best, but not even I can eat forty brownies in one sitting.’

‘I told you that some of those are for the bake sale that Gwen is organising for the Friends’ summer fundraising drive. So if you had eaten them all, you’d have had her and me to answer to!’

‘Thank God I didn’t then, because no man could survive that.’ Grandpa Bill laughed again, and Isla did her best to arrange her face into a smile, but she was having the same trouble faking it as she’d so often had lately. The thought of her grandmother meeting up with Gwen and them idly chatting about life, without Gwen bringing up the fact that Isla had been diagnosed with leukaemia seemed impossible.

‘This year would be particularly dangerous for you to cross Gwen, because she’s on a mission to raise funds for another scanner.’ Isla’s grandmother sighed. ‘One of the nurses on the orthopaedics ward was diagnosed with cancer after a scan that wouldn’t have been detected any other way until it was too late. She’d have left her six-year-old son behind if it hadn’t been caught in time. So, she wants to raise all the funds she can.’

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