Page 60 of The Life We Almost Had

‘It’s cancer,’ the doctor had said after a series of tests.

Oliver had felt like he was falling. He had gripped her hand while he asked what the treatment plan was.

The doctor’s gaze had shifted briefly to the floor before looking at Oliver once more and he had known the forthcoming news wasn’t good.

‘I’m afraid it’s stage four so, while there are things we can put in place to—’

‘It can’t be. She hasn’t had any symptoms…’ But even as Oliver had said the words, he knew that they were a lie. Her constant exhaustion. Her weight loss. Her stomach aches. The lack of colour in her cheeks. He had put it down to her busy lifestyle. Let her reassure him that she didn’t need to see a doctor, she was fine, she had said.

Fine.

She was dying.

‘I’m sorry,’ she had said as if she’d let him down when it was the other way around. He worked in medicine, for God’s sake. How could he not have known? Still, he hadn’t quite believed it, was sure a miracle would somehow occur.

But it didn’t.

‘I’m sorry too,’ he would whisper while she slept.

It was frightening how quickly she had faded away. In a matter of weeks he was sitting by her bed, sleeping by her bed, while she drifted in and out of consciousness. Delirious with pain and medication. It tortured him that he didn’t know what she was thinking, feeling. Did she blame him? He blamed himself. An earlier diagnosis might have made all the difference. He had been too wrapped up in his research to notice. What sort of husband was he? He didn’t deserve her love. He didn’t know if he still had it.

His guilt had grown, stretching his skin, pushing into his bones until his whole body ached with the pressure of feeling.

‘Clem.’ He said her name frequently, as though by keeping it alive he could keep her alive.

He couldn’t.

It was mid-morning. Outside the sun was shining, the birds were singing. A lawnmower hummed in the distance. It was a fluffy white clouds and ice cream day.A possibility day. She had opened her eyes and focused on him. Properly focused on him. Oliver had felt a surge of hope. She was coming back to him.

‘Clem?’

She didn’t speak. Oliver didn’t know if she wouldn’t or couldn’t. Instead, she had raised her finger and pressed it against her lips. It was her ‘I love you’. It was her goodbye. He had nodded, just once, his throat swelling with pain.

She had slipped away but Oliver kept hold of her hand, kept speaking her name.

She was gone.

After Clem had died, Oliver couldn’t let his constant questions about consciousness go. What happened to someone if they could no longer communicate? Could they still think? Feel? Remember? Oliver didn’t want to think or feel or remember. He tried to dull his pain with whiskey but he couldn’t dull his thoughts. He rattled around their huge home, tumbler in his hand, unable to settle. Unable to sleep. What had Clem been thinking in those final weeks as she had drifted in and out of consciousness? How much easier would it have been if there had been a way they could have communicated? A way he could have understood the things in her mind. It wasn’t only for her benefit he wished this. He agonized over whether she had blamed him for not insisting she saw a doctor, whether she had stopped loving him. In those last few weeks when she was wracked with pain, was she full of love or hate? Did it bring her comfort, thoughts of him? Of them? Of their wedding day, barefoot on the beach, frothy waves rushing excitedly towards them as they declared until death do us part.

The alcohol soured his breath, burned his throat.

He clanked another empty bottle into the recycling bin and unscrewed the cap from a fresh one.

‘It must be so rewarding to know you’re making a difference,’ Clem had said the first night they met. ‘The world needs more people like you.’

She’d be so sad if she could see him now.

So ashamed.

It was the newspaper article that did it. A photo of him in a crumpled, stained shirt. Hair wild and unbrushed. ‘Is it all over for the once brilliant Chapman?’ the reporter had asked.

Could he make a difference? Be the man Clem wanted him to be? The man he had thought he was? It was too late for her, for him, but what if he could help others? He had previously researched consciousness. Should he carry on? Could he?

‘I’m so proud of you,’ her voice had echoed from the past.

Instead of slugging whiskey into his glass, he had glugged it down the sink and stumbled into his office, waking mid-afternoon, a bitter taste on his tongue, his face pressed to his desk, papers stuck to his cheek. He vowed never to drink again. To continue to make Clem proud.

Now, as he finished his orange juice, Oliver thought about the grief he had felt. Still felt. ‘I can’t imagine how you feel,’ he had told Anna but it was a lie. He knew how it felt to lose the person you love more than anyone else in the world. He had felt it too. He perhaps should have told her the truth.

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