Page 112 of The Art of Loving You

‘We’re not leaving you.’

‘Please. I’m not going to do anything stupid. ’ I stuff the pills back into the box.My hand is trembling and several tablets fall onto the floor. I scoop them up so Socks doesn’t find them.

‘You’ve already done something stupid.’ Alice’s tone is hard now, she and Mum playing good cop, bad cop. It won’t work. ‘How could you have just … run away?’

‘Like you have run away from your problems? You haven’t even told the father …’

‘At least if I don’t tell him, I won’tdie.’

‘Alice!’ Mum is distraught but I don’t blame my sister for her bluntness. She is speaking out of a place of fear. Of love. Sometimes there is only a fine line dividing the two.

‘Sorry.’ Alice is shamefaced. ‘But we don’t understand why you left the hospital. It’s crazy—’

‘But I might be crazy.’ I tap my head. ‘This thing might be making me crazy.’

‘All the more reason to have it removed then, surely?’ Alice asks. I don’t answer. My head full of nothing. The swirling mass of cells crawling around, devouring my rational thoughts. Causing irrational thoughts.

‘Please talk to me, Libby,’ Alice begs but I don’t have any words. How has it come to this? Jack gone. Mum crying into a tissue in the corner. My sister crouching broken before me, her baby bump hard against my shins. There’s a tightening of her abdomen, the baby is moving. Did it all circle back to this life inside her? Jack going out for prosecco. Did it start the day we moved in here when she called and asked if she could pop round? If I’d said no, she couldn’t visit, would things be different? Would Jack still be here? If only I hadn’t answered the phone.

Four phone calls.

It has taken four phone calls to spin my world off its axis and I remember them all with sharp clarity; the things I wanted to know – I was going to be an auntie – the things I wished I’d never been told.

Paralysis.

Memory loss.

The shock, the fear, the hope. The impossible, impossible decision I am faced with. To let go of Jack and have the operation, not knowing what the doctors will uncover, not knowing if it will be a success, the future uncertain and terrifying. Or to remain as I am, here with Jack, not knowing what the tumour might do to me, that future also uncertain and terrifying.

A stroke.

Loss of speech.

But … Jack.

You might have limited time to have this operation.

How limited? Is it safe to take a day to let things sink in? Two days? A week? I want everything to slow down.

Stop.

‘I can’t …’ What I can’t do is look my sister, Alice, in the eye. It’s too much. All of it.

Death.

‘Mr Baxter has told us the risks if you don’t go back in.’

‘I know. He told me too.’

Alice thinks I don’t understand, but I do. Or perhaps she thinks it doesn’t scare me or that I’m too scared.

I don’t know which I am.

Both, perhaps.

‘Say yes.’ She is crouching before me, reaching for my hand but I snatch mine away. ‘Say yes to the surgery and I’ll take you back to the hospital now. You deserve to live. A fresh start.You’ll feel better with that … that thing out of your head. You can begin to move on. You will …’ She swallows hard. ‘You will find happiness again.’

I remain silent and still but my mind is noisy. Deafening thoughts scream for attention but the loudest one of all is yelling that if I have the surgery I might not see Jack again.

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