Amanda Brooke - Another Way to Fall

It had taken her a huge amount of concentration to block out her surroundings as she began to write, drawing herself into a world over which she had complete control and one she was loath to set aside. At least she was feeling well enough to write, she told herself as she tucked a rogue curl back behind her ear, sweeping her fingers towards the dressing at the back of her scalp as if to remind herself that the nightmare was far from over. Reluctantly, she pulled down the lid of her laptop and pushed it to one side.

Emma’s marked improvement was not a result of the operation itself, which had been purely exploratory. It was the new regime of drugs she had been taking that made her thoughts feel clearer and the headaches that had plagued her for weeks had all but disappeared. Her vision wasn’t perfect but then it never would be; damage to her peripheral vision was an old war wound. She had been diagnosed with a brain tumour four years earlier and had been in remission for three of those. She was now awaiting the results of a biopsy that was likely to confirm that her future was in doubt once again.

Emma looked towards her mum and she had no doubt that the fear she could see etched on her face was a mirror image of her own. There were other similarities between mother and daughter. They had the same dark auburn hair that fell in soft curls, the same round hazel eyes, high cheek bones and tall willowy frames. Meg had often been mistaken for Emma’s sister and there were those who would be genuinely surprised to know that she was already the wrong side of fifty, but not today. Today, her age was showing.

Meg was sitting upright in an easy chair next to the bed; her hands gripped the neatly folded newspaper, which she had been reading moments earlier. She looked tired in her creased blue cotton dress, which matched with the cold blue walls of the hospital ward. As Emma reached out a comforting hand towards her, it didn’t escape her notice that the skin tone of her own arm, semi-transparent and tinged blue, also matched the decor.

Meg quickly discarded her newspaper and gripped Emma’s outstretched hand. ‘Ready?’ Meg asked as they both looked towards the huddle of doctors heading their way.

Emma bit down hard on the inside of her lip to hold back the scream building inside her. She wanted to say, ‘No! I’m not ready, I’ll never be ready. Please, oh, God, please send them away!’ Her unspoken words burned like acid at the back of her throat as she nodded in silent submission, never taking her eyes off Mr Spelling as he approached the foot of her bed. Emma had an assortment of consultants involved in her care and it was the neurosurgeon who would have assessed the pathology results of her biopsy. But it was her neuro-oncologist whom she relied upon and listened to most and she had asked for him to deliver the news. Mr Spelling was in his late fifties. He had a full head of thick, brown hair but it was peppered with far more grey than when they had first met. Back then Mr Spelling had been confident and the treatment offered had been intensive – major surgery followed by months of chemotherapy – but remission had been her reward.

Lately, however, each time she had met Mr Spelling, he had looked just a little less confident, less eager to give Emma one of his winning smiles. He felt Emma’s gaze on him now and, when he looked up, he smiled at her but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, their hidden depths a little closer to the surface than Emma would have liked.

‘Writing anything interesting?’ he asked her, nodding towards the discarded laptop.

Emma tried to return his smile but the corners of her mouth were being pulled down by invisible weights. She could feel herself not just sinking back into the bed but shrinking in size too, like a small, defenceless child gripping her future like a comfort blanket that was about to be torn from her grasp. ‘Just idiotic ramblings,’ she answered with a dismissive shrug.

In the days when she had counted on endless tomorrows, Emma had nurtured great ambitions and writing a book had been amongst them. Her first battle with cancer had derailed her dreams for the future and she had spent the last three years prevaricating rather than picking up where she had left off. The blind spot that her cancer had left in her peripheral vision unnerved her and she hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that there was something still there inside her head, lurking out of sight. She had been hoping for the best but all the time preparing for the worst, questioning every twinge, every headache, panicking each time she had a lapse of memory. She had told herself it was paranoia but the phrase I told you so was echoing across her thoughts now and with it, a sense of regret. There had been so much she could have achieved in the intervening years but she had waited too long. Panic bubbled inside her as she felt time slipping through her fingers.

As Mr Spelling put down her medical charts and walked to the side of the bed, there was an ominous silence, filled only by the continued pounding of Emma’s heart. His entourage followed in his wake and when they had fully encircled Emma, her nurse, Peter, pulled the curtain around the bed to provide a degree of privacy. She felt trapped and glanced anxiously from one face to the next, searching out a pair of eyes that might hold a hint of hope. There was none.

‘Right, then,’ Mr Spelling said, taking Emma’s free hand as Meg squeezed the other even tighter. Imperceptibly, the gathering of registrars and nurses leaned in a little closer, eagerly awaiting judgement to be passed.

‘Tell me,’ Emma commanded.

‘We’ve ruled out necrosis,’ Mr Spelling told her, knowing that Emma would immediately understand what this meant. The mass that had shown up on recent scans was not scarring around the site of the previous tumour and that left only one other explanation. Any further attempt to soften the news was futile and Mr Spelling left no pause before delivering the final blow. ‘There’s a tumour in your temporal lobe, Emma. A grade-three Glioblastoma Multiforme.’ He let the words sink in. The brain tumour wasn’t only back, it was more aggressive than it had been before. ‘We need to plan some radical treatment, a programme of radiotherapy and chemo.’

‘No operation this time?’ Emma asked, doing well to hide the tremor from her voice. ‘Even if the NHS can’t afford to sharpen its knives any more, I would have thought the surgeons here could do a decent enough job with a butter knife from the hospital canteen. Or is that what they used last time?’ Emma’s false bravado was betrayed only by the gentle trembling of her knees beneath the blue cotton blankets.

‘If my colleagues’ knives were as sharp as your wit, I’m sure we wouldn’t be facing this problem right now,’ Mr Spelling argued gently. ‘I’m afraid we can’t operate on the tumour without seriously compromising your brain function. We could remove some of the growth but each time we operate there are more risks and the results are less effective. We’ll reassess as we go along but I think for now at least, radiotherapy and chemo offer the best option.’

‘And will it get me back into remission?’ Her mum’s grip on her hand was practically cutting off Emma’s circulation now.

Mr Spelling broke eye contact briefly, looking down at his feet to take a breath before facing her again. The look he gave her wasn’t in the least bit enigmatic. He couldn’t hide his feelings, not when his eyes were brimming with sympathy. Emma sensed that he was about to sugar coat his answer so she jumped in before he had a chance to reply. ‘What’s the five-year survival rate?’

‘It’s difficult to say,’ Mr Spelling began but then checked himself, knowing Emma wouldn’t accept anything but a straight answer. ‘A small percentage. A very small percentage.’