Helen Brown - After Cleo

Unfortunately, the commentary wasn’t accompanied by any architectural masterpieces of an intimate nature on my part. Where was May anyway? There were no rustles or throat-clearing sounds from the other side of the door. She must’ve hurried away on some nursey business. I was alone and suddenly frightened.

A wave of dizziness. The harshly lit bathroom, along with the television presenter’s carefully enunciated praise for the architecture of Bath, merged into a sickening blur. With a clatter of bottles and tubes, I spiralled off the seat toward the floor, just managing to press the emergency buzzer on my way down.

The door slid open. A forest of nurses, including May, appeared above me.

‘Get the commode!’ snapped an authoritative voice.

‘She’s anaemic,’ said another. ‘She’s been pale ever since she came out of theatre.’

‘Sleep deprived too,’ said a third.

The old ‘she’ again. Thanks for letting me know, girls.

‘Her oxygen levels are okay, though,’ said May.

I was wheeled back to the room to be lowered painfully into bed. Glumness hovered for a while. The bedside phone screeched. In no mood for the Herculean task of answering, I flipped the receiver off with my hand and lowered my head into position.

It was the breast cancer surgeon, loud and a little breathless. Results were just back from pathology. She was confident the cancer had been removed. The growth was even larger than they’d thought. Another six months and it would’ve been absolutely everywhere, she said.

Absolutely everywhere. Wasn’t there a rock song with a name like that? Thank goodness I’d ignored the GP who’d suggested I take the slow track to breast screening.

Wonderful news. So good I made her repeat it three times. To celebrate I was allowed to summon bedpans for the rest of the night. Pure luxury.

Next morning when I was ushered into the bathroom, I produced a masterpiece worthy of the Royal Crescent of Bath. Pale green, it was the colour of Play-Doh, and probably a result of the pre-surgery scan when they’d pumped me full of radio active dye. Bending uncomfortably to flush it away, I issued a silent apology to the environmental engineers who ran the municipal sewerage ponds. The last thing they wanted was radio active poo.

After breakfast, Nurse May hauled me out of bed and helped me into the shower. She said she’d seen the fear in my eyes in the bathroom the previous night, but I’d turned a corner today. When May said she liked the perfume in my hand cream, I made a mental note to send her some when I got home.

How painful it must’ve been for wounded soldiers, young and frightened with holes shot through their bodies. Almost every one of them must’ve fallen for a nurse. I was half in love with them myself, the competent ones at least. Good nurses are angels, kind and strong. I loved their gentle strength when they lifted me in their arms to rearrange my pillows or help me stagger across the floor.

Soon, however, I was going to have to get by without them. Very soon.

Entrapment

Never swear you’re not getting another cat

Clutching Philip’s arm and creeping down the hospital steps, I entered a world of eye-stinging colour. Winter grey streets and footpaths pulsated with vibrancy. The red of an advertising sign glowed so aggressively I was forced to look away. Maybe being in hospital had heightened my senses. Or I’d forgotten to notice how vivid everyday life is.

Lydia and Katharine trailed behind us like anxious bridesmaids carrying my bags and what was left of the flowers.

It felt too soon to be going home. My abdomen was still swollen and a drainage tube somewhere below my right ribcage remained attached to its Christmas bauble bottle. I’d rather have stayed tucked up in hospital until they’d removed that thing. But the nurses had made it clear enough. If I’d insisted on roosting in their airless corridors I’d have been ignored, pretty much. There were new patients to tend to..

Six nights in hospital is long enough anyway: the food, the noise, the awful artwork. Presumably the nearly seven centimetres of high-grade cancerous growth removed from my right breast was now floating around in the clouds over our heads, merging with other particles and about to be drizzled down on the city. Technically, I had a pert new breast made from tummy flab and a reduced and lifted left breast to match. Somewhere underneath the bandages and swelling was a new woman. In reality, I was a patchwork quilt and felt a wreck.

Driving home, Philip abandoned his usual Roman-taxi-driver-on-steroids technique and nursed the car along as if a bomb was lodged under the bonnet. When he pulled into our driveway, I looked up at Shirley. It was good to see the old girl. In my previous life I’d barely noticed the slope up to the front door. Today it looked like the path to Everest Base Camp. As I hobbled up the paving stones, drain sloshing inside a discreet pink drawstring bag, my lungs sucked and puffed. I felt like a building due for demolition. One nudge in the basement and I’d crumple.

Being home was good but frightening. The table was set for lunch, except for one glaring omission. There were knives and plates – but no forks. The old me would’ve sprung into the kitchen and slid the forks out of the drawer before you could flick a dishcloth. Now I could only sit and wait for someone to notice and do something about it. They didn’t.

‘Forks,’ I wheedled in my post-operative voice.

There was a pause bred from years of me leaping around to fix things before they’d started going wrong. Mother’s syndrome. When does it start? Must be in those moments after birth when a woman sees her baby for the first time and feels like a god. Giving birth is the ultimate act of creation. No wonder Mother Earth was the first deity. She brought things to life and helped them grow. We handed religion over to men just to keep them occupied. Our devotion to our creations, our kids, has no limits. I’d heard an eighty-year-old woman angst over her sixty-year-old son as if he was still in nappies.

It’s a two-way disorder. Mum becomes a compulsive nurturer. Dad and kids play the role of domestic dimwits. Once it sank in that I could not, would not, jump up from my chair to collect the forks, Lydia hurried over to the kitchen to get them.

Motherhood has a habit of turning women into martyrs. I’d always believed I was too liberated for that to happen. Yet the decades had eroded me into someone just as subservient and resentful as my own mother. Jeez, I had three aprons hanging from a hook beside the fridge! I even wore the one emblazoned ‘Desperate Husband’.

There are no medals for being dictator of the small island nation that is a household. Maybe breast cancer would bring the dawn of a freer, more democratic society to our place. Perhaps I’d learn to step back and take care of myself more. It might be good for all of us.

I couldn’t sit at the table for long. A hot dagger was digging into my ribs. Bed and the forgiving softness of the sheepskin were welcome relief.

It soon became clear that the new regime was going to require patience. I couldn’t bend over to pick a towel off the floor. Or stoop to collect crumbs, or petals from wilting floral arrangements, the way I always had. It was time to adopt selective blindness like everyone else, and not notice anything below waist level.

The only suggestion Greg had given to ease the abdominal swelling was gentle massage. Limited arm movement made it impossible to perform the task myself. Understandably, there weren’t many volunteers. To my astonishment Lydia stepped forward and offered her services. Twice daily she instructed me to lie on the couch while she rubbed almond oil on my belly. Her willingness to overlook my gruesome wounds, her tender dedication, was overwhelming. I’d never have been so physically intimate with my own mother. Lydia cooked meals, brought cups of tea and took over the running of the household.