Page 72 of Midnight in Paris

‘OK, what?’

‘OK. I’ll join you at 5a.m. But it had better be worth it.’

She smiled now, remembering how torn she’d been about the early hour, the intense exercise. How she’d almost not made it at all. And how forcing herself up and out of the flat that morning had changed her life.

38

THE EIGHTH SUMMER – 2018

‘Well, the good news is you’re young,’ said the doctor, as if he was telling them something they didn’t already know.

‘That’s the good news!’ Sophie found herself saying. Tom put a calming hand on her leg.

‘OK, so what’s the plan?’ he asked, so calmly that Sophie wondered whether he’d heard the same diagnosis as she had.

The two doctors glanced at each other. ‘Well,’ said the younger of the pair, ‘well, with stage 4, we tend not to be able to operate.’

Sophie stood up then. ‘NOT operate?’ she cried. She felt hot, white rage coursing around her body. ‘Youhaveto operate. You have to give him a chance. You can’t just give up on him!’

The two doctors regarded her impassively. This, clearly, was just part of an ordinary workday for them. But they didn’t understand! This wasn’t some ordinary patient. This was Tom! And he was absolutely, completely essential to her life.

‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t do any good,’ Dr Sullivan said, his face grave. ‘The cancer has spread.’ He pointed to the CT scan on screen with his biro. ‘We can see traces here in the liver and there’s a possibility it’s migrated elsewhere too.’

‘Then operate there too!’ she said.

She wondered, suddenly, why Tom wasn’t standing up next to her, demanding to be heard. This was the expensive private healthcare his parents raved about – surely they should be able to do anything?

‘Sit down, Sophie.’ Tom didn’t look up at her. His gaze was fixed on his hands, folded neatly on his lap.

‘But Tom… I…’

‘Sit down.’

She sank back into her chair obediently.

Tom looked up then, making eye contact with the doctors. One looked away, the other held his gaze. ‘So, what’s the plan?’ he asked again.

It struck Sophie later that his choice of words were exactly the same as he might have chosen if he were talking about what to watch on Netflix, or planning a holiday itinerary. Innocuous, simple.

The doctors nodded, exchanged infuriating eye contact again, then Dr Sullivan opened a beige folder. ‘So,’ he said, pointing to a printed text with his biro, ‘in these cases where the cancer has been caught quite late and, ahem, spread’– his eyes remained fixed on the paper, he didn’t seem able to look up at Tom – ‘what we aim for is to drive the cancer into remission with chemotherapy.’

Sophie felt something lift. So there was hope! She’d assumed no surgery meant no options.

Tom took a deep breath next to her. She reached over and grabbed his hand, squeezing it firmly.

They sat silently as the doctors mapped out the next twelve weeks of their lives. Appointments and scans and check-ups and chemo sessions and recovery time. Side effects and risks and outcomes and schedules and support. They nodded; two schoolkids being assigned a new timetable with very little sayin what would happen and when. Sophie felt Tom’s hand – hot, slightly sweaty. She gave it a squeeze.

The worst of it was that she’d been impatient with him. His tiredness, his nausea. In recent weeks, he hadn’t always wanted sex, even when she’d been ovulating and explained to him the small window they had in which to conceive. She’d noticed that he looked a bit paler than usual, a bit run-down – but had reasoned that she probably looked similar. Teaching was a full-on, full-time job and the constant fact of infertility was weighing heavily on her at all times.

Now this. The feeling that if she’d taken him more seriously more quickly, they might have caught the cancer before it became inoperable. Her rational mind overruled this emotional leap – he was a grown man, quite able to go to the doctor’s any time he saw fit. But she also knew that he would have gone if she’d encouraged him.

Then a thought: ‘What about fertility?’ she found herself blurting out, interrupting Dr Sullivan’s explanation of cold caps and hair loss.

He looked at her. ‘We do recommend that men freeze a quantity of sperm before treatment begins, to make parenthood a possibility in the future,’ he said. ‘At your age, it’s definitely something we’d recommend.’

Tom nodded. ‘So I’ll be infertile, after?’

‘Not necessarily, but treatment can and often does decrease sperm production.’

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