CHAPTER 41
I sat by his bed as he cried, holding his hand with my right while my left held the tissues ready.

“I can’t do this any more, Jill!”

I tried to pull my own emotions back. He looked dreadful the hair almost gone, skin looking almost green. Weight had dropped off him, muscle as well as fat, and his knuckles shone white where he clung to me. Sod it.

“You telling me you’re a coward, Ian? You’d abandon Bethy and Hays, like? Shall I just pop out into the corridor and send Mam home? You don’t do this, you don’t fold like some soft Mackem”

“Not a Mackem…”

“Then prove it, or I’ll put the girls in red and white!”

He grinned, sort of, but the pain and the nausea were never absent, and the grin became sobbing. A nurse looked in, face composed, and something passed between us. She saw this every day; how the hell did she keep it together?

“How are we doing this afternoon, Ian?”

He turned his tear-streaked face away, and I answered for him.

“Not wonderful, nurse”

“Candice”

“Candice. Thank you. I’m Jill. No, not wonderful today. Sorry”

She came over and did a few things with tubes and the pressure cuff that seemed to be permanently on his arm. Electronics and pumps whined and gasped, and she made a few quick notes on his chart.

“Doctor will be round in a few minutes, so he can talk you through Ian’s progress. But…Ian, please listen to me. That was it for this session, OK? No more for a while, yes? Time to recover with your family”

His voice was low. “I’m not recovering though, am I? Just treading water”

She squeezed his shoulder. “Let doctor explain all that. I’m just a nurse”

No ‘just’ in that. I asked myself again: how did she cope? She stood up and away from the bed. “More visitors outside, I saw. Two maximum at a time, right? And don’t worry about time limits. We don’t play that game here, within reason”

Once again I felt her meaning rather than heard it. This was, after all, only slightly removed from a gentler version of Death Row, and they were allowing as much family time as they could without interfering with their work. I stood to go.

“So remember, brother dear, grow some backbone or it’s red and white for the girls, aye?”

I walked out past Mam and Von, wordless, nodding to them to take up station as I carried on down the corridor followed by Larinda until I found the ladies’, and privacy, and my own dam collapsed. Ian wasn’t the only one who was losing strength.

No words. She just held me, and she was the strength I was so in need of. Twenty minutes later we were in a small room with the doctor, a small man from Hong Kong. He told us that in what was clearly his attempt to lighten things. It didn’t work; my eyes, my heart, just saw Ian in his bed.

“I will not try and make things better that aren’t, my friends. The cancer is very aggressive in your son’s, your brother’s case. We are having a difficulty in managing his chemotherapy as the need is for some brutality, and by definition he is not a well person”

He steepled his fingers, looking down at a piece of paper on his desk.

“Are any of you in any way religious? Ian included?”

I shrugged. “Look at me, Doctor. Doesn’t fit well with most churches. Ian, no, definitely not. Why do you ask?”

“Ah, there are people who object to some treatments. Blood is a common one. In this case I am talking about stem cells. There are new treatments, but some people have… opinions about the world that does not let them accept such things”

Mam looked up from where she had been leaning against Ralph.

“If we don’t try this?”

The doctor suddenly looked very, very tired. “He dies, Norma. I would say, even with the best care we can give here, he leaves you in about six months. I am sorry to be so blunt, but I have been running his bloods as carefully as I know how. I believe you have a friend in the lab, no? Well, even with this latest course, the prognosis is…”

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I am sorry, but this is a thankless job. His prognosis is dreadful. With the treatments he is receiving, he has received, there is no longer much more we could reasonably do beyond looking to his comfort. The chemotherapy is a brutality too far. The new treatments, well, I promise nothing”

Mam was trembling. “No choice, then? We try, or he’s gone?”

The doctor nodded. “I need his agreement, though. The Trust has gone a little silly on respecting diversity in this sort of thing, and they are petrified that even if someone is cured they run the risk of a law suit if the patient’s belief system is compromised”

Von snorted. “You are joking!”

“Unfortunately not. And as he is so ill at the moment he requires some in loco parentis support”

Von stood. “I’ll do the talking. My turn, innit?”

Mam looked at her, suddenly calm, flat in her stare. Seconds passed, and Von held her gaze. Then Mam nodded.

“Aye, I think so. Gan on, Von. We’ll wait here”

My old lover stood, face wet, and took some time to look each of us in the eye. Mam reached out to take her hand.

“Thy turn, lass. Show us you’re worth him”

Von was in the room for ten minutes. Candice brought us tea, and some plain biscuits, and a small bag of mint humbugs.

“Look, I always carry a few of these. They help with that aftertaste, you know, when patients don’t… hold onto their food too well. It’s the best I can do”

Mam smiled. “They don’t pay lasses like you anywhere near enough, pet. Thank you”

Our nurse just flashed a quick, tight smile and left us. Larinda shuddered.

“What a shitty job…”

Von put her head into the office just then to call the doctor, and he left us, carrying a buff folder that clearly held the necessary documents for Ian’s agreement.

He signed. I signed. Mam signed. We left. I wept.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He was back with us, not that long afterwards, the chemo finished for too short a time, and I returned from work to find him slumped in an armchair before some dreadful Australian soap opera. He was wrapped in a dressing gown, his old army cap comforter on his head, and I saw that even his slippers looked too big for him. Bethy called from the kitchen.

“Cuppa, Aunty Jill?”

“Aye, pet!”

Ian turned red-rimmed eyes to me, face still grey.

“Sorry, lass”

“Sorry for what?”

“Sorry for being a bit of a puff, like. No excuse for whining on like that”

I will never, ever understand men. What is it with their sodding machismo, their ‘face’, their…

“Ian Carter, don’t you ever, ever apologise for being human! None of us here, not me, not Mam, not Larinda, not bloody Ralph, none of us could go through what you are without breaking, aye? None of us can even IMAGINE what you are dealing with! I will slap you if you talk such shite again, got me?”

He looked away, and there were hints of tears in his eyes. Bethy came in just then, teas in hand. As her daddy tried to pretend interest in some sunwashed nonsense, she cuddled in gently beside him.

“Daddy, Hays asks if you would like her to sing for you tonight”

“That would be lovely, pet. Look, owt left of of that soup Rachel brought round?”

“You want some?”

“Please”

Once she was gone, those fading eyes turned back to mine.

“Look, it’s a pride thing, aye? I hear what you say, but, well, dignity, shite like that. I shouldn’t be lying in a bed crying. You’re right, though. Just… just not in front of the girls, like”

The girls in question were back in a minute, with a steaming bowl of chicken soup and a couple of songs in what sounded like bloody Norwegian or Swedish, which led me to wander which of my, our, peculiar friends had that odd taste. Bethy cuddled him as he ate, Hays kneeling before him to sing, and I noticed with a quiet smile that her first act had been to turn off the television.

Song. The occasional slurp or clink of spoon. He looked up at me once more, and this time there was the tiniest, faintest of smiles.

“Would you really, you know, all in red and white?”

I tried on my widest grin. “You’ll only find out if you fail us, aye? And I won’t let that happen. Eat your soup”