DAY 66
Say sorry
“Annie. Annie!”
“Ugh?” She came awake slowly, realizing that Costas was standing over her. In her bedroom. “What are you doing in here?”
“I am sorry!” He backed off, hands up. “You would not wake up when I knocked. Sorry, Annie. But you have to get up now.”
She yawned widely. “No, I don’t. I got fired, thanks to Polly, so I may as well have a lie-in.”
“Annie, Polly is sick. Very sick. Yesterday, she have...” He shook his hands, trying to think of the word. “She got bad. Very bad.”
Annie was bolt upright in a second. “Her lungs?”
“No, no, her head. George says her head tumor is back. Bigger.”
Shit. It had grown. Annie threw back the covers, momentarily ashamed that Costas could see the tea stains on her pajamas. “How bad?”
“Annie, she cannot see. She wake up and she can’t see at all. Please, you have to come now.” He was opening her drawers, finding jeans and a clean jumper. “Wear this.”
“Okay. I’ll come right now. Shit.”
He held the clothes out to her. “Maybe you have shower first?”
* * *
An hour later, all the crisp fragments washed from her hair and clothes, Annie was scurrying down the neurology corridor after Costas. The walls seemed to be tilting and swaying. This couldn’t be it. She’d just had a fight with Polly—you didn’t have fights with people who were about to die. It had only been two months, not three. There was still time. There had to be time.
At the door of Polly’s room, Dr. Max was standing with a chart in his hands and a grim expression. Annie did her best to push away the thoughts of what she’d said to him in Scotland. Idiot. “How is she?”
“Stable. For now.” He didn’t smile. “This is it, Annie.”
“Oh, no. Please, no.”
“I’m sorry. The tumor’s grown again, and it’s pressing on her eyes. I’ve put in a shunt and drained some fluid, so she might get a bit of vision back, but it’s a temporary fix.” She recognized the voice he was doing—soothing, but honest. The bad-news-for-relatives voice. Her stomach fell.
“Oh, God. Can you not—”
“No.” He put the chart back in its holder by the door. “Believe me, Annie. I’ve done everything I can. There’s nothing else to try.”
Beside Annie, Costas was crying. “How long, Dr. Max?”
“I can’t say for sure. A week or two, maybe.”
“But it’s only day sixty-six. She didn’t get all her days!” Annie said stupidly.
“I know.” Dr. Max looked exhausted. “I’m sorry. You can go in if you want. She’ll be coming around soon. But the surgery was fairly brutal, I’ll warn you. She won’t look...like she did.”
How could that be? Annie had only seen her a week ago. She wanted to kick herself. How selfish was she, wallowing in her flat during what might be Polly’s last days? Why had she let it go this far? Why hadn’t she battered Polly’s door down, forced her to be friends again? She put her hand to the door, then took it away, frightened by what might be on the other side. Dr. Max nodded. Go on. She pushed it open.
* * *
Polly was tiny in the bed, her head shaved all over, a livid red mark on one side with scabbing-over stitches. Annie’s hand flew to her mouth. Costas went white beside her and he began backtracking. “Annie, I go... I find George. He text me he’s in the canteen. Sorry. I leave you.”
Annie stared at her friend, horrified. Her beanie hat was too big for her, falling down over her shrunken face. Her hands were like claws, bristling with tubes, purple with old and new bruises. “What did they do to you?” Annie murmured. She laid her hand gently on the bed, which was piled with extra blankets despite the heat of the room.
“I’m not...dead...yet,” Polly wheezed without opening her eyes. “Annie, is that...you? I’d know that smell of crisps and...desperation anywhere.”
Annie sniffed. “Hey, Baldy.”
“Like it? It’s very...‘retro Sinead O’Connor.’ Everyone says the...nineties are back in style.” She opened her eyes, wincing as if the light hurt her. “I can’t really see. Come over.”
She beckoned. Annie sat in the orange chair, leaning on the bed. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to get you anything. Costas made it sound like you were at death’s door, so I just came.”
Polly coughed, making her tubes rattle. “I told him to. Knew...you’d be wallowing around in your flat.”
“Well done, Sherlock Baldy. So you’re not at death’s door?”
“Maybe...on its garden path.” She groped for Annie’s hand. Her skin was icy cold. “Annie. I think this is it.”
A lump rose in her throat, choking her. “I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, come on, no sorry. Remember the pact. But it is a...shame. I didn’t get to do all the...days.”
Tears pricked Annie’s eyes. “It’s okay. We had a lot. I wouldn’t have had any of them without you. Poll—I’m so... God. I can’t believe I said all those things to you. You’re sick, and there was me shouting at you, making a fuss. I’m a terrible person.”
Polly waved her other hand. “Fuggedaboudit, as they say in...New York. I was out of line. I’m sorry, too. I just get so angry, you see, watching people...waste the time they have, when I don’t have any. I really am...sorry about your dad. And your job! What was I...thinking? I’m a terrible person. Christ, will you be okay?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t have rich parents to fall back on, see.” Annie sighed. “Listen. I know why I’ve been sort of hostile to you at times.”
“Hadn’t noticed,” wheezed Polly. Sarcasm even with her last breaths.
“I was just so—if I’m totally honest, and I know this reflects really, really badly on me—I was jealous of you sometimes. All the things you had. Great family, cool parents, lovely house growing up, all your friends and your education and clothes and coolness. Even down to your name. A Polly would never end up doing admin for the council, or in a poxy former council flat in Lewisham. I just kept thinking how unfair it all was. I know that sounds awful, when you have cancer, but...there it is.”
Polly cracked open one eye. Still so blue, despite the yellowing and bloodshot whites. “I was jealous of you, too. You’ve got time, Annie. You’ve got time to be anything you want. And I could see you getting on so well with McGrumpy. Whereas I tried to throw myself at Dr. Quarani and he just looked at me like...a tumor on legs. Not a person. I panicked—you don’t need me anymore. You’ll be fine after I go. You’ll have a future. But, Annie, I need you. I can’t do this without you.”
“You don’t have to. I promise, I’ll be there. All the time, until you get sick of me.”
“Pro-mise?”
She clutched Polly’s hand more tightly. “God, of course I promise. I’ll be here. Right till...right to the end.”
“Well, let’s not be too dramatic. You can still go home to shower and stuff.”
“Meh, showering is overrated.”
“There’s the Annie I know. Oh, and, by the way...my name isn’t actually...Polly.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t born Polly.”
“What? What’s your real name, then?”
She coughed. “You have to promise you’ll never tell anyone. Even after I’m dead, or I swear to the great...spaghetti monster I’ll come back and haunt you.”
“How bad can it be?”
“Bad.” She shuddered, almost dislodging her cannula. “My real name is...Pauline. After some great-aunt. I changed it when I was five—I always hated it.”
Annie gaped. Pauline. A Pauline could easily end up doing admin for the council. A Pauline could be overweight, and sad, and obsessed with Grey’s Anatomy. A Pauline could be left by her husband and could most definitely live in a horrible flat. “My God,” Annie said, her brain falling apart. Polly hadn’t been born Polly. Polly had become Polly.
“You ever tell anyone, I’ll kill you with my...bare hands.”
“You’ll be dead first, Pauline.”
“True,” she said. She started to laugh, a deep gurgling sound, and after a few moments Annie joined in, too.