Chapter Twenty-Eight

Georgina

 

 

I walked alone into the small room down the hall. I went past the nurse, holding my arms in to my sides. Nurses always try to be nice. Some even did the whole ‘reassuring touch’ thing, and I couldn’t take that right now. The smallest act of kindness would have me sobbing on the floor. I’d barely held it together when Kaley had grabbed my hand.

The nurse asked me to lie down and undo my gown. I lay down on the bed, the sheet of protective paper crackling under me. I took slow breaths. Fear ate into me until acid spewed up from my stomach and filled my mouth, soured and bitter, stinging all the way up into my nasal passages.

The nurse felt around my breast with her cold gloved hand, feeling for the lump. She squirted ice-cold ultrasound gel onto me and rolled the probe all around my chest, tapping buttons on the screen as she did. She didn’t say anything much, just a short gasp of sympathy about my age and previous run-in with cancer as she looked over my old scans.

“Too young. Just too young,” she said, shaking her head.

With a frown, she called in a supervising doctor.

I knew that was never a good sign.

He reviewed the scans and announced he wanted to draw some tissue, and out came that scarily sized biopsy needle.

I didn’t feel much. A local anesthetic took care of that. I just felt the pressure as the needle popped through my first layer of skin, forcing down into my breast. It was the same kind of biopsy I’d had that confirmed my cancer the first time, so I knew to brace myself.

Clack-BANG.

The biopsy needle sounded like a small gun going off as it extracted each sample. I tried to keep still and not flinch, and a single tear squeezed from my closed eye and down my cheek.

I squeezed the edge of the thin bed because I had no hand to hold.

Clack-BANG.

Clack-BANG.

Pieces of me filled the syringe barrel and were taken away for testing.

The doctor left, and the nurse handed me a paper towel to wipe off the gel. She said they would be in touch soon. She told me I could change in there, that I could take all the time I needed, and walked out.

It all felt sort of anticlimactic, really.

I dabbed at the impossible-to-wipe-away gel. It was cold and sticky and smeared off the towel onto my fingers. I gave up and just lay on the bed, exposed, raw, and wanting nothing other than to cry for days.

I stopped myself. I forced the tears back.

I had to be stronger than this. I couldn’t take all the time I needed. I didn’t have enough time. Every moment of my life now was limited and precious. I couldn’t spend it lying in a medical examination room, crying, alone. The List was still unfinished. It didn’t seem as important anymore, but part of me knew I had to complete it. I had to.

I would wait for the test results, and then I would know if I would only ever complete that list, or whether I’d have the chance to make new lists. Bigger lists. Life lists rather than bucket lists.

I would live what time I had as best as I could. Because I could, and Julie couldn’t. I had to do that for her. I had to do that for my dad. I had to be brave, truly brave.

There was no point in staying there any longer. Everything that needed to be done had been done. I got changed, and walked out through the bright, flower-filled reception, feeling strong, like stone. I wouldn’t cry again. I would be a river bed during a bitter drought.

I would build myself up, build a wall of rock around myself. Until I was hard enough. Impenetrable enough. Strong enough to protect myself, and to protect my loved ones, for what was ahead.

I raised my chin, ready to walk out of this hospital and into my life.

The List Georgina pretended to be brave.

I wasn’t pretending anymore.

 

 

To be Continued in The Forever List

 

 

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