Staying Alive. Matt Beaumont

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СКАЧАТЬ I buy the Daily Sport? Right now I could do with a light-hearted lap-dancers-abducted-by-aliens-for-intergalactic-sex-orgies story. Ironically, I have a sudden urge to take up smoking—nicotine might be just the ticket. Without even moving my eyes, though, I can see three NO SMOKING signs. I look at a kid in a baseball cap on the far side of the waiting area. He’s got no eyebrows, which suggests that he’s most likely bald beneath the hat. Jesus, cancer. He’s trying to read a Spider-man comic, but it’s obvious his heart isn’t in it. How old is he? Nine? Ten? He should be in school. Or bunking off. Whatever, he doesn’t deserve to be here. At least his mum is with him. I don’t often wish for my mother, but I’d like her to be with me now. What am I thinking? No, I wouldn’t. She’d be crying. When I gashed my shin at scouts she was hysterical. I needed two stitches and a tetanus. She required treatment for shock and was kept in overnight for observation. I had to catch the bus home on my own. Could she cope with cancer or, rather, with the faintest and most wafer-thin outside chance of it? Forget about it.

      But I wish someone were with me.

      A few weeks ago that someone would have been Megan. Situations like this bring out the best in her—her innate empathy makes her a natural Florence Nightingale. Last night I came close to calling her—I got as far as dialing the first five digits of her mobile. I couldn’t go through with it—I hate to seem needy.

      The engagement ring. How needy must that have made me look? She must have found it and seen it for what it was—a cheap (six-and-a-half-grand-cheap!) shot at emotional blackmail. I picture the scene:

      Megan: Jesus, Sandy, have you seen this? He thinks he can buy me. He just doesn’t get it.

       Sandy: Have a heart, darling. He must be—(The rest of his answer is drowned out by…

       SFX: £6,499 of diamond solitaire being flushed down a toilet.

      I need that ring back—with or without Megan attached. I still have no idea how I’m going to pay for it. I’ve started buying lottery tickets—£20 blown on them today—because odds of fourteen million to one must be better than no chance at all.

      Can’t think about all that now. I return to the newspaper. With eyes closed I flick past the cancer drug story. When I open them again I’m staring at RADICAL QC CAMPAIGNS FOR REFUGE and a picture of Sandy Morrison. Well, who the hell else? He’s standing outside an asylum centre in Highbury that’s facing closure. The neighbours can’t stand the place, apparently. Sandy is one of them, but he’s swimming against the NIMBY tide and is all for it. Normally I’d be sympathetic to his argument, but seeing his handsome face makes me want to round up every last refugee, load them into containers and truck them out of the country. And if a certain radical lawyer gets caught up in the mêlée and ends up being shipped to a crime-ridden tenement in Tirana…Acceptable collateral damage, if you ask me.

      My mobile beeps. The receptionist glares at me and points at the MOBILE PHONES MUST BE SWITCHED OFF sign, which is competing for attention with NO SMOKING. I don’t care though—being in possession of an active mobile could be an imprisonable offence, but at least mine is dragging me from the excruciating thoughts swimming about my head. I turn away so she can’t see me lift the phone to my ear. I listen to the message. It’s Jakki: ‘Niall wants to know where you put the Schenker job-start file. Call me when you can.’

      Haye was miffed when I didn’t reschedule my appointment—which guarantees me a column of fat zeros on my assessment, as well as about a dozen pesky messages on my mobile. Well, sod him. I’m having some quality me time.

      In a hospital.

      With some sick people.

      I switch off my phone with a decisive flourish just in time to hear the receptionist call out, ‘Mr Collins?’ She’s squinting at a folder with—I presume—my name on it. ‘It’s Colin. No S,’ I say on autopilot, though I don’t know why I bother.

      ‘Doctor Morrissey will see you now,’ she says. ‘Third door on the left.’

      Just what I need—a doctor whose namesake is pop music’s singing suicide note.

      10.29 a.m.

      Doctor Morrissey doesn’t have a bunch of gladioli sticking out of his trousers and a comedy quiff. In fact she has very short hair indeed. She’s young as well. Which is reassuring, actually—if I were on some critical, tumours-sprouting-out-of-his-ears list, surely I’d be seeing a battle-scarred senior consultant. With her Peter Pan haircut and pert features she’s quite elfin. No way would an elf pull the literal graveyard shift.

      ‘Take a seat,’ she says pleasantly with a hint of a West Country accent—not one of the Manchester Morrisseys, then. ‘Why don’t you tell me why you’re here.’ She must know why I’m here. Hasn’t she got some notes, a letter or something? Do I really have to explain? She seems to sense my discomfort and says, ‘I know you’ve found a lump…On one of your testicles. I just need to know how long you’ve been aware of it.’

      ‘A couple of weeks. Maybe three,’ I say.

      ‘That’s good. Our biggest headache is when men find something and then ignore it for months. Why don’t you let me take a look?’

      I knew she was going to ask me that. In fact, I showered twice this morning because I knew someone was going to ask me precisely that question. So much for all the preparation because I feel extremely uncomfortable now. I hated it enough when sixty-something Stump had me drop my trousers and felt me up. Twenty-something, not unattractive Doctor Morrissey is an entirely different proposition and I imagine a lot of blokes would be thrilled at the thought of her small and fragile hands down there. Not me, though. I suppose I’m shy. Or uptight and repressed. Whatever, I’m someone who needs to be on very familiar terms with delicate feminine hands before I’m comfortable with them touching me below the waist. Again she senses my awkwardness and says, ‘I have done this before, you know. That’s why I keep my nails short. You can take your trousers off behind the curtain if you like.’

      11.17 a.m.

      I’m sitting on the edge of an examination couch, a needle in my arm, and under the circumstances I feel remarkably relaxed. Doctor Morrissey is taking blood. ‘We’ll do some tests for tumour markers,’ she explains matter-of-factly. ‘They indicate the possible presence of cancer cells.’ I flinch at the mention of the T-followed closely by the C-word. ‘Of course, you most likely don’t have cancer,’ she goes on, and I relax again because I believe it from her. ‘It’s much less common than you might imagine. It looks like you have some sort of growth down there though and we need to get to the bottom of it.’

      She knows that I have some sort of growth because she sent me to a room along the corridor where a technician gave me an ultrasound scan. This, bizarrely, is what sparked my sense of calm. Ultrasounds—to me, anyway—are Good Things. My only experience of them was when Liz Napier, a senior account director at work, brought the print-out from hers into the office. A small, fuzzy black and white image that drew a gaggle of cooing onlookers. I peered at it too. I looked at the snap of the perfectly formed foetus that everyone agreed was sucking its thumb, though all I could see was something that resembled a photo of Greenland taken on a particularly cloudy day by a satellite equipped only with a disposable Kodak. But of course Liz didn’t give birth to Greenland. She had a perfectly formed, thumb-sucking baby girl called Carmen. That’s why ultrasound scans equal nice, warm and pleasant, even when they’re looking for cancer. So what if this has no basis in reason? It’s a sturdy-looking straw and just try and stop me clutching it.

      Doctor СКАЧАТЬ