It’d meant making a new file in her head.
Mammogram
Needle biopsy
CT scan
Hormone therapy?
Drugs?
Chemo?
Surgery?
She’d put off telling anyone in case it was all a hoax. A cyst with a wicked sense of humor. But in the end, she’d had to. She’d taken the train home to Norwich in the sleety rain back in February and told her mum and dad. Her dad had left the room to make them a cup of tea while she and her mum had cried. She’d felt terrible telling them—Mum had so much to cope with already; Elise’s brother’s messy divorce and his childcare crises and her washing machine on permanently to keep up with Grandad’s “little accidents.”
“I’m going to be fine, Mum,” she’d said when her mother started talking about coming down to Ebbing to hold her hand during the treatment. “You’re needed up here. And you’ll be on the end of a phone.”
At work, Elise had gone for black humor—the policeman’s friend—and tried not to see the pity in colleagues’ eyes as they laughed along.
They think I’m going to die, rang like a bell in her head.
“It’s not metastasized,” she told her boss in his office, blindsiding him with the new vocab she was mastering. “Spread, I mean. It’s treatable but I’ll need chemo and surgery.”
DCI McBride had tried not to look at her breasts but his gaze kept slipping to the guilty parties.
“Take as much time off as you need, Elise,” he’d said, his arm round her shoulders as he walked her to the door of his office. “But no malingering . . .”
And they both laughed too loudly and leaned together for support.
Elise had suddenly wanted to tell him not to write her off. But that would have been admitting it was a possibility. But she needed to say it.
“I’ll hurry back, Graham. Don’t worry,” she said at the door. “Don’t write me off.”
“As if.” He’d smiled back. “Ring me when you’re ready.”
She hadn’t made the call yet. Maybe tomorrow.
* * *
—
The Oncology registrar leaned against his desk while he was speaking to her as though he were chatting her up in a bar. Elise wanted someone older, with serious glasses and a white coat. But the consultant was elsewhere giving someone bad news. Elise’s results were all good, so she got the one with a holiday tan and a braided bracelet. Elise tried to concentrate on what he was saying but her mind kept slipping away.
I should have brought Ronnie in with me, she told herself. She’d have been able to tell me all the important points after.
“Do you have any questions, Miss King?” he was saying.
“Er . . .” She wanted to ask the risk of it coming back and if she still might die but she’d pushed the words down too far to retrieve now.
“Good. Well, we’ll carry on with the hormone therapy and send you an appointment letter for your next blood test. But you are good to go back to work in a managed return.”
And she was back in the waiting room.
“How did you get on?” Ronnie said.
“I don’t know. I can’t remember a single thing he said.” Apart from being ready to go back to work.
“Was it bad news, then?” And Ronnie moved closer to her so their bare arms touched and Elise shivered.
“No. I’m sure I’d have paid more attention if it had been. It was sort of mood music. Good-so-far sort of thing. Keep calm and carry on.”
“Are you ready to go home?”
“No. Actually, there’s someone else I want to see while I’m here.”
“On the wards?”
“No, the mortuary.”
Thirty-eight
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2019
Elise
Hi, Aoife. How are you?”
“Elise! What are you doing here?” the pathologist said, slipping up her Perspex mask. “I thought it had to be a direct order before you set foot in here.”
The autopsy tables were scrubbed and empty, so Elise slid round the door and sat on a stool as far from the working surfaces as possible. She was usually up in the gallery, watching Dr. Aoife Mortimer at work from a professional distance, but she needed to get up close and personal today.
“I’ve just been upstairs in Oncology and I thought I’d come and see you,” she said.
“And?” Aoife said, taking another stool. “How did you get on?”
“All good, thanks. Got to keep taking the tablets but the doctor says I can go back to work as planned.”