Free Will You Remember Me? by Amanda Prowse Page B

of relief.
It’s okay
. That’s what he’d said. Was it a clue? Was it all over before it had even begun? She smiled at the thought.
    The consultant placed his elbow on the desk, cupped his clean-shaven chin with his left hand, and with his right tapped at the keyboard of his computer. He was handsome, with thick dark hair that was cut into a neat crop. His wide eyes were hidden behind the square black frames of his glasses. She found it hard to guess his age; he could be a fit, healthy fifty or a not so fit thirty, someone who’d had a tough paper round.
    Poppy watched as he studied the screen before knitting his hands into a little basket and placing them on the desk in front of him. He looked her straight in the eye and for his direct gaze and blunt delivery, she was grateful.
    ‘I have looked at all your test results and have shown them to the team here. I’m afraid that it’s not good news, Poppy.’
    And just like that, any small flicker of hope, any tiny flame of reprieve was extinguished and Poppy knew immediately that telling the kids was now unavoidable. This was her overriding thought – not what the horrible disease might do to her, but that telling her family would bring sadness and illness to their door. What would she do? Tell Martin first? Yes. Yes of course, then Granny Claudia. Then what? Sit Peg down on the sofa, or maybe take her for a walk. Wherever she told her would become a place forever tainted for them both. Should she be honest, open? How much to explain to her little girl? Max was probably too little to take in much of anything.
Oh God.
    ‘No?’
    ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I have studied the results of your biopsy, scans and blood work. And we can see from the tests we have performed that your cancer is not the one isolated tumour that we had hoped for.’
    ‘Oh, that’s a shame.’ She cringed at her words, inadequate and child-like. Poppy was struggling.
    ‘It
is
a shame.’ He smiled at her. ‘You have a number of tumours, not just the one that we have located in your breast. Do you know what that means, Poppy?’
    She shook her head; no, she didn’t know what any of it meant.
    ‘It means that you have metastatic breast cancer. It has spread.’
    He watched as the information filtered into her brain. He gave her time to mentally catch up.
    ‘Where has it spread?’ she eventually asked.
    Mr Ramasingh again offered the words slowly. ‘It has spread to your bones.’
    ‘My bones?’ Poppy took a moment to replay this in her head; it didn’t make any sense. ‘How did it get in there? I don’t understand.’ She had pictured her lump as the bad thing in her body, but was unable to think of other lumps inside her bones.
    It was Mr Ramasingh’s turn to take a deep breath. His voice was soothing, calm and steady. Poppy had quite forgotten he was waiting for his lunch.
    ‘Cancer can be complicated. It is made up of millions of cells and sometimes those cells can break away from the original tumour and travel to the bones in different parts of the body, through the lymph or blood system.’
    ‘Is this what has happened to my cells?’ she asked, picturing the cells as tiny blob-like creatures riding in pedalos around her bloodstream.
    ‘Yes.’ He gave one nod.
    ‘So what do I have to do to get better?’ Poppy wanted to show him her resilience, give him faith that she would fight. ‘I’ll take any medicine, do chemotherapy or whatever and I’ll work really hard at it. I’m not afraid of getting stuck in and doing what I need to.’ She smiled at him, feeling like an interviewee for a job she desperately needed, trying to convince him to take a punt on her.
    Mr Ramasingh’s fingers drummed lightly on the tabletop. ‘We will make a plan for your treatment, Poppy—’
    ‘That’s good, thank you,’ she interrupted.
    ‘There are things that we can do to minimise and manage your pain and to slow the progress of the disease. We will start your chemotherapy as soon as