Mum's List by St. John Greene

Author:St. John Greene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

When I woke the next morning I immediately remembered Reef’s lumps, and any positive thoughts I’d had the night before seemed to have completely deserted me. I felt frightened and alone. The house was quiet, and I couldn’t stop one very persistent negative thought from banging on my skull. “You looked on the bright side with Kate,” it said nastily. “You were wrong.”

I saw Kate’s outline appear in the door frame. “Singe, I’ve got a little lump,” she said, stepping into the bedroom from the shower. She was wearing a towel and was smoothing her hand protectively over her left breast. It was a hot day in August 2008, just a few weeks after Reef’s birthday celebration at the cinema.

Poor Kate, I thought. I could hardly blame her being paranoid about her health after what had happened to Reef. Each time we gave him Calpol to calm his raging temperature Kate had worried we were missing something.

“What if there’s something really wrong with him?” she kept asking. “What if we’re missing something?”

When she got no answers, she didn’t give up, neither of us did. Reef had test after test, but still it took months and months to work out what had happened to our once-active child.

“We wasted nine months,” Kate sobbed when Reef’s cancer was finally diagnosed. “We treated cancer with Calpol,” she cried. “If he’d been diagnosed sooner he might never have been disabled.”

The thought haunted Kate, and I had to keep telling her she had done her best, we both had. We followed our instincts and kept insisting Reef be tested and tested again and again, and the doctors had done their best too, even though months and months slipped by as Reef’s condition worsened.

I could imagine what was racing through her head that morning when she emerged from the bathroom, but I really didn’t want her worrying unnecessarily. She’d suffered too much stress already.

“Kate, it’ll be a cyst or something,” I said as she got me to feel the tiny little lump.

It didn’t feel much bigger than the tip of a pencil.

“Make an appointment and have it looked at. I’ll come with you if you like.”

I think Kate looked at me that morning and decided I’d had enough stress too.

“No,” she said bravely. “I’m sure you’re right. I’ll book an appointment, just to be on the safe side, but there’s no need for you to take time off work.”

Over the previous year Kate had decided to give blood. She wanted to give something back to the NHS for everything they had done for Reef; it was her way of saying thank you. Both Kate and Reef had a fairly rare blood type—O negative—so it was a very worthwhile thing to do. Kate gave blood successfully several times, but I remember she looked worn out when she came home from the latest session.

“You’re amazing,” I told her. “Most people wouldn’t volunteer to go anywhere near a nurse or a syringe after all Reef’s treatment.”

“Actually, they wouldn’t let me give blood today,” she said, sounding fed up.

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