‘I’m famished this morning. Plenty of time for coffees and cake,’ Rhonda said, nodding to the huge clock in the middle of the foyer – 10.10a.m. They always gave themselves time for a quick pit stop before visiting started at eleven o’clock on Gwen’s ward. Both her sadness and the grumbling of her stomach gave Ailish permission to go wild and have a latte and a bacon roll. Other women might have champagne on the day their divorce papers dropped through the door, but Ailish was more of a caffeine and comfort food kinda gal. Besides, she honestly felt like this was nothing to celebrate. She had no intention of even telling anyone until she’d processed the finality of it herself.
They got their food and picked up Gwen’s chocolate chip cookie to take up to the ward, even though they never knew if she’d have the appetite to eat it or not. Her cancer journey had been as tough as it had been shocking. Last year, when she’d first been diagnosed with a rare form of abdominal cancer, it had blindsided them all. Gwen was a fitness fanatic who had jogged every day of her adult life, and never suffered anything more than a mild flu. Surgery had been the first step in the treatment, followed by months of chemo. She’d been told she was in remission back in September, but then, just before Christmas, she’d fallen ill again. Unable to eat and exhausted, she’d been rushed into hospital for more tests, then kept in so she could be treated for her whole new set of symptoms.
The only family Gwen had was her elderly parents who now lived up on Skye, and she’d refused to tell them that she was unwell because she didn’t want to worry them, so Ailish and Rhonda had spent every moment that they could by her side. One of the charge nurses on the ward said that she’d seen them more than she’d seen her own husband over Christmas.
The whole time they were there, they’d only uttered words of positivity aloud, but inside, they all feared the worst. As always, dark humour had got them through from day to day.
‘Ailish,’ Gwen had murmured on the day after she’d been brought in, when she was still too weak to stand and had barely been able to get the words out.
Ailish had leant closer, squeezed her hand. ‘I’m right here, doll,’ she’d said, using their pet term for each other.
‘If I peg it this time, you can have my Versace bag.’
The splutter from the other side of the bed had been loud, and the outrage that followed it indignant, which was exactly, Ailish realised, what Gwen had intended.
‘I don’t bloody think so,’ Rhonda had spluttered. ‘I will rugby tackle you and wrestle it from you with my bare hands. No way is she getting her paws on that.’
Gwen had managed to smile. ‘Better make sure I stay alive then. Can’t be having you two fighting at the wake.’
It was just one of many inside jokes that had kept their spirits up over the last fortnight of this latest admission, as the doctors searched for the reason for her latest symptoms. Of course, the obvious answer was that her cancer had returned, but none of them vocalised their biggest fears because it was just too terrifying to say out loud. Her initial scans had been inconclusive, and the second round had been slow to come due to the hospital being short-staffed over Christmas, but in the meantime, they waited, they hoped, and they visited her every day.
‘She seemed a bit better yesterday, didn’t she?’ Rhonda said, as they pulled up plastic chairs to the one empty table in the corner of the café.
‘She did. Definitely,’ Ailish replied, but neither of them mentioned what they both knew was true – they’d seen this happen before. As quickly as Gwen could seem better, it couldall turn on its head again the next day. Yesterday they’d changed her medication, and they were anxiously waiting to see if that helped or inflamed her symptoms. If it was the latter… Well, Ailish refused to think about what Gwen would have in front of her.
‘Okay, I’m going to change the subject because we’ll just go down a rabbit hole of worry and we can’t go up to the ward all teary-eyed and snotters.’
Ailish didn’t disagree, but she was struggling to make her mind focus on anything else. Eventually, she settled on, ‘So where are you going then? Tonight, I mean? You said you already had your dress all picked out.’
Rhonda popped the cherry off her Bakewell tart into her mouth, then held it like a gobstopper in her cheek while she answered. ‘Well, since you are breaking our tradition of a million years for the second year in a row and refusing to come out with me…’ That had been Rhonda’s favourite dig for the last month, ever since Ailish had broken the news to her that once again all she wanted to do this Hogmanay was go to bed with a box of Quality Street, a glass of Prosecco and a box set of anything but rom coms. ‘I’m going on a blind date.’
Ailish almost choked on her latte. ‘A blind date? On Hogmanay?’
She struggled not to laugh as Rhonda came over all indignant, her chin jutting out defiantly. ‘Yes. I think it’s got an air ofWhen Harry Met Sallyabout it. You know, all that snogging at midnight.’
Ailish put down her bacon roll, too engrossed to eat. ‘Rhonda, on your last blind date, you practically commando crawled out of the restaurant while he was looking the other way. It had more of an air ofDie Hardabout it.’
Despite her very best attempt to be unamused, Rhonda crumbled into laughter. ‘I know! But I’m not bloody stayingin on New Year’s Eve and you are the only sad git I know who doesn’t have plans with their significant others or their families…’ She paused, realising what she’d just said. ‘Sorry if that just picked a scab.’
Ailish brushed it off. ‘Yep, it reopened that wound, but carry on and see if you can make me feel worse about my life.’
They both knew she was joking, so Rhonda wittered on, ‘Right then, Sensitive Sally. Anyway, unless you want to change your mind about coming with me…’
Ailish was quite emphatic. ‘I don’t.’
‘Then I’ll be spending New Year’s Eve with a gentleman called Ralph, who, from the pictures on his dating profile, would appear to be an aging gym buff with thighs that look like they could crack nuts.’
Ailish’s cackle made several people at nearby tables turn to stare. She gestured apologetically to them, before going back to the conversation. ‘You know, I always thought I’d only have to worry about Emmy making irresponsible decisions as she navigated maturity.’
Rhonda didn’t even pretend to be outraged. Her first marriage had been a spontaneous deed that she called ‘a one-night stand that lasted three years’. Her second marriage, many years later, had been to a man who had come to resent her work ethic and her success, so she’d said goodbye to him around their fifth anniversary. Her third promise at the end of the aisle had lasted ten years, and she always said that for the last nine of those, it was a relationship that didn’t fulfil or excite her, so she was absolutely unapologetic about living her most adventurous life now. ‘And I fully plan to be completely irresponsible for at least another decade.’
Ailish didn’t doubt it for a second. She just wished she had the energy or the inclination to do the same.
They finished their food with discussions about Rhonda’s frock, before Ailish checked the clock again. ‘Ten minutes. By the time we get up there, they’ll have opened the doors.’
They scooped all their wrappers and empty cups into the nearby bin, then Ailish picked up Gwen’s biscuit, and they made their way to the elevators, both of them silent, lost in their own thoughts. Ailish’s were the same every single time she did this route.Please make her be okay. Please make her be okay. Please make her be okay…She sent that thought out into the ether and just hoped that someone was listening.
They got stuck in the lift with a family whose tiny human pressed every single button, so they were held up by stopping at every floor. When they finally got to the right place, Ailish’s nerves were frayed. As the doors opened and they stepped out, she made eye contact with Rhonda, and they needed no words to make their familiar resolution.
