The referral letter has come through. Breast Clinic, suspected non-cancerous. I like those words. I don't have the headspace right now for cancer, not in myself at least. My estate planning isn't even done, I think, my eyes welling. I've become moderately obsessed with not wanting my people to have to go through what I did with Daddy, what I'll have to continue to carry for Jay. I sigh to myself, wondering if I just shouldn't cave and become his guardian. Clean, sober, he recognizes the cliff drops and knife edges of not having an entirely intact frontal lobe. I close my eyes, think back to that Friday in June, 1989 and how quickly everything can change in a moment for a five year old boy, how you can do everything you're supposed to: get off your bike, wait at the crosswalk, walk across the road and how it can all go wrong because a sanitation worker is in a hurry and has just finished his shift beer. How quickly it changed everything about our worlds for all of us. How small he looked, pinned under the lorry wheel, how frail in the bed at the Krankenhaus.
I put the letter on the fridge, put lunch in the oven for the Covidious one, who has now lost her voice. Its her leavers' disco today and she's so tiny in her disappointment, despite being 5'5 at 11. I put on a mask, pull her onto my lap. She cries into my shoulder. 'Its not fair!'
And it isn't fair. This summer isn't going to be the cluster f@ck of 2021, there will be no emergency flights, no hospital room to walk into at midnight, confused because that tiny wizard man can't be my father...that beard alone! There will be no human waste to weed through, no needles to dispose of, no endless stretches of hotel rooms, chopped and changed childcare. I can keep them safe, better here. And daddy's caught the ferry, so I know he's safe.
I take a COVID test because the headache of the last three days isn't abating but it is negative and I realize my cycle is about to start. How is it only 3 weeks ago I was staring out over the Dalmatian sea, then the Med? I close my eyes, so ready to elsewhere for a few days. But first, there is quiet and sleep, and documents to scan, emails to solicitors to write, mammograms to book. 'Suspected non-cancerous,' makes me giggle again, imaging my breasts in a mug shot pose. I make an iced tea, make my post-nap to do list, and sigh.
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