“So,” Dr. Flanagan said, putting down her phone. “It’s good news.” I waited, too scared to breathe. “The operation went very well. Everything is out. No complications. And Jack did brilliantly.”
“You managed to get all of the tumor?” I said, feeling the pump of my heart, the quickening of my breath.
“Yes, we got all of it,” the doctor said, taking her surgeon’s hat off. “It was simpler than we anticipated. Some tumors are complicated, tangled up with blood vessels, but that wasn’t the case here. We’ll have to do a scan to confirm this, but I’m confident that we’re looking at a gross total resection.”
Gross total resection. We knew those words. We had read them on Hope’s Place, in the medical literature. It was the gold standard for children who were cured. All visible signs of cancer removed.
“So this...this,” Anna stammered, almost gasping for breath. “This might mean he’s cured?”
“Yes, it might,” Dr. Flanagan said quickly. “Officially I’m not allowed to say that. We doctors are very nervous talking about cures but, in Jack’s case, the surgery did go incredibly well, and I really expect him to make a full recovery. However, to be fully straight with you, there is always a risk that it will come back. In Jack’s case, that would be a very small risk, but a risk nonetheless.”
A risk, a very small risk. But there were always risks, crossing the road, playing rugby at school.
“And will he need any more treatment?” I asked.
“So,” the doctor said, looking at her watch, “in the coming days we’ll do another scan to make sure that the resection was total, that there are no signs of cancer. And if that scan confirms what we think, no, Jack won’t need any more treatment.”
“Thank you,” I said, “thank you so much.”
“Well, it’s nice to be the bearer of good news,” the doctor said, standing up and walking toward the door. “But if you’ll excuse me, I need to prepare for another operation.”
Suddenly, Anna stood up and flung her arms around the doctor. Their embrace was awkward, two people who didn’t know how tight to squeeze or how long to hold on. But Anna wouldn’t let go, her arms tightly wrapped around the doctor’s body, as if she was clinging to her own child. They stood, gently swaying next to a fire extinguisher, as Anna whispered “thank you, thank you” into Dr. Flanagan’s neck.
12
I listened to the waves lapping against the shore, with the occasional crash, the wake from a distant boat. Anna was reclined on the chaise lounge, reading her book. Jack sat on his beach mat, flicking through his Pokémon cards. His hair was beginning to thicken with salt and sand, his nape tinted blond with the sun.
We loved watching his hair grow after the operation, back to how it was when he was young, when the barbershop was an ordeal. Anna wanted him to grow it long, to let it curl and flop into his eyes. She didn’t want him to ever cut it again.
Dr. Flanagan had been right. The MRI showed that she got it all. Jack soon regained his strength. He started school again. He went up the London Eye with his class. He even started football training with Hampstead Colts. Did we dream it all? Look at him, look at him, I thought as I watched him play football or jump into the swimming pool. Does that look like a boy who had a brain tumor?
It had been Anna’s idea to come to Crete, an apartment her colleague had recommended. It was a penthouse suite, a terrace with an unbroken view of the sea. The apartments were at the quieter end of the beach, away from the boat trips and Jet Skis, the hawkers selling dresses and coral necklaces and salted corn on the cob.
Suddenly, Jack shrieked, jumped off his beach mat and ran to the water’s edge, dodging and weaving, leaving wet footprints in the sand. We jumped up, thinking something was wrong, and then we saw the butterfly dancing around his head.
“It’s chasing me, it’s a wasp,” Jack said, waving his arms around, his little feet jumping in the sand.
“It’s a butterfly, Jack. It’s not going to hurt you,” I said.
“How do you know?” he said. “Butterflies can eat people sometimes.” He walked toward me, holding out his hands like a dinosaur. “Really, Daddy. How do you know?”
“Because I’m very clever.”
“Ha,” he said, twisting my toe, “you’re not as clever as Philip Cleaver.”
“Is he clever then?”
“He can read and write and do all the sums, since he was a baby.”
“Wow, do they call him Clever Cleaver?”
“What?” Jack said, his hands bolshily on his hips. “His name isn’t Clever, it’s Philip.”
Anna laughed. “It’s okay, Jack,” she said. “No one gets Daddy’s jokes. By the way, is it too early for a beer?”
“It’s 11:05,” I said, looking at my watch.
“That’s acceptable on holiday, right?”
“I thought we had decided 10:30 was the acceptable cutoff.”
“Ah, then one beer, please, and some of those little chocolate pretzel things.” Anna stretched out on the chaise longue, her legs turning a light shade of brown.
“Anything else?” I said.
“No, no,” she said, “that will be all, although you could do my back before you go?”
Anna sat forward and handed me the cream, and it was nice to touch her again, to feel the soft purchase of her skin.
“So nice,” she said, sighing a little too hard, as if we were alone after Jack had gone to bed.
“It is nice.”
“But you should stop, otherwise I might do something inappropriate.”
“Okay,” I said, laughing and rubbing in the last bit of sun cream.
“Right, matey,” I said to Jack. “Shall we get some ice cream?”
“Again?” Jack asked. “Is it the weekend?”
“We’re on holiday, Jack. We can have ice cream every
