After the fireworks, there was a little autumn show, and Jack’s class had been chosen to sing the closing hymn. It was “Jerusalem”—one of Anna’s favorites—and I was surprised, thinking it too patriotic, or too Christian, or too socialist, for Amberly Primary.
I watched Jack, his little halo of blond hair lit up by the stage lights, my heart melting as he struggled to remember the words. I could see him blinking into the glare, looking out for us in the audience. And then, suddenly, he wasn’t there anymore. I thought perhaps it was a trick of the light, but, no, there was now a gap where he had been standing, as if he had been excised from a school photo. Just as the children started to sing “And did the countenance divine,” I heard a shriek and then the screech of the piano. We both ran through the audience and jumped up onto the stage. Jack was lying crumpled on the floor, still clutching his book of hymns.
* * *
He probably just fainted, the EMTs said, even though we told them he’d had a brain tumor. Nah, don’t worry, they said, as if we were telling them he had a nut allergy. It was hot in there; kids fainted all the time.
We went in the ambulance with Jack, the sirens blazing, much to Jack’s delight. I looked at Anna. I knew what was going through her head. Dr. Flanagan had said there was a 14 percent chance that the tumor would come back. I knew how her brain worked. Fourteen percent. With a reasonable margin of error, a little bad luck, that was 2 in 10, or 1 in 5.
She sat with one arm over Jack’s blanketed legs, and I knew that she knew. I could see it in her dulled eyes, the way that she hung her head.
* * *
In the hospital, I was watching a Pokémon cartoon with Jack on his iPad when Dr. Flanagan walked in.
“Hello,” Jack said, and smiled sweetly. We didn’t expect her, didn’t know she would be coming to this hospital in a different part of London.
“Hello, Jack,” she said, smiling. “How are you? I hear you’ve been throwing yourself around on the stage.”
Jack smiled and shyly looked down at the iPad.
“And how do you feel now, Jack?” the doctor asked.
Jack tapped his head and then his torso and legs. “Okay, no injuries. But I lost some of my Pokémon cards. They fell down on the floor.”
“Don’t worry, angel,” Anna said. “I promise we’ll find them.”
Jack nodded, unconvinced.
“Excellent,” Dr. Flanagan said. “Now, I want you to try to get some sleep, Jack. You’re going to stay here tonight and then go home in the morning.”
I felt a flush of relief, that perhaps it wasn’t serious, just a minor complication from the operation. Dr. Flanagan looked at Jack’s chart and then nodded at us, indicating she wanted a word outside.
She led us into an unoccupied waiting room. We all sat down at a table on some plastic chairs, and the harsh light made it feel like an interview room at a police station. The doctor took a sip of coffee and she seemed nervous, a state we had never seen her in before.
“So,” she began, trying to look at both of us across the table. “From what we can tell, Jack has had another epileptic seizure.” She paused, swallowed, and I noticed that her lips were dry. “I’m very sorry, but from the scan we’ve just done, it looks like there has been a recurrence of his tumor.”
I didn’t understand what she was saying. They had got it all. Dr. Flanagan told us repeatedly they had got it all. An 86 percent chance he was going to get better.
“Jack’s... Jack’s tumor?” I stammered. “But I thought you got all the tumor out. It was gone, you said it was gone.”
Dr. Flanagan swallowed again, unsettled. Anna sat rigid in her chair, her hands clasped in front of her as if she was praying.
“We got out everything we could see,” she said, “everything that could be seen on the scan, but I’m afraid in a small number of cases with astrocytoma, this does happen. There are microscopic tentacles that grow into the surrounding brain tissue...”
“And that’s what Jack has?” I said.
Dr. Flanagan took a deep breath. “From its appearance on the MRI, it does now look like a glioblastoma.”
We knew about glioblastoma. We saw the parents on Hope’s Place. They posted for a few frenzied weeks and then never came back.
“But...but...it can be removed, right, as before?” I said. “There are treatments...”
Dr. Flanagan shook her head. “I’m so sorry. There is absolutely no easy way of telling you this. The MRI showed many, many tiny microscopic lesions all over Jack’s brain.”
I didn’t understand. It didn’t make any sense. He had been swimming, playing football every day. I looked at Anna, expecting, wanting her to say something, but she was silent, unmoving, her hands locked together.
“And it’s not possible to take these lesions out?”
The doctor shook her head. “I’m afraid not. There are just too many. Even if we could take them out, given how aggressive the tumor is, they would just come back.” She exhaled, rubbed her hands together as if she was applying hand cream. “I really am so very, very sorry.”
I looked at Anna next to me. Her head was bowed, her hair draped over her face.
“And is there any treatment to...to...?”
“We need to talk about this, of course. But first we need to do some more tests.”
Slowly Anna lifted her head up, her eyes glassy, her face gray and pale. Her voice was small but filled the silence of the room. Where I stammered, stumbled over my words, her enunciation was considered and clear. “And does this mean that Jack can’t be cured?”
Dr. Flanagan held her gaze for a moment, calibrating her response. “I’m sorry,
