Storm in a B Cup - A Breast Cancer Tale Read Online Free PDF

of each other. When he’s old enough, I plan for
him to ride his bike. He can take the backstreets and cross at the lights and
I’ll be able to head straight to work. I think he’d like that. Being a big boy.
I’d like it too.
    It’s 8.50 a.m.
when I unlock the back door and dump my stuff in the small space I’ve designated
as the staffroom. Lani’s nowhere in sight, so I put down our coffees and get
out the price tags and the list I’ve generated for the pricing of the new
stock. Lani managed to return those hideous bags from last week and reorder
what I actually wanted in the first place, so I perch myself on
a stool and sip and tag alternately.
    When I was
at school, I never dreamed that one day I would own my own shop. I wanted to
design things — well, handbags, to be specific — but that was as
far as my future was planned. I didn’t think I’d be selling other people’s
bags, but that was how it ended up. I got pregnant with Rory in my last year of
Art School. I had to feed a baby. I had no family to help me out. Fluffy dreams
were replaced by practicality.
    After the discovery,
I put my dream aside and went to work at Heather’s
Hats And Bags, a tiny glass fronted shop in West Perth. Heather sold the
most amazing hats, some designed by herself, some she imported. People used to
stop in the street to look at her zany window displays. From one week to the
next you never knew if the hats would be decked out like flying saucers or balanced
on top of stuffed parrots or something. They were a talking point up and down Hay
Street. And her collection of handbags was enough to make a grown woman drool.
I did. Often.
    I loved
working for Heather; she was like a second mother to me and, after Rory was born,
she let me bring him to work. She set up a playpen and a cot out the back, so I
wouldn’t have to pay for childcare. She let me start late and finish early to
suit his nap times. She taught me how to order and who to order from. She let
me borrow her collection of vintage hats for a promotion idea I came up with.
It was fun.
    Then one
morning — it was Rory’s second birthday — she arrived at the shop
with a battered leather suitcase, a huge smile and a fox fur stole draped
around her neck. She announced that the man she’d loved for forty years had returned
and wanted her to run away with him. He was going to marry her and take her
around the world. They were going to visit the exotic places they’d spoken of
when they were twenty. He was hideously rich. Then, she said, if I could keep
the shop afloat for six months, without her help, I could have it. I was
practically family and she wanted to retire anyway. It was certainly a windfall
I never expected. But that was how I came to be here. Not the grandest of
starts but among the most interesting, I’ll bet.
    As the hands
on the wall clock — a sunburst remnant from the seventies — click
over onto nine, I dig in my bag for my phone and search my contacts for the
doctor’s number. My knees are trembling, more than the day I found out I was
pregnant. I dial and listen to the ring tone. Deep down, I already know what
they’re going to say but I’m clutching to that sliver of hope.
    “Good
morning, Dr. Jackson’s rooms. Maryanne speaking.”
    The
receptionist sounds rather pushed for time. I tell her I’m after my test
results.
    “One moment
please.”
    I hear her
shuffling papers and clicking keys on the computer.
    “Dr. Jackson
wants to see you.”
    Shit. They
never ask to see you if nothing’s wrong. It’s only when there’s a problem.
    I say
nothing because, well, I can’t. My lips feel as if they’ve been welded to my
teeth.
    “Are you
there?” Maryanne asks.
    “Yes.”
    “I can make
an appointment for you next week,” she adds, cool as a cucumber.
    Is. She. Kidding?
    Suddenly, my
voice remembers its job. In a really loud aggressive sort of way that’s not me.
“No. I need it this week. TODAY.”
    “Doctor has
no slots available