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oncologists are doctors who deal with childhood cancer. My vocabulary is growing by the minute.
    Inside, it’s overwhelming, full of shiny floors and signs pointing to places where people get treated for lots of scarily named stuff that I didn’t even know you could get. In the corridors, smiling staff in colorful uniforms bustle past gray-faced families looking just like Mum and Ava did when they first got the news. Like we all do, in fact. Looking lost.
    It takes us twenty minutes to find the corridor where Ava’s consultant, Dr. Christodoulou, is seeing his outpatients. Despite the fact that Dad is a highly trained academic, we can’t seem to follow simple directions.
    We sit in the waiting room, avoiding the eyes of the other families. Automatically, Mum and Dad look around to findsomething to read. You don’t get to be a French translator and an ex–history professor without reading pretty much everything you can get your hands on, all your life. Mum grabs the only newspaper. Dad goes for the magazine with the largest amount of writing, which turns out to be Good Housekeeping . He reads it anyway. Maybe he’ll pick up some laundry tips. Ava’s already got her nose buried in an old copy of Marie Claire . That only leaves Hello! for me. I soon know more about the beautiful homes and failed love lives of B-list celebrities than I ever wanted or needed to. Luckily, the consultant is running five minutes ahead of schedule. A nurse pops her head round the door of the waiting room to show us into his office.
    The consultation goes by in a blur. Dr. Christodoulou is not as old as I was expecting — younger than Dad, in fact, with a smooth, unlined face and black, wavy hair. He must have done all his training very fast. I wonder if he can really be a “highly respected expert” already. But for Ava’s sake, he has to be.
    He explains that her type of lymphoma is called Hodgkin’s disease. The lump in her neck is not a tumor — or not the way I imagined it, anyway — it’s a swelling of the lymph nodes. I didn’t know you had lymph nodes, but now I do, and Ava’s have got cancer. Once they’ve found out how far it’s spread, they’ll start treating it with chemotherapy, which is basically lots of powerful drugs that they’ll be flooding into her bloodstream over several weeks until they’ve got rid of it. And if that doesn’t work, they’ll try radiotherapy.
    Great. Not remotely frightening, then.
    “But you look fit, Ava,” he says to her with a smile. “That’s a good start.”
    He’s not the first person to tell Ava she looks “fit.” Not by a long way. It’s just not usually in these circumstances. She still smiles coyly, though, as if she’s forgotten why we’re here. I think she’s struggling to concentrate. And he’s not bad himself, as pediatric oncologists go. I really should stop noticing stuff like this.
    “My secretary will book you in for the other tests you need, OK? It’ll only take a few days. We like to move these things along.”
    Mum blows into a tissue; she’s already gone through most of the box thoughtfully placed next to her. I think we’re all very slightly in love with Dr. Christodoulou. Even Dad looks a bit less gray than he did five minutes ago.
    “And you can make her completely better?” he asks, with a cough.
    The consultant hesitates slightly. “I can’t make any promises. But I can tell you that the treatment is very effective these days. Over ninety percent of our patients are completely cured.” Then he turns his attention back to Ava. “Now, while you’re here, I’d like our phlebotomist to take some samples.” He smiles at our blank faces. “Blood samples. It won’t take long.”
    Next thing we know, we’re back in the corridor. Ava and Mum are being taken to wherever the phlebotomists hang out — in the basement, somewhere — and Dad and I are shown back into the waiting room.
    I want to talk to Dad about the last bit of the conversation —