The Two Week Wait Read Online Free PDF Page A

.’
    Cath steps back and watches her shoot off down the hill, wobbly and precarious on her skis, but upright.
    She returns to the cafe, sits down again.
    Then, suddenly, like a gale-force wind whooshing over the mountains onto the terrace, it hits her, right in her lower abdomen.
    A longing, primal and powerful, so overwhelming she nearly falls from her chair.
    She’s put her desires and hopes on hold for such a long while – she had no choice but to do so – but now it seems a familiar yearning is making itself felt once more.
    *
    She’d still been woozy from anaesthetic when the oncologist had finally come to her bedside. Rich had been sitting next to her, on one of the hospital plastic chairs,
waiting in trepidation for the doctor to do his rounds.
    ‘So how did it go?’ Cath had asked. She’d tried to prop herself up on an elbow, but hadn’t the strength; there were stitches across her abdomen. She was forced to lie
back on her pillow.
    ‘Good,’ the oncologist had nodded. ‘The chemotherapy shrank the tumours enough so we could operate much more easily.’
    ‘That’s great,’ Rich had said and smiled at her.
    But Cath had remained uneasy. ‘And my ovaries?’
    ‘We wanted to be sure we’d removed all the cancer,’ the doctor said.
    ‘So . . . ?’
    ‘The good news is it hasn’t spread. We have caught it in time.’
    ‘But my ovaries?’ She had to know.
    ‘We had to remove them.’
    ‘Completely?’
    ‘Completely.’ The word stabbed more than any scalpel. Cath closed her eyes as if shutting out the world might obliterate her pain.
    *
    She buttons her jacket up fully, ready to leave. She should talk to her husband soon; this holiday is a good moment, surely. It’s an uncomfortable conversation to have to
have, but eighteen months have passed since the surgery, and there is no point in putting it off any longer. Time is ticking; they can’t afford to.

4
    ‘Louise Burgess?’ calls a man in a pale-blue coat.
    Lou rises from her chair. ‘That’s me.’
    ‘This way, please.’
    He leads Lou and Sofia from the hospital waiting room.
    ‘I take it you’re a friend?’ he asks Sofia, over his shoulder.
    ‘Partner.’
    ‘Oh. Well, I’m the radiographer.’ He addresses Lou. ‘Please would you mind taking off your clothes and putting on this hospital gown?’ He draws a curtain so she can
do so in private.
    Lou is desperate for a pee. She’s been told to come with a full bladder, and wriggling out of her jeans and knickers makes it worse. She needs to go so badly she can’t even worry
about the scan – she can only focus on getting it over with. She flings her clothes on the floor and doesn’t bother doing up the ties of the gown.
    ‘Could you lie down here?’The radiographer pats the couch next to the ultrasound machine. ‘Now I’m going to spread some of this gel onto your tummy.’
    Lord, it’s cold.
    ‘What’s that for?’ Sofia steps closer to look.
    ‘It helps transmission of sound waves to and from the microphone. They bounce off the organs inside your body. In this instance the womb. This computer’ – he gesticulates
– ‘then turns the reflected waves into a picture.’
    Sofia peers at the screen. ‘Fascinating.’
    Lou wishes they would shut up so he can get on with it. She’s going to wee on him otherwise.
    ‘Do you want to see?’ he asks her.
    ‘I guess,’ says Lou, though the prospect fills her with dread.
    He turns the monitor towards her and as he moves the microphone back and forth, Lou can make out fuzzy black-and-white shapes, like a TV with its aerial missing, picking up a ghostly channel.
What they indicate she has no idea.
    Sofia steps closer and takes hold of Lou’s hand. ‘Are you OK?’
    Lou nods. ‘Can you see what’s wrong?’ she asks the radiographer, and grips Sofia’s palm.
    *  *  *
    In the evening, the sanctuary of the chalet is a well-earned antidote to the challenges of the slopes: if daytimes are marked by bright sunlight