It felt as though four months of false hopes, dead ends and being passed from consultant to consultant had ended as soon as the clean glass doors slipped shut behind them. The motion was too abrupt to be fair. Sara looked back for a moment. Suddenly she yearned for the simpler life, the open spaces around her home, even the flat grey of the car park she could still see. In the effortless closing of automatic doors, all that had been whipped from her grasp.
She took Noah’s hand and led him towards the reception, although it was plain for anyone to see that she was the more reluctant of the two. With every step she seemed to shrink in comparison to the lobby’s high ceiling, and as each member of the varied cast that kept this very grown up place ticking over passed them by, Sara looked more and more like a lost child herself.
In chairs that lined a quieter, yet somehow more oppressive wing of the sprawling complex, everything from the noises in the distance to the sickly sweet odour of pot pourri (there to mask the sharp, hit-you-in-the-back-of-the-throat of the disinfectant) put her ill at ease. She would look down to Noah’s level, each time startled that something in the harsh lighting of the waiting room was making this mystery illness all but apparent in his face. The bluish hue that bathed the chairs made her son look almost hollow, His skin was stretched, ghostly. His shoulders were thin, the new angles accented by the overhead lighting even under the coat she had insisted he wear. His eyes were dull even as they flickered nervously around, refusing to alight. And though Sara squeezed his hand in reassurance, his smile that should have been able to lift her heart for the depths of this anxiety, seemed far too old for him to have to bear.
It struck her then, that outside of the very first days of his life, Noah had found himself in this building on only two occasions. There had been one night of observation following a nasty knock to the head and forty five minutes spent visiting a grandfather. In this realisation, there seemingly to encourage her nerves, she reverted back to old habits, fingering the silver cross that hung around her neck and knowing that however fretted those visits had been, they paled to insignificance next to today. Sara stroked his hair gently, more for her own comfort that anything else, and tried in vain to inspire him to say something.
Time had grown lethargic, and conversation was now on a par with that they exchanged four hours past Noah’s bedtime. Already, three magazines, with their covers mismatched and all the best articles torn out, lay abandoned on the chair beside them, though quite why she had thought he would be interested in celebrity, digital photography and angling was uncertain. Sara squinted up to the small clock which hung over the reception desk, feeling as weak as if this appointment was all for her benefit. To match, sickness of her own was imminent. She was restless. Slouching forwards to fix her eyes on the skirting rather than the other empty chairs, then sitting uncomfortably straight. Each phase of her fidgeting though, was incomplete, the better to hide her distress from the only person in the world who now mattered.
These doctors, in shirts and loosened ties instead of crisp white coats, were late. Eleven o’ clock and in the morning and already they were three patients behind – she had counted nervously on fingers now wrung tightly in her lap as they had been called in on time which had been booked as her son’s.
But now they were alone, huddled together in an isolating silence, both staring at the floor. While his mind wandered, she was praying.
It was inevitable that their turn would come next.
It wasn’t clear that this would be an end to anything at all. But how to explain to a child of eight why, in the middle of a school day, they were here in a clinic with patients seven times his age? Sara wondered how much he actually understood, or whether all he cared for were the toys he was given after they listened to his chest, the magic distractions for the hours Sara was cross examined on everything from his diet to his sleeping patterns. It was atrocious, being ordered here and kept in the dark after the hundredth test on her little boy had revealed what, over the phone, they would only call a “subtle irregularity.” The speed of it all had to mean that something else was wrong, but all that Noah had asked was whether they would be back in time for lunch.
So how to explain that he loved him, without unbidden tears of worry summoning themselves to cloud her eyes? How to begin to describe why, without a degree or even a clue as to what had happened? She thought about his father, far out of contact on one of his infamous “work things”. Simply because she was alone, with nobody to share the horrible load, suddenly a subtle irregularity seemed enough to crush and grind her into the earth, something with enough teeth to eat them all alive. She needed him here, this man that she found herself loving even more as the years passed them. Even if it would be all he could do to make her laugh in the face of this, and even if that in itself would have been guilt ridden, Sara wanted nothing more than to hear his voice. He had left, worried of course, but still thinking that this would be another ten days to wait for no conclusion at all. It seemed unfair that he knew nothing of what was happening at home.
But how selfish, to wish him here. Their son, in his half boredom, half totally rational fear of all these tall doctors who kept flitting past them, files in hand, could nestle against Sara’s shoulder. In a kinder world, she would be able to lean back and let her husband catch her. He was the one who had to be strong enough for all three.
Terror blossomed at the sight of that last patient walking slowly back towards them. Sara watched for the corner of her eye as he talked shortly to the receptionist. With a forced smile, he left, prescription crumpled in his hand, looking somehow far more ill than when he had been called in. Sara’s mind tore itself apart with year’s worth of things she should have done, ways to escape from this, all the reasons why this shouldn’t have been happening to her precious family. In the last few days, she had barely even been able to fall asleep on her own. Now that in her heart she had shrivelled up to be eight years old herself, it seemed utterly implausible that she would find the courage to hear what it was about her child that seemed to have the professionals so ill at ease.
She took Noah’s hand again, then gave up on trying to be restrained and kissed the top of his head. He recoiled. It was just enough to make to make her laugh. The sound she came out with was close to a sob.
In the new panic, akin to fear for her own life, Sara considered whether, in the moment it would take to sign off on the last case and disinfect the clean lines of the doctor’s office, she would be able to reach her husband and spill out this panic that was breeding from uncertainty. Mobiles were banned. She had no change for the patient pay phones. But she could have taken the receptionist and called across ten time zones from behind the desk. She was desperate enough.
The doctor appeared, striding light heartedly from a corridor with no windows. His office door was still ajar behind him. He wore a nametag that was barely straight and glasses that made him look like nothing short of a bringer of appalling news.
He called her son by name.
