Writing

The backdrop for this novel was the death of my father. I am standing in the hospital room by the side of his dead body looking out the window.

In thia extract we have just been given the diagnosis.

Excerpt – Bodies in a Window

We sat there stunned. I don’t know why. We both must have known it was coming. I’d known from the beginning. It was hearing it like that though. It sucked all the words out of your head and stopped you thinking. It was as if your brain stopped working. That’s what it was like for me – fuck knows what it was like for the old man. He was the one in front of the firing squad. But had that faraway look, seemed detached and did not appear to even be listening. The words were falling short. He was not taking any of it in. In fact he gave every appearance of not wanting to be here at all. I could understand that but…………

At least one of us was attentive. I listened as the Specialist told us what was what. The words seemed echoey and were coming to me as if I was in a long tunnel, but I tried to make sense of them despite the fact that I was still reeling from the impact of that first statement. Dad was dying. That’s what was going round in my head. It clouded everything. When those other words arrived they did not even seem to gel together to form any sense.

There are extensive tumours throughout the liver. I expect they are secondary. We will do further tests. I expect the primary will either be in the lung or gut. I can see from the extent that it is inoperable. Are you a smoker Mr Cooper?

Yes.

He smoked like a trooper – had done since he was a bloody trooper. He’d joined up in the war and his best mate had given him his first cig. Imagine that! You go through a fucking war with your mates getting shot to pieces, steel and bullets all around, the enemy doing their utmost to blow you to bits and you get a death sentence from your best bloody friend – killed by friendly fire! I felt like laughing out loud.

The feeling of being submerged eventually passed and reality hit home. Dad was dying. It was confirmed. He had inoperable liver cancer. There was nothing they could do. I sat there seething. This should not be happening. He was much too young. It should have been picked up much earlier. They should have been able to treat this.

What’s the treatment? Dad asked.

Treatment? I looked around at him in disbelief. He was highly intelligent. The guy had said it was inoperable. What was dad talking about? I stared at him and wondered what was going on in that head of his. The guy was telling him that he was dying. He was not stupid for god’s sake. Why was he behaving like this?

We will give you palliative care, the specialist said kindly. He must have been used to delivering speeches like this and the reaction of patients to the news. There will be some pills for the pain. But there is nothing we can do. I am afraid that the tumour is inoperable.

Dad nodded. He latched on to the pills. They were going to treat him with pills. That’s all he needed to know. The shutters went down again.

We will have a better idea of the state of affairs when we get the bloods back. They will tell us a better picture of what time we have left.

Dad was satisfied. He’d heard all he needed to know. He did not need to know the duration of the death sentence – they were going to treat him with pills. There wasn’t much more to say. It was as if he had blotted everything else out. He did not want to hear it. The specialist told us to check in with the receptionist and book another appointment. He would send a prescription through to Dad’s own doctor. Dad allowed himself to be shepherded out through the door. Our appointment was over – except it wasn’t quite over for me. I needed to know more. I waved dad off to the receptionist to see about his follow-up and stayed behind for a quiet word with the specialist. He seemed prepared for this, even glad. He must have done it a thousand times.

‘How long?’ I asked.

‘Two months – maybe four’, he told me. ‘The bloods will tell us a bit more. It is hard to be exact. Everybody is different.’

‘Is there nothing you can do?’ I asked – I mean I had to ask, didn’t I?

‘I’m sorry’, he said. ‘There is nothing we can do. It is much too advanced.’

‘Would it have made any difference if he had come in three months ago?’ I had to know. If I had done something about it back then, at Christmas. If I had noticed.

‘I doubt it,’ he said diplomatically. ‘The symptoms are largely silent on this type of cancer until it is far too late to do anything about it. It is rare for us to be able to treat a cancer of this nature.’

That did not make me feel much better and certainly did not let that sad excuse for a doctor off the hook; he had been utterly reprehensible. Something needed doing about that smug git. I thought I might just be the person to do it.

Bodies in a Window: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781986269544: Books