the same rational. If she couldn’t find any evidence that I was cheating, that was her proof that I was hiding something. Before I got sick Mary knew where I was every minute of every day. It wasn’t difficult. If I wasn’t at work, I was with her. I hadn’t gone any where without her in over a decade. Work was a kilometre away from home and I was never late home. Since I became ill it was home or hospital. That didn’t stop the accusations.
“When?”
“Two weeks ago”.
“And what, why didn’t you say it to me then?”
“I wanted to see how it developed”.
“And what did?” I was exasperated.
“Nothing” she answered.
“So why are you attacking me?”
Mary didn’t give me a reason. For the next hour she berated me. The kids stayed in the living room watching the television. Nothing I tried to say made a difference. I’d been on interferon for eight months. I looked terrible and felt worse. I didn’t have the mental capacity to defend myself against what she was accusing me of. I knew what she was saying wasn’t true.
For the first time I really realised that Mary was deliberately lying. It wasn’t just a suspicious streak. She was doing all that she could to hate me, she didn’t want to get closer, she wanted to be further apart. She had waited until I was totally isolated in Spain where there was no one else to see and then she set out to abuse me unmercifully. This was the first hour of the first day and it only got worse after that.
Mary fired hate at me every waking moment. It came off her in waves. By the tenth day I was utterly beaten down. Mary’s younger sister was due to arrive the next day. I literally got down on my knees and begged Mary to stop hurting me. She seemed, no not seemed, she actually took pleasure in emotionally torturing me.
The last night of the holidays we went out for something to eat with Mary’s sister and the children. For months I’d been vomiting after I ate. Some times it stopped quickly other times it lasted for hours. It was always accompanied with gut wrenching cramps. Eating out made it worse, I think it was the fear of being ill in front of others especially Mary. I didn’t want to be sick that night. It was a posh restaurant and I was very anxious so I decided to have only soup. It was the safest thing on the menu. Mary and her sister were drinking wine. I stuck to water, I hadn’t had a beer since the previous holiday twelve months earlier. As soon as I swallowed one spoonful of soup the gut wrenching started. I broke out in a cold sweat.
“I have to go” I told Mary.
She sighed disapprovingly.
“You go with him” she ordered Leah and went back to her wine.
The restaurant was very good and a taxi turned up instantly. It was only five minutes drive to the apartment. I fought the entire journey not to vomit in the taxi as cramps bent me double in the seat. As soon as we got into the apartment I was violently ill. I was ill all that night and the next morning. I retched on an empty stomach hour after hour. I lay on the floor beside the toilet bowl wishing, hoping, wanting it to stop. There was no way I could fly home. I could have gone to a Spanish hospital but I didn’t speak the language and I didn’t want to be stuck there. That and I didn’t have travel insurance, I couldn’t get it.
“You can’t be sick” Mary was standing over me. Her fists were clenched, her face red with anger as she spat the words at me.
“I’ll have to take care of the kids on my own” she roared at me.
Mary and the kids were gone. Her sister was still there and I was in the bedroom alone. I had a small bin lined with a plastic bag in my hands. I stayed there retching and retching until I eventually passed out from exhaustion. When I awoke the nausea wasn’t gone but it had receded to a point where I could overcome it. I picked up the small bin and was about to take the liner out and dump it when I noticed that it had already been changed. I guessed that Mary’s sister had changed it. I was overcome with gratitude, in the previous twelve months, Mary had never done anything like that for me.
For the rest of that morning I sat on the balcony and sipped from a bottle of water. Muscles in my chest and abdomen ached from the previous days heaving. My flight had been rescheduled for that evening. I dared not eat anything. When the time came a taxi arrived and took me the forty five minute journey to the airport. I kept the window rolled down as the driver chatted away. This time there was no delay, I boarded the aeroplane and took a seat right at the front opposite the toilets. A couple of times during the flight I thought I was going to start vomiting again but I fought it down. I’d bumped into a guy in Malaga Airport, Gerry. We had worked together for years before I became ill. Although he was sitting elsewhere on the plane, it gave me comfort that if I did start to get sick again at least there was someone who knew what was wrong with me. I feared that I looked like some strung out junkie. When we touched down in Dublin I was more than relieved. I should have gone straight to accident and emergency in Beaumont but I couldn’t face a night on a trolley. Instead I decided to stay at home that night and go to day oncology in the morning. That day was the first time in nine months that I didn’t take interferon, I couldn’t face it. When I got home I hugged the kids and went to bed. By dawn I was heaving again.
Day oncology had just opened its doors. Mary was with me. I made it into the tiny waiting room and collapsed onto a seat. I was heaving uncontrollably. All my reserves of strength were gone. I was totally wasted. I was transferred to a bed in double quick time. All the smells of the hospital made me heave even harder. In the next cubicle, a man talked to someone about take away food, I don’t remember if I actually asked him to stop but I wanted to. The next I knew I was alone in a small room on a different ward. The nausea stopped when I fell asleep but it was back a few hours after I woke. That was the pattern for the next two weeks. Hour after hour heaving, exhausted, sometimes forty eight hours at a stretch. Only sleep stopped it but sleep was practically impossible. I couldn’t keep anything down no matter how hard I tried. I had convinced myself that I could restart the interferon if and when this horrible sickness passed. One morning an oncologist sat and talked with me. He was convincing me that I was finished with interferon. I didn’t want to give up, I explained to him that I was determined to finish the course. By the time he left the room I conceded that I couldn’t keep going. My best shot at getting rid of cancer was gone. I was consoled that the nine months I’d done were not a waste of time, if interferon was going to work, I’d given it the most that I physically and mentally could.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
