“Oh, Nick,” she said, grasping my hand very tight. There were tears in her eyes.
I pulled her close to me, and we sat in silence as the taxi maneuvered through Regent’s Park and out onto the Euston Road.
It was a difficult evening, and night, for both of us.
Claudia was checked into the hospital by the admissions staff, for whom it was a regular routine to be completed with brisk efficiency. They didn’t mean to be uncaring, but quite a few times they made us feel uncomfortable and even foolish.
I kept having to wait in the corridor outside her room as nurses and technicians came to perform some procedure or other. Swabs were taken from up Claudia’s nose and inside her mouth, and then others were then taken from more intimate areas. Blood was drawn for this, and urine was tested for that.
After a couple of hours they finally said that she was ready for the morning and left us in peace. I turned off the bright overhead lights and dimmed the reading light to a much more subdued level. Suddenly, everything did not look quite so stark and antiseptic. Much better.
I sat on a chair by her bed and held her hand.
“You ought to go home,” Claudia said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Unless they physically throw me out,” I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Claudia laid her head back on the pillow and smiled. “Good,” she said.
I still couldn’t believe how badly I had read the situation between us. What a fool I had been, and what a greater fool I might have become. Just thinking about it caused me to break out in a cold sweat.
“You get some sleep now, my love,” I said to her. “You’ll need all the strength you can get for tomorrow.”
“This bloody bed is so hard, it makes my back ache.”
I spent a few minutes using the electric bed control, lifting the head or feet, trying to make her more comfortable. It didn’t really work.
“Why can’t they have bloody beds that are comfortable to lie on?” Claudia complained. “You’d think that would be the first priority.”
I recognized what was happening. She was getting irritated by the slightest little thing. It was a sign of the nervous condition she was in. I would just have to smile gently and agree with her.
“Yes, darling,” I said. “Please try and close your eyes and get some rest.”
“You try resting on this bloody thing,” she snapped, turning herself over once again to face away from me.
In the end, she settled, and in time I could tell from the sound of her breathing that she was asleep. I settled down into the chair and closed my eyes.
One of the nurses came into the room and snapped on the overhead lights.
“Time for your vitals,” she said loudly.
And so it went on through the night, with temperature, pulse and blood pressure being measured in two-hour intervals, each time accompanied by the Blackpool Illuminations. Hospitals were clearly never designed for relaxation and recovery.
No one told me to go home, so I didn’t, although I had to admit it was not the best night’s sleep I’d ever had.
Breakfast wasn’t eaten by Claudia, or even offered, there being a large NIL BY MOUTH sign hanging on a hook by the door, so I went down to the hospital lobby at about six a.m. in search of coffee and a bun for myself while the patient had a shower.
At about eight-thirty, Dr. Tomic, the surgeon, arrived, wearing light blue scrub tunic and trousers, all set for the operating room. He brought with him some paperwork and a thick marker pen, which he used to draw a big black arrow on the left side of Claudia below her belly button.
“Don’t want to take out the wrong one, now do we?” he said.
That, somehow, wasn’t very encouraging.
“What, exactly, are you going to do?” I asked.
“I will make two small incisions here and here,” he said, pointing to each side of Claudia’s lower abdomen. “I will then use a laparoscope to have a good look at all her bits and then I’ll remove the left ovary completely,” he said. “I also plan to take a wedge biopsy of the right ovary.”
“And what is a wedge biopsy, exactly?” I asked.
“A small sample that is removed, like a tiny bite, which is then tested to see if it’s clear,” he said. “Then I will sew everything up and Claudia will be back here before you know it. About two hours in total, maybe a fraction more.”
“And if the biopsy’s not clear?” Claudia asked.
“If I can tell that straightaway just by looking,” the surgeon said, “then I’ll have to remove that ovary as well. Otherwise, the biopsy will be sent to the lab for tests. There is a slight chance that I may also need to perform a complete hysterectomy if I find cancer cells attached to the uterus. But I think from the scans that that will be most unlikely.”
Claudia looked at me with rising panic in her eyes.
Dr. Tomic spotted it. “Claudia,” he said, “I promise you I will do as little as possible. But we have to deal with this. It won’t go away on its own. I have to tell you everything that might happen because I need your consent to proceed. You will understand that I can’t wake you up halfway through the operation to ask your permission to remove your womb if I need to do it in order to save your life.” He smiled at her. “But I really don’t think it will come to that.”
“Can’t you just remove the tumor?” I asked. “Do you have to take the whole ovary?”
“The tumor will probably have taken over most of the ovary and it is the only way of ensuring it doesn’t return.”
“If the second ovary is clear, does that mean it will remain so?” I asked.
“Let’s cross one bridge at a time,” he said. “We’ll discuss the future after the operation.”
I took that to mean no, it probably wouldn’t remain clear.
My mother’s wish for grandchildren was not looking too promising.
“Right, then,” said Dr. Tomic, “I need you to sign here.” He pointed. “And here. And here.”
Claudia looked at me in despair. I pursed my lips and nodded at her. She signed the papers. What choice did we have?
“OK,” said the surgeon, taking back the forms from her. “I’ll see you in the OR in about twenty minutes. Wait here, they’ll come for you.”
I wanted to tell him to be careful with my girl, but I didn’t. Of course he’d be careful. Wouldn’t he?
If the previous evening had been bad, the next twenty minutes were intolerable.
Dr. Tomic had left the door open, and every time someone walked down the corridor outside we both jumped.
What was there to say? Nothing. We both just watched the clock on the wall move inexorably around from eight-fifty to nine o’clock, then ever onwards to nine-five and nine-ten.
Claudia held on to my hand as if her life depended on it.
“It’ll be all right,” I said. “You heard what he said, you’ll be back in here before you know it.”
“Oh, Nick,” she said miserably, “if I come out of this with only a tiny piece of an ovary left, let’s use it to have kids.”
“OK,” I said. “You’re on.”
“Marry me first?” she asked.
“You bet,” I said.
It was an unusual proposal, but we were in an unusual situation.
At nine-fifteen an operating room orderly arrived, wearing blue scrubs and a cloth hat.
“Please be careful with my fiancée,” I said to him as he wheeled her bed out of the room and into the corridor. “She’s very precious to me.”
I went with her to the lift. However, the orderly said that he was sorry but I couldn’t come any farther. I looked at Claudia’s frightened face until the closing lift doors cut off our line of sight, and all too quickly she was gone.
I went back into her room and sat down on the chair.
Never before had I felt so desperate, so helpless, and alone.
In truth, it was not a great start to an engagement.