I suppose if you stand under a tree long enough in a thunderstorm the chances of it coming down get a bit higher. Today the tree came down.
Another Friday morning in Kathy's clinic - all becoming a bit routine. My guard lowered I was making a mental shopping list for the Tesco Extra round the corner from the Marsden all the time we sat and waited for Kathy. The play specialists have hired clowns for the Friday morning clinic - they were very funny and Rose was distracted. But the child in front of us left and still the wait went on. Behind the clinic door in our last few minutes of ignorance when we all still had a future Kathy was busy making CT and bone scan appointments with the chest x-ray we hadn't yet seen sitting on her screen in front of her. A perfect little 7 year old chest - with two metastatic bone tumours sitting in the right lung. Peekaboo. The pantomime villain of cancer is back.
The door of Kathy's office, it occurs to me half an hour later, is like a crossroads - left for McDonalds, Tescos, freedom and home, right for canulas, blood tests and the CT department. Rose didn't even murmur - back into daycare, anaesthetic cream on every available vein, needles and drips back in place. Like we'd never been away. 'Is it an infection?' she asks us. 'We're not sure, sweetheart. Kathy just needs a closer look.'
