You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead by Marieke Hardy Page A

tests.’
    â€˜Right,’ the student doctor replied, nodding seriously. Adopting the ‘I’m here to listen’ face he had no doubt pictured himself wearing in future years when he was a highly paid GP with a four-year waiting list and a mistress named Conchita.
    â€˜We’ve been waiting about two hours out in the foyer,’ Gen’s sister explained, adding in a shaky, impatient voice, ‘It’s been fairly brutal.’
    She was referring of course to that infinite stretch of time we had simmered in unspoken frustration, looking at the mere amount of steps between knowing and not knowing, the difference between carrying on with the rest of our day unencumbered or stepping into a whole new world of catheters and radiation. We had watched at least seven people go in before us, in varying degrees of poor health. We had envied them. At least they knew what they were dealing with. At least they had earth beneath their feet.
    If this was a sign that our party may have been in a slightly fragile emotional state, the student doctor failed to notice it.
    He ploughed onward, sensing a misguided opportunity to bond with a room full of women.
    â€˜Oh boy, don’t tell me about waiting !’ he said with comradely eye rolling. ‘The other night my girlfriend and I waited ninety minutes for a table at Mamasita. You know that restaurant in the city? They offered to give us a seat at the bar, but I’m like, “No way, we want a table.” I mean, the food was amazing, don’t get me wrong. But ninety minutes? An absolute joke.’
    More silence. I wondered if his man-of-the-people routine would carry on if the news was bad and Gen was given three months to live.
    â€˜You think a death sentence is rough?’ he would say, interrupting the oncologist’s grim diagnosis with a wry chuckle. ‘One time I had an overdue DVD at Blockbuster and was fined eighty-seven dollars . Oh man, was that a shitty day. I had to pay it off in instalments!’
    When the oncologist finally entered the room at a brisk clip, waving his manila folder about like a baton, things were finally and instantly set on an even keel. He cut to the chase, telling Gen she most certainly had breast cancer and that it had spread to her lymph nodes and they would be performing a mastectomy within the following week.
    The news was of course terrible, though I sensed most of us were doing everything we could not to look at the ashen face of Mr ‘You think that’s bad’ over the other side of the room as he realised the moronic depths of his faux pas.
    I still think about that student doctor from time to time. I very much hope he’s been run over by a bus.
    In a rush, more men in suits and ties entered the room, taking Gen behind a mysterious curtain and poking at her and murmuring reassuringly. As I held her mother’s hand, I heard the booming voice of her surgeon cutting through.
    â€˜I wouldn’t worry about this at all,’ he said with confidence. ‘We’ll just get in there, take it out, and move on. That’s always been my motto with surgery—Keep It Silly, Stupid!’
    The silence behind the curtain was suddenly deafening. The surgeon cleared his throat.
    â€˜I mean—Keep It Simple, Stupid! That’s my motto. Not the other one. That was . . . that was a mistake.’
    This was deeply comforting. The man in charge of Gen’s mastectomy couldn’t even get his surgery motto straight. If things continued in a similar vein she’d be prepped for the operation by Pauly Shore and wheeled in by the cast of Let the Blood Run Free .
    We filed out of the room in a sombre mood, not looking each other in the eye, wondering what to do or say next. Gen announced she was going to the toilet and, for want of anything better to do, her mother and sister went too. I was hovering in the hallway outside, slightly stunned, waiting for them to finish, when music