CHAPTER ONE

DOMINIC

MAY, 23

"It was December 2nd 1804. Within three years Napoleon's conquest would extend his Empire across almost all of Europe, and he would rule over 70 million people. Not since the Ancient Caesars had one man held so much power..."

The words echoed, facts and useless bits of knowledge pouring out from the television screen in form of sound waves, flying past my ears before they had a chance to absorb into my brain like a peregrine soaring in spring, preying on pigeons and waterfowl.

Under less unfortunate circumstances, I would not have been seen dead, or rather flat lining on the table dressed in tight berry-coloured leather spandex scrubs listening to Metalicca, sitting here perched on the edge of the cream cushioned sofa in our little flat, trying to engage in a documentary that I had, after all, much less than little care for. This particular documentary, as tiresome as any that didn't centre around the likes of Amy Winehouse, detailed the life of French military and political leader Napoleon Bonaparte. The best thing about it? This was only part one of a four part documentary series.

It had only been around this time last year, when I had been involuntarily 'coerced' into watching a documentary series about a Revolutionary War ship, that I found myself subconsciously either tearing or biting apart my fingernails, tapping out silent yet rhythmatical tunes on the soft fabric of the arm rest, or reflecting upon the sad, never-ending number of previously failed relationships in my current thirty-years-or-so miserable existence. In this, let us call it desperate-state-of-boredom, I was simply just doing anything to distract my mind from the painful endurance that it took for the minutes to crawl by and for the monotonous task of hearing fact after fact after fact to be over. You see, the thing about documentary series such as these, is that, yes they are educational, but for people like me, or perhaps to phrase it better, for people who do not share an enthusiasm for revolutionary leaders such as Garibaldi and Napolean himself, there is only so much Napoleanic history the mind can take. And anyway, if I had wanted to torture myself in this way, then I could have spent the afternoon treating a patient for a fractured toe or talking to Hanssen about the history of Swedish delicacy and cuisine.

But yet, as we sat here now, gently resting elbow-to-elbow, our brains somehow engaged by this wearisome bundle of tripe, I did not once have to fight the urge to picture myself as being somewhere, anywhere away from here, whether that be elbow-deep in the midst of a large bowel resection or being forced by Sacha to work on bariatrics. Rather I found myself trapped, deep in thought, alone with Diggers (and Napoleon) in our flat, which no longer felt homely, but as if our flat was an infected lung and all of the life and hope had been suctioned out of it during an attempt to clear any excess fluid from its airways. It felt different, and I didn't know why or how but it was whilst alone in the company of Diggers that I noticed a pain that I had never quite felt before. My heart ached, but it was a dull kind of ache. The kind that you pray may go away in time, without the need for input of any self-care measure method or treatment. The kind that wasn't necessarily debilitating, or that would leave you weak, begging on your knees for the strongest painkiller that there is, but powerful enough to notice and cause flashes of disturbance and pain. It was difficult to explain, but with every minute that went by I felt a silent, recurring pain of emptiness wash over my aching body. I had felt this way ever since Arthur's diagnosis. Melonoma. Secondaries in his stomach and lungs, even in despite of a long and grueling, tough course of chemotherapy. The truth was, as much as I did not want to admit it, Arthur was my closest friend and my time with him was running out.

I had made a personal promise to myself that from then on, not a moment spent with Diggers would be wasted. So I would coo as he made Norse-God Medallions out of old bits of copper, sit through five episodes worth of French Revolutionary history without complaining, eat his homemade shortbread biscuits even though I had eaten better tasting slop from out of a can, even if the boredom, the endurance, this inner uncharacteristical mode of kindness killed me.

I was watching the screen, partially disengaged, yet left half-admiring, I'm ashamed to admit, the fact that it was Napolean's Army that first discovered the Rosetta Stone, when I felt the side of Arthur's head brush gently across my shoulder and land, resting against my upper forearm. I glanced down at the side of his pale face. He seemed a bit drowsy and heavy-eyed behind his glasses. His eyelids I noticed, kept on closing shut before jerking back open in accordance with his head rising and falling conventionally in time with the heightened notes of Étienne Nicolas Méhul's Stratonise as Napoleon was about to go to War with Russia.

"Diggers," I said, gently shaking his right arm, perhaps a little too softly, as if I were almost subconsciously afraid that rattling him any harder would break him, "wake up. You're not leaving me to watch this on my own."

He stirred, steadily pulling his body back up into an upright position before peering back at the screen. "It's okay," he said tugging at his cottoned-sleeves as he stretched his arms out in front of him, "I've already seen this about four times already". He pulled his glasses away from his face, folding them and placing them down on to the coffee table.

My face shifted into a look of transparent offense and resentment. "You don't honestly mean to tell me that you've put me through all of this for nothing. Do you know just about how much trauma you've caused to my brain?"

He was rubbing at his eyes with the back of his knuckles."Trauma? And what kind of trauma would that be then?"

"Emotional. Physical. Call it boredom-ical."

"Boredom-ical?" His cheeks rose into a half-ish kind of smile, before dropping slightly as he let his head fall lightly into his palms. I could hear him sniggering softly underneath his breath but with struggle, as if his body was fighting that much to keep itself awake that it made every other little action or thing feel like it was running a marathon."Right. And I'm assuming that you're going to be needing professional intervention to get through this rather traumatic experience?"

"Yes actually, and so will you."

He looked back up at me, as his sunken face reappeared from resting against the surface of his palms. "Me? No I'm rather quite enjoying this actually."

I sighed softly into my chest, only it sounded a lot more rough and jagged than I had intended. As I went to talk, I felt the words get caught in the back of my mouth just before emittance, as if the small lump that had now developed in my throat was acting as a bouncer, and restraining any words that had been resting in my mouth from being vocalised. I swallowed deeply and abruptly, jolting my body in the process, and for a few minutes we found ourselves sitting still, in what would have been silence had it not been for the Napoleon documentary still playing distantly in the background. "I think we both know that I'm not talking about the documentary Diggers," I eventually said, after minutes figuring what was and what wasn't the right thing to say in this moment.

He glanced up at me with sad, knowing eyes, before looking away as if I had hurt him. I noticed that his previously tired breathing had become slightly choppy, as if it kept stopping and starting in time with the rattling pulsations of his heart. "You mean to say that you're talking about the c..."

"Look, I get that you're a doctor and you have to watch people face this kind of thing every day, but watching somebody getting struck down by a train is different from actually being hit yourself."

He turned to look back at me, and as he did, I slowly closed my eyes, and held them there for a couple of seconds, as if not having to look at him staring at me that helplessly, would make all of this go away. Of course I knew it wouldn't.

"I don't need help Dom. Honestly, I'm fine."

"Well, I wish I could believe that." I caught him fidgeting with his fingers, like you do in most awkward situations, when you can't quite comprehend what's happening, and can't quite figure out how to pull yourself out of them and back into reality.

"Look, I know that you and Zosia seem to think that I need to be wrapped up in a blanket of cotton wool and just left there as This... the cancer slowly eats me alive until there's nothing left but you really don't have to be here if you don't want to."

"Arthur, I don't think that, okay? I just think that, you know, if you're not really fine like you say you are, then that there would be nothing wrong with that."

"And what about you?" He stared at me, his face still but eyes wandering as if they were searching for answers, and could find them just from reading the expressionless hurt in my face.

I felt my body tense as he shifted the attention from himself onto me. I shrugged my shoulders mildly at him."Me?" I answered blankly, before smiling at him, not because I was happy or because any part of this was okay for either one of us, but because I had no true answers to give.

He elaborated."Sitting here with me on your day off, when you could be spending time with Isaac, watching documentaries about Napoleon as if you actually care about the great extent of his empire. This isn't you Dom."

We found ourselves sitting still again, neither one of us saying anything to the other. And suddenly, in this partial never-ending silence between us, I could feel that the endless droning of the documentary voiceover was making me turn irritable, and was causing a figmental, pulsating headache to develop in the side of my head. With one hand remaining clutched on the left side of my skull as I tried to encourage the pain away with a massaging hand, I reached for the remote control that lay in a diagonal position on the coffee table, next to where Arthur's glasses were still resting. I glanced at Diggers, who was staring, eyes not particularly focused on anything, in the open space in front of him as my finger lay hovering over the off button.

"Right, I think that's enough of that." I said, relieving myself of the tedious voiceover man by pressing down firmly on the button that was marked clearly with the off sign. "Shouldn't you be thinking of getting off to your support group soon anyway?"

"You do realise I wasn't actually serious about going to that thing right? I just did it to reassure Sacha that I was okay. I didn't want him to be left there worrying about me." He pulled his knees that were bordered with the thin cotton from his pyjama trousers gently up into his chest.

"Look you promised Sacha that you would go and I think it would be good for you to meet other people that are going through... are under similar circumstances that you are. Not just patients and names, but People; maybe even friends. Do you really want to spend the rest of your days stuck with only a bunch of losers to call friends? I mean Zosia, a Swede and a middle-aged registrar, turned acting-consultant who thinks he's a teddy bear and wears flowery shirts that not even 1920s wallpaper can compete wi-."

"And yourself."

"And myself..." I paused, briefly turning away from Diggers and towards the kitchen counter, noticing that the kitchen tap had perhaps been dripping all along and neither one of us had even noticed it. "Look, if you're not willing to go for him, then at least do it for me, even if I have to drag you there by that granddad jumper of yours myself."

"You're not coming with me to a support group on your day off Dom," he said, tracing the outline of his pale ankle bone with his index finger.

"Well maybe that's not up to you." I said this with an unexpectedly authoritative tone.

"I'm being serious. The amount of time you've spent with me and cancer, these past couple of months. It's not fair. Look, Zosia should be back in about four hours or so. Why don't you go and spend some time with Isaac." I caught him wriggling the toes on his left foot, as if he was feeling restless and fidgety, and couldn't bring it upon himself to sit still, even though deep down, his body was probably yearning for sleep.

"Because, maybe this is more important," I said, responding in the most empathetically understanding tone that I could manage.

"I know it is Dom, and I will go to one. Just not today." He looked down at his knees, and as he did so, I did too to my own lap. It was as if neither one of us would allow ourselves to look at the hurt on the other's face, because we just couldn't handle it, and having to face it head on like this made it feel all the more real. The thing is, we were both in denial of the whole thing, even if neither one of us wanted to admit it.

"Promise me you will."

"Only if you promise to not spend the rest of the day sat here babysitting me on the sofa." He reached for my hand, pulling it closer towards his side, and I allowed him too. His grip was loose and his hand was thin and soft.

"I promise." I felt his grip tighten, as if with genuine love, friendship and reassurance.

"Well, then."