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You sit, arms enveloped around your knees in a protective semi-circle; head twisted roughly to the side; your heels abandoned under the office desk. The sole reason for your situation dawns upon you for the first time since the diagnosis, for it had never had the chance to catch up with you until now; you were always too busy to let personal matters intrude into the workplace. The oppressed weight that was your late father's birthday became the stead-fast, dreary electives on your daily list; the unwelcomed news of an impending marriage ceremony became a night's work of wearisome research for your new, minimally invasive, key-hole oesophagectomy, and the unyielding torment of your condition becomes an uninterrupted hour of sifting through patient file after patient file.
Anything for a distraction.
Your mind has begun to work in complete overdrive; you fully admit that you have a tendency to overthink things, calculate the pros and cons of a plight, a dilemma, but this is like nothing that you have ever experienced before. Alas, you seek out that numbness, that bout of grief, that incapability to function, that you have seen burden all of the others before you, but it's not within reach. You feel everything. Grief. Hurt. Betrayal.
"That's a very dramatic word Jac, betrayed."
The latter has always been abundant in your life, debilitatingly so. Time and time again, this emotion creeps up upon you, as unexpected as the crippling pain, without such mercy as to leave you without another scar to add to your collection. All those weeks, months, years in care, molded an infrangible and complicated network of walls that would always be with you, a defense against the bitter emotions that shaped your personality all those years ago, spare the latter, and it always was the latter that hurt the most.
You slip your jacket carefully onto your shoulders, resume your previous position of defeat and let out a shaky sigh in a voice so weak, so fragile, so like china, that it scares you half to death. The few tears that had somehow overcome the steely resilience, slide down your cheek in quick succession - the first proof of the free and proper action of your tear ducts. Angrily, you obliterate the trails from your soft skin with a few frenzied wipes of the palm of your hand. Weakness is not an option. But who are you to stop such a horrid mutation of reality? And, oh, it was so, so real.
You can't eat. You can't sleep. That one, constant thought pounds through your head with the force of a thousand car crashes; it is the only thought that inhibits your sleep; the only thought that attacks your otherwise medically healthy heart; the only thought that drives each single movement forward: he wants kids, and you can't have them.
"I want a normal life, you know, all the normal, boring things. I want a wife, and a family, and I want a dog, and I want roses over the door - the whole shebang."
It devastates you. And that's why you had to be cruel to be kind. You pushed him away, so far away, that he'll never get back - he can find another woman and she can bear his children, just like he's always wanted; he'll be happy, content, and a brilliant father - that's all you can ever hope for now. You do not care for yourself. You do not care, or listen, to that quiet voice in the back of your mind claiming that you are, in fact, maternal, nor do you care, or listen, to your heart when it renders you so uncontrollably numb - a futile attempt to blot out the hurt. For, the fact of the matter is, you do want children, and it pains you to realise that that may never happen, so much so that your shoulders slump, and the tears begin again.
"We all want to find a person or have a child we love so much we'd die for, swap places with."
For an intense, deliberating second, your thoughts linger upon the moment when you felt your relationship, your life even, slip from within your grasp. It was another fault of the hands, the usually steady hands that, when the nurse's hard words and lack of composure stoked them, lashed out. After that incident, you had time to contemplate... Maybe he was right, maybe any child born of your womb would be tortured to have you as a mother, rather than nurtured.
"Who in their right mind would want to have a baby with you anyway?! Any product of your womb has got an evens chance of being the anti-Christ."
The scan glares accusingly at your from its place on your desk. You brake your unruffled pose and reach forward, grasping the small piece of your life in your hands.
Nothing will ever be the same again. And don't you know it.
With a crash, you are brought back from your pondering. As fist meets wood once again, your attention is drawn to the violent knock at the door. Barely registering the voice that is calling your name, you shake off a trembly sigh and cautiously emerge from your chair, in fear that you may collapse.
"Jac?" It's him. He still addresses you informally, as if he subconsciously misses what you two used to be like. You stretch towards the handle, before you hesitate, risking a glance up at the shadow behind the door.
You have to tell him. But, the thing is, whenever you experience an unimaginable stint of gallantry, your throat garrotes, with the brute power of an invisible noose, your heart quickens, and you find yourself unable to form coherent sentences. You're usually good at this kind of thing - breaking bad news that is. It's your job, it has been for the best part of a decade. Relative after relative, person after person, they're all the same. You donne a look of sincere regret, guide them to the relative's room, and repeat on every occasion: "we did every thing we could, but there were complications. I'm so sorry," and after a while, "is there anyone we can call for you?"
But there's just something deep down inside you that can't muster the courage to confess that there is something wrong with you, because, if you did, your mother would be right, and you just can't stand for that.
"And the only answer I could think of was that it had to be me, there had to be something, so fundamentally wrong with me that you couldn't bear to stay!"
You move backwards, to the far most corner of the room, in a futile effort to mask his sight of the faint trail of cascading tears.
In a voice unlike your own, you call out to him: "come in."
Slowly, cautiously, the door swings open and Jonny ventures into the room.
"Jac, I -" he trails off as he fully takes in the ravaged state you're in. "-what's going on? Are you alright?" His voice emanates concern and in that single moment all you want is to be held in his strong arms once again. Despite your mood, you shoot him a classic Naylor sardonic glance. "Sorry, stupid question." He pursues you to the edge of the room, and, before you can protest or even react, takes you in his arms, as if he read your mind. You struggle at first, entirely for your reputation, but your limbs go limp as he plants a passionate kiss on the top of your head. You want him to tell you everything's going to be okay. You stay there for a few beautiful moments, just enjoying one another's comfort, before he pulls away. He holds your arms staunch and lures you in with the alure of his amber eyes. "Tell me what's going on in that head of yours. I can see what it's doing to you, and I just want to help. It's okay not to be okay, you know."
That soul-destroying pain constricts your lungs, and you find yourself without a word to say, for once. All you can do is aim a delicate finger at the scan that you had hastily dropped back onto your desk, hand the nurse the support leaflet you had received, and wait for him to take it all in.
A million and one questions make their way into the confines of your head, recking the pathway through. Did I do the right thing? Will he leave me if I can't give him what he wants? What happens now?
But, of course, there is no need to be worried.
He glances up at you with an expression of soft concern, laced with pity.
"I don't care." His words instantly confuse you, and that shows on your face. He repeats himself, "I don't care Jac. At the moment, all I want is you, and it doesn't matter what condition you have, or what a bitch you can be," these words are met with a disapproving look from you, "you're always gonna' be stuck with me. And, when that time eventually comes, then that's when we can see about it. There's other options Jac, there are always other options, and I would have thought you of all people would have known that more than others." His speech having the desired effect, he grins triumphantly at you.
"You do realise the thought of pushing a buggy through the park makes me feel physically sick?" And there you go, denying everything again.
"Of course," you know he doesn't quite believe you, "now come here you silly cow."
And, in that one last embrace, you feel all of your anxieties wash away.