"Oh Diane…" He took her into his arms and let her bury her head in his shoulder, where she began to cry, crying out of sheer relief that she had finally told him. He held her tight, stroking her back and trying in vain to comfort her, when he knew that there was no way that he could.
As he held her, he looked around the canteen, anxiously searching the faces of the people there, hoping that the crying woman in his arms wasn't attracting too much attention. But, in a hospital, no one pays attention to others. Everyone is preoccupied with their own problems: their illnesses, their relatives, friends, lying ill. As he looked around, he saw that Diane was by no means the only person crying. He stroked her hair gently. "Shush…" he whispered.
Her arms were around his waist, her face hidden by his shoulder, and she felt slightly safer, just being there. She couldn't face moving, she never wanted to lift her head and see his pitying expression, see that he was not quite sure how to treat her. Because of course he would look like that. Suddenly she wasn't just his best friend, she was his sick best friend.
"It's okay…" he whispered into her hair, feeling her sobs begin to subside.
"I don't… I – I'm sorry…" she mumbled into his shoulder. "I'm being stupid…" Slowly, she lifted her head and looked into his eyes. "I'm sorry, Ric…"
"Sorry?" he repeated, confused. "Diane, you have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing at all." He sat down again, pulling her down with him. She sat, half on his lap, looking uncertainly at him.
"I'm sorry for breaking down on you like that," she told him. "I shouldn't have said anything…"
"What would you rather have done, kept it to yourself? You can't hide from this, Diane," he said, stroking her hair gently again, trying to reassure her that he was going to stick around. "Is that why you took the week off? Trying to hide?" he asked, quietly.
She shook her head. "No… I just, I couldn't face it, I honestly couldn't, Ric." She didn't mention that, for the first few days, she had barely bothered to get up. She had lain in bed or on the sofa, watching mind-numbing daytime television and trying to block all of her thoughts out. She had drifted, tears on her cheeks, from the bedroom to the bathroom to the bedroom again, ignoring the phone when it rang. The extent of her communication with the outside world had been a single text message to Zubin – Ric would've asked too many questions – on the first day. "Not in for a few days, feeling sick."
"So you were trying to hide," he repeated. "Diane, I know it's your defence mechanism, I know that you run, you hide from whatever you don't feel you can cope with."
"Don't sit there and judge me!" she retorted, indignantly. "It's my life, Ric, and I'll deal with it how I want to!" She stood up and began to back away, but he began to follow her, and put an arm around her.
He stroked her hair again, trying to calm her. "Diane, sweetie, I didn't say it was wrong. I just – I don't think that you can hide from this one. You can't pretend that nothing's wrong." He hated having to tell her that, he hated having to tell her that she might have a very serious illness. Cancer… it was such a definite word, such a terrifying word. As a doctor, he'd heard it, they'd both heard it, thousands if not millions of times before, but this was different. This was Diane. And cancer was something that happened to people he didn't know – it was something that happened to the never-ending rotation of patients who came in through his door everyday, but not to the bright young woman who stood next to him in theatre, not to his best friend, not to the woman he loved but didn't dare ask out, not to Diane.
She nodded. "I don't… Ric, I don't want this to be happening…" Her eyes were filled with tears again, and he hastened to rub her back gently, trying to comfort her.
"Diane, Diane, you need to calm down."
"Calm down? Ric, I can't, I can't, I absolutely cannot…" Her voice was becoming strangled with the tears that she was trying to suppress. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat before continuing. "Ric, please… I can't do this, I…"
He sat down, pulling her down with him. "Diane… Diane, it's okay…"
"It's not okay, it's not, how can you say it is?" Her words were tumbling over one another, wanting desperately for him to tell her that it was going to be okay, that he had a miracle cure for her.
He nodded. "You have a point." He sighed. "Diane, you need to get it checked out, you know that, don't you?"
There was a silence. Diane laid her head against Ric's shoulder and bit her lip anxiously. "I know." But doing something, by doing something, she would be admitting that there was something wrong. She sighed. "I just… I don't want to think about it."
He stroked her hair gently. "I know…" He smiled at her, before looking pointedly at her plate. "You've not eaten anything."
She glanced down at her plate before looking back up at him. "That's not food, Ric." She forced a smile. "I'm not hungry."
"Hungry or not, you need to eat…" he began.
"That's what Zubin said." She bit her lip and smiled up at him.
"Hopefully you'll trust the both of us then?" he teased, as he began to stand up. "Diane, I've got to go… but there's no way I'm letting you work, not today…"
"Ric, I can do this, I'm fine, honestly I am," she insisted. "Please, Ric, let me take my mind off this…"
He sighed, hating depriving her of her chance to take her mind off her problems. "Diane, sweetie, you're not in the right frame of mind, are you? Tell me honestly, do you think you could work today?"
She smiled reluctantly and grabbed onto his hands. "Maybe not. But Ric, I don't want to be alone…" She didn't want to go back to the silent flat, where the only sound was her crying, where her fears echoed off every surface, where her worries were magnified and grew out of all proportion…
"I'm not going to send you home," he told her, stroking her hair again, and smiling. "I just don't want you operating today."
She smiled gratefully. "Paperwork then?"
"I've got plenty if you feel like giving it a go…" he said, returning her smile. "Just go sit in my office, do whatever you please, and I'll send Zubin up to talk to you when he's done. How does that sound?"
"Pretty good," she replied, standing up.
He smiled. "I'll walk with you," he offered, standing up himself and putting an arm around her.
"I think I know the way," she teased him, leaning her head against his shoulder and feeling better about herself. She smiled up at him, and laughed as he stopped at a vending machine. "Hungry?"
"No, but I think you are," he retorted, handing her a chocolate bar. "Eat."
She smiled and bit into the chocolate, feeling grateful that Ric had been so accepting, that he hadn't asked unnecessary questions, that he hadn't panicked or left her to deal with it on her own, that he had just treated her like Diane, not like a patient. He'd just been Ric, and that was what she needed – Ric, her best friend.
He watched her, trying to notice any signs of her feeling unwell, of her looking ill, looking unlike the Diane he knew and loved. All he could see was that she was slightly paler than normal, that she'd been crying. Other than that, she looked just like Diane. But she was ill, she could be so ill, and he had to watch her and see her be so ill… and she was Diane. His best friend. He couldn't lose her. And all of his own feelings for her began to build up, as he whispered an excuse to her and ran towards the toilets, locking himself in a cubicle and letting himself cry. For her.