Hello Stranger

I will never forget my fear in return when she was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was twelve years old, and then bowel cancer when I was barely out of university.

I was pretty damn convinced I would lose her through the years. My experiences of things coming good weren’t all that many to ease the pessimism. We lost my grandparents early. My grandfather had lung cancer, and it was slow. Really slow. Saying goodbye to him was so damn hard.

I was only nine years old.

I saw Mum’s pain at that too.

My grandmother fell down in the street one day when out with some friends – a heart attack she never woke up from.

I was ten.

I’ve seen grief. I’ve seen the devastation of those left behind. I’ve seen people wailing, rocking on the floor when they realise the person they love most in the world has gone.

I never wanted to put anyone through that when I said my final goodbye to the world. It was a decision I made early on, and was resolute on, even after college when there was a whole host of gorgeous young women seeking their true love for a lifetime.

No. I focused on the ones who just wanted a fuck for the night instead.

That changed when I met Evelyn.

She was a vet. Probably still is.

She spent her time helping animals – she’d say it was her vocation, or destiny or whatever. Mum had this cute little Jack Russell terrier at the time with some fucked up stomach problems – probably ate some festering piece of crap from under the hedge in the park or something, who knows. Anyway, Scamp he was called. We took him to Evelyn for an emergency appointment.

We walked into the consultation room and she knocked me sideways. She was auburn, this cherry red that shimmered under the lights in there. She had this cute little nose and this sweet smile, and a way she pitted her eyebrows when she concentrated. But it wasn’t just that. She had so much compassion in her eyes when she sorted out Scamp’s meds that I couldn’t forget it, it blew me away.

I tried. I really did. I tried to forget I’d ever gone to that place and wipe her from my mind forever. But no. As it turns out, Evelyn came into the local hospital with her uncle a few weeks later, assigned to the ward I was working on.

The rest, as they say, is history.

We were happy. She was ever the eternal optimist against my eternal realism, but that worked for us. We had virtually nothing in common, but again, that worked for us. We were two strange jigsaw pieces that fit together like a dream, and I pushed it aside – that utter determination not to let anyone get close enough to hurt at my loss.

Then I was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma. Again, the rest, as they say, is history.

I pushed her away, she left me, whatever. It wasn’t pretty.

Last I heard, she got married to some lecturer guy up in Lancashire and they have a couple of kids and a springer spaniel. I’m happy for them. Genuinely.

When I’d lain there in bed, with Chloe in my arms that Saturday afternoon, I knew she’d heard all this from my mother. Condensed, and interspersed with great memories of me graduating as a doctor, and sweet little snapshots of me being a bookworm, or once winning a football trophy, or the first time I went hiking up Ben Nevis. Whatever.

Mum always told people the shitty times as well. She’d say it made me who I am. Brave and strong, and wanting to help people. I appreciated her kind words, but in truth it made me a realist who doesn’t do closeness anymore. I just help people deal with losing theirs.

“I saw some pictures,” Chloe said, and she held me tighter.

“Mum has a habit of that.” I sighed, and held her tighter back. “Please don’t let it influence you. It was a long time ago.”

She looked up at me. “How would it influence me?”

I met her eyes, and I knew my stare would be heavy. “Because I’m not leukaemia, or kidney loss, or grief, or losing my hair. I’m a doctor living his life, who happens to like the gym, and walking up hills, and reading too many books for any regular person, and who works far too many hours to be sane.”

She smiled at me, that big grin on her face that made her so unique. “I didn’t know you liked the gym and climbing hills. Not until your mum said.”

And that’s when she had me.

It was her absolute focus on the positives, genuinely. That absolute love and joy in her face when she focused on my Ben Nevis climb and not my chemotherapy, and it wasn’t a gloss over it, don’t make him sad by talking about his bodily failures and the shit that goes along with them – it was the plain truth in her seeing me as the same man she dashed across Harrow for on a Friday night.