Читать книгу The Boys of '93. Derry’s All-Ireland Kings онлайн

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‘There’s not a trace of cancer in your body’, the doctor had insisted but now she’s on the phone telling me the doctor had been wrong.

‘He’s got non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Maria.’

‘Non-what? What’s that? Lymphoma?’

‘Yes.’

My brain scrambles to make sense of it. Non is no, which is a good thing, right? ‘That’s a good thing, right?’

‘It’s not good; it’s cancer. Can you just come down? He wants me to go and tell Mae.’

Bernadette waits at the hospital and is standing stock still by his bedside when I arrive. He is upright in the bed, staring straight ahead. His eyes don’t move towards me and there’s a thickness in the room. I’m reminded of an explosion I got caught in as a schoolgirl; the bomb sucked the air out of the street. That’s what it feels like here and I start to gabble to fill the void.

‘The doctor will be round soon … We have to ask about your bloods … We need to find out who the consultant is … What does he think? What’s the next move?’

He’s had enough and snaps, ‘The only thing we have to ask is am I gonna live or am I gonna die.’ My mobile tolls in the vacuum. I leave the ward to take Bernadette’s call. When I come back, he asks, ‘How’s Mae?’ I nod gently, ‘She’s OK.’ He knows that I am lying and then he starts to cry.