LITMIR.BIZ

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discipline me in your wrath.’

      Discipline? Oh no – that must be my illness, maybe even secondaries. I knew it was a punishment.

      ‘Be merciful to me …’

      But why do I need mercy? Is it because I’m a bad person?

      ‘O Lord heal me, for my bones are in agony.’

      That’s me! It’s talking about me. My bones are in agony. Of course. Why didn’t I see? The cancer is a punishment for my sin and for the bad things I’ve done in my life. Maybe I will get secondaries and then I will die.

      I am crying and sobbing, the tears flowing steadily and easily down my cheeks.

      I know the cancer can kill me – and even if the cancer doesn’t then the drugs might. They will poison my body, cell by cell. First they will poison my scalp and my hair will fall out, leaving me a bald and sexless freak. Then my ovaries will die, robbing me of the beautiful children I have always longed for. Then, maybe then, the bad cells left by the Limpet will be poisoned. They might be killed; they might not. If they aren’t poisoned then I will certainly die. ‘Death’, a word I never used until recently, has now entered my vocabulary and is used every day of my life. I feel I can’t escape from its shadow. I dwell constantly in reach of its beckoning hand. I do not know how to die. I do not know what awaits me beyond the grave. What if I am facing an eternity in hell?

      Maybe by making some painful sacrifice I can make it up to God. I cling onto the bench and kneel carefully and painstakingly on my one good knee, leaning the weight of my body over the bench. It hurts as the hard wood digs into my breasts and ribs. I should be punished. I deserve it all; the cancer, the amputation, the ugly and deformed body. The tears pour down my cheeks and run on to the bench, then cascade to the polished floor.

      I look accusingly at the picture on the wall. I see the figures of Jesus and the apostles breaking bread together.

      ‘Why me? Why me?’ I sob, but the figure of Jesus is serenely aloof.

      ‘Don’t just sit there looking holy,’ I yell in my mind with all the anger I am capable of.

      Suddenly something inside me breaks. My mind begins to fracture and unravel. The images from the picture blur behind my tears and the figures seem to come alive. My mind leaves the chapel and I am in the upper room, sharing a passover meal. I sit down between two figures. On my right is Jesus. He is dressed in white and has a sad smile on his face. His eyes are downcast. He is crying and somehow I feel cheated. Jesus is not meant to cry. Then I see why. His hands are wounded and covered in blood. I recoil in horror at the sight. Jesus is holding a chalice full of ruby wine which catches the candlelight. He passes it to me and solemnly I lift it to my lips. I take a sip and, as I taste the metallic tang of blood, I drop the chalice and it hits the ground, smashing into millions of tiny pieces. There is blood everywhere now.

      ‘It’s broken!’ I cry, and Jesus looks down. He spots the hideous, empty space where my leg no longer is. I hear Him draw breath sharply and He shakes His head disbelievingly.

      ‘What happened to your leg?’ He asks.

      ‘They took it away. It was bad. The miracle didn’t work, you see.’

      Suddenly, another figure leans over my shoulder. I peer up at him and know it must be Judas because he is carrying a bag with coins in it. I hear the chink of metal on metal.

      ‘It must have been your fault, then,’ says Judas. ‘What did you do wrong?’

      ‘Nothing,’ I cry. ‘I don’t think I did anything wrong. I don’t know why it didn’t work. Anyway,’ I ask Jesus between sobs, ‘what happened to Your hands?’

      ‘Oh, they crucified Him,’ interrupts Judas. ‘I betrayed Him.’ He throws his head back in mocking laughter and, as he does so, I glimpse a dark ring around his neck.

      ‘What is that mark – like a bruise?’

      Judas is silent; he looks shiftily around for a way of escape but he cannot get out of the picture.

      ‘Tell her, Judas. Tell her you could no longer live with yourself. Tell her you hanged yourself from a tree.’

      ‘How did he betray You?’ I ask but, before He can answer, my mind leaves the scene and returns to my head. I am in the chapel again, shivering and trembling.

      But in my moment of darkest fear I find courage. I recall the voice I heard when I wanted to kill myself and realize now it was the voice of Judas. I make a vow and, as I speak it to the Limpet, I know it to be true. I will survive, if only to tell the tale. Words flood into my mind from a power greater than my frail human spirit: ‘I shall not die! I shall not die; but I shall live!’

      Somehow I make my way back to the ward knowing that, by my own strength or by divine miracle, I must overcome death.

5

      The nightmare was terrible. I was so scared. It was horrific. I woke up sweating and drenched, my heart racing. I had wet myself. All I could hear was the sound of blood pumping in my ears and breath rasping in my chest. Maybe it was because of the chemotherapy and the drip or maybe it was because of my experience in the chapel. I’m not sure.

      I saw a pack of hungry dogs. They were huge and ferocious. Their fur was a mixture of tan and black. One was faster and bigger than the others. His muscles were lean and strong. His teeth were white and hard and from his mouth drooled spit. The metal spikes on his collar shone as they caught the moonlight. I tried to run and at first it felt good. I was laughing with the ease of out-running the pack. But then I fell, down, down a long, long way and the dog was upon me. The laugh became a scream. His teeth ripped into the soft muscles of my left thigh and I felt agonizing pain and the crunch of splintering bone as his canines met and easily split my limb. The blood spurted skyward and the dog picked up my severed leg and shook it in his mouth. I could see his tongue relishing the taste of my blood. I struggled to roll over and push the killer away. But before I knew it his teeth were at my neck, ready to execute me. I should look my killer in the eye, I thought, in the courage and the despair of my final moment, and so I looked into the eyes of a murderer. I do not understand.

      Yesterday Dr Tan-Shoes came to put my drip in. That was awful too. He walked up to me and nodded, carrying a shiny metal dish shaped like a bean. In it were lots of needles with plastic blobs on them, all different colours: pink and blue and green. He chose a green one. It seemed bigger than the other needles. They looked pretty sitting in the dish and I thought maybe it would not be too bad. Irene had already brought a pole with a bag of salt water hanging on it to attach to the needle. Dr Tan-Shoes held my arm and put a tight band around it to make my veins fill up. He started to shake his head and made tutting noises. Then he got the needle and stuck it in my arm and I jumped in the bed because it hurt so much. I drew my arm back and he got really cross and said the vein had popped. Blood was running all down my arm. He tried again and again but he just couldn’t get the needle in my vein and he kept getting more and more impatient. I got scared and it was hurting me so much and then I cried, but he didn’t say anything. He just kept sticking the needle in my arm. I was shaking by the end of it and there was blood everywhere, all over my bedspread. It must be very difficult to put a drip in. Then he attached the needle to the bag of fluid and went. The nurses gave me lots of tablets to help my kidneys work properly and told me the chemotherapy would start next day.

      This morning, Irene came to make my bed and noticed it was all wet from my nightmare. I told her I spilt the bedpan. She washed and changed me, for I am stuck here now, chained to the bed by my drip.

      ‘You look tired, Mary,’ she said to me. ‘Didn’t you get any sleep?’

      ‘Not much.’ I didn’t sleep after the nightmare – I was too scared.

      ‘Are you worrying about starting the drugs? What are you thinking about, Mary?’

      ‘I was wondering if God gets angry with people. You know, for bad things they

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