“Well, she’s no worse than she was. But seriously—we can’t have that here. Understand? I’d have to call the police next time.”
Costas looked like he was going to cry. “I don’t think he realized they’d do it here,” Annie said. “He was just trying to help.”
“With illegal drugs.” Dr. Max raised one of Polly’s eyelids, very gently.
“You’ve never dabbled? Come on. Give him a break.”
“Not in a hospital, and not when I had a tumor in my lung.” He relented. “I suppose there’s no harm done, but really George should have known better, and—eh, where is he?” They all turned to look at the empty chair, and the open door to the room.
“Skata,” swore Costas.
*
George, however, hadn’t got very far. The three of them stood over him, where he was slumped on the ground by the vending machine, one arm inside it. “I’m stuck,” he said mournfully.
Dr. Max knelt down. “I don’t know, George. What will we do with you? First drugs and now trying to steal a KitKat?”
“I paid for it. It didn’t come out.”
“Aye, I know that feeling. Let me see.” Dr. Max squinted into the coin slot, pressed a few buttons and held out his hand to catch the thing that was spat back out. “Well, you see, George, here’s your problem. This machine doesn’t take gym locker tokens.”
“Oh,” said George. “Um, can you help me?”
Dr. Max rolled up his sleeves. “Aren’t you lucky that you’re here with the world’s foremost expert in vending machine extractive surgery?”
“Surgery?” His lip trembled.
“Aye. Nothing for it but taking the arm off, lad.”
George started to cry. Dr. Max rolled his eyes. “Lord, people take things seriously when they’re high. Come on, grab his legs. Costas, you’re skinny, see if you can get your hand inside there.”
A short time later, with some pushing and pulling and George whimpering like a puppy, he was free, minus a KitKat but at least in possession of all his limbs. “That was horrible. I thought I was going to die.”
“Maybe you should knock off the drugs, lad. Seems you don’t have the temperament for them.”
Costas was kneeling beside George, tenderly examining his swollen wrist. “Please, George, you must be more careful. You will hurt yourself.”
George squeezed his good hand over his eyes. “It was her idea. She wanted to cut loose one last time, she said. How could I say no? Oh, God. How can it be the last time? My sister. She’s my sister. I’m going to be a...a...what’s the word for like an orphan but not an orphan?”
Annie and Dr. Max exchanged looks. “An only child?” she ventured.
“It’s not fair.” George was crying again. “It’s not fair. Why Polly? She’s a good person, she’s so smart and alive and amazing, and now she’s dying. It’s not fair.”
Costas hugged him, murmuring words in Greek. Annie looked at Dr. Max, and a strange current seemed to run through her from her head to her toes. A sweep of blood so powerful she was surprised she was still standing, still fully clothed. He scratched his head, blushing in a way that she knew meant he could feel it, too.
“Listen,” she mumbled, unable to look him in the eye. “About Scotland. I don’t know if I ever said sorry about...everything. But I am. Really. You were such a good friend to me, and that’s how I repay you.”
“A friend.”
“Well, yes. You were.” And she wanted him to be more, much more, but she didn’t know how to say it, how to find space in her heart around the huge boulder that was Polly dying. “I...”
There was a moment of silence, stretching on longer than she would have thought possible. “It’s fine,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s get young George here into a bed so he can sleep it off.”
DAYs 70 to 80
Let go
Toward the end, during Polly’s last days, Annie felt like a cave dweller. She only went home to shower and change, and otherwise spent all her time in the hospital, shuttling between one bed and another.
Jane was discharged, with her baby strapped to her chest, still crying and begging Annie to come and visit. Mike repeated the offer, though rather more nervously. Annie said of course. And maybe she even would. It was hard to see more than one day in the future at the moment. For now, she was letting them go, Jane and Mike and their baby, letting them drift out of sight like a boat sailing over the horizon. And that was enough.
The MRI machine they’d bought for the hospital was delivered, paid for with money raised online and through the charity concert. It was unveiled and the local press came and Dr. Max awkwardly cut the ribbon, and Milly pitched the story to the Guardian, who did a piece on how inspirational Polly was. The machine had a plaque on it that read Donated by Friends of Polly Leonard. Polly herself was too ill to get out of bed.
Annie began to catch her mother looking at her suspiciously, as if she was in some kind of unconvincing disguise. As if she recognized her, but the name was gone, on the tip of her tongue...
George got another audition for the chorus of a West End show—Guys and Dolls this time. He mentioned he might not go to it because Polly was ill, and at Polly’s request Annie threw grapes at him until he changed his mind.
Costas was named Employee of the Month at Costa and got them all free pastries. Most days he sneaked in Buster to see Polly, until Dr. Max noticed that his gym bag was woofing and banned it. “Fascist,” Polly wheezed.
Milly brought in her twins, Harry and Lola, who scribbled all over the walls of Polly’s room with eye pencil, then ate the chocolates Polly had been sent until Harry was sick behind the heart monitor. Suze came with neck pillows and hot water bottles and her latest terrible boyfriend, Henry, who ran a start-up coffee company in Shoreditch (Polly whispered, “My dying wish is that you will never again date anyone who runs a start-up anything”). They had to ask people to send donations to the fund instead of flowers, as there were so many Dr. Max grumbled he felt like he was in The Day of the Triffids.
There was Valerie, brushing Polly’s remaining tufts of hair and putting cream on her dry skin. Holding scented tissues for her to cough blood into when spots of it began to come up, scarlet as poppies. “There you are, darling. Cleanse, tone and moisturize, that’s what they say, isn’t it?”
There was Roger reading to her from women’s magazines. “Here we go now. Top ten mistakes you’re making with mascara—good God, what is this rot?”
The two of them were practically camped out, bringing clean pajamas and books Polly couldn’t read and home-cooked food she couldn’t eat, but notably they were always there at different times.
There was Dr. Quarani, too, who seemed to be on Polly’s floor a lot considering he worked on a different one entirely. “How is she?” he asked Annie whenever he saw her.