“None.”
“And you’re not experiencing any symptoms? Anything you’re worried about?”
“No.”
“None of the risk markers,” says Caterina. She checks them off on her fingers. “You’re not obese, you don’t smoke, you’re not diabetic, no family history.”
“No,” says Sue. “I know it’s silly. Don’t worry. I’m not worried.” She takes a piece of pear from the edge of the salad bowl with her fingers.
“Aren’t you?” Caterina looks at her steadily. In the dim light she could be the same woman Sue met when they took their first babies to their local baby clinic forty years ago and bonded over their dislike of the bossy clinic nurse.
“Well,” says Sue. “I know it’s hard to catch early. I know outcomes are not great. It wouldn’t be my…preferred choice.”
Caterina smiles ruefully.
Sue continues, “And I guess it’s our age, but don’t you find you keep hearing of people getting terrible diagnoses? It feels like we’re all just waiting to see where the axe falls next.”
“I know,” says Caterina. “It’s brutal.”
“It’s annoying because I’ve been in a really good mood since I turned sixty.”
Caterina says, “You’ve been in a good mood as long as I’ve known you, Sue.”
“No I haven’t. And we’re so excited about this trip. Can you believe I’ve never left the country? Imagine if I die before I even get a passport.”
“You’ve been kind of busy, Sue,” says Caterina. “Raising a beautiful family, working your socks off, saving people’s lives. Don’t buy into this idea that you’ve only truly ‘lived’ if you’ve traveled. As if taking the same photos at the same tourist spots as everyone else is the only thing that counts as living.”
“I know,” says Sue. She pauses. “Although I really do want one of those photos of me pretending to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I want it on my fridge. That’s my dream. I want to see myself holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa every time I open my fridge.” She demonstrates with the palm of her hand, beaming at an imaginary camera.
Caterina snorts. She lifts her glass, swirls it, and puts it back down. “Okay. So let’s do some baseline tests. An abdominal ultrasound. A breath test to check your blood sugars. Make sure you’re not prediabetic. Blood tests to check how your liver and kidneys are functioning.”
Sue puts down her fork. “Is it self-indulgent? I don’t want to be like those people who turn up at the ER because they’ve got a bad ‘feeling.’ I haven’t even mentioned it to anyone at work. Too embarrassing.”
“We’ll just do an overall health check,” says Caterina. “Nothing wrong with that. For peace of mind. Everything we can feasibly check, we’ll check.”
“You are a very good friend,” says Sue emotionally.
“Nope.” Caterina holds up a hand like a traffic cop. She can’t stand sentimentality. Although Sue sees right through her brusque exterior to her sentimental heart.
Sue spears one giant-sized ravioli with her fork and watches the juices pour free. “I know it’s stupid to say this at my age, but I feel like I’m only just getting started.”
“My mother used to say ‘La vita va veloce: this life goes fast, much faster than time.’ ”
“Sometimes I worry I’ve lived the last forty years on autopilot,” says Sue, “like I’m always thinking, okay, I’ll just get through this next thing, then I’ll start living: once I’m married, once the baby is born, once this kid sleeps through the night, once this one is at school, once they’ve all finished school, once Christmas is done, once Easter is done, you know how it goes. The hamster wheel.”
“I do,” says Caterina. “But you’ve never struck me as someone on autopilot. You’ve always seemed like a present little hamster, Sue.”
“I’m just not ready to die,” says Sue dramatically at the exact moment the waitress with the lovely hair appears to offer Parmesan and black pepper.
The waitress looks stricken.
“I’m not actually dying,” Sue reassures her. “Oh, yes, please to Parmesan! There was this psychic—well, to be honest, we don’t even know if she truly was a psychic—”
“Sue,” says Caterina.
“Oh my God, I love psychics,” says the waitress.
“Give me strength.” Caterina sighs.
Chapter 40
That day, on the flight from Hobart to Sydney, I was the butterfly.
Actually, I was the less poetic seagull.
That seems more apt. I walked through that plane squawking my predictions, flapping my wings, and my actions had consequences, which had consequences, which had consequences.
I was an agent of chaos.
Chapter 41
“Your baby spent the first nine months of their life in a warm, cozy, aquatic environment!”
Paula shivers in her too-tight old one-piece, waist-deep in chlorinated, supposedly heated water, in a circle of parents each holding a swimsuited baby. The parents tip back their heads to listen to the instructor standing above them on the side of the pool. Their babies kick and bounce, wriggle and gurgle, chortle and whimper.
“Your baby has a natural affinity for water.” The instructor is a fit wiry woman with close-cropped white hair, wearing a red long-sleeved rash guard over her swimsuit. Paula can see her matching red-painted toenails hanging over the edge of the tiles. The instructor, like the parents, also holds a baby, a chipmunk-cheeked girl in pink, who seems to be a handy prop baby, as Paula can’t see a parent nearby.
All the babies are cute but Timmy, obviously, is the cutest. He is making his favorite tuneless “ah ah ah” sound and patting his palms against the surface of the water, startling himself each time he splashes his face. Tiny droplets of water cling to his dark eyelashes and Paula feels a knifelike stab of love.
