I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans as I stared at the tall grey and white building that stood across the street – the same building where I had spent most of the first year after I had relapsed, just over a decade ago – an acute sense of dread beginning to build somewhere deep inside of me. Just like it did every May. I always felt as if I was on my way to the gallows before every appointment I had with Dr. Torrens, even if I was sure I had nothing to worry about. The weather wasn’t helping my mood – it was much warmer and sunnier than the beginning of May had any right to be. And not for the first time before one of these appointments, all I wanted to do right at that moment was get back in my car and drive back home.

“I know that look,” Ruby said from beside me, and I glanced over at her. Her own hands were deep inside the pockets of her hoodie, and it was all I could do to stop myself from grabbing one of them and squeezing it tightly, as if my life depended on it.

“What look?”

“The one that says you’d love nothing more than to turn tail and run for the hills.”

Even though it was the last thing I felt like doing, I let out a chuckle. “How is it that you know me so well?”

She grinned. “That would be telling, wouldn’t it?” she teased me. As she said this, she was looping her left arm through my right. “I know you’re worried, Tay,” she continued. “I am too. Especially considering what Dr. Emerson told you a couple of weeks ago.”

“I wish I could say I’d forgotten about that,” I said with a small sigh. In all honesty, what Dr. Emerson had told me had been on my mind nearly constantly, no matter how much I’d tried to forget it – and I’d tried very hard to forget. I pushed the sleeve of my hoodie back and checked the time on my watch, swallowing hard when I saw that it was nearly twenty minutes past ten. “Guess we’d better get this over with.”

Right before we walked into the hospital, I drew Ruby close. “Thank you for coming with me today,” I said quietly. “It…it means a lot. I don’t think I could have done it otherwise.”

Ruby didn’t say anything. Instead she held me a little tighter, and I let my eyes drift closed. Having Ruby with me that morning really did make it easier to deal with.

I had never been so relieved that we didn’t have to wait long that morning. Not even five minutes after I’d checked in with the medical centre’s receptionist, almost as if she’d known how anxious I was that morning, Dr. Torrens was calling out my name. Between the anxiety and the migraine that was currently doing its level best to drive me up the wall, I wasn’t sure I could have handled too long a wait.

“How have you been doing?” she asked once she had ushered Ruby and I into her office. This was said as she was closing the door behind us, and she gave us a smile as she sat down at her desk. “Ruby, it’s good to see you again.”

“I figured Taylor would appreciate having a bit of support today,” Ruby said. The two of us were sitting so closely together that I could feel her shrugging as she said this, and I reached for her hand. She immediately laced her fingers through mine. “I know he gets a lot more anxious than usual around this time of year.”

I gave Ruby’s hand a squeeze. “Good and not so good,” I said, deciding I should probably answer the question I’d been asked. As much as I hated my appointments with her, I’d always got on well with Dr. Torrens. That we did get on so well was the main reason I hadn’t gone back to seeing Dr. Andrews after I’d moved away from Newcastle. “We got engaged six weeks ago,” I continued. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Ruby holding her left hand up so that her engagement ring was facing Dr. Torrens.

“Congratulations,” Dr. Torrens said with a smile that reached all the way to her eyes, one that I found myself immediately returning. “I take it that’s your good?”

“Yeah,” I replied with a small nod. The anxiety I’d been feeling all morning started to pick up again, and I clenched my free hand into a fist so tightly I could feel my fingernails digging into my palm. “I just…I haven’t been feeling great lately.”

“And you’re worried it could be the start of a relapse?” she asked. “Or that you might have developed a different cancer?”

I nodded again. “You told me to watch for anything out of the ordinary or that doesn’t feel right,” I said. My voice had started to shake as I said this. “And, well…how I’ve been feeling lately is definitely out of the ordinary.”

“I see.” Dr. Torrens turned to her computer and started typing, and Ruby squeezed my hand tightly. I held my breath as I waited for Dr. Torrens to finish. “Fortunately, I have good news for you,” she said at last. “Your blood tests, X-rays, lumbar puncture and spinal MRI all came back clear.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding in a massive sigh of relief. I’d made it another year in remission – something that in the first months after I’d finished my second lot of chemotherapy, I hadn’t dared to let myself hope for. For the first time in a couple of weeks, I felt like I could finally, completely relax.

At the same time, though, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something Dr. Torrens wasn’t saying – something that Ruby almost immediately picked up on.

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ here,” she said, and I glanced over just in time to see her frowning.

Dr. Torrens nodded. “Your GP noted that he suspected you had developed a myxoma in your heart, and unfortunately your test results do bear that out.”

“What is that, exactly?” Ruby asked. “His doctor back home mentioned it, but neither of us asked him what it was – I think we were both a little overwhelmed that morning.”

“It’s cancer,” I said, starting to feel cold all over. At the same time I could feel the panic and fear I’d felt after my last appointment with Dr. Emerson threatening to overwhelm me all over again, and I squeezed Ruby’s hand tightly. “Isn’t it?”

“It is a tumour, yes,” Dr. Torrens replied. “But it is highly unlikely that it’s malignant – it’s more probable that it’s benign.” She paused, as if she wanted to give me a chance to take this in. “With that being said, however, you will need to have it removed. Judging by what your GP wrote about the symptoms you’d been experiencing before you saw him last, it’s likely that it’ll need to happen sooner rather than later. You’ve got an appointment with a cardiologist next week, correct?”

I nodded. “Next Wednesday.”

“Good. I want you to promise me that you’ll keep that appointment, all right? The chances of this tumour being cancerous are extremely low, but at the same time it can still cause a lot of complications. And I would hate for any of them to happen to you.” She clasped her hands together on top of her desk and studied me for a moment. “I’d also like to see you again in three months’ time, just to see how things are going. Sound good?”

I fidgeted a little with my free hand, worrying at a hole in the front pocket of my hoodie. “Yeah, okay. Sounds good to me.”

I couldn’t stop shaking as Ruby and I left the medical centre and started heading down the corridor to the lifts. Ever since my last appointment with Dr. Emerson I’d suspected something was wrong, but to have Dr. Torrens all but confirm it was almost my worst nightmare brought to life. Now that I had a more definite idea of what was going on, I was dreading my appointment with Dr. Wenham to the point that I felt sick.

Almost on cue, as if she knew what I was thinking, Ruby veered off toward the disabled toilet that I knew was nearby, nearly pulling me along with her. Before I had realised what I was doing, as soon as the door was open I barged straight past Ruby, dropped to my knees in front of the toilet and started throwing up. Distantly, I could hear the dull click of the door locking, followed by footsteps that I knew belonged to Ruby – footsteps that stopped just as I felt someone settling beside me and putting a hand on my back.

“Easy,” I could just barely hear Ruby saying quietly. She was beginning to rub down the middle of my back with her thumb as she spoke, along my spine. Anyone other than her, my mother or Sophie, I would have jerked away from them out of nothing more than sheer reflex, as if the more animalistic part of my brain was certain they were going to hurt me. It was a mark of how much I trusted the three of them that their presence didn’t almost immediately cause my anxiety to kick into overdrive.

I finally managed to stop throwing up after what felt like forever. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I mumbled as I flushed the toilet, my hand shaking the whole time. Ruby’s eyes met mine once I’d shifted around so that the toilet was at my back – her deep sea-green eyes were full of what was unmistakably worry, and for the most fleeting of moments I felt a little guilty. “I’m okay, Rue,” I assured her. “Anxiety is just a bitch, that’s all.”

“You’re sure?”

I nodded a little, not wanting to aggravate my migraine any more than it was already or to risk setting off an entirely new wave of nausea. “I’m sure.”

After we’d left the hospital, we drove out to the Cold Rock in Hamilton for ice cream – both to celebrate the beginning of my ninth year in remission and as an attempt to keep both of our minds off of what was hanging over my head. It being the middle of Wednesday morning, we weren’t waiting long and were soon headed out to the park a few streets away. For a little while after we had picked a spot to sit, at a picnic table not far from the park’s gates, close to a Moreton Bay fig tree, we were both quiet.

“I can’t tell them yet,” I said a little suddenly.

“Tell who what?” Ruby asked, giving me a quizzical look over her half-finished ice cream. She’d gone for strawberry this time rather than her usual rocky road, with lolly raspberries and chocolate freckles mixed in. I’d finished my own ice cream – peanut butter in a waffle cone as usual, but with crispy M&M’s and chocolate brownies mixed in rather than Maltesers and choc-chip cookie dough – a few minutes earlier. It didn’t take her long to figure out who and what I was talking about. “Oh…”

I nodded. “Yeah. I just…” I trailed off and shrugged a little. “I guess I just want to make sure I know exactly what it is I’m up against before I go off telling anyone.” I let out a quiet sigh. “I’m going to update my will as well. Just in case.”

“That feels like you’re expecting something to go wrong,” Ruby commented.

“I’m not, I promise. I just want to make sure that if something does happen, you’re taken care of. That’s all.”

Ruby studied me for a few minutes after I’d said this. Right as I started to feel like I was an insect beneath a magnifying glass, she gave me a small smile. “Okay. But promise me something?”

“Sure.”

“Tell your mum and dad before we go home. Please. I don’t think this is something you should be telling them in a phone call.”

“I will tell them. I promise.”

“Tonight?”

I swallowed hard, knowing that because we were heading home in the morning this would be my only real chance to tell my parents what was happening, and nodded. “Tonight.”

I kept my promise.

After dinner, and after the dishwasher had been loaded, I allowed Ruby to lead me into the lounge room. Mum and Dad were sitting on the lounge in front of the TV, the end of the six o’clock news on NBN playing at a low volume. “Mum? Dad?” I said, my voice shaking nearly imperceptibly. “I…I need to talk to you.”

“Is everything all right?” Dad asked.

I shook my head. “Not really.”

This got my parents’ attention. “Did everything go okay at your appointment this morning?” Mum asked as Dad muted the TV.

“I’m still in remission, Mum. Don’t worry.” I gave Mum a smile that I didn’t really feel, one that vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “It’s something else. I, um…” I squeezed my eyes shut against the sting of tears that were threatening to fall. “Dr. Emerson told me a couple of weeks ago that he thought I had something called a myxoma, in here,” I continued, pressing my right hand to the middle of my chest. “Dr. Torrens all but confirmed it. It-” I broke off, knowing that if I tried to say anything more I’d just end up breaking down.

“It’s a tumour, in his heart,” Ruby said quietly, picking up from where I’d left off. “Dr. Torrens said it’s probably benign, but we won’t know for sure until next week. He’s got an appointment with a cardiologist back home next Wednesday.”

The lounge creaked, and I opened my eyes again just in time to see both Mum and Dad getting up from their seats. “Come here,” Mum said, opening her arms to me, and I all but collapsed into them. “It’s all right, love,” she murmured as she stroked my hair, and for the first time in many, many years I let myself fall apart.

“I’m so scared,” I whispered.

“I know, Tay. I know. But you’ll get through this. You’ll be all right.”

Right at that moment, though, I wasn’t entirely sure who Mum was trying to convince – me, or herself.

“Jordan Hanson?”

I just barely held back from rolling my eyes at hearing the use of my first name and carefully got to my feet, ignoring the way my knees were screaming at me. Ruby had a hand on my left arm to steady me as I straightened up. As soon as I was sure I could move without falling over, the two of us followed the doctor who had called out my name out of the waiting room and down a brightly-lit corridor. She stopped walking just outside the second door on the left and gestured for Ruby and I to step inside. The nameplate on the door read Dr. Elise Whelan.

“Thanks for coming in today,” Dr. Whelan said once the door was closed behind us. Her office was much like any other doctor’s office I’d ever been in – desk facing the door with two uncomfortable-looking chairs in front of it, an examination table against the wall to my left, a sink with a mirror above it next to the head of the examination table, and a set of bookshelves behind the desk. A stuffed toy owl wearing black graduation robes and a mortarboard sitting on the bookshelves caught my eye as Ruby and I took our seats. She sat down at her desk and gave Ruby and I a smile, one that reached all the way up to her bright blue eyes – out of the corner of my eye I could see Ruby returning Dr. Whelan’s smile, while my own response was a nod. “How are you travelling?”

“Not great,” I replied. Admitting that I felt less than great during my very first appointment with a new doctor was usually the last thing I ever wanted to do, but it tended to be in my best interest to be completely honest with them. “Mostly I’m anxious as hell. More than usual, I mean.”

“Anxiety is completely normal given the circumstances, Jordan – may I call you that?”

“I prefer my middle name,” I replied, somehow managing to hide my irritation at being called by my first name.

“Oh, of course. Taylor, then.” She offered me another smile, one I took to be apologetic. “Now, as I understand it, your GP referred you to see me after you’d presented at your last appointment with symptoms of both an atrial myxoma and an arrhythmia – waking up coughing or unable to breathe, finding it hard to breathe when you’ve gone for a run, dizziness, a fast heartbeat, and generally feeling unwell. Your scans also indicate that you have a damaged mitral valve. Does that sound familiar?”

“Sounds mostly right, yeah,” I replied. I shifted a little in my seat, already beginning to feel uncomfortable. “My oncologist all but confirmed the myxoma thing, but she didn’t say anything about an arrhythmia – Dr. Emerson, he’s my usual doctor, he’s the only other doctor who’s said anything.”

“It may be that your oncologist – Dr. Torrens, was it?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Dr. Torrens may have felt that having the myxoma treated took priority over the arrhythmia, and I agree with her. There are quite a few complications associated with myxomata, not least of which is stroke.” As Dr. Whelan said this, I was sure I could feel the blood draining right out of my face, and I reached for Ruby’s closest hand. “The sooner you’re able to have the myxoma removed and your mitral valve either repaired or replaced, the better.”

I let out a quiet sigh and scrubbed my free hand over my face. “Right. How soon is that?”

“It’s wholly dependent on the current elective surgery waiting list. But in your case, the best case scenario is within the next thirty days, so at the latest we’re looking at the middle of June.”

“That’s quick,” Ruby commented, and Dr. Whelan nodded. “Why so soon?”

“It’s considered a condition that has the potential to deteriorate quickly, to the point where emergency surgery may become a necessity. And I would rather avoid that if at all possible.”

“You and me both,” I said. I wasn’t all that keen on having surgery to begin with, but at least this way I would know roughly when it would be happening. Not knowing was always the worst part. “I’m probably going to end up disappointed, but is it going to be done here?”

This time Dr. Whelan shook her head. “Unfortunately Wollongong isn’t equipped to handle cardiac surgery, so I’ll be referring you to the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney.” She gave me a sympathetic smile. “This is all very overwhelming, I know. Do you have any other questions?”

“A couple, yeah.” I let go of Ruby’s hand and raked my fingers back through my hair. “I had to have radiation therapy as part of my treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma,” I said. I touched the middle of my chest as I said this. “Could that have caused any of this?”

Dr. Whelan seemed to consider this for a little while. “How long ago did you undergo radiation therapy?” she asked at last.

“First time was in 2002, so about thirteen years ago,” I replied. I could feel myself beginning to shake a little, and I curled my hands into tight fists. “Second time was eleven years ago, in 2004.”

“And you had radiation to your chest?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“I see.” She eyed me for a moment. “It likely wouldn’t have caused the myxoma,” she said. “But there is a chance that the arrhythmia and the damage to your mitral valve are a result of the radiation therapy. If the arrhythmia is no longer present after surgery, then we can safely assume it was the myxoma causing it.”

“And if I still have it, then it was probably the radiotherapy that did it,” I said. I unclenched my fists and wiped my hands on my jeans, already dreading what Dr. Whelan had to say next. “Just one more question, though I’m pretty sure I already know the answer. I’m supposed to be going to Melbourne for work soon, just for a couple of days – will I still be able to travel?”

This time Dr. Whelan shook her head. “That won’t be possible – your condition is too unstable right now, and I’m concerned that the stress of travel might cause further deterioration. Is there any way you can arrange to work from home for now?”

I let out a quiet sigh. “I had a feeling you’d say that,” I said. “I should be able to work something out.”

The rest of the appointment was spent mostly being poked and prodded, filling out forms, and trying to stop myself from being freaked out about what was going to happen to me fairly soon. By the time Ruby and I were headed home, nearly an hour after we’d arrived at the hospital, I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed. As Ruby was driving us back up the Northern Distributor, I found myself wondering just how things could get much worse than they were already.

I found out just how much worse they could get a few days later – in the worst way possible.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Ruby asked just before she headed out the front door. Even despite everything that I had hanging over my head, the two of us had somehow found a moment to set a tentative date to tie the knot. We’d decided on the twenty-first of March 2017 as the big day – as much as we’d both wanted to get hitched on the seventeenth of March, we’d realised it wasn’t reasonable to ask our friends and families to rock up to Newcastle, or Wollongong, or wherever it was we ended up getting married, on a weekday. With that particular detail sorted, Ruby’s sisters were taking her out to lunch to discuss some important women’s wedding business that I definitely felt like I had no business sticking my nose into. I planned on doing the same sort of thing with my own brothers at some point.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “We’re going to have that meeting with Liberation, then if I feel up to it we’ll probably practice or work on music.” I smoothed Ruby’s flyaways down and presed a kiss to her forehead. “I will take it easy, and I won’t let them push me around.”

“You promise?”

For maybe half a second I was tempted to be sarcastic, but I knew Ruby wouldn’t take it in the spirit I intended it. So instead, I nodded. “I promise.”

I could tell that she still wasn’t totally convinced. But even so, she let out a quiet sigh. “Okay. I’ll call you when we’re done and I’m on my way home.”

Isaac and Zac were waiting for me in my office at the back of the house, just off the sunroom, when I wandered in a minute or so later. They were sitting on the lounge that was against the wall to my right, across the room from my desk, both of them failing spectacularly at hiding how worried they were. I had told them after dinner the evening before about what was going on with me, and what I was due to go through in what I hoped would be just a few weeks. And not for the first time, even though I knew it wasn’t something I could help, I felt as if I was letting everyone down.

“Are you totally sure you’re up for this?” Zac asked as I fired up my laptop. “I mean, didn’t you say you still had a few weeks before you had to be in hospital?”

I shrugged a little. “Nobody said I couldn’t,” I replied without looking up from opening Skype. “And anyway, I don’t know for sure yet. I haven’t even been told I’m actually on the waiting list, so for all I know it could be longer than a few weeks.” I pulled a face at this. “Though I really hope not. I want this fucking thing out of me already.”

It wasn’t long until I had a group video call set up and ready to go, with both Joel and Vanessa joining in a few moments afterward. Joel looked about as concerned as my brothers had, while Vanessa wasn’t betraying any of her feelings whatsoever. I had to hope that she was at least a little bit worried, though.

“Are we all ready to go?” Joel asked, his voice sounding a little staticky through my laptop’s speakers. I nodded, as did Isaac, and I could see Zac giving a thumbs-up.

“When you are,” Vanessa replied.

“All right then.” Joel immediately snapped his gaze to Isaac, Zac and I, though I knew he was looking directly at me. “Taylor, how are you feeling?”

“Honestly, not great,” I admitted. “Haven’t been sleeping well lately, plus I’m generally just really nervous about going into hospital again. Surgery is a big deal at the best of times, but this…” I shrugged a little. “This is a really big deal, as in my whole life is at stake if I don’t get it done.”

“What exactly are you going into surgery for?” Vanessa asked. “You mentioned in your email that you were having surgery soon, but you didn’t say why.”

“It’s taken me about this long to get my head around it, that’s why I didn’t go into any specific details,” I replied. “Only just told these two yesterday.” I gestured at my brothers. “I’m having open heart surgery to remove a myxoma, basically a tumour, and to have one of my heart valves either repaired or replaced. I don’t know for sure just yet.”

“I can definitely understand why you’re nervous,” Joel said, and I nodded. “How long do you expect to be recovering for?”

“I figure at least a month or two. Definitely not before the end of August.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Vanessa said, and I just barely managed to hold back a sigh of relief. As much as I loved my job, I still didn’t want to be pushed into doing things before I was ready – something that both Vanessa and Joel thankfully understood. “How about we pencil in starting work on the new music for sometime in October, then? It gives Taylor plenty of time to recover and get back on his feet, and knowing the three of you as well as I ought to by now you’ll probably have a whole album’s worth of songs by then.”

“Sounds good to me,” Zac said. “We could probably have the whole thing done by Christmas.”

“We’ll see how things go,” Joel said. “In the meantime, Taylor, both Vanessa and I want you to focus on getting through surgery and recovering – don’t worry about the music for now. As soon as you feel up to it, drop either of us an email and we’ll see about teeing up another meeting. All right?”

I rubbed the back of my neck a little and managed a small smile. “Yeah, all right.”

Almost as soon as the video call ended, I dropped my head into my hands and let out a very shaky breath. The meeting hadn’t even lasted a quarter of an hour, and yet I felt completely wrung out and exhausted. “‘m okay,” I mumbled as I felt a hand on my back, trying not to flinch.

“You’re really not,” Zac said. “Last time you said that, you ended up in a coma for two and a half weeks because you didn’t tell anyone you were feeling like death warmed up. More than usual, I mean.”

“Can you not remind me about that?” I snapped, immediately regretting my tone and my words. “Sorry,” I apologised almost straight away.

“We’re just worried about you,” Isaac said.

“I know, I know.” I looked up and at the two of them, trying not to notice how worried they now both looked. They weren’t even trying to hide it now. “I promise I can handle practicing for a little while. At least until Ruby calls and says she’s on her way home.” I quickly checked my watch and saw that it was nearly midday – Ruby had left about twenty minutes earlier, and I figured she wouldn’t be on her way home for at least another couple of hours.

Isaac and Zac looked at each other for a little while. “One hour,” Isaac said at last. “Then you’re going to have a lie down. I don’t care if I have to drag you away from your piano.”

“One hour,” I agreed. “I can handle that.”

I would soon come to regret those words.

We were about halfway through working on a new song, one that I’d written for Ruby, when I started to feel dizzy and horribly lightheaded. I stopped playing my keyboard halfway through the second verse of the song, no longer able to hear it through the buzzing that had started to fill my ears, and tried to lean forward so that I could put my head down between my knees. At the same time I could hear Isaac and Zac both stop playing their own instruments. “I don’t feel so good,” I just barely managed to get out.

Those were the last words I spoke, about half a second before I toppled sideways out of my seat and went crashing straight down onto the practice space’s floor.

“Isaac, call triple-zero now!” Zac yelled out as I fought to stay awake. Everything was starting to fade out as darkness started creeping in from the sides of my vision. “Tay, mate, stay with me yeah?”

Ruby’s going to kill me, I thought hazily right before I completely lost consciousness, unable to keep myself from blacking out any longer, with Zac’s frantic voice calling out my name the very last thing I heard before the darkness claimed me.