Five Days Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Douglas Kennedy

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Thursday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Friday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Saturday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Sunday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Thursday

  Sunrise. I used . . .

  Copyright

  About the Book

  How long does it take to fall in love?

  For twenty years, Laura has been a good wife and a good mother. She’s supported her husband through redundancy, she’s worried about her son, she’s encouraged her daughter. She’s stopped thinking about all the places she’d like to go or all the books she’d like to discuss.

  She’s not unhappy, exactly. She’s not that self-indulgent. As anyone would tell you, Laura is wonderfully constant, caring, selfless. She’s certainly an expert at putting on a brave face.

  But a chance meeting in a hotel lobby reminds Laura of the young woman she used to be – and the life she’d imagined she would have.

  As Laura sees a different version of herself and her future, she wonders whether we owe it to ourselves to grasp an opportunity for happiness if it’s offered to us?

  From ‘the absolute master of love stories with heart-stopping twists’ (The Times) Five Days is a compelling novel about how life can change with one brief encounter.

  About the Author

  Douglas Kennedy’s ten previous novels include the critically acclaimed bestsellers The Big Picture, The Pursuit of Happiness, A Special Relationship, The Woman in the Fifth and The Moment. He is also the author of three highly praised travel books. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages. In 2006 he was awarded the French decoration of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Born in Manhattan in 1955, he has two children and currently divides his time between London, Paris, Berlin, Maine and Montreal.

  ALSO BY DOUGLAS KENNEDY

  Fiction

  The Dead Heart

  The Big Picture

  The Job

  The Pursuit of Happiness

  A Special Relationship

  State of the Union

  Temptation

  The Woman in the Fifth

  Leaving the World

  The Moment

  Non-fiction

  Beyond the Pyramids

  In God’s Country

  Chasing Mammon

  Five Days

  Douglas

  Kennedy

  For Christine

  ‘Hope is the thing with feathers

  That perches in the soul,

  And sings the tune without the words,

  And never stops at all.’

  – Emily Dickinson

  Thursday

  One

  I SAW THE cancer immediately. It was right there in front of me. As always, I found myself taking a sharp intake of breath as the realization hit: I am looking at the beginning of the end.

  The cancer was shaped like a dandelion. Sometimes this sort of tumor looks like a cheap Christmas decoration – a five-and-dime star with ragged edges. This specific one was more like a minor-looking flower that had been denuded, stripped down to its seeds, but with an insidious, needle-like design. What radiologists call a ‘spiculated structure’.

  Spiculated. When I heard that word for the first time I had to look it up. Discovered its origins were actually zoological: a spicule being ‘a small needle-like structure, in particular any of those making up the skeleton of a sponge’ (I’d never realized that sponges have skeletons). But there was an astronomical meaning as well: a short-lived jet of gas in the sun’s corona.

  This last definition nagged at me for weeks. Because it struck me as so horribly apt. A spiculated cancer – like the one I was looking at right now – might have commenced its existence years, decades earlier. But only once it makes its presence known does it become something akin to the burst of flame that combusts everything in its path, demanding total attention. If the flame hasn’t been spotted and extinguished early enough, it will then decide that it isn’t a mere fiery jet stream; rather, a mini supernova which, in its final show of pyrotechnic force, will destroy the universe which contains it.

  Certainly the spiculated species I was now looking at was well on its way to exploding – and, in doing so, ending the life of the person within whose lung it was now so lethally embedded.

  Another horror to add to the ongoing catalog of horrors which are, in so many ways, the primary decor of my nine-to-five life.

  And this day was turning out to be a doozy. Because, an hour before the spiculated cancer appeared on the screen in front of me, I had run a CT scan on a nine-year-old girl named Jessica Ward. According to her chart she’d been having a series of paralyzing headaches. Her physician had sent her to us in order to rule out any ‘neurological concerns’ . . . which was doctor shorthand for ‘brain tumour’. Jessica’s dad was named Chuck; a quiet, hangdog man in his mid-thirties, with sad eyes and the sort of yellowing teeth that hint at a serious cigarette habit. He said that he was a welder at the Bath Iron Works.

  ‘Jessie’s ma left us two years ago,’ he told me as his daughter went into the dressing area we have off the cat scan room to change into a hospital gown.

  ‘She died?’ I asked.

  ‘I wish. The bitch – ’scuse my French – ran off with a guy she worked with at the Rite Aid Pharmacy in Brunswick. They’re livin’ in some trailer down in Bestin. That’s on the Florida Panhandle. Know what a friend of mine told me they call that part of the world down there? The Redneck Riviera. Jessie’s headaches started after her ma vanished. And she’s never once been back to see Jessie. What kind of mother is that?’

  ‘She’s obviously lucky to have a dad like you,’ I said, trying to somewhat undercut the terrible distress this man was in – and the way he was working so hard to mask his panic.

  ‘She’s all I got in the world, ma’am.’

  ‘My name’s Laura,’ I said.

  ‘And if it turns out that what she has is, like, serious . . . and doctors don’t send young girls in for one of these scans if they think it’s nothing . . .’

  ‘I’m sure your physician is just trying to rule things out,’ I said, hearing my practiced neutral tone.

  ‘You’re taught to say stuff like that, aren’t you?’ he said, his tone displaying the sort of anger that I’ve so often seen arising to displace a great fear.

  ‘Actually, you’re right. We are trained to try to reassure and not say much. Because I’m a technologist, not a diagnostic radiologist.’

  ‘Now you’re using big words.’

  ‘I’m the person who operates the machinery, takes the pictures. The diagnostic radiologist is the doctor who will then look at the scan and see if there is anything there.’

  ‘So when can I talk to him?’

  You can’t was the actual answer – because the diagnostic radiologist is always the behind-the-scenes man, analyzing the scans, the X-rays, the MRIs, the ultrasounds. But he rarely ever meets the patient.

  ‘Dr Harrild will be talking directly to Jessica’s primary-care physi
cian – and I’m sure you’ll be informed very quickly if there is—’

  ‘Do they also teach you to talk like a robot?’

  As soon as this comment was out of his mouth, the man was all contrite.

  ‘Hey, that was kind of wrong of me, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said, maintaining a neutral tone.

  ‘Now you’re all hurt.’

  ‘Not at all. Because I know how stressful and worrying this all must be for you.’

  ‘And now you’re reading the script again that they taught you to read.’

  At that moment Jessica appeared out of the changing room, looking shy, tense, bewildered.

  ‘This gonna hurt?’ she asked me.

  ‘You have to get an injection that is going to send an ink into your veins in order for us to be able to see what’s going on inside of you. But the ink is harmless.’

  ‘And the injection?’ she asked, her face all alarmed.

  ‘Just a little prick in your arm and then it’s behind you.’

  ‘You promise?’ she asked, trying hard to be brave, yet still so much the child who didn’t fully understand why she was here and what these medical procedures were all about.

  ‘You be a real soldier now, Jess,’ her father said, ‘and we’ll get you that Barbie you want on the way home.’

  ‘Now that sounds like a good deal to me,’ I said, wondering if I was coming across as too cheerful and also knowing that – even after sixteen years as an RT – I still dreaded all procedures involving children. Because I always feared what I might see before anyone else. And because I so often saw terrible news.

  ‘This is just going to take ten, fifteen minutes, no more,’ I told Jessica’s father. ‘There’s a waiting area just down the walkway with coffee, magazines . . .’

  ‘I’m goin’ outside for a bit,’ he said.

  ‘That’s ’cause you want a cigarette,’ Jessica said.

  Her father suppressed a sheepish smile.

  ‘My daughter knows me too well.’

  ‘I don’t want my daddy dead of cancer.’

  At that moment her father’s face fell – and I could see him desperately trying to control his emotions.

  ‘Let’s let your dad get a little air,’ I said, steering Jessica further into the scan room, then turning back to her father who had started to cry.

  ‘I know how hard this is,’ I said. ‘But until there is something to be generally concerned about . . .’

  He just shook his head and made for the door, fumbling in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes.

  As I turned back inside I saw Jessica looking wide-eyed and afraid in the face of the CT scanner. I could understand Jessica’s concern. It was a formidable piece of medical machinery, stark, ominous. There was a large hoop, attached to two science-fiction-style containers of inky fluid. In front of the hoop was a narrow bed that was a bit like a bier (albeit with a pillow). I’d seen adults panic at the sight of the thing. So I wasn’t surprised that Jessica was daunted by it all.

  ‘I have to go into that?’ she said, eyeing the door as if she wanted to make a run for it.

  ‘It’s nothing, really. You lie on the bed there. The machine lifts you up into the hoop. The hoop takes pictures of the things the doctor needs pictures of . . . and that’s it. We’ll be done in a jiffy.’

  ‘And it won’t hurt?’

  ‘Let’s get you lying down first,’ I said, leading her to the bed.

  ‘I really want my daddy,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll be with your daddy in just a few minutes.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  She got herself onto the bed.

  I came over, holding a tube attached to the capsule containing all that inky liquid, covering with my hand the intravenous needle still encased in its sterilized packaging. Never show a patient an IV needle. Never.

  ‘All right, Jessica. I’m not going to tell you a big fib and say that getting a needle put into your arm is going to be painless. But it will just last a moment and then it will be behind you. After that, no pain at all.’

  ‘You promise.’

  ‘I promise – though you might feel a little hot for a few minutes.’

  ‘But not like I’m burning up.’

  ‘I can assure you you’ll not feel that.’

  ‘I want my daddy . . .’

  ‘The sooner we do this, the sooner you’ll be with him. Now here’s what I want you to do . . . I want you to close your eyes and think of something really wonderful. You have a pet you love, Jessica?’

  ‘I have a dog.’

  ‘Eyes closed now, please.’

  She did as instructed.

  ‘What kind of dog is he?’

  ‘A cocker spaniel. Daddy got him for my birthday.’

  I swabbed the crook of her arm with a liquid anesthetic.

  ‘The needle going in yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Not yet, but you didn’t tell me your dog’s name.’

  ‘Tuffy.’

  ‘And what’s the silliest thing Tuffy ever did?’

  ‘Ate a bowlful of marshmallows.’

  ‘How did he manage to do that?’

  ‘Daddy had left them out on the kitchen table, ’cause he loves roasting them in the fireplace during Christmas. And then, out of nowhere, Tuffy showed up and . . .’

  Jessica started to giggle. That’s when I slipped the needle in her arm. She let out a little cry, but I kept her talking about her dog as I used tape to hold it in place. Then, telling her I was going to step out of the room for a few minutes, I asked:

  ‘Is the needle still hurting?’

  ‘Not really, but I can feel it there.’

  ‘That’s normal. Now, I want you to lie very still and take some very deep breaths. And keep your eyes closed and keep thinking about something funny like Tuffy eating those marshmallows. Will you do that for me, Jessica?’

  She nodded, her eyes firmly closed. I left the scan room as quietly and quickly as I could, moving into what we call the technical room. It’s a booth with a bank of computers and a swivel chair and an extended control panel. Having prepped the patient I was now about to engage in what is always the trickiest aspect of any scan: getting the timing absolutely right. As I programed in the data necessary to start the scan I felt the usual moment of tension that, even after all these years, still accompanies each of these procedures: a tension that is built around the fact that, from this moment on, timing is everything. In a moment I will hit a button. It will trigger the high-speed injection system that will shoot 80 milligrams of high-contrast iodine into Jessica’s veins. After that I have less than fifty seconds – more like forty-two seconds, given her small size – to start the scan. The timing here is critical. The iodine creates a contrast that allows the scan to present a full, almost circular image of all bone and soft tissue and internal organs. But the iodine first goes to the heart, then enters the pulmonary arteries and the aorta before being disseminated into the rest of the body. Once it is everywhere you have reached the Venus phase of the procedure – when all veins are freshly enhanced with the contrast. Begin the scan a few critical seconds before the Venus phase and you will be scanning ahead of the contrast – which means you will not get the images that the radiologist needs to make a thorough and accurate diagnosis. Scan too late and the contrast might be too great. If I fail to get the timing right the patient will have to go through the entire procedure again twelve hours later (at the very minimum) – and the radiologist will not be pleased. Which is why there is always a moment of tension and doubt that consumes me in these crucial seconds before every scan. Have I prepped everything correctly? Have I judged the relationship between the diffusion of the iodine and the patient’s physique? Have I left anything to chance?

  I fear mistakes in my work. Because they count. Because they hurt people who are already frightened and dealing with the great unknown that is potential illness.

  I especially fear
moments when I have a child on that table, that bier. Because if the news is bad, if the images that emerge on the screen in front of me point up something catastrophic . . .

  Well, I always absorb it, always assume a mask of professional neutrality. But children . . . children with cancers . . . it still pierces me. Being a mom makes it ten times worse. Because I am always thinking: Say it was Ben or Sally? Even though they are now both in their teens, both beginning to find their way in the world, they will always remain my kids – and, as such, the permanent open wound. That’s the curious thing about my work. Though I present to my patients, my colleagues, my family, an image of professional detachment – Sally once telling a friend who’d come over after school: ‘My mom looks at tumors all day and always keeps smiling . . . how weird is that?’ – recently it has all begun to unsettle me. Whereas in the past I could look at every type of internal calamity on my screens and push aside the terribleness that was about to befall the person on the table, over the past few months I’ve found it has all started to clog up my head. Just last week I ran a mammogram on a local schoolteacher who works at the same middle school that Sally and Ben attended, and who, I know, finally got married a year ago and told me with great excitement how she’d gotten pregnant at the age of forty-one. When I saw that nodule embedded in her left breast and could tell immediately it was Stage Two (something Dr Harrild confirmed later), I found myself driving after work down to Pemaquid Point and heading out to the empty beach, oblivious to the autumn cold, and crying uncontrollably for a good ten minutes, wondering all the time why it was only now so getting to me.

  That night, over dinner with Dan, I mentioned that I had run a mammogram on someone my own age today (this being a small town, I am always absolutely scrupulous about never revealing the names of the patients who I’ve seen). ‘And when I saw the lump on the screen and realized it was cancerous I had to take myself off somewhere because I kind of lost it.’

  ‘What stage?’ he asked.

  I told him.

  ‘Stage Two isn’t Stage Four, right?’ Dan said.