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Part One: The First Time
You walk out of the hospital and cold fire explodes in your fingertips. You smash your gloved hands together.
‘You okay?’ Pat says.
‘Only my second chemo session and the cold sensitivity has ramped up.’
Pat nods. ‘Yeah, those nerve endings under attack. My treatment ended three years ago, and I still get some numbness, which comes from the damaged nerves. They’ll heal eventually. It varies from person to person. As my counsellor said, it’s not prostate cancer or breast cancer, it’s Bill’s prostate cancer, it’s Lucy’s breast cancer.’ He nudges your shoulder. ‘Let’s get you into a warm car, mate.’
At the parking machine, you grab your wallet but Pat beats you to it. ‘You’re not earning at the moment.’
‘Thanks.’
It’s hard to do photo shoots for real estate websites or wedding folios when you’re tired and nauseous most days. Louise and you can manage for the six months of treatment on her teaching salary and your part-pension. Just. You thought you might be able to help with minor jobs. Not now, not with chemo scorching your cells. Poison the body to save it. Will you ever be able to view a scene and take the shot, that decisive moment, as Henri Cartier-Bresson once put it?
