Chapter 9

The following morning Faith and Andrew lay and talked quietly about the discussions from the previous day. He asked her why he kept coming back to the issue of her doing something for him. She looked over at him.

“You are a selfish boy.”

No smile to soften the blow.

“You live life on your terms Andrew. You don’t do anything for anyone else, it all comes back to the point about not trying. You are not trying to be a good person. It is not that you are trying to be a bad person either but you give nothing back. You keep the world at arm’s length. You need to share your gifts especially your intellect. Help classmates, be humble, be someone that can be relied upon, things like that. Make a positive contribution to life. You are not a negative, at least not intentionally, but your coasting has to stop.”

She stopped at this point and looked at him impassively.

“My coasting has really bugged you and Leslie, hasn’t it?”

She nodded vigorously.

“Like you wouldn’t believe Andrew. I want to smack you about the head sometimes. I don’t know why you have no confidence, perhaps your shyness or reserved nature but you have two people who just won’t let you fall back into your lazy habits.”

“You won’t let me?”

“Of course not. Do you think so little of us that we are not going to see each other when we get out of here?”

Her gaze pierced him. He smiled over at her as the realisation sank in.

“I have two female friends, don’t I?”

She nodded.

“Finally got the message?”

She said with a smile. Andrew laughed out loud.

“All I can say is that I hope I don’t have to go through quite as much the next time to get a couple of women as friends!”

She laughed with him. Looking back on these couple of days Andrew didn’t remember thinking about his cancer and the appointment in eight days that would be determine whether he had a life to try and change. It was times like this where he understood what Leslie was saying about the distraction. There was Faith talking about being his friend in the future. It was great and yet so absurdly optimistic at the same time. Still these discussions about his changed behaviour going forward were an incredibly timely and welcome respite from the constant gazing at the calendar and the following Friday.

When Andrew’s oncologist came round later that morning he was cautiously pleased that Andrew was keeping his food down and was looking and feeling better. The great thing was he was no longer bed ridden. With care, and an arm for support Andrew could make it to the bathroom on his own. He was able to sit on a chair in the shower and could finally have a shower unassisted. He guessed Faith and Leslie’s bath time show was over. The doctor said that Andrew could go home the following day and spend the next week at home. Andrew was initially excited about this. However, that initial excitement quickly faded when Faith’s oncologist stated that she would have to stay as a patient on the ward until her tests where completed and they were able to tell if the bone marrow transplant had been successful. He was going to miss his friends. No distractions, lots of time in his own head thinking and worrying. Not good.

At this point Leslie arrived, later than usual. Normally, she spent most of the day with Faith, and by extension Andrew, but her car needed some work done and she was later than usual. Faith and Andrew were both feeling down and the mood around them was sombre. When Faith saw Leslie she started to cry and Leslie held her for a few minutes until she had calmed down. Faith had haltingly explained that she was to remain on the ward until at least the following Friday. Leslie looked over at Andrew as she held Faith’s hand.

“What about you Andrew?”

“I am being released tomorrow for a week. Now that I have a little mobility back they are sending me home until next Friday.”

“That’s great news. I am pleased. Although Faith and I are going to miss your company during the day.”

He nodded.

“I know I feel exactly the same way. I have got used to having the two of you around and I think that next week will drag for me.”

All three of them were quiet for 10 minutes as they were alone with their thoughts. Surprisingly it was Faith who restarted the conversation.

“Sis, this means it is even more important that we go through some of the other things we wanted to talk to Andrew about. We had a long talk about his selfishness this morning and an even longer talk about karma and good deeds.”

“I see.” Leslie responded. “So that means I get to talk about girls and sex, doesn’t it?”

She was looking Andrew straight in the eye as she said this. There was going to be no doubt about his reaction. Once his blush had subsided somewhat, not helped by Faith and Leslie’s laughing, Leslie started to talk about dealing with girls. She covered so many areas in such a small time Andrew was completely overwhelmed. They would go back over all these areas, sometimes repeatedly, in the coming year but this was the first time someone had talked to him about girls, with girls and seen the world from their perspective. Among the key things that they talked about were puberty and the differences it has on men and women’s bodies.

Leslie gave him a full unexpurgated recounting of life as a teenage girl. She talked for most of the afternoon. She covered things that he had never thought of and he was not sure he would ever have thought of. Hearing this from a female perspective was fascinating and a priceless insight. She was brutally honest.

She talked about her final year at primary school where she was one of the first girls to develop physically. How developing breasts made her feel and how it made other people treat her. She felt everyone was staring. Looking back now she didn’t know whether everyone actually was staring or she expected everyone to be staring so she thought they were. Probably somewhere in between. As other girls developed she quickly got used to it but it made her very aware of her body and boys’ reaction to it. Puberty meant periods and so she talked about them. The physical impact and the emotional impact. Andrew was, at different times, fascinated, horrified and amazed. He had no idea about any of this. The feelings of bloating, the cramping and the sore breasts? Never mind the actual bleeding and dealing with tampons or pads. He sat there with a look of horror on his face.

Leslie summarised puberty for him and emphasised the different experiences for men and women.

“Puberty is a struggle for both sexes Andrew. We both get acne and greasy hair. We both struggle with seas of hormones surging through our body making us feel and act in new and odd ways. Men’s voices deepen. Your body starts to develop muscle in the arms, legs and chest. These changes are obvious to everyone. The sex development in puberty for men is limited to your groin. Your cock and balls develop and get bigger. You start to grow pubic hair. Other than in the changing room nobody can tell, right?”

Thinking about his own experience he nodded. Now his chemo had screwed this up. His dick and balls did seem bigger but that may have been teenage wishful thinking. HIs voice was definitely deeper.

“Now think about the changes that girls go through as they develop into women. We have discussed the issues with periods. When our sex organs develop we get breasts and hips. You get balls to produce sperm to make babies, we get breasts to feed them and hips to be able to birth them from our bodies. This is all natural. One of the main things women have to deal with is comparison. Men compare women’s breasts. There is nothing any woman can do to naturally change her breast size. Diet and parental genetics have determined what size they will be. Just the same as there is nothing guys can do about the size of their dicks. It is what it is. But imagine if you went around all day and women could have visual confirmation of what your dick size was and they judged you. Harshly.”

There was nothing he could say.

“That is what women deal with every day. Men looking at them and assessing and judging them based on their tits.”

She almost spat the last sentence out.

“I have spent six years dealing with this and have talked to Mum to try and understand this. As far as I can tell from my own experience and from talked to her, men are visual creatures. They are drawn to tits and asses. Mum talked about primal instincts. Hips mean that births should be easier, remember that just 300 years ago the odds of a woman dying in child birth over her life were one in ten. Now obviously that mortality rate has plummeted although it is not zero. So, men want women with hips, nothing more subtle than survival of the fittest. It is the same with breasts. Plenty of food for the baby. Especially if the winter was cold and food was scarce. That is tens and tens of thousands of years of evolution that can’t be undone in two or three hundred years. So men look at women’s bodies.”

She then went on to talk about the different approaches to all this. She acknowledged that she was giving him her perspective and that there was a huge range and that this was not THE answer. Andrew often thought back to that afternoon over the following years.

“The guys that I liked” Leslie confessed “were the ones that treatment me as a whole person. Saw me as someone who was a woman who happened to have breasts as opposed to a pair of breasts with a woman attached that they had to put up with. Now I know that seems ridiculous but it is how I felt and was treated at times during high school. Sadly, there are a lot of male assholes out there.”

She paused at this point to calm herself down. Then her innate wicked sense of humour reasserted itself.

“Watching your face and reactions to some of the things was funny. I don’t think you could handle being a girl based on your reactions to all the period talk.”

“You are probably right. It was an absolute eye-opener. I had no idea. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand or know what certain words or terms meant. It was just an information void. Well, as long as you are alright with us carrying on I must admit I am excited about learning more. I am getting such an amazing insight into women. I am sure the first time I try and talk to a new classmate in September that feeling will explode in my face.”

He said the last with a rueful chuckle.

“Nonsense Andrew. You will be fine.” Faith responded.

They all got comfortable and Leslie carried on this time about attraction, crushes and relationships.

“I don’t know who you are going to be attracted to Andrew? What we are talking about here is how you act around your friends especially friends that are girls. And how you act around your girlfriends.”

Leslie talked about high school crushes, the inevitability of them, how it was very likely to happen early next school year just because there were girls around. She talked about what to do with a crush. How to deal with a crush from someone you are not attracted to. What you can do as a 14-year-old? The limitations based on having to use public transport, not being able to drink and not having much money.

“Crushes are something you deal with as you go through puberty. As you get older, although you still have these feelings, often unrequited, for someone they tend not to be called crushes. At co-ed schools crushes happen during the first couple of years of high school.

“Again Andrew, we can only talk about general situations. I can’t tell you whether you and a girl will have a mutual attraction early on next year and will settle down into a boyfriend girlfriend dynamic. Frankly it is unlikely. What is more likely is that you will have a bucket of strange feelings about girls generally and certain girls in particular. You will go out on dates. Right now we’re are not going to talk about what to do on dates. We will talk about that presently. What I want to talk to you about is almost the most important thing that I can tell you. Again this is not universal but the vast majority of woman that I know feel the same way.

“Andrew, you have asked a woman out. This may or may not be known by friends, acquaintances or classmates. You are out on a date and you may run into some of the same groups. Again, you will see all of these groups when you are back in school. What are you going to say when someone asks you about the date?”

She waited.

“Eh, I don’t know. I have never gone on a date. I will probably be pretty excited.”

“Being excited is great Andrew but the key thing is never talk about the date or the person you went on the date with.”

He looked confused.

“Okay.”

It was clear he was still unsure.

“What I have found Andrew, is that boys brag. And exaggerate. None of my friends or I really get it although Mum tried to explain once in terms of male group dynamics which frankly I didn’t understand.

“Let me be clear. And we will come back to this when we start to put this into the context of sexual activity. Never talk. I have dumped guys who have talked about our dates, especially when they were making up what we did sexually. I have stayed away from guys that my friends have dumped for the same reason.

“I can’t make women in general like you and I can’t make a certain woman like you. But you will have a much better chance of getting a date and building a relationship if you never talk about it. Ever. Girls really appreciate guys who are discreet.

“The biggest slut in my school was not a girl as most people would assume with that phrase and specific word. The biggest slut in my year was a guy. He was a funny guy that could make everyone laugh. We used to joke that he laughed our knickers off us because he was incredibly successful. Don’t know how many of us he bagged but he was amazing. Girls trusted him because although there were endless rumours about him, he never talked himself. In fact, the girls were much worse than he was.”

Andrew looked over at Faith and she was lying there fascinated by her sister’s explanation. She looked less tired than she did earlier. The conversation then turned to sex. Leslie did sex-ed for teenagers by teenagers. Answered the questions that he, as a naïve 13 year old, had especially the ones were you felt you were the only person who didn’t know and were afraid to ask. Just like the Woody Allen movie. Only better.

They covered the bases and the big difference between inside and outside clothes for second and third. Kissing, French kissing, kissing on different parts of the body. Erogenous zones and how there tended to ones that were common such as the neck and behind the ears as well as more unusual ones such as behind the knees. She went on to discuss being felt up, touching versus grabbing, patience versus rushing. She talked about breasts and nipples and about pussies and the importance of the clitoris. She went through them at a fast pace without giving him a chance to ponder or ask questions.

“Andrew, don’t worry we are going to come back to body parts later.” She explained mysteriously. “I want to finish giving you the basic menu of sex and the common high school progression. Then we will go back and talk about each of the subjects in more detail.”

“Sure. That makes sense.”

She then talked about oral sex, blow jobs and pussy eating. She explained the mechanics but said there was a whole afternoon just talking about them so they moved on to intercourse, fucking as she called it. The culmination of high school sex for some students. For the majority it was not. She told them that more than half of both sexes at her secondary school were still virgins when they graduated.

“This is not scientific Andrew but from talking to my friends and from asking around it seems like very roughly one third of the class had fucked at least once, about a quarter of the class had barely kissed.”

Andrew thought this would have been the category he was destined for without Faith and Leslie’s intervention.

“And the remainder were somewhere on the spectrum. Beyond kissing but not yet at fucking.”

Again he had no frame of reference to challenge her and what she said seemed reasonable.

“The reason I seemed to rush through the progression of sex acts is because I wanted to talk to you about the progression before we get into all the details. I am talking from my experience and most of my girlfriends’ experience when I say that we felt pressure to move along the progression. If you let a boy touch your breasts he immediately wanted to move his hand down there. If you were playing with his cock and he was fingering you then why weren’t we doing oral? After I gave my first blowjob within a week he wanted to fuck. Probably 20 girls I know either as friends or classmates, friends of friends etc., have given blowjobs but only two of them had been eaten. I am not one of them. Guys are real keen to stick their dicks in our mouths but are suddenly nowhere to be found when it is time to reciprocate. Think about that.

“Right up there with keeping quiet is stop pressuring your girlfriends for the ‘next’ sex act. Woman’s bodies are just as full of hormones as men’s. But again your reputation will soar if you are not seen as a pushy bastard constantly trying to stick your dick in her mouth or always pushing for the next thing. You will get more pussy more often if you let the girl set the pace.

“I will explain more when we start talking about the different acts themselves.”

Leslie sat there looking at him with a slightly flushed expression on her face. The silence hung like a pall over the ward. The last few hours had been insane. Hugely educational, incredibly embarrassing, just completely unbelievable. Andrew had no idea what to say. He didn’t really have anything to say. Sex and female bodies were totally hypothetical at present. Eventually he felt he had to say something.

“Em, okay. I heard everything you said and I will try to absorb it all but really this is so far beyond anything I have considered before.”

He and Faith were both tired and so Leslie wrapped it up for the day. He had a ton to think about. Faith dozed most of the evening and Andrew had a long time to think about everything Leslie had said to him. He was utterly clueless about this stuff.

On the Friday morning Faith was pretty upset. Andrew’s parents were coming to collect him at lunchtime. He was still a frail skeleton but as the impacts of the chemo left his body and as he ate better he had more energy. Andrew lay there thinking about the coming week. Faith was lying dozing on the bed when Leslie arrived. He beckoned her over and she sat on his bed on the far side from Faith.

“I have been thinking about next week. If I can get my parents to agree, would you come and collect me every day on the way to the hospital?”.

“What for?”

“I am going to come back here and sit with Faith and you, if it is alright. That way neither of my parents need to think that they have to stay off work and one of them can collect me on the way home. That means I won’t get in the way of family time in the evening with you and your parents.”

He had barely finished saying all this when he was smothered in a huge hug. Leslie’s eyes were bright with unshed tears when she let go of him.

“You would do that Andrew?”

“Of course Leslie. Look we have both seen how this has affected her. It is important for both Faith and me that we don’t spend the whole time sitting around, moping and worrying about next Friday. We will be doing plenty of that anyway but this seems like a great mutual distraction.”

Leslie sat for a minute and then smiled.

“I will sit with you when your parents arrive. It will be a great surprise for Faith if we can get them to agree.”

Andrew went one step further.

“Can you help me up please? I will take my bag and go and change out of this gown back into real clothes. When we see Mum and Dad maybe we can intercept them away from Faith’s bed and talk to them. I don’t think they will refuse but if they get all bent out of shape then we won’t dash Faith’s hopes in front of her.”

This got him another hug and a peck on the cheek.

“Every day you do something nice for her Andrew. Do you realise that?”

Leslie spoke quietly. As usual around Leslie he was at a bit of a loss for words and just shrugged. Andrew carefully swung his legs down and she helped him stand. 20 minutes later he was just coming back into the ward when he saw his parents get off the lift. He waited for them as they came up to him and gave him careful hugs. Andrew looked round at Leslie and waved for her to come out and join him and his parents.

They found a small waiting area and sat them down. Andrew explained it from the benefit to him, not sitting at home with too much time on his hands; the benefit to Faith, pretty much the same thing but also the benefit to her of him not ‘abandoning’ her; and finally, and this was the clincher he believed, the benefit to them, they would not have to take time off work next week other than Friday.

Initially, they were very resistant but then as Leslie and he talked they realised the mutual benefits and so it was agreed that Leslie would come over on Monday morning and would bring him there and then his father would collect him on the way home from work. Andrew hugged them both thanks and then they went back into the ward. Faith was lying in her bed looking miserable as it looked as though he had left while she was sleeping.

When Leslie and Andrew explained that he would be there with Leslie the following week from the Monday through the Thursday she broke down in tears. This made everyone misty eyed and so there was several minutes while they all regained their composure. Andrew told Faith he would see on Monday and then they were off. While he had been saying goodbye to Faith, Leslie had made a note of his address for Monday. She said she would see him around 8.30 on Monday.

His mum and dad gently quizzed him on the ride home about going back to the oncology ward again on the Monday, this time as a visitor. Andrew knew that he would need to have this conversation with them and had been rehearsing in his head for the last couple of hours. His main issue was that the key bond between Faith and him was that they both were on their last options for treatment. If the treatment had not worked and the cancer had not gone into remission then they would be dead by the summer. While this was stark and terrifying, they had both supported each other and kept each other calm. They could talk about this fate even if no one else would or could. How did he explain all this to his parents without them doing the adult equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and going ‘la, la, la, la’?

“Faith and I have grown close over the last eight weeks. Initially it was because we are 15 years younger than any other patient in the ward. However, once I got over my shyness with her and Leslie we have become friends. We have spent a lot of time together, all three of us, and we have talked about everything. Home life, school, friends, boyfriends, although I think that was Leslie showing off, and about our cancer and our treatment. We both understand the importance of the Friday and what the outcomes could be.”

Andrew held his hand up as his mother tried to interrupt.

“I know that you don’t want to talk to me about it and although I don’t get it I am not going to fight with you about it either. Sufficient to say that Faith and I have talked about it. We are each other’s closest supporters. She was devastated yesterday when she found out that she couldn’t go home. It took practically all the joy out of my news that I could come home today. So this morning I asked Leslie if she would collect me on Monday and I will come with her until Thursday afternoon. The last eight weeks would have been tough for Faith and I and both sets of parents without Leslie. She is there all day, every day. It has allowed both sets of parents to keep working and at least slightly lowered the stress of our situations. Although this sounds like I am doing this for Faith I am also doing it as much for me as well. The Campbell sisters are great at keeping me distracted.”

Andrew caught his father smirking at his mother when he said this and thought ‘if only he knew!’ His mother was a social worker and understood what he was talking about.

“It is clear that you have given this a lot of thought Andrew. Hopefully this will make next week more bearable for you both. As you said you are very close to each other now.”

The weekend was filled with visits from relatives, his grandmother, aunts and uncles, his cousin. It was worse than Christmas. Monday rolled round and Andrew wouldn’t say he leapt out of bed but was able to get up and shower without a problem and his appetite had definitely returned. He had a ‘normal’ breakfast augmented with additional protein to help him regain weight and strength. Lentil soup for breakfast was not his first choice but vegetable protein was highly recommended by the nutritionists at the hospital so he dutifully supped up a bowl before his Weetabix.

Leslie was outside right on time and they headed into the city centre at the tail end of the rush hour. Faith also had been visited by large numbers of relatives over the weekend so had not been too bad. However, Leslie confirmed that she was missing him. They had spoken at the end of visiting the previous night and Faith had seemed down. Andrew sat in the car as they headed to the hospital and thought about the pair of them.

He couldn’t ask Leslie the question that hung over both of them. Was his getting out and Faith staying in the hospital a sign of their prognosis on Friday? He couldn’t think that. He had to be positive not just for himself but for her as well. When Andrew realised that he was thinking this way it surprised him. Bloody hell, he was starting to think of others first. Andrew was ashamed that it took his friend’s cancer to get him to this point. Leslie and he had been driving in silence for the last 5 minutes while he was working stuff through in his head. Now as they approached the hospital he looked out the car and saw his school. It was right across the road from the hospital. As they approached it was on the left with the Infirmary on the right. This was the first time Andrew had considered school the place, as opposed to schoolwork and subjects, since before Christmas. Inevitably, he wondered if he would ever be back there. Friday, it all came back to Friday.

Leslie parked the car and the pair of them walked through the hospital to the lift. Andrew was still slow and had no stamina but Leslie took her time and he was not too winded when they got off the lift and headed to the oncology ward. The duty nurse did a double take when she saw him come through the ward doors.

“Andrew, are you alright? Are you being re-admitted?”

He smiled at her.

“No, I am feeling much better this week thank you. I am here with Leslie to visit with Faith Campbell. We have been beside each other for the last eight weeks and she is upset that she is still on the ward. I know it is a bit odd but we have been incredibly supportive to each other during our treatment and I want to make sure that she is not too down this week. I will be here during the day through until Thursday.”

The nurse bathed him in a warm look.

“This is a good thing you are doing Andrew. An important thing. Keeping patients spirits up is always a challenge. Thank you.”

Leslie and he walked down the familiar aisle to the last bed on the left where Faith was lying sleeping. Her face had a troubled look about it. Andrew put his fingers to his lips when Leslie looked at him and she stood there silently. He sat down next to Faith and spoke in an unnecessarily loud voice.

“I come all the way to see her and what do I find? Fast asleep. I ask you.”

Leslie was now trying not to giggle at his words. Faith’s eyes didn’t open but her mouth turned into a smile.

“Here I am trying to get some sleep and some loud BOY comes in making a racket.”

She opened her eyes and although she looked tired there was pleasure in her gaze.

“Good morning you two. Now that we have that pantomime out of the way come and sit down. Same as last week only you have some clothes on.”

Here she smirked at him and then smiled widely as he blushed. Mind you with the Campbell sisters Andrew seemed to blush every ten minutes anyway.

“Don’t ask me how I am feeling, because I am feeling crap. Let it be.”

She might be sick but she was in a feisty mood that morning. They settled down into a recounting of the weekend and who had won the title of most annoying relative. Andrew’s sister was always a perpetual favourite but in fact this weekend she had been quite restrained. The clear winners were the Porter boys, Faith’s cousins. Their mother was Faith’s mum’s sister but Aunt Lorraine was notoriously lax in discipline with the three boys. Why she thought that bringing an eight year old, a seven year old and a five year old to a cancer ward made sense nobody knew but on Sunday afternoon she had turned up with all three of them. Within three minutes they were bored of sitting at Faith’s bed, within 5 minutes they had proceeded to annoy two other patients and within 10 minutes they had been thrown out. Lorraine had protested half-heartedly but to no avail. 10 minutes of the Porter boys had exhausted Faith and she slept for most of the rest of the afternoon. Andrew laughed at her recounting of the visit.