Guts

Cancer. Lower gut – spread to liver and lungs. Gut: what does that mean? What kind of word is that. Is that colon, is that intestine? Makes him sound like livestock; insides that can be used to string instruments. I haven't looked it up. This morning I awoke wondering whether they had told us on Friday and then given us the weekend to get used to it before dropping the next bomb of prognosis. It's bad, there's no doubt about that – no cure, only treatment, if he gets that far. He is frustrated, bored, becoming cranky, while the white haired men all around him hang their shiny purple legs off the beds and wheeze into ventilators.
'No eye contact,' he keeps telling me about the staff. 'Just come and take my blood pressure, my temperature, then go away.' Nobody much, it seems, speaks to him for hours and hours.
From the window he has a view of the college playing fields, rugby matches and the car park. Fireworks bloom on the black winter sky. Outside, it's raining and very very cold.