Day One

The first chemotherapy was on the tenth of March at half past nine in the morning and it was, she said afterwards, weirdly like a very boring flight.

There was a big room with fifteen chairs in it and a television nobody was watching. There was a woman of about seventy in the next chair doing a crossword who had been coming for four years and who explained the biscuits. There was a nurse called Danny who found a vein on the second go and said "sorry about that" and meant it.