My Oxford Year

I look out my window at the passing scenery. Beautiful. Rolling green hills dotted with oak trees and fluffy sheep. There’s a fine winter mist caressing everything. The sky is broken up into pockets of light gray and stormy blue, like a quilt. “I love this,” I murmur. “This country is a novel come to life. It’s timeless. It’s rugged and slightly wild, but elegant, too. Hmm, sounds like someone I know,” I tease. Jamie doesn’t respond. “Hey, you wanna stay in your lane, buddy?” We’re starting to inch over the solid white line of the motorway’s shoulder. A slight curve in the road puts us solidly over it. “Jamie, seriously.” I glance over and find that his face has gone ghost white, his eyes hooded, a sheen of sweat covering his brow. “Jamie?”

His head drops to his chest.

“Jamie!” I shout, lunging for the wheel. He startles awake, but just as quickly drops out again. “Jamie, brake! Brake!” He jerks his head up and pounds his foot onto the floor, missing the brake. Instinctively, I grab the wheel with one hand while lifting his foot onto the brake pedal with the other, the car kicking up gravel on the shoulder. I press down on his leg as hard as I can and we start slowing, but not quickly enough. I yank up the emergency brake. We skid to a stop in a cloud of dust.

Jamie flops forward like a rag doll.

I unbuckle my seat belt and grab him, taking his head in my hands and forcing him to look at me. “Jamie!” He mumbles something that sounds like “sorry.” I keep a hand on his chest to brace him upright and dig into my back pocket for my phone. “Jamie. Jamie! Stay awake! Please!” He attempts to speak, but his head falls to his chest again.

I gently lean him against the driver’s-side window. “It’s okay, it’ll be okay!” Hands shaking, I start to dial 911, but stop myself. Shit! Is 911 the emergency number in this country? How do I not know this?! How can I have a boyfriend with cancer and not know how to call for help?! Idiot!

I start slapping the side of Jamie’s face, staccato little strikes, trying to wake him. “Jamie, Jamie!” His eyes open. Barely, but open. “How do I call an ambulance?” He mumbles something. “An ambulance, Jamie! How do I call?!” I slap him again. Harder this time.

“Nine-nine-nine . . . and stop. Slapping.” And out he goes again, this time with the faintest of smiles.

“Funny,” I croak. “Jerk.” But it gives me a momentary reprieve from my panic as I dial. When I have the phone to my ear, I grab one of his hands and bring it to my mouth, kissing it. “Everything’s gonna be okay, just try to breathe. All right?” My heart has left my chest. It’s flopping around on the floorboards. “Don’t worry. Help is coming. Stay with me, Ja—Yes, hello!”

Just as I connect to the dispatcher, Jamie faintly squeezes my hand. I look up into his eyes, searching. “Don’t call my parents,” he breathes with his last bit of strength.

Then he passes out for good.

Chapter 23

Say not the struggle nought availeth,

The labor and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been, things remain.

Arthur Hugh Clough, “Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth,” 1862

You can do this. It’s just a car.

A car that probably costs more than my entire education, but, still, a car.

A car with everything reversed. Like a goddamn fun house.

I check the mirrors yet again, automatically and absently reaching to the right for the shifter. Instead, my hand hits the door.

Jesus. Focus.

When the paramedics had asked me if I wanted to follow, I had nodded. Why did I nod? Because I’d needed to feel useful. They said the hospital was only three miles away. I can do anything for three miles.

But now the ambulance’s lights are flashing and the siren comes on and it’s go time. I depress the clutch and, with my left hand, shift into drive. I follow the ambulance back onto the motorway and we slowly pick up speed. The transmission grinds and I cringe.

As if driving a stick for the first time since I learned to drive on my aunt’s old Volkswagen Beetle wasn’t bad enough, driving on the opposite side of the road, sitting on the opposite side of the car, takes every single ounce of attention. The problem is, I don’t have an ounce left. Every part of my mind is consumed with Jamie. What signs did I miss? Is this normal? Is he all right? Is this just a glimpse of things to come?

We have to switch lanes and my eyes instinctively glance up and to the right, seeing nothing but the patchy clouds. Forcibly, I look left, to the rearview mirror.

I’m not cut out for this. I’ve never been around illness before. I’m useless. And for whatever reason, I’m the only one Jamie wants near him.

And I’m leaving.

Someone will have to take care of Jamie when I’m gone. Whether he wants to admit it or not, as he gets progressively worse, he’s going to need more help. It’s a fact. Decisions are going to have to be made.

Jamie’s going to need his family.

Oh God. A roundabout. White-knuckled, I follow the ambulance through it.

This is how crisis works, I think. In one instant, priorities can change.

Beliefs can reverse.

Somehow, some way, his relationship with his parents has to be fixed. I can’t leave him, come June 11, like this, like some animal slinking off into the woods to die alone.

Miraculously, we’ve made it to the hospital. The ambulance driver sticks her hand out the window and points at the adjacent, nearly empty parking lot. We’re somewhere in the wilds of Kent and it appears that we’re pretty much alone in the world.

Even without having to navigate around other cars, I swing too wide into the parking spot, and end up straddling the line. Screw it. Let them ask me to move. I’ve parked right in front of a sign that cautions no overnight parking and I think, Oh God, I might have to drive at night. With Jamie in the car.

Distracted, I turn off the Aston and open my door, stepping out into the crisp winter air. The distant sound of a train whistle reminds me, for the first time, of the ferry we’re not catching. Should I call the company? I don’t have the number. I’ll look it up on my—

The ground moves beneath my feet. An optical illusion. In reality, the car is rolling forward. “Shit!” I leap back into the car and yank the brake. But not before the Aston rolls into the “No Overnight Parking” sign, tipping it backward thirty degrees with a mournful creak.

I drop my head onto the center console. I don’t even want to look at the bumper. I take a deep breath.

Knowing what I have to do, I pull out my phone.

“I AM SO bloody sorry,” Jamie mutters yet again as I arrange and fluff a pillow behind his back, doing my best to make him comfortable on the couch in the drawing room.

“If you didn’t want to go you should have just said so,” I joke. “You didn’t have to pull a stunt like this.”

He sighs heavily with the faintest sound of a laugh.

Anemia. Severe anemia. Turns out he’d been feeling faint and lethargic for the past week, he just didn’t tell anyone (i.e., me). Before we left this morning, he’d been dragging, which I’d noticed but thought was just a side effect from the chemo. Or maybe I just didn’t want to notice. He didn’t tell me he’d nearly passed out in the shower. I feel horrible, as if this were my fault. Was I being selfish, or stupid, or . . . ?