Shooting Butterflies (33 page)

She could feel Gabe as he patted her back and rubbed it. Still holding her hand, he murmured to her. That she would be okay, that the doctor would look after her. That they would get through it, like always.

Yet she felt so alone.

So lost.

‘Am I going to die?' she asked.

‘Not if I can help it. Our best bet is to go in and remove it. The operation is called transsphenoidal surgery, basically we drill a little hole into your brain and remove the tumour through your nose. When we do that we will be able to tell if it's cancerous or not. As I said, most of these types of tumours are benign, so hopefully you won't have to worry about radiation or chemotherapy treatments. But I can only confirm that after we have it all out.'

She nodded. ‘So what happens if I don't want to have the operation?'

‘The tumour will grow. You could lose your sight, you could experience numbness or pain in your face. You will start feeling dizzy and you will have a loss of consciousness. From the tests that we've done so far you are clear in the secretion of hormones, but if it gets any larger, it will interfere with the production of those. If we leave it to develop further, you could get a condition called acromegaly, like gigantism in children. Your could develop growth in your skull, hands, and feet, you voice can go deeper, because of the facial bones growing again, your jaw can begin to protrude. You could have increased body hair growth. And you could be more susceptible to both heart and kidney diseases.'

‘That's a grim picture,' Gabe said. ‘So surgery is the only option here?'

‘I believe so.' Emile looked at Tara to ensure she was still listening. ‘Tara, you need to know that you won't just wake up one day being a giant, these changes can happen slowly. If we don't get in there to see if it's malignant and it is, the cancer could spread to the rest of your brain and you could potentially die.'

Tara sat in silence.

A brain tumour.

She could die.

Suddenly the tears began to flow uncontrollably down her cheeks, and they dripped off the bottom of her jaw and on to the
white linen pencil skirt she wore. In all her daydreaming since she was a child, she had never envisaged herself dying young. No one did. Now she was glaring death in the face.

Tara wiped her tears with the back of her hand, and Emile leant over from sitting on the corner of his desk, and reached for a tissue box, which he put in front of her.

‘How long do I have before I have to make a decision on the surgery?' she asked.

‘No decision, Tara,' Gabe said. ‘You are having the surgery.'

‘Obviously the sooner the better, but I wouldn't leave it longer than a month at most. We don't know how aggressive your tumour is, it's no use taking chances with your life when you don't have to.'

She smiled weakly at Gabe through her tears. Then she turned to Emile.

‘So is there anything else we can do while we wait for the surgery, to reduce the headaches?'

‘Injections. We can begin to schedule drug dosages, morphine. But I would caution against any long-term use of those drugs. The chance of addiction is extremely high.'

‘How soon can you book her in?' Gabe asked.

She looked at Gabe. He was everything that she should have in a man, caring, loving, and her best friend. She relied on him for everything, and she always had, but Gabe was not hers. Suddenly the realization hit. If she died, she would have such regrets in her life. Because she had such a rock in Gabe, she had been able to shut out the one person she still loved above anyone else in the world, Wayne.

Josha. If she died, Josha would be alone without anyone related to him by blood.

‘If I die—' she croaked out.

Emile looked at her. ‘Tara, let's talk about living, not dying. With the location of this tumour, we go in through the nose. I need to caution you that there are always risks, as with any operation. General complications like bleeding, blood clots, infection and even reactions to the anaesthesia. But I'm confident that I can get your tumour out, and you can continue to live a normal life again.'

‘What type of risks are related directly to going in through her nose?' Gabe asked.

‘Commonly, cerebrospinal fluid leak, when the fluid that surrounds your brain leaks through a hole in the lining of the skull. You could experience a watery discharge from your nose, or feel a postnasal drip. Sometimes, there is major swelling, and that could mean more surgery to patch the leak. And strokes sometimes occur.'

‘I could end up a vegetable?' Tara said.

‘We don't use that term professionally, but no, if a stroke happens while you are on the table, we can try to restore blood to that part of the brain that is starved of it, or at least minimise the damage.' He said, ‘I know it's a lot to take, but getting it out is your best option.'

‘Can I asked you something?' Tara said. ‘If this was you, what would you do?'

‘Hypothetically speaking, if it were me, I would find the best neurological surgeon to remove the tumour, and I would take all the chances of everything going well.'

‘And if it didn't? If you had to plan to maybe die?'

Dr Brits smiled and shifted in his chair before answering. ‘Then I would take my time before my surgery and live life to the fullest. Go watch that sunrise at the beach, make peace with everyone around me, and ensure that my wife and kids were provided for in my will, with the least amount of paperwork afterwards for them to worry about. Make my passing as complication free as it could be.'

‘So get my house in order just in case, and celebrate being alive at the same time?' Tara said.

‘Basically, yes. Don't go mortgage your house and sell your soul, because if you do live, you will need to pay it back. But have a holiday with your son, give him memories to hold onto in case he needs to. Make sure that he is provided for and that you know what will happen to him if you go. Make sure the people around you know you love them.'

‘Right,' she said, and blew her nose.

Gabe still held his hand around her shoulder. ‘Do you want to fly your mother down to be with you?'

‘No, she has enough on her hands with my gran and her dementia. If she was here, Dela won't cope with gran alone.' She reached up and squeezed his hand.

Emile looked at his file. ‘Statistically, you have a good chance of being one hundred percent afterwards, and I firmly believe that you will be.'

‘Okay,' she said. ‘I bet you say that to all your patients.'

‘No, just a few lucky ones who I know will be alright. Sometimes the news I have to deliver isn't the best. There is no easy way to tell someone they are terminal,' Emile said.

Tara smiled weakly.

‘So surgery it is then,' Tara said.

‘Right. Now we can go through to see my secretary, make a date, and you can call your medical aid company, and discuss this with them. Know what costs you are looking at.'

She heard what he was saying but she felt numb. As if someone else listened into his conversation. All she could think of was all the years she had wasted in her life and how she wished, if she could have a do over, how much more she would have fought for the things she wanted.

Like Wayne.

19

The Letter

Kujana Farm, Hluhluwe, South Africa

1998

Wayne walked into his farmhouse after yet another hard day working on Kujana.

He was ready for a shower, some dinner, then his bed and sleep. He headed straight into his bedroom, and through to his ensuite where he took his time under the hot water in the shower.

Slightly refreshed and feeling decidedly cleaner now that the grit and smell of the wildebeest they had been transporting was washed off, he ventured out and ambled into the kitchen.

When he opened the fridge he found his dinner, pre-cooked and waiting under a clear cover on a dinner plate. His new maid Nomusa had learnt fast from Ella, and he smiled as he remembered how Ella had made sure Nomusa could cook when she had trained her to take her place in the house. Ella had been promoted into his office assistant.

He took out his plate and put it into the microwave. While it spun around warming he looked at the piles of mail from that day.

Ella had already sorted it into baskets marked
Personal
and
Wild Translocation
, the name of their translocation game service that they ran together to supplement the income from the tourist trade while the farm came into its own. It was never supposed to become a full-time job, however they had soon found that Jamison and he were good at it because they worked so well as a team. The business had flourished and it gave Wayne a steady income to continue to develop the safari side of the farm.

Kujana was a bottomless pit for the money he earned. Fences, building lodges, bringing in Eskom to install the power cables for the underground electricity lines so that they didn't mar the landscape. It all cost money. Money they had to continue to generate if Wayne's dream of a private safari lodge to rival the best in the Kruger area was ever going to happen. It was a work in progress, and he loved it. He sorted through his personal mail pile.

Most of it looked like bills, but there was one in a crisp white envelope that was addressed by hand. He looked at the postage stamp. Cape Town. The date was the week before.

The microwave dinged and he took his plate out. He walked through to his lounge area, putting his plate down on the small coffee table.

Looking up at the mantlepiece, he smiled when he saw that Nomusa had rearranged his photographs again. She had a habit of doing that, she didn't quite put them back in their right places.

But he didn't mind, instead he stared at the picture closest to him, the one of Tara with Josha in the park. His family. He smiled as he remembered a day when Jamison had decided that he trusted him enough to tell him his ulterior motivation behind driving his truck down from Zimbabwe to accept Wayne's offer. He recalled the night almost word for word in his mind.

Jamison had walked over to the huge fireplace where he had his three large pictures of Tara and Josha on the mantlepiece. Jamison lifted his hand to the one where Tara had just given birth and was holding Josha.

‘Do you remember in Zimbabwe when you asked me if I knew Tara Wright, and I told you no?'

‘I remember,' Wayne said.

Jamison took the large frame off the mantle, carried it to an armchair and sat down. ‘I lied. I knew
Inkosazana
Tara, with the blue eyes, and the white hair of an angel. We called her
Imbodla
.'

Wayne sat very still. Worried that if he spoke, the big Zimbabwean would clam up again. It had taken him years to begin opening up, to accept him as a friend more than a boss. To cross over the imaginary line that existed between the black and white men in South Africa. To be as comfortable with him as he had once been with Widow Crosby.

‘I lived on the farm next door to Whispering Winds, her father's farm.'

Wayne nodded.

‘From your pictures, she grew into a beautiful woman,' Jamison said as he passed the picture to Wayne.

Wayne touched the picture. ‘That she did.'

‘You two have a beautiful son. Josha, a nice name, much like Joshua, her father's name. She is a woman with traditional values.'

‘I like to think so,' Wayne said.

‘But still you have not found her, because she is not here at Kujana where she belongs.'

Wayne snorted. ‘I don't think she knows this is where she belongs. Our last meeting was painful. We didn't part on the best terms.'

‘When you find her, I'll be very happy to see her again,' Jamison said.

Wayne laughed. ‘You and me both, Jamison. You and me both.'

Shaking his head, Wayne returned to the present. ‘Well, Jamison, you and me are still waiting, aren't we.' He spoke out loud, even though he knew Jamison was in his own house, with his beautiful wife Ebony, their oldest daughter Sibusiso, who everyone called by her English name of Blessing, and their newborn child, Thabisa, which Jamison had already shortened to Joy.

He began to eat his
bobotie
with just a fork, the rich taste of curried minced meat and fat sultanas swirling around his mouth. He reached for the envelope, and opened it.