CHAPTER 24 — BOOK III
Staying
(Sydney — Kinghorn Cancer Centre / Home)
Recovery did not announce itself.
It arrived in permissions: to leave the ward, to stop counting hours, to replace drips with pills small enough to forget until the alarm sounded. Embong went home with instructions folded carefully into his bag and an understanding that progress would be measured less by distance than by restraint.
The discharge paperwork took longer than expected.
Not because anything was wrong—because everything had to be right.
Forms were signed. Instructions repeated. Dates circled. A plastic folder appeared where the thin hospital one had been. Someone explained medication schedules twice, then once more when Embong asked again without apology.
By the time they wheeled him to the lift, the ward had already started to forget him.
Beds were remade quickly. Curtains drawn, then reopened. The bay by the window—his bay—was stripped back to its neutral state. No leaf. No bottle. No chair angled just so.
The lift doors closed.
Embong exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath for days.
Outside, Sydney continued.
Traffic moved. People crossed streets with purpose. A man argued into his phone while holding a coffee he hadn’t tasted. Nothing paused to acknowledge that Embong was leaving hospital with a body still at war with itself.
That felt right, somehow.
Geoffrey walked beside the wheelchair without hovering. Delima followed with the folder tucked under her arm, already adjusting the world forward.
No one said congratulations.
They said see you next week.
The Kinghorn Cancer Centre smelt different.
Less antiseptic. More human.
The chairs were arranged for waiting, not recovery. People spoke in lowered voices but not whispers. Some had hair. Some didn’t. Some looked bored. Some looked exhausted in ways that had nothing to do with sleep.
This was not a place of endings.
It was a place of continuation.
Embong sat through the briefing with his hands folded in his lap, nodding when required. Oral tablets explained. Side effects named plainly. Fatigue framed as expected, not failure.
Geoffrey watched how Embong absorbed information now—not defensively, not bravely. Just… steadily.
When it was done, they stepped back outside.
The sun hit Embong’s face harder than he expected.
He squinted. Smiled once.
“I forgot how loud everything is,” he said.
Geoffrey nodded. “Yeah.”
They didn’t linger.
At home, nothing had been changed.
That was deliberate.
Shoes where they belonged. The kettle where it always was. The couch slightly too low for proper posture. Familiar irritations left intact, like proof that the house hadn’t been holding its breath.
Embong lay down almost immediately.
Not to sleep. Just to stop.
Geoffrey hovered at the doorway, then caught himself and stepped back.
He didn’t ask if Embong was okay.
He already knew the answer would change too often to matter.
Later, Geoffrey brought water.
Embong drank half and handed it back without comment.
That was enough.
The days reassembled themselves slowly.
Morning tablets. Afternoon fatigue. Evenings that arrived too early.
Some days Embong was quiet.
Some days he was sharp.
Once, halfway through a sentence, he snapped, “Can you stop looking at me like that?”
Geoffrey blinked. Adjusted his expression.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m about to disappear.”
Geoffrey considered this.
Then, evenly, “Okay.”
He looked away.
They sat like that for a while, the house breathing around them.
Later, Embong said, not looking at him, “I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” Geoffrey replied.
That was the end of it.
On chemo days, they didn’t talk much.
Waiting rooms didn’t invite conversation. They invited patience.
Geoffrey learned the rhythm of it—the way Embong’s shoulders tensed just before nausea arrived, the way his jaw set when he didn’t want help, the exact moment when distraction was welcome and when it wasn’t.
He never asked if Embong was scared.
Fear, he’d learned, was quieter than that.
It sat between breaths. In pauses. In the way Embong held his cup with both hands even when it wasn’t heavy.
Once, after a longer session, Embong leaned back and closed his eyes.
“You don’t have to stay for all of these,” he said.
Geoffrey didn’t answer immediately.
“I know,” he said eventually.
He stayed anyway.
Weeks later—quietly, without announcement—Embong began to get bored.
It arrived without drama.
He complained about the food. About the weather. About how everyone else seemed to be doing things without him.
Geoffrey recognised boredom immediately.
It was the first symptom of wanting the future back.
One afternoon, Hijau came by with groceries and a too-bright energy she hadn’t yet learned to soften.
Embong shifted suddenly, one hand flying to his mouth.
Hijau froze.
“Oh—no, no, no—” she said, already halfway to the kitchen. “Where’s the—”
Embong gagged theatrically.
Geoffrey didn’t move.
“If you’re going to fake it,” Geoffrey said mildly, “you could at least commit.”
He watched Embong from the corner of the room, expression unreadable except for the faintest tightening at the corner of his mouth.
Then Embong straightened.
Nothing happened.
He looked at Hijau, eyes bright despite the fatigue still clinging to him like a shadow.
“…Just kidding.”
Hijau stared at him.
For a moment, it looked like she might yell.
Then she laughed—sharp, startled, relieved all at once—and swatted his arm.
“You are unbelievable,” she said. “Do you know what you just did to my heart?”
Embong smiled, small but unmistakably his.
“I needed to check if it still works.”
Hijau shook her head, still smiling now.
“That’s a good sign,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. “Joking means you’re coming back.”
Delima, who had been watching from the doorway, said nothing at first.
Then, mildly, “If you are well enough to joke like that, you are also well enough to warn us first.”
Hijau let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding and laughed again, this time quieter.
Embong winced. “Sorry, Ibu.”
Delima stepped forward and adjusted the edge of his blanket, smoothing it once.
“Next time,” she added, “choose a joke that doesn’t stop my heart.”
Geoffrey felt the tension finally leave the room.
Embong smiled—smaller now, sheepish.
“Noted,” he said.
Geoffrey moved the glass of water closer without a word.
The joke had landed.
And that, somehow, mattered more than anything else that day.
They walked again in the late afternoons, when the light softened and the paths emptied. Sometimes it was Nielsen Park. Sometimes the longer circuit that dipped and rose through familiar streets.
Embong set the pace.
Geoffrey followed it without comment.
When Embong tired, they stopped.
When he didn’t, they went a little further.
Training resumed without fanfare.
Paul watched Embong move for a full minute before saying anything.
“We’re maintaining,” he said. “Not rebuilding.”
Geoffrey trained beside him, matching by instinct. When Embong rested, Geoffrey rested. When Embong stopped, Geoffrey stopped.
It was not an agreement they discussed.
It simply felt wrong to do otherwise.
At night, they spoke less.
Not because there was nothing to say, but because the day had already taken what it could.
Embong slept earlier than he used to.
Geoffrey stayed up a little longer, listening for movement that didn’t come.
Staying, Geoffrey understood, wasn’t about guarding against what might happen next.
It was about trusting that what remained was enough for now.
Outside, the city moved on.
Ambulances passed. Traffic lights changed. Somewhere, people argued over small things that still mattered to them.
Embong closed his eyes.
He was still here.
Geoffrey stayed until the lights dimmed and the house settled.
At the door, he hesitated.
Embong opened his eyes.
“You don’t have to be here all day,” he said.
Geoffrey nodded.
“I know.”
He left anyway.
The house did not feel empty.
It felt like a place that had learned how to hold what came next.
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