Week 2 – Day 1

Gail's on the ward, lying on her bed dreaming of our holiday in June. It's a week in a cottage out in the countryside near Dartmouth. The week falls in the middle of the two months break in between treatment cycles. While we're waiting for this second week of treatment in the first cycle to begin, she revisits the Coast and Country website to have another flick through the images – the cozy cottage, its homely interior, its modest garden, its unspoilt views. She's holding on to the thought that, soon, we'll be as far away from here as we can be.

It's already six o'clock, the evening approaching, and she hasn't been administered her first dose of IL-2 as yet. I've been with her all day, much of it spent sitting in the now familiar comfy arm chair next to her bed. But, we're not in the same ward as before.

A week ago Gail was in ward twelve on the top floor, aka the 'penthouse suite' as one cheeky mancunian nurse put it. "We only have VIPs staying in ward twelve" she'd proclaim. It's ward eleven, on the third floor, for Gail this time. Each ward has several bays and several side rooms. Each bay has four beds, the side rooms have just the one bed. The bay that Gail is staying on this week is right down at the end of the corridor.

It would seem that Gail is out on a limb here; it's a long way from everything. But perhaps that has it's advantages. Firstly, it's quieter than it ever was in the VIP lounge upstairs. It's more up-together, too. Fresh, sky blue curtains rather than off-white. The bath isn't directly opposite, so Niagara falls won't be turned on anywhere nearby, half way through the middle of the night. This bay is right at the end of the line, so if you haven't got business down here, you ain't going to be passing by. And that feels like a small piece of luxury already.

Despite the clutter of medical paraphernalia and the occasional bleeping of the drip feeders when their fluids run dry, we serenely while away the hours. It's as if we're in a hotel conservatory reading a magazine, the paper, a book, unconcerned at what our unknowable future holds. We chit-chat about this and that and sometimes search out each others hand for that reassuring squeeze. The sun has swung an almost uninterrupted arc past our window seat view since we arrived on ward eleven nearly eight hours ago. And a little troublingly, IL-2 still hasn't made an appearance... Not that Gail is that eager to see its return.

From our window, we watch scores of airplanes soar into the sky and bank into their trajectory, the destinies of their occupants we can only wonder, while we continue to await the arrival of Gail's first £700, 50ml bag of IL-2 of week two. Gail has made the most of this idle time by fiddling with her new bed's electronic position-adjusting controls, whilst reclining gracefully on her state-of-the-art, air-cushioned and almost imperceptibly oscillating mattress. She didn't have this top gadget on ward 12!

It's now 7:30pm and the holiday's over. Finally, the first bag of IL-2 has already been attached and emptied into Gail's veins. The 50ml dose only takes 15 minutes to drip through. All quiet again right now.

It's so quiet. There's one other inpatient in our bay with a visitor. Their talking is a soporific murmur. Gail's got her iPod headphones in now, listening to a meditation, quietly anticipating IL-2's first aggressive sign of invasion when it charges her body with those crippling rigors.

It's 8:42 (I feel like saying, in a geordie accent, "...in the Big Brother House") in the end bay on ward eleven, it's no goals in the Manchester derby, and it's a no-show from those rigors – so far.

It's now after 10pm... Visiting hours finished two hours ago and I've been hanging on in the hope that I could be here for Gail when she goes through her first rigors. The nurses have been empathetic and have let me stay, but now it seems it could be ages before anything might happen. So, unfortunately, the time has come for me to say goodbye to Gail, and to take my leave.