a seventy first story...'waking up to dying'

That was when I first noticed it – through the long winter hours, hunched over my writing desk; a dull pain in my lower back I first put down to bad posture.  But it didn’t go away, the pain, and steadily became more insistent.  So I went to my doctor in the end; of course I put it off until, as it turns out, it is (was?) too late.  Still, I guess there's something to be said for stoicism in the normal course of events. 

My doctor is older than me by nearly twenty years – tall and lean, sallow skin, full head of silver hair, big, soft, gentle hands – he may even be in his seventies, and the plain fact is it may be he'll always remain twenty years older, I’ll never make it that far: I am waking up to dying.

He had to tell me. 

The tests came back: at first it was jaundice, then the secondary tests revealed the uncomfortable (incomprehensible?) truth.  Any time in the next five months, I will die. 

When I came into his office in the surgery, he was sat facing me as I walked in the door, sleeves of his white coat rolled up, forearms wresting on his knees, hands cupped together. 

‘John’, he said, ‘fucking hell’.

‘You fucking poor sod’.

Then he asked me if I wanted to sit down. 

So I sat.

There was a nurse in the room too, wearing green scrubs; we made for a moment a bizarre triangle, and when I left I said thank you and goodbye.

Now it’s getting light outside, the dawn chorus has begun, and I'm ready for bed.