1
The lump
I suppose Bob and I go back a long way, in fact we went through school together so we had been the best of friends for quite a while, on occasions we took our families on holiday together.
We all seemed to like similar things so it was never a problem where ever we went, so last year we were all off on holiday together, Bob got to do what he always fancied doing, diving for oysters, some how it had always been a romantic adventurous thing for him, so I tagged a long to keep him company while the wives and kids did their thing.
To be honest I quite enjoyed it, but I was never a lover of oysters, some how raw fish or whatever never seemed to be my thing. I think Bob had thoughts of becoming rich by finding pearls but he also knew they were hard to come by.
The day out on the boat had been great but it was nice to get my feet back on dry land again, we had time to have a shower and get changed and went down to the hotel restaurant where the families were waiting for us.
For those who wanted them there were the fresh oysters we had been diving for earlier in the day. Bob downed six in no time at all, but he was the only one, every one else turned their noses up at them, the rest of the night went well as did the rest of the holiday, but as in every holiday, comes the time you have to go home.
Back to normal life time passed by, I think thoughts were now leading towards Christmas or even where to go on our holidays next year, the phone ringing brought me back to earth, it was Bob’s wife, Bob wouldn’t be able to meet me tonight as planned because he was feeling unwell, I wished Bob well and said we could meet again soon.
Two days later I got another phone call to say that Bob was in hospital, when I finally got to see him he looked like death warmed up, he said that they had done all kind of test on him and he had all kinds of x-rays but they couldn’t find anything wrong with him, two days later he was well enough to come home, things seemed alright for a while but he complained about having a kind of lump just about at the top of his stomach, but then he had us all laughing which wasn’t very nice but he kept saying the lump seemed to move about.
A couple of days later found him in hospital again having more x-rays but the results were negative for there was nothing showing up on his x-rays to show what his lump was, it was as though there was nothing there.
But honestly I had seen his lump by now, it was there one day and was gone the next so it wasn’t a figment of his mind and to top it all I knew Bob almost as well as I knew myself and I knew he wasn’t kidding for I can’t remember Bob ever being ill in his life but this was now really making him ill, but then when he was examined there were signs of his lump then the lump seemed to dispersed itself.
But things were getting worse for Bob and once again he was admitted to hospital after he had collapsed, it was decided that they would have to operate on him to try and find out what his problem was, it was during the time he had just gone down to the operating theatre, the surgeon found Bob’s lump and had a hold of it and he swore he could feel it move, at the spur of the moment he took a large needle and stuck it into Bob’s lump to make sure it didn’t move away during the operation.
Two days later found Bob up out of bed and looked his old self almost, I was there when the surgeon came to see him, it was an almost unbelievable tale but it all came back to the time of our holidays when Bob had those fresh oysters, some how when Bob downed them he had also downed a live but small sea slug type of creature that some how had remained alive inside of Bob and was growing and had caused all of his problems, the surgeon told him if he had not of skewered his lump at the last moment with a needle he was almost sure he would never have found it and could probably have went on to do real damage to him, if not have killed him.