One Dark, Two Light, page 21
She smiles. ‘I’d better go and see if she’s OK. And I’d better let you get to your boyfriend.’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you,’ she says, her eyes still glistening.
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘And I hope that—’ I stop mid-sentence, both of us knowing that there are no words of comfort for her.
*
When I reach Will’s bay, I wash my hands again at the sink in the corner. I pause and look round for Becky, but she’s nowhere to be seen. I peer across to Will’s bed. He’s still in the same spot by the window and I’m pleased to see that he’s alone. I walk over to his side. He’s fast asleep and doesn’t stir at the sound of my footsteps. I catch my breath as I take in his appearance. He looks so poorly again. His face is pale and clammy, his eyes swollen. He has all the same tubes reattached to his neck, his nose and his arms, which are trailing off into machines beside the bed. His left leg is propped up on its usual position on the pillow, but the black sponge and clingfilm have gone and in their place is a huge expanse of crepe bandage which stretches all the way along his leg, from calf to thigh. The machine’s back at his feet, inflating and deflating in a steady rhythm which seems to coincide with the rising and falling of his chest.
I put down my bag and pull up a chair.
Will’s eyelids spring open and his eyes dart up to meet mine. His expression is one of shock.
‘Hi,’ I say, softly.
His eyes flicker from me towards the door and back again. ‘What are you doing here?’ he whispers, hoarsely.
I lean forward. ‘I came to see you,’ I smile.
He shakes his head. ‘But I told you not to come.’
I nod. ‘I know, but—’
He fixes his swollen, dark eyes on mine. ‘I don’t want you here,’ he says, abruptly. ‘I want you to go.’
I look back at him in confusion. ‘Will? What’s going on?’ I say. ‘Are you expecting someone else? Your parents?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘Will?’ I reach out and try to take hold of his fingers but he moves his hand away. ‘Please,’ I say. ‘Talk to me. What is it that’s upset you?’
‘What the hell do you think?’
I recoil at the tone of his voice. He turns his head away.
‘Is it because of Andy?’
Silence.
‘Then, what is it?’ I ask him. ‘What have I done?’
Will’s face contorts in pain as he hisses, ‘You know what you’ve done!’
I sit back in confusion for a moment, trying to figure it out. ‘No,’ I say, finally. ‘I don’t.’
Will moves his head. A tear slips out of the corner of one eye. ‘Christ. You’re really enjoying this. There’s something wrong with you. You’ve just come here to gloat.’
‘Will, please… I haven’t! I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but…’ I rack my brain as I try my hardest to figure out what on earth he’s talking about. Will shifts on the bed and tries to lift his head up. His forehead is glistening with sweat.
‘No,’ I say, reaching out a hand towards him. ‘Don’t try and move.’
He flinches. ‘Don’t touch me!’ he screams out.
I snatch my hand back. ‘OK. OK. Look,’ I say. ‘I’ll go. If that’s what you want.’ I push my chair back and pick up my bag. Will watches me, but I notice his eyes moving towards the bed remote, which is hanging on the side rail of the bed.
‘Are you in pain? Do you want me to call the nurse?’ I say, leaning forward again.
‘Nurse!’ Will cries out, hoarsely, before I can press the button.
I activate the alarm and there’s a monotone beeping sound.
‘Nurse!’ Will’s voice gets louder.
‘Will, calm down,’ I say. ‘I’ve already called for the nurse.’
He shoots me an angry, frightened glare and calls louder, ‘Nurse!’
I hear movement and voices in the corridor and turn around, dazed with confusion, as Becky strides into the bay and over to the bed.
Will is really agitated now. He’s trying to lift his head off the pillow again. ‘Nurse!’ he keeps saying loudly, even though Becky’s right there in front of him.
Becky leans over and turns off the buzzer. ‘All right, Will. What is it? What’s wrong?’
Will eye-points at me.
Becky glances at me, then moves around the bed, checking that all his tubes are still attached, fiddling with cables and tightening his blood pressure cuff. She presses a button on a machine behind the bed. ‘All right,’ she says soothingly. ‘It’s fine, Will. Everything’s OK.’
‘No, it’s not. You need to get her out of here,’ Will says, excitedly, looking up at Becky, then intermittently glancing at me. ‘I don’t want her here!’
‘OK. All right.’ Becky turns to face me. ‘I’m sorry. It’s best if you leave.’
I pick up my bag and move away towards the end of the bed.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say, under my breath. ‘I don’t know why he’s being like this.’
Becky moves after me and says, in a hushed voice, ‘Please don’t worry. It’s really common for people to get distressed following surgery. It’s likely to be the medication he’s on. But we’ll do some further tests, just to be sure that there’s no secondary infection.’
I gaze back at Becky as the realisation hits me: she’s right; Will’s delirious. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. I suddenly recall his words to me when he told me about his arrival in hospital. I thought I was on a film set. I congratulated one of the nurses on her acting. I smile at the memory, reassured by the fact that this is what happened post-surgery last time and that he’d come through it. When he’s better, we’ll laugh about this. Hopefully.
‘It’s OK, Will. I’m going,’ I reassure him. I lower my voice. ‘Can I have a word?’ I say to Becky, under my breath.
She nods and indicates that she’ll follow me out in a moment. I cross the bay and step out into the corridor. After a few moments, she appears in the doorway, squirts alcohol gel onto her hands and walks out to where I’m waiting.
‘Bottom line. How is he doing? How worried do I need to be?’ I ask.
Her face is warm but inscrutable as she tells me, ‘It’s very early to be able to tell you very much, but the surgery went well. We’ve removed the infected tissue. He’s on a course of strong antibiotics.’
‘They didn’t stop it spreading last time,’ I observe.
She nods. ‘Unfortunately, it’s difficult for us to get ahead of the infection, but we’re doing everything we can.’
‘And the things he just said? Is that really normal?’
‘Very. He may well be confused for several days.’
‘But it could be due to another infection?’
She hesitates. ‘It can happen for many reasons. We’ll keep an eye on his temperature. But more commonly it’s a reaction to the drugs we’ve given him. Morphine and general anaesthesia are notorious for this.’
‘And he got confused last time, didn’t he?’ I ask, hopefully. ‘But then he got better?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘That’s right.’ She says, earnestly, ‘We hope to see an improvement. I wish I could give you odds or guarantees but you know that’s not possible. Only time will tell, I’m afraid.’
*
Back in the waiting area, Karen and Sophia are sitting side by side.
Karen looks up, her eyes questioning. ‘You weren’t long?’
‘He wasn’t really up to seeing visitors,’ I explain. ‘He’s very poorly. But he was awake – and talking.’
‘Well, that’s a good sign. Isn’t it?’ Karen forces a smile.
‘I hope so.’ I nod. ‘They said it’s too early to say, really, but…’
‘I’m sure…’
‘Yes,’ I finish for her.
Karen inclines her head, the weight of what she’s bearing hanging silently between us.
‘He was delirious,’ I tell her. ‘He didn’t know who I was.’
Sophia looks up from her phone. ‘What does delirious mean?’
‘Well…’ I begin.
‘Is it, like… stupid?’
I smile. ‘Not quite. More like… confused.’
‘Oh.’ Her eyes flicker up to meet mine. She raises her eyebrows and grins at me. ‘So, did you get any, then?’
Karen glances from her to me, questioningly.
I shake my head. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What are you up to, young lady?’ Karen smiles at her.
‘I was supposed to see if Will had any chocolates,’ I confess.
‘Sophia!’ Karen reprimands her. She turns to me. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I say. ‘It was my idea.’
I reach over and pull my coat from the back of the chair.
‘So, what now?’ she asks me. ‘Heading home?’
‘I guess so,’ I say. ‘What about you?’
She gives me a meaningful look. ‘Waiting for Jack, I guess, and then…’ She glances at Sophia, who’s now bent over her phone again.
I think about the conversation that Karen is soon to have with her children. ‘Do you want me to wait with her?’ I offer. ‘So that you can go back in, spend a bit of time with him? And with Jack?’
She lifts her eyes, hopefully. ‘Do you have time?’
I nod and shrug my coat off again. ‘Yes. As it happens, I do.’
‘She skived off work,’ says Sophia, without looking up.
I grin, penitently. ‘It’s true.’
‘That would be great,’ she says. ‘If you’re really sure you don’t mind. I won’t be long.’
‘Go.’ I gesture towards the door. ‘Take as long as you need.’
Karen stands up and turns to her daughter. ‘Soph. I’m just going to get Jack.’
Sophia nods.
Karen hesitates, looking at the top of Sophia’s head as she hunches over her phone. ‘Do you want to stay here with Sarah?’ she asks. ‘Or do you want to come with me, to see your dad?’
‘Stay here.’ Sophia doesn’t look up.
Karen heaves a sigh, then looks at me and shakes her head. She takes a deep breath and then says, ‘Right.’
When she’s gone, I sit down next to Sophia and place my coat down on the chair. ‘So, what are you watching?’ I ask her.
‘Cats,’ she says. ‘Doing funny things. Do you want to see?’
‘Sure.’ I lean over her shoulder. She plays a YouTube clip of a cat swiping playfully at itself in the mirror, then at another one purring blissfully as its head is massaged by a machine. We both laugh. ‘Have you got any photos of your rabbit?’ I ask her.
She glances at me and grins. ‘Yes.’ She closes down her browser and flicks open her photo gallery. ‘Here,’ she says, swiping through her photos and clicking on a video. ‘Here’s me giving her a banana.’
‘A banana?’ I ask in surprise.
‘Yes,’ she giggles. ‘She loves bananas. What did Tallulah Louisiana like?’
‘Carrots and hay, mostly,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I ever tried to give her a banana. My brother gave her a doughnut once.’
‘A doughnut?’ she frowns. ‘That’s stupid.’
I nod. ‘I know. He was a bit stupid, sometimes. It was my doughnut. He put it in her cage to hide it from me.’
‘Because he was angry?’ she asks, remembering our earlier conversation.
‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘Probably.’
She closes down her photo gallery. ‘Why was he angry?’
I let out a long breath. ‘I guess because my dad left my mum when we were kids and he didn’t want him to go.’
Sophia looks up, uncertainly, her mouth falling open. Her eyes flicker over me.
‘Deep down, he missed him,’ I explain, ‘and he was actually very, very sad. But he didn’t want to be sad, so he was mean instead.’
‘Why?’ she asks, her curiosity trumping her disquiet regarding the direction of the conversation. ‘Why didn’t he want to be sad?’
I shrug. ‘Because being sad was too hard for him, I suppose.’
Sophia’s mouth sets in a tight line. ‘He still shouldn’t have been mean to you,’ she says, defiantly. ‘He was your dad too. He wasn’t the only one who was sad.’
‘No,’ I agree, glancing across at her, and nodding. ‘That’s absolutely right.’
Her eyes meet mine for a second, then she lowers her head. A tear squeezes out of the corner of one eye and runs down her cheek. She lifts her hand to wipe it away, on the pretext of rubbing her nose.
I hesitate. ‘I was pretty much the same age as you,’ I tell her. ‘I was nine when my dad left us.’
‘I’m ten,’ she objects, her voice muffled. ‘I’m nearly eleven.’
She looks hard into her lap and for a moment we don’t speak. Her voice is barely audible as she says, ‘Did you cry?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘But I wish I had.’
A pause. And then, ‘Why?’
‘Because I think it would have helped.’
Sophia continues to hang her head, but I can see that tears have started to trickle down her cheeks.
I root around in my bag and, miraculously, find a clean tissue. I hand it to her. She takes it without looking up. ‘It didn’t work,’ I say. ‘Bottling it up inside. It took up a lot of my energy. And it didn’t make it hurt any less. So I wish, now, that I’d just let myself cry.’
Sophia gasps as a sob escapes from her throat.
I say, ‘Your dad loved you, Sophia. He loved you very, very much.’
She looks up, her freckled cheeks wet with tears. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Your dad and I used to work together. We’re friends,’ I say.
‘Did he tell you?’
‘He didn’t have to.’
She dabs at her eyes with the tissue. ‘So how do you know, then?’
‘Because of the way he talked about you. Because of the way his eyes lit up when he mentioned your name.’
She shakes her head, disbelievingly. ‘I don’t think he loved me. If he did, he wouldn’t have gone.’
‘It’s not as simple as that.’
She shrugs.
I look her in the eye. ‘OK. Close your eyes. Close your eyes and think of him. Think back to a really happy memory of him, of a really happy time.’
She obediently squeezes her eyes shut, lifting her wet cheeks towards the ceiling, gripping the seat underneath her, her knuckles red.
‘Have you got one?’ I ask.
She frowns in concentration, her head tilted upwards, her mouth quivering and her front tooth digging into her lip. Then she nods.
‘OK. What is it?’ I ask her.
She smiles, her eyes still closed. ‘When he gave me my rabbit,’ she says. ‘On my birthday.’
‘OK. Tell me about it.’
‘So.’ She shifts in her seat. ‘He came home from work in the morning and he was whistling and pretending everything was normal. I was in the living room. I was wearing my pyjamas. I heard the door slam. And then he was standing there in his coat, with his hands in his pockets and he didn’t have a present for me. And I said, “Dad. Have you forgotten?”’ Tears begin to trickle out of the corners of her eyes again. ‘And he said, “Forgotten what?” And I said, “Dad, it’s my birthday!” And he said, “Oh yes. So it is. Happy birthday, Squiggle.”’ She looks up at me, her eyes glistening. ‘That’s what he calls me: Squiggle.’
I nod. ‘OK. Close your eyes again.’
She does as I ask.
‘Carry on.’
‘And then,’ she continues, ‘he pulled some sweets out of his coat pocket and gave them to me. But that wasn’t very special, because he always did that. And then he smiled and he said, “What? You don’t like sweets any more?”’ She starts to giggle through her tears. ‘And then I said, “Yes, I do, but it’s my birthday, Daddy!” And he started smiling. And then he went out into the hallway and brought my rabbit in, in her cage, and he got her out of the cage and he put her in my arms and she was so soft and warm and furry. And then he gave me a little bottle of water so that I could feed her and… it was just so, so amazing.’
Her eyes are shining as she opens them. She looks at me and quickly shuts them again.
‘What did you say?’ I ask her.
‘I said, “Thank you, Daddy. I’ve always wanted a rabbit!” And he said… he said, “I know you have. Happy birthday, Squiggle.”’
She pauses for breath.
‘And then?’ I ask.
‘And then he hugged me.’
I nod. ‘Can you feel his arms, wrapped around you?’
She nods, her nose in the air.
‘How do they feel?’
She thinks about this for a moment. ‘Nice.’
‘Does it feel as though he loves you?’
She nods, vigorously, then sniffs, then says, chokingly, ‘Yes.’ She unscrews the tissue that’s in her hand and blows her nose.
‘So, there’s your evidence,’ I tell her. ‘That he loves you. It’s all about evidence. If you want to know the truth, you just have to find it.’
She looks up at me, her lip quivering. ‘Then why did he go?’
I hesitate, Burdie’s voice in my ear again. ‘He had his reasons,’ I reassure her. ‘He had some very, very good reasons. But they were absolutely nothing to do with not loving you to the end of the world and back again.’
*
Mark is in a single room in the corner of the ward. I’m relieved to see that there’s no sign of DCI Hollis or any other police presence in the room. Karen and Jack both look up in surprise as I walk in, Karen’s face softening into a gentle smile as she sees Sophia standing next to me, holding my hand. I can feel Sophia trembling and I grip her hand tightly to reassure her.
‘Come here, baby,’ Karen calls out to her, standing up and stretching out her arms. She moves round the bed towards us. ‘Come and say hi to your dad.’
I wait until Sophia loosens her grip on mine, then I let go of her hand and watch as she walks tentatively over to meet her mother, glancing across at Mark’s bed as she goes. He’s lying very still, his head tipped up on his pillow, his eyes closed and his mouth slightly ajar. The tracheostomy tube is partially concealed inside a wide collar around his neck and lies across one side of his chest. The ventilator and all the other machinery is bleeping and whirring quite loudly, and Sophia glances at it momentarily before lowering her eyes down to her father’s face.
