Bo was in fairly good form at lunchtime. I drove back to Carrickmines to collect my laptop, and spent about half an hour rooting through clothes in TK Maxx, considering a handbag. Then I suddenly became impatient with the shop and went home. Bo was tired, but decided to get up for dinner. Olaf came round, and we ate some confit of duck, which I had bought in Monaghan, at the duck farm at Emyvale, when we were driving back from Donegal. It was delicious. Bo only had some mashed potato, and did not eat more than a spoonful. He had ice cream, however, which he had been able to eat the day before as well. After dinner, Olaf went home, and Bo and I watched Downton Abbey, which we had missed the previous Sunday, in Magherawarden, and which we both enjoyed on this occasion.
We decided that Bo should sleep in the living room. This would save him the pain of going back upstairs. And I thought it would be convenient for him on Monday morning, when I teach, to be close to the kitchen. I was worried that he might fall again. I made up our sofa bed in the front room. The room was warm and cosy, with a fire dancing in the grate. In the morning, Bo would see the sun rising over the Irish Sea. The best view from our house is from that particular sofa – you see Dalkey Island, and Killiney Hill, whereas from the other front windows all you see is the Irish Sea, stretched out in front of you like yards of cloth in a haberdashery, sometimes blue, sometimes pewter, sometimes sparkling, sometimes angry. But plain. It is a plain sea, the sea that stretches in front of our house, with not much relieving its sea-ness.
Bo got into bed – actually he had not dressed, but come down in his dressing gown. It was just at this stage that he noticed a rash on his legs. He called me. The rash was very bad on his thighs, around his lower stomach, but there was also spotting on other parts of his body.
My first thought was that it was a reaction to the urine, which had dried on him, I realised, on Saturday. We had changed his pyjamas and washed his face and hands but not his legs or lower body. How could I have been so stupid? He has sensitive skin – on one occasion, at least, he, and one of our boys, broke out in a rash in reaction to a fabric softener. I searched around for some cream – Sudocrem, I knew, would be the right thing, if his was a nappy rash of sorts. But I had no Sudocrem. The only soothing thing I could find was aftersun cream, so I rubbed that into the affected areas. It gave some very temporary relief.
MONDAY
DAY 11,995
‘See ye that ook?’
I went to bed upstairs, and Bo downstairs. In the morning, Monday morning, he said he had not slept well. The rash itched. I looked at him. The rash was much worse. It had spread everywhere. For some reason I thought it might be shingles and my heart sank. Shingles is very painful, if you are elderly, and lasts for a very long time.
I telephoned the doctor’s surgery and told them what was wrong. I had to go teach my Monday morning class, I explained.
I just had to go. Missing a class was unthinkable.
But Bo was downstairs, he would let the doctor in.
This was our arrangement.
I went into college, taught two classes – oddly, I had the feeling they were the best classes I had ever taught, everything went so well, and I congratulated myself on being able to forget everything while I was teaching I’ve noticed on other occasions that this happens. I had an arrangement to meet a friend for lunch but I cancelled that and phoned Bo.
‘The good news is that it’s not shingles,’ Bo said. ‘The bad news is that I still have it, and the doctor is going to call back this evening. He’s going to bring some cream for it. Sood …’
‘Sudocrem,’ I said. ‘I’ll get some on the way.’
I rubbed Sudocrem all over the terrible red rash. It gave just momentary relief from the itch. By this time, it was about half past two. I don’t remember much of what happened during that afternoon. Bo was reading Bombi Bitt och Jag – this is the book he had been reading over the weekend, an old children’s book, a classic. He was almost finished but had twenty pages to go (he had read it many times before). Perhaps Bo slept. It is odd that I don’t remember.
At about five, the doctor called. He looked at Bo’s rash and speculated. It’s from inside, he said. It’s not a reaction to detergent or anything. An anti-viral medication will get rid of that. But what’s causing it, that’s the question.
At around this time Bo mentioned that he had not gone to the toilet – urinated – all day.
‘When did you last go?’
Bo thought, that morning. But there was not very much.
The doctor looked at his tongue and said he was very dehydrated. He muttered that we should go to the hospital.
‘They’ll hydrate him, and get the kidneys functioning again. I’ll call an ambulance.’
Does that mean Loughlinstown?
Or Vincent’s?
‘Bo’s hospital is Vincent’s Private. Can he go there?’
The doctor thought not. There is no A&E in Vincent’s Private. He said we could go to the Blackrock Clinic if we drove ourselves, but they closed at six and it was already half past five. Besides, I knew Bo was in no condition to be taken to hospital by car.
I knew the system was two tier, unjust, and unegalitarian. But it wasn’t the moment for me to protest about the injustice of the Irish healthcare system. I didn’t think Loughlinstown was appropriate, for Bo (or anyone). Last time he was there, in an emergency, he was in a ward with six people, one of whom played the radio loudly all day without pause. The treatment he got on that occasion was fine – that is to say, it worked. But the conditions were dreadful: noisy, somewhat chaotic, bad washing facilities.
‘Listen. They’ll hydrate Bo this evening. You’ll be picking him up tomorrow and taking him home.’
I knew that you can never be sure about the future.
He reassured me. ‘You can get him transferred out of Loughlinstown if he’s there for longer than a day. People do that all the time.’
‘So?’ I looked at Bo.
We decided: Loughlinstown.
I was thinking, it will be handier than Vincent’s. The queue in the A&E won’t be so long. It’ll be easy to collect Bo there tomorrow.
The doctor rang for the ambulance, then sat down and wrote a long letter, laboriously. An hour passed. I felt sorry for him – still with a patient at the end of a long day. I asked if he needed to be here when the ambulance came and he said no. He told me to give the letter to the ambulance men, and he also asked me to move my car out of the drive, so it would be easy for them to wheel the trolley up to the door.
At about seven o’clock the ambulance arrived.
‘Here goes!’ I said to Bo, who was in the sofa bed.
Two large, cheerful men came into the room. I handed them the letter.
‘I can’t read the handwriting!’ one of them said, stuffing it in his pocket.
‘Come on, my good man!’ he said to Bo. ‘Off we go.’
‘Bo can’t walk very well,’ I said. ‘He fell earlier today.’
‘We’ll help you!’
Looking bewildered, and frightened, Bo sat at the side of the bed. I put on his dressing gown. The ambulance man put on his slippers.
‘Now! We’re all set! Up you go!’
Bo struggled to his feet.
Why didn’t I protest more vigorously? I was bewildered too. I had already forgotten that I’d moved the car so they could wheel Bo down the drive.
With a huge amount of support from the men, Bo, in his dressing gown and slippers, walked out of the house and down the drive to the ambulance. It reminded me of Jesus Christ walking up Calvary, and indeed it was soon to bear more resemblance to that.
‘I’ll follow in the car,’ I said.
‘Or you can come in the ambulance if you like.’
‘But I’ll need to get back from the hospital.’
‘We won’t be taking you back,’ he joked.
One of them put Bo on a small seat, in the back of the ambulance. He looked very pale, very sick, and shocked.
They checked h
is blood pressure.
A voice from the machine, a female voice, said ‘CPR, CPR, CPR.’
The men glanced at one another. Bo was clearly in deep shock. They moved him from the chair to the bed in the ambulance, covered him with a blanket. They didn’t give him CPR, but they raised his feet and lowered his head, and some of his colour returned.
‘You don’t bother coming up to the hospital for an hour, love. Or two hours. They’re really busy up there. Nothing will happen for hours.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. I kissed Bo and said I’d see him soon.
I decided to go to the hospital immediately. I packed a small bag with some of Bo’s things – clothes, two books he had asked me to bring. I got a few books for myself – I was reading a new novel, to review for The Irish Times, so I grabbed that and a Swedish novel from the Swedish book club I belong to.
My car – our car, but since Bo didn’t drive we tended to refer to it as the car, or my car – was parked on the road, not in the drive. When I went out, my next-door neighbour, Janice, was coming out of her house. She asked me if Bo was all right. She had seen the ambulance. She gave me a big hug and said not to worry. Susan, another neighbour, also passed. I explained what had happened. It’s nothing, I said. It’s just a precaution. But, to my surprise, I burst into tears.
‘The ambulance is scary,’ Susan said.
‘Yes, very scary.’
That was it, I thought. The ambulance is scary. That must be why I’m crying.
But I remembered Bo, walking down the drive in his slippers and dressing gown, and his white disbelieving face in the ambulance.
I drove to the hospital, paid the parking fee, and went into A&E.
The A&E waiting room in Loughlinstown has gradually deteriorated over the years I have been going there. When we first began, soon after we married and moved to our house by the sea, I was frequently up in that hospital with our baby and toddler sons – when they fell; when Ragnar swallowed (as I thought) a piece of glass; when he was bitten by a dog. I remember it as, first, rather basic; then it got renovated and painted and looked modern and cheerful. There were some toys for children, and magazines on a table. It was not a great place but it was normal.
The last time I was here was in March, when Bo came in with a minor complaint. (‘You’ll be out today, just get them to check it,’ the doctor had said.) On that occasion Bo was in for three or four days. I later heard from a nurse that the ward he had been in was the worst ward in the place, which is saying a lot. Then the waiting room looked different from when I’d seen it last, in the 1990s, probably. It was just an alcove in a corridor, extremely shabby, with three or four rows of plastic seats. No table, no toys, no magazines, not a single gesture towards comfort. I had noticed then, and I noticed again now, that no middle-class people were in the waiting room. I am not saying this in any mood of snobbery. But it was plain that anyone who knew better or who could afford better went elsewhere. This was a hospital for the poor, and the HSE (Health Service Executive) provided them with the sort of waiting room and accommodation it apparently believes they deserve: a grim, grey place without the slightest pretension to comfort or cheerfulness. A hospital like this could not exist in Sweden, where Bo came from. Such places, if they ever existed, have probably not been in Sweden since the before the Second World War.
Trying to be positive – he’d be home tomorrow anyway – I asked at reception for Bo. He was admitted about fifteen minutes ago, I said. He came in an ambulance.
The man at the desk looked at the computer. ‘No, he’s not here,’ he said.
‘The ambulance said they were taking him here.’
‘No, nobody by that name.’
He rang someone, spoke for a few moments, and then turned back to me. ‘No. When did the ambulance leave? Where do you live? They must have gone to Vincent’s.’
My heart lifted slightly. Already, now that I was reminded of what this place was like, I knew he would be better off in Vincent’s. The A&E here was obviously very busy anyway – the main reason we had for coming here no longer existed.
‘I’ll ring Vincent’s,’ he said. ‘Are you …?’
‘His wife.’
Then someone came into the reception area.
‘Is your husband a professor?’ she asked.
‘Yes, yes,’ I said.
‘Ah, he’s here all right. Come this way.’
Bo was on a trolley in a small room, off the main A&E. At least he was in a bed of sorts, and on his own. He looked not too bad. I was very glad to see him.
‘They told me you weren’t here!’
‘They don’t listen to what I say,’ he said.
We laughed.
Nobody had done anything.
Why weren’t they hydrating him? What were they waiting for?
‘Are you thirsty?’
Yes, he was.
I bought a bottle of water from a vending machine in the corridor – there seemed to be no water supply in the hospital, for patients – and he sipped it.
An hour passed.
A nurse came, and inserted a system tube into Bo’s arm.
‘I have to take bloods,’ he said. ‘And I am giving him something for the rash. Then the doctor will look at the results and see. What is the matter with him?’
They talked about Bo as if he didn’t exist.
‘The doctor has written an account.’
‘Oh, where is that?’
‘The ambulance man had it.’
He looked in a file.
‘Difficult handwriting!’ he said.
I told him that Bo had a rash and was dehydrated. He nodded.
‘The doctor will come when he is ready,’ he said.
I settled in the chair beside Bo and read my novel. Bo dozed off – it was cold in the room so I covered him with my coat and his dressing gown.
About three hours later a young doctor came in.
The questions started again.
‘Why didn’t they put in a drip?’ he said, shaking his head in irritation.
‘That’s what I was wondering,’ I said. He didn’t respond.
Bo, who had come into this hospital to be hydrated, had lain for four hours without even a glass of water being supplied.
‘We’ll keep him tonight,’ the doctor said. ‘I will get a drip inserted. His sodium levels are low.’ He mentioned electrolytes, a word I had heard for the first time on Thursday, when the doctor as the medical centre had said something about magnesium levels, electrolytes, and other things that could be affected by the medication.
The doctor asked the nurse if they had sodium which could be given orally. No.
‘We’ll X-ray him and admit him,’ he said.
It was almost midnight.
‘Will that happen soon?’
‘As soon as we have a bed.’
I felt reassured, as I always do when I talk to a doctor, especially a young doctor: he was intelligent, everything he said was sensible, he seemed honest (‘Why didn’t they put in a drip?’). Bo was in good hands.
It was very late, and I decided to go home. I had an interview with a radio producer in the morning. I was going to talk about ‘The Children of Lir’, for a programme on storytelling. It seemed important to me to keep this appointment. Bo was in a shabby, old hospital, but he was in a hospital. They would keep him for the night. I could come and collect him tomorrow after the interview and take him home and normal life would resume.
Bo’s rash seemed to be getting better. It was no longer very itchy. I kissed him goodnight and told him I’d see him the following day.
DAY 26
Breaking the spell
It was I who broke the spell. Stupidly. But spells of magic, spells of great joy must always break eventually, just like spells of sunny weather. These months of pure bliss – for this was our one true honeymoon, when it came to the crunch – must always come to an end. We can’t sustain a mood of high excitement, perfect happiness, for very long. After a month I
needed to escape from it, just as you need to throw out the Christmas tree and all the lustrous sparkle that goes with it, and move again in plain rooms. Or as you may wish, for an unaccountable perverse moment, to return to the chill banality of foggy autumn workdays, even as you stroll around an ancient white village on a Greek island, drenched in eternal summer. Too much happiness hurts your eyes. We can sustain grief and sadness for considerably longer than joy, oddly enough.
I didn’t know this, then, when I was twenty-four. You can take more bright lights and rich sunshine when you’re young, you think warm days will never cease. But I had already suspected that Bo would not be able to sustain his level of euphoria. I liked to think of myself as a calm individual. I believed I could keep a rein on myself, even when I was flying high, or racing down a ski slope at a hundred miles an hour.
Bo’s emotions ran higher and faster than mine. He was more excitable. He was like a child with a wonderful new toy – love, I think, rather than me as such.
Slow down, you move too fast, I had been thinking. But how can you ask an enthusiastic child to slow down, to dampen their joy? It would be like waking a dreaming toddler from a delicious sleep. Or, perhaps, like forcing a toddler who is delirious with the joy of playing to stop and go to bed.
For years Bo had been suffering loss. The end of his marriage had hurt him deeply. When you’re young, even when you are as young or as old as forty-three, the only way to fall out of love with the person who is lost is to fall in love with someone else. I knew that much, as every twenty-four-year-old who has loved and lost knows it. There’s just one really effective cure for a broken heart.
No wonder he was on top of the world. Bo, whose capacity for optimism and enthusiasm, whose love of life was greater than anyone’s – although the life he loved was not the common one, but encompassed, as well as nature and people and food and music and ordinary fun, knowledge, learning, the life of the mind. He had the capacity for boundless joy, and his character was tempered by pain and loss. But I suspected that he couldn’t stay on top of the world, where the oxygen is thin, although the snow and the air are glittering, for very long. I didn’t know about manic depression, or bipolar disorder, and Bo did not suffer from these conditions. But there was something – some capacity or tendency to be overexcited that made me uneasy. When will we meet again? Tonight! Let’s buy that lovely big house on the corner, you’d like that. There was something not quite bearable in going so far, so fast. But maybe I was wrong. There was so much I didn’t know about him. He was a stranger from a foreign land and a different generation. He seemed invulnerable, omniscient, sure of himself, and in ways he was. Maybe he could stay on the top of Mount Everest?
Twelve Thousand Days Page 10