The Silent Treatment

by Abbie Greaves

  I can hardly say no.

  “So, how are you doing?”

  “Er . . . not well.”

  “It’s understandable.” There is a pause when I know the doctor is considering mentioning that support line again, and I am desperate to stop him. I have hundreds of more pertinent questions for him, but somehow the words are all too jumbled to form themselves into anything resembling an intelligible order.

  “So . . . your wife.”

  “How is she?”

  “Well, Professor, as I’m sure you are aware, we are nearing the seventy-two-hour phase. By now we were hoping we would be able to begin to rouse your wife. However, her signs are not as consistent as we would like, and we feel it would be a risk to do so before we can see a pattern in her vitals emerging. I came to explain that we have decided to keep her sedated for the next twenty-four hours at least.”

  “So, this is bad news?”

  “It isn’t the best. Of course, we would all like Mrs. Hobbs to be brought out of the coma sooner. The longer she is under, the greater the potential damage. We have also yet to establish the cause of the fluctuations on her charts. That said, certain organs are showing some signs of activity. There seems to be the will to come through, if you will. She is in no worse condition than when she arrived, and we are doing all we can for her . . .”

  A space has opened up for me to speak. To say I’m relieved. To say I feel reassured. All I want to do is scream.

  “Thank you,” I manage. “For what is being done. I know Maggie would be very grateful.”

  “Do you have any questions, Professor? I appreciate this is a lot of information to take in. You needn’t ask me now either, but you know where I am should any crop up later in the day.”

  Can she hear me? When do you give up on her? What will I do if I lose her? What will I do if I don’t?

  “What happens after the twenty-four hours?”

  He pauses. I have hit on the crux of the matter.

  “Then there will be some important factors to consider in terms of the next phase of care.”

  I ask the doctor to repeat himself, but still nothing he says means anything solid. I know what he’s inching toward, though. Time is running out. I need to get on. Cut to the chase.

  “If there’s nothing else at this stage, I’ll be off.”

  “No. No, thank you. You have been very informative.”

  “See you soon, Professor.”

  When the door clicks shut, I turn back to Maggie. The bedside is surprisingly free from the sort of tat that usually accumulates with a long hospital stay: grapes, magazines, a family pack of sweets. I suppose it would be stranger if it had—there is no one I have told.

  I fish my mobile out of my jacket pocket. I imagined it would have run out of juice, now that Maggie isn’t there to plug it in next to hers at night, but, remarkably, there is still some battery. It is a perk, I presume, of having avoided upgrades. Instead, I aimlessly scan the email notifications on the home screen. Among them there is a single text, from Edie. She hasn’t been able to get through to Maggie—is everything OK? I hover over a response—Maggie sick. In hospital. Will text when better—and click send before I think better of it or allow the guilt to really take root.

  After everything that happened, we cut ourselves off. A lot of people dropped away, understandably. But Edie has been persistent over the last few months. Constant in her kindness, in the sheer will to get through. And still we couldn’t reach out. How much does she know? I wonder. Did my silence push her away too? I switch off my phone before I write anything else or find myself reading into the isolation of the unanswered gray bubble.

  “Come along, Frank,” I tell myself out loud. “Yes, Maggie, I need to get the hell on with this. All of it. The difficult stuff too. Because we really don’t have long now.”

  I was never foolish enough to think you were OK about it, the fact that we couldn’t have a child. But you have always been so very hard to sound out. Some months when you bled you treated it with the same brisk efficiency as paying the gas bill or taking the bins out. Other times, you were inconsolable, locking yourself away in our room. Those were the worst days, when you didn’t leave the bed and I spent hours attuned to your every move. With every shift of weight on the floorboards above, my heart pounded with the hope that it was over now, that you were getting your dressing gown on and coming down to my outstretched arms. When I heard the flush of the toilet and the bedroom door shutting again, my whole body ached.

  But as months became years and the years rolled on, those days became fewer and further apart. We were good together, the two of us, and, as I saw it, growing better with each passing day. Marriage suited us, didn’t it, Mags? As we marked five, ten, fifteen years together with a candlelit meal out, two cards, and something other than the second-cheapest bottle of wine on the list, we could revel in the good life that we had built. We eased into each other, like shoes that require a little patience to wear in but that come to fit so perfectly you cannot so much as fathom the existence of another pair.

  I could curl my index finger and thumb and know exactly how much spaghetti would do us both. Not a strand more, not a strand less. We reveled in long suppers together and long weekends away, the freedom to lie in on a Sunday. I can still see you now, sorting the supplements into two piles: technology and sports for me, the magazine and arts review for you. You always read faster and, in a bid to distract me the moment your attention was up, you would begin to fashion the main broadsheet into a paper roof of sorts, propping the edges behind the headboard. I’d give it two minutes (maximum) of you kissing down my neck until I abandoned the sports section entirely. Do you remember how crinkled the paper would be afterward? It must have made an ungodly racket.

  I lived to make you happy, and I feel no less of a man to admit that. I brought things home that I knew would make you smile: Mateus rosé on the first sunny day of the year, which you would chill and then crack open on the patio. When the sun began to go down, I would head in to bring you your shawl, knowing that you liked to eke out every last drop of warmth on your face. I would even put your slippers on for you like a cheap and cheerful knockoff of Prince Charming. Then I would look at you, my polar bear in twenty-degree heat, and it would be so silly that the two of us would fall about laughing until it was dark. As I watched you carry in the glasses, I knew you made me the luckiest man in the world.

  I remember exactly where I was standing when you told me that this was all about to change. I was in the study, pacing by the window, the final clue in the Times cryptic on the tip of my tongue, tapping a battered blue Biro against my front teeth in an attempt to conjure it.

  “Oh, Frank, will you stop pacing, it makes me nervous.” You appear at the door, never shut in those days, in a gingham apron dusty with flour.

  “How could it possibly make you nervous from the kitchen?” I feign exasperation but take a seat, to humor you.

  “Frank, please.”

  “All right, all right. If it’s the guests making you this stressed, you should have said. We could have canceled.”

  “It’s not that, Frank. That’s fine. It’s under control.”

  “Then what?”

  “Do you have five minutes for a chat?”

  What a peculiar thing to ask your husband. I had signed up for a lifetime of five-minute chats. In your case, they usually came out at more like five hours anyway, what with the tangents and the inevitable embellishments.

  “I know we have Jack and Sarah for supper, but I’d rather just say this now . . .”

  It is then that I realize you are nervous, gathering the skirt of your apron in both hands and twisting it back and forth in a thick spiral.

  “Go on then, Mags. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  I drop the paper on the desk and come over to you, releasing the fabric, now crumpled into a thousand tiny creases, and taking your trembling hands in mine.

  “Whatever it is, Maggie, we’ll be fine. You know that
.”

  “Well, it’s not bad news. Just . . . unexpected. Yes, certainly unexpected.” You are off now, and I know better than to interrupt. “The thing is, Frank, I’m . . . well . . . I’m pregnant.”

  Silence.

  I realize now that you only ever get one chance at a first response and that mine have always been lacking. Somewhere in the shock and sudden flash of terror, I notice you looking up at me expectantly. I am still holding your hands and give them a tight squeeze.

  “Look, Frank, I know this is unexpected—”

  “Yes, quite the word I was after,” I mutter. It has been fifteen years since we met, fifteen years since the miscarriage. We would have had a teenager by now. “Unexpected” is an understatement.

  You laugh gently. “But don’t you see, Frank, we’ve wanted this for so long, and maybe it was just when we stopped thinking about it that it happened. Nature took its course—a bloody long one, but . . . well . . . it’s a miracle, really.”

  I take a step into the gap between us and let my lips linger on the place on your forehead where a little flour has landed and diffused. It takes me back to one of our early dates, a picnic on a rug in Port Meadow on one of the first days of spring, our eating intermittently interrupted by you blowing the fuzz from dandelion clocks onto the surrounding grass.

  “Oh, Frank, you’ll be a brilliant father—just you wait and see.”

  In the kitchen, a timer begins its aggressive beeping, calling your attention away.

  “God, is that the time? Right, Frank, they’ll be here soon. Don’t mention this, though? We’ll speak more after. There’s a fresh shirt for you on the door upstairs . . .” You are already off, your voice calling down the hallway.

  I wish I could have said something, the right thing, then, instead of giving you just an openmouthed gawp. I knew how delighted you must have been, Mags, and there is nothing worse than someone throwing a dampener on one’s happiness, even if it is entirely unintentional. I’m sorry. If I could go back and replay that all again, I would do so much better. I would manage some proper enthusiasm with my wide-eyed surprise. I know I would.

  In any other circumstances, supper would have been an easy affair. But that night? My mind was all over the place, and anywhere but on the beef bourguignon. How had this happened? At some point in the years following the miscarriage, you saw a doctor. Several, in fact. You had test after test. I had a few too. Weeks went by and then, eventually, a meeting for us both. They said it was unlikely, given the circumstances of the first pregnancy. Unlikely but not impossible, I reminded you as we walked home from the bus stop. You didn’t look convinced. And as the years went by? Well, the needle slipped from unlikely ever more toward impossible.

  I am brought back to the room with a thump. Sarah’s fist lands on the table, steadying her as she laughs uncontrollably at something you have said. I catch a glimpse of you, mid-anecdote, your torso thrust over the green beans and your fork dangerously close to Jack’s upper arm. I can’t remember the last time I have seen you so uninhibited. One hundred percent light, not one speck of darkness to be found. When our eyes meet, I give you the smile that tells you I am over the shock, that I have processed it. I hope it also tells you how much this means to me too.

  When we did discuss it the next day, properly, that was when the excitement kicked in. You were twelve weeks at that stage. We talked about the room we would do up and the cot we would buy, the leave we could take. Finally, when we ate out, we could look at the families at the circular tables set aside for them and know that it would soon be us. I insisted on carrying your handbag, collected anything that fell on the floor. At night, I knew the exact spot on your lower back that I needed to massage to help you get some sleep.

  In fact, I became so accustomed to our new normal that I almost forgot the pregnancy had an end point.

  “Frank! Frank! We need to go.” Your voice ricochets down the stairs.

  I am slow to unearth myself from whatever review I am immersed in.

  “Frank!”

  When I get out to the hallway, I can see you have only made it down one stair and that you are gripping the bannister with both hands. Behind you on the landing, a dark pool on the carpet where your waters have broken. I don’t move. I never have had a head for logistics, have I, Mags?

  “Phone. Now.”

  It takes me such a while to find the phone, buried as always under the papers or one of those pointless sofa cushions you love so much, that by the time I am back you have made it down the stairs by yourself. You are folded as far forward over the bannister as your bump allows, fists pressed into the wall. I try to rub my hand over the base of your spine, but you wriggle it off.

  “How long?” Each syllable comes out like a huff. I try to tell myself it isn’t me, not altogether convincingly.

  “Ten minutes max. Can I get you anything? Tea? Water?”

  I have no idea what I’m saying. I half expect you to bite my head off but instead you just don’t reply. Every few seconds you exhale with such force that I wonder if it would be worth sourcing the sick bucket.

  “Bag. Shoes!” you shout. I know where the bag is; it hasn’t moved for weeks. I have nearly tripped over it on at least three occasions, the canvas straps tangling with my laces. Your shoes are quite another matter. I find something slip-on in our bedroom, comfy, I think, until we have to deal with navigating them onto your swollen feet.

  “How much longer, Frank?” You have started kicking your shoe against the wall in time with your breaths.

  “Er . . .” I check my watch. It’s been fifteen. I figure it is better not to tell you that. “Soon, soon, darling. Here.” I weave my fingers under yours, and they are slammed hard against the wall, the bones crunching together as you press down.

  It is then that the paramedics arrive with the right equipment and, fortunately for one of us, the right words. When we arrive at the hospital, I cannot tell if I am welcome in the room with you. There are scores of people offering their medical advice and intervention. I feel inadequate, just offering my hand, and even that manages to get in the way. On the pretense of heading to the vending machines, I take the opportunity to grab some fresh air outside the labor ward. By the time I get back, there is a bundle in your arms.

  I missed it.

  “Eleanor,” you whisper, transfixed on her tiny head, bluish purple and mottled. “Will you hold her?”

  I nod.

  You pass her over, and suddenly she is crying and I am crying and there is no feeling on earth like it. I press Eleanor up against my nose so I can smell her and examine the folds on her tiny hooded eyelids. I don’t want to squeeze her in case I hurt her. And the relief. She is safe and you are safe and I know then that whatever I have done before or since is nothing. Nothing if I can’t keep her safe.

  Chapter 9

  “I hear our Maggie isn’t quite ready to wake up yet.” In Daisy’s hand, there is a basin with a sponge.

  “Yes,” I mumble. I feel ashamed, as if this is somehow my fault. It is my fault. Perhaps not medically, but she wouldn’t be here if we had talked, if I hadn’t shut down. I only did it to protect Maggie, and look where that has left us.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Daisy says, shutting the door lightly behind her. “And don’t give up what you are doing either, Frank. I walk past and I see you talking to her. You obviously have a good story to tell her.”

  “I’m not sure about that. It’s just . . . us, I suppose. Our story.”

  “Well, whatever it is, it is doing her good, even if we can’t see it yet. Less thinking, more talking. You can think again when she is back with us.”

  Back with us. I can’t begin to imagine what that would look like. Hoists? Round-the-clock help? It is terrifying, but no more so than the alternative.

  It appears I am not the only one on borrowed time. When I don’t respond, Daisy shakes the basin to startle me out of my reverie. “Right, then, Frank, I was going to give Maggie a bath. But I can get
someone else to come back later—what would you prefer?”

  “I don’t want to get in the way.” Gently I remove my hand from beneath Maggie’s and begin to stand up.

  “Do you want to help?” Daisy offers. “With the bath? We can do it together. Then I’ll leave you two in peace.”

  I am unsure how to respond. In my mind I reel through all the times I have washed Maggie. Always when she was at her lowest ebb, too weak to move. Even so, it feels almost too intimate, as if this is something I shouldn’t be intruding on.

  Daisy senses my hesitation, even with her back to me, as she fills the bowl with warm water from the sink.

  “Look, Frank, it’s easy, I promise you. I can talk you through it.”

  She comes around to stand beside me and places the basin on the chair where I have been sitting.

  “First we need to get this loosened.” Daisy reaches behind Maggie’s head, gently propping it up on her forearm while she undoes the ties of her gown. Her motions are smooth and slow, trained not to disturb the fragile network of machinery keeping Maggie alive.

  Daisy wriggles the fabric down, exposing Maggie’s neck, shoulders, and chest, pulling the gown as far as it will go without taking her arms out. I am struck by how thin Maggie has become, her collarbones jutting out like sharp shelves, her ribs visible in the cavity between her breasts. When we touched in the past months, it was in the darkness, our hunger so great that the details of our bodies evaporated and the comfort of touch stretched like a blanket between us. I see now how pain has hollowed Maggie out. How it has scooped out her soul and left just its bony surrounds.

  “We just want to moisten Maggie, to keep her fresh. Just a little water under her arms, around her neck.” Daisy has wrung out the sponge and passes it to me with one hand while supporting Maggie’s torso with the other. “That’s right, lovely, easy does it.”

  I run the sponge over Maggie’s chest and watch how the gauzy skin glistens temporarily with the moisture before absorbing it back to quench its thirst. I move the sponge up to her neck, carefully weaving it between the few strands of hair that fall down below her chin. I watch as a single drop of excess water, plump and heavy, trickles down from below her earlobe, skirts the bright blue veins of her throat, and then traces its path down her chest, coming to rest on the bunched fabric of her gown. There is such tenderness to its progress, slow and halting; I remember how my fingers felt running there for the first time, the last time too. I wish the times in between felt less indistinct.