My Book

by Alam, Donna

  ‘You might’ve said before we left.’

  ‘Mum, Dad, for goodness sakes. You’re upsetting the kids.’

  At my light-hearted intervention, Olivia murmurs and apology, but there’s not necessities for her husband.

  ‘You should really have a round the clock driver on staff in case anything like this ever happens again.’

  ‘God forbid,’ I whisper, and the car goes quiet again.

  ‘What I can’t understand is, if he was on the way to the wedding, why has he been taken to a hospital nearer? St George’s is miles away. There are nearer—p

  Beckett presses his hand over his wife’s, his gaze, for the moment, intent on hers.

  ‘Why?’ I ask. If Olivia isn’t allowed to ask, tell me.

  Beckett sighs heavily, flicks the blinker, and begins to turn the car into a corner.

  ‘Because St George’s is the leading trauma centre in London for brain injuries.’

  ‘It’s probably just a precaution.’ Despite her words, Olivia’s expression is grim. But I don’t have the bandwidth to process any of it as I tighten my hands over my stomach and begin to pray.

  * * *

  Beckett takes charge at the hospital, herding Olivia and I as though we’re hens. Down a corridor, the scent of disinfectant cloying as small things register during our hustle.

  Automatic doors buzz open.

  Industrial sized dispenses of hand sanitiser with signs of instructions for use.

  The squeak of rubber against shiny floors.

  The rustle of uniforms and scrubs.

  Then we’re bustled into a room where faces greet us, but not the one we’re here to see.

  ‘How did you get here so fast?’ I ask, as Heather stands, her hair in disarray.

  ‘Griffin, he had his bike.’

  ‘Your mum will kill you when she finds out.’

  Olivia greets a man with dark hair, pressing a kiss to his cheek, but it’s Beckett I’m watching as he take a sea next to the man who could be James in forty years or so. The man, Thomas, holds his head in his hands, and then I begin to belatedly wonder why we aren’t standing around a hospital bed because this isn’t a hospital room. This is a room they put families when they have to break bad news.

  I blink rapidly, though I can’t take my eyes off the two men on the chairs. His dad’s head rises, his gaze red and watery. I feel Heather’s arm tighten on my shoulder as she tries to get me to move, but I’m too busy trying to process what’s being said at the other side of the room.

  He died. James died at the scene of the accident.

  Like a judges gavel or the reaper’s scythe, the finality of this sweeps my legs from under me.

  38

  Miranda

  ‘This too shall pass. It sounds like something you’d say to a kidney stone.’

  I close the magazine I wasn’t really reading, placing it on the bed. My comment goes unremarked upon. One day though, I know.

  Traffic trundles past the window, the working hums of the hospital carries from the other side of the door. These sounds are all now as familiar to me as my own sigh.

  ‘Come on. You usually like my jokes.’

  There comes no answer, just the stead rasp of his breath as I reach out and rub my fingers over the coarse golden hairs on his wrist.

  James died on the last Saturday in September, on the most beautiful day of the autumn so far. His death was brief, and his guardian angel wore a uniform that day. She was there to save him when his body went into Ventricular Fibrillation. He was shocked twice before reaching the hospital. He died, and they brought him back to life, and for that, I have insufficient words to convey thanks.

  The man I love, while on the way to attend the wedding of his best friend, met with a drunk driver in a side impact b pillar collision. In other words, James’s car was T-boned. The car was totalled, and didn’t fair much better when the fire crew arrived to cut him out.

  He’s suffered three fractured ribs and an open tibia fracture with blood loss complications. But the more pressing concern was the subarachnoid haemorrhage as a result of his brain being battered against the walls of his skull on impact.

  It’s almost impossible to describe the elation I felt as I’d discovered cI’d misread the situation in that bland little family suite on the side of the emergency room. Elation that turned to despair when Thomas and I were finally allowed to see him. At first, I didn’t believe it could be James—that there had been a mistake. He barely looked human, never mind like himself.

  How could someone do this to him?

  Swollen, bruised and battered, I wanted to hold him, comfort him, but I could barely reach him through the web of tubes and wires and monitors and IVs and other things I couldn’t even name.

  I stood dumbfounded, silent tears streaming down my face. And then I realised I wasn’t the only one crying. Thomas stood next to me, sorrow etched in his face so acutely, I could only watch on.

  No parent should have to see their child suffering.

  The realisation was the prompt I needed. I wouldn’t allow our child to suffer my worry. And I would carry his—Thomas’s. I took the stranger’s hand in mine and together we approached the bed, waiting for someone to come and tell us what we could expect.

  I didn’t know then, but he had been placed in a medical induced coma for the protection and control of the pressure dynamics of his brain. Who knew sleep really can make you heal? Or maybe that just too simplistic a view, especially as he’s still sleeping. But what do I know? I’m just a marketing manager who is in awe of the people who dedicate their lives to save lives.

  ‘Knock-knock. A blonde head appears around the half open door, halo of soft curls framing her sunny smile. Lisa is the first of the many people since September the twenty-eighth who’ve had a hand in saving James’s life. A paramedic, she was at the scene first. His guardian angel. The woman who brought him back.

  ‘I thought I’d just pop in and see how my favourite patient is doing.’ This isn’t the first time she’s called in to see us, each time bringing her very own brand of wry wit.

  ‘Your favourite, eh?’

  ‘Well, since about half-past two.’ She twists her wrist, glancing at the face of her watch. ‘When my original favourite left the building.’

  Did I say wry wit? Maybe I meant a gallows type humour.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ And a little appalled, but being a medical professional must, at some point, make you appeal a little ghoulish to those not in the trade. I can’t ever be upset with her, not after all she’s done, even if I have the sudden urge to cover his ears against more. ‘It must be awful when you lose a patient.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t lose him, love. He just went home with his mum earlier today.’

  Coming farther into the room, she does what everyone seems to do when they walk in here, and that’s lift then peruse the chart hanging from the bottom of his hospital bed. That’s professional and visitors both; everyone seems to be drawn to look. Though the nurses so do in a medical capacity, jotting down measurements after administering meds, checking vitals, and measuring urine output. But the poor girl who checked his catheter last actually winced before shooting me a strangled smile.

  I’ve no idea what that was about.

  ‘Yeah, I helped deliver my favour patient last week at the side of a MacDonald’s drive through. A preemie baby.’

  ‘Oh!’ And phew. ‘How lovely.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a sweet little thing.’ She hangs the chart back. ‘So, how’s he doing? Are you seeing any change?’

  ‘Well, your conversation skills sucks, I’m sorry to say.’ I rub his forearm, including him in the discussion.

  I might not have picked up many of the baby books James ordered, but I’ve read a literal tonne of literature on traumatic brain injuries. It seems lots of coma patients have reported that, while unconscious and uncommunicative, they could actually hear things going on around them. So Thomas and I make it a point of including hi
m in our often one-sided conversations. Even when we’re watching TV in this room, which is more often than not a tea-time game show, we compete, totting up our scores as we go, which means James always loses.

  I keep hoping he’ll call us out one day in a fit of annoyance.

  Please.

  ‘But you’re also getting prettier to look at, so there is that.’ I try to inject a little levity in my tone, as I try for everyone. But it’s true that some of the swelling has reduced and he’s looking a little more human.

  ‘He’s got a lot of colour, for sure.’

  She’s right, but she’s not commenting on his skin like you would after a friend has been on holiday but the full colour palette of bruising.

  ‘But other than that, nothing. But we’ve got lots of time. Haven’t we?’

  The latter comes out as a tiny question, a question that’s already been answered by the doctors several times. James is no longer in a medically induced coma. That only lasted for a few days, enough to give the medical staff time to assess his injuries, as well as help reduce the swelling and inflammation around his brain.

  And this is where we are now. He’s breathing on his own and we’re just waiting for him to wake. Three days in a forced coma and now four more on his own.

  According to the neuro-specialists, James can get better, becoming more alert, or else the coma will evolve, which sounds much less positive that it is. An evolved coma is otherwise known as a vegetative state. This is an outcome I refuse to acknowledge.

  Lisa hangs out with us for while more before heading home after a gruelling twelve hour shift. Before she leave she give me the kind of hug you can’t help but feel fortified by. Some people are just good, and Lisa definitely falls into this category.

  * * *

  Please, if you’re listening, let him wake.

  Another day, another evening.

  I rest my head on the mattress as send a prayer to a God I’m only just coming to know. These past days have been a whirlwind of knowledge building through medical texts and the internet, as well as the kind of knowledge seeking that includes the quest for divine intervention. And in the quiet hours, it’s hard to avoid reaching inside myself to feel my shame. I know I’m not at fault for the current state of body, but I wonder if it would’ve made a difference if I’d shared the knowledge of my love with him.

  I spent weeks avoiding my feelings, and in this avoidance I also kept my love from him. I can’t help but feel that, if I hadn’t denied it, maybe he wouldn’t have been in that car at all. He would’ve left with me earlier, and we’d have held hands in the back seat while his driver pretended not to look. James would be whole and his Vanquish stowed away in his garage, not lying somewhere in bits.

  ‘We haven’t had enough time,’ I whisper, my words strangled with tears I’m finding hard to restrain, when a hand comes to rest between my shoulder blades.

  ‘A lifetime isn’t long enough for love.’

  ‘Thomas, I thought you were done for the day.’ Like me, Thomas spends most of his day here, chatting to me, reminiscing one-sidedly with his son. Earlier, we’d watched The Chase together and eaten a dinner of sandwiches I’d grabbed from the cafeteria before he left for home.

  ‘Marjory, my next door neighbour, popped in with a casserole. I thought, well I thought I’d bring you some. You’re not eating enough for a girl in your condition.’

  ‘I’m eating fine.’ I rub the soft rise of my belly, though in truth, I don’t have much of an appetite.

  ‘Anyway, here you go.’ He passes me a thermos flask, taking a seat in the other chair next to the bed.

  ‘How are Pawdry Hepburn and David Meowie?’

  ‘Who?’ His thick grey brows lower and he leans closer as though worried he’s misheard.

  ‘The cats next door?’ Of course, they might not be Marjorie’s. Too many houses have passed since them.

  ‘Ah!’ Those ugly chicken-y looking things. Well, that makes sense now.’

  ‘Does it?’ I ask, my voice a little tremulous still.

  ‘He must’ve taken a shine to you then because he called me, you know, asking for the name of the agency Marjorie used. He was obviously after was after tracking you down.’

  ‘You said you’d buy a goldfish, remember?’ No answer.

  ‘My boy! Please tell me he didn’t approach you like that.’

  ‘No.’ I smile. ‘I work for Beckett’s wife. That’s my main job, and we just sort of bumped into each other one evening, didn’t we?’ More like you bumped into me drunk, I can almost hear him say.

  ‘He loves you, you know.’ I nod. Swallow. Lean down and graze my lips over a patch of James’s skin. ‘Did he say?’

  ‘Yes. That morning. And I didn’t say it back.’ I break out into gulping, painful sobs.

  ‘Hush, now.’ Thomas pulls his chair next to mine and slides his arm across my shoulders to give me a very proper kind of hug. ‘Here, blow your nose, m’dear.’

  I try my eyes and blow my nose, doing as I’m told. It’s hard not to. Thomas has an innate kind of authority that I’ve seen reflected in his son. Except Thomas’s takes an avuncular direction, while James is more like, take off all of your clothes.

  ‘God, I miss him.’

  ‘Me, too. But we keep the faith, he whispers quietly. ‘Just as he would do. Just as he did with you, I know.’

  ‘How can you say that? How could he have known if I didn’t tell him?’

  ‘Quite simple. You see the chain your wearing? It was his Mothers. When she was diagnosed with cancer, she found it started to affect her hands. Something to do with the nerves, the cancer causing numbness. They swelled terribly, too. And she stopped wearing her wedding ring. Now, this necklace,’ he adds, pointing at the brilliant sitting against my chest. ‘This was her engagement ring, and for Mother’s Day, James used his own money to have the stone from the ring set into a mount. We knew she was dying.’ His gaze falls away for a beat, his memory slipping back to that awful time. ‘We were prepared for the one thing you cannot prepare for, and my boy wanted to bring a little happiness into her life.

  ‘She was overjoyed to be able to wear the ring. And she told him, that when she passed, he was to keep the necklace for his wife. His wife, Miranda. He knows you love him. You’re wearing the evidence of that around your neck. Love, dare I say it, pays no attention to age, or station, or gender. It is completely indiscriminate. And let me tell you, any chance you get to experience it, grab it with both hands. Revel in it.’ He reaches for my hand, his fingers almost punishing in their grip. ‘Because you just never know how long you’ll get not keep it. And however long, you’ll find it’s never long enough.

  ‘Now, enough of that. Eat some casserole. I also brought you something to read while you’re here.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I swallow convulsively, my voice hoarse. ‘But Heather brought me some magazines.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I heard you reading an article about winter fashion earlier today.’ I read aloud. You know, so James can hear. ‘And I have to say, if you were reading such drivel to me, I jolly well wouldn’t wake up, either!’

  Okay . . .

  39

  Miranda

  Your mum wanted to come in with me this morning.’ Heather kicks up her feet onto the bottom of the bedframe, folding her hands behind her head.

  ‘Eesh. A Sunday morning visit would’ve been all I needed. Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest. Of peace, not of pecking people’s heads.’ Hooking my hand under her ankles, drop her feet back onto the floor. ‘Were you raised in a barn? Didn’t anyone ever tell you you don’t put dirty shoes on furniture?’

  ‘Harry isn’t complaining. Are you?’

  I open my mouth to complain, then realise I’d be contradicting everything I’ve been saying about not talking over him. I’d gotten a little cross this morning when Griff and Beckett arrived and did just that when discussing yesterday’s football results.

  I think I might be going a little stir crazy.
<
br />   ‘So she’s not coming?’

  ‘Nah, mum persuaded her to stay home. Apparently, she’s going to bake and deliver a quiche and an apple cake to Harry’s place tomorrow because she says she’s worried you’re living on hospital food. And everyone knows that stuff makes you ill.’

  ‘I’m fine. But it’s nice that she would think about me.’

  ‘She’s your mum, Mir, Of course she thinks about you. Granted, she might not have done a great deal of that lately. But it looks like that’s changing. Maybe it’s the thought of becoming a grandmother. Anyway, she wants to help.’

  So I’ll let her. There’s no point saying that Sandy, James’s housekeeper, cooks for the same reasons. Not the grandmotherly reasons. Anyway, I’m rarely there to eat it.

  ‘She’s my mum and I love her. And if she’s decided to act like my mother again, then I think that’d be great.’

  ‘Olivia said you got a little cross with her this morning.’ Talk about a change of direction, though I refrain from asking why my boss and my cousin have been talking about me. Mainly because I’m not sure I want to hear.

  ‘She asked if I wanted her to come with me to my next antenatal appointment.’

  ‘That’s nice of her. You know I’d do it. Your mum mentioned it, too.’

  ‘Then she asked if I had a birthing plan, and who’d be in the suite with me.’ As I speak, I can feel all those reactions from this morning bubbling like lava to the surface. Irritation, rage, hurt, all swirling and red. ‘And I told her, James would be.’

  I said it as though it were one of the ten commandments—an incontrovertible truth.

  Because . . . because I can’t contemplate anything else.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘No, not okay, actually. She said I should have a fallback plan.’

  ‘Oh, babe.’

  ‘So I told her she could fuck right off.’

  ‘She’s only trying to help, Mir.’ Heather’s gaze is as soft as her reply. And though I know they’re all trying their best, I can still feel my eye twitching.