Emma wished she had such conviction. Nothing seemed to make perfect sense at the moment.
‘But what about after all this? What about five years from now, if we aren’t in contact and we meet new people, and our only option is to have a baby with each other?’ Emma was whispering, not wanting the staff to be aware that their next-of-kin status wasn’t all it was made up to be. She didn’t want to be a pessimist, but they needed to be pragmatic about this. It wasn’t a decision to be made lightly.
‘But we don’t know what life will be like five years from now. We don’t even know what it’ll be like five months from now. All we know is what we have here and now, and if they’re saying this gives us the best chance, we should take it.’
‘This’ll tie us together forever, you realise that?’
‘Does it scare you?’
Lots of things scared Emma at that moment. The thought of Nathan falling asleep and not waking up again. Her surgery and how well it would go. Leaving her mother behind all alone. There were so many things to frighten her, yet the thought of having a baby with Nathan in the future didn’t seem like one of them. Instead it sounded like a delightful impossibility. ‘It doesn’t scare me. I’m more scared about the possibility it might never happen.’
‘In that case, let’s go and make sure it can happen.’
Emma nodded in agreement. There were so many things to overthink, but this wasn’t one of them. Who knew where they were going to be in the future? Letting their DNA forge together was for the purpose of preserving hope.
Whatever their future might hold, it should contain as much of that as possible.
Nathan’s Diary
Ever since the surgery, I’ve been living in a fog. Things that are supposed to be straightforward have become complicated, and those that are simple have become complex.
While I was under, the dream continued on repeat. I kept hearing that baby crying over and over and like before, I still don’t know what it means. What could it ever possibly mean?
But what they told us in the appointment – that a frozen embryo would have a greater chance of success in the future than if we were to freeze our eggs and sperm separately – that’s when I knew.
I knew we should do it. We should create life and see where it takes us.
Thirty
Emma
Emma was doing her best not to get involved in the discussion between her mother and Nathan.
‘Honestly, it’s not a problem, and I’ll have no further arguments over it. It works out for the best right now. We have to go with the solutions life presents us with.’ Carole had been well and truly in charge over the past week.
‘Only if you’re sure. I don’t want to intrude,’ Nathan said.
‘Stop worrying and go and put your bag upstairs.’ Emma’s mum pointed a finger that no one should argue with, even if it was trembling.
Without any help from Emma, over the past few days her mother had been sorting out everything she feasibly could to make life easier. She’d organised herself a morning and evening carer so the responsibility wouldn’t fall to Emma. She’d finally got hold of her electric wheelchair and was learning to whizz through the house without the help of her daughter. She’d set up online shopping with the help of Emma’s brother, who might not be good at visiting but was a technology whizz.
‘How are you feeling, sweetie? Have a seat, would you?’ It was like the front room had become a command centre from which her mother was going to take charge of everything.
Emma sat. Thankfully her bum wasn’t hurting from the hormone injection.
‘Are you sure this is okay? I know you’ve said it is, but I don’t want to impose.’ Nathan re-joined them, having deposited his bag, and sat next to Emma on the couch. His weight pulled her a little closer to him. It was good to have his warmth back.
‘It’s a vacant room. There’s no way I’ll be getting up there to use it. If your housemates aren’t going to be any help while you’re recovering, then it’s better that you stay here. At least, between Emma and I, we can keep an eye on whether you’re doing okay.’ Carole moved her chair slightly, something Emma was yet to get used to.
Emma knew what her mother really meant was that they’d be around in case Nathan slipped back into a coma. As they hadn’t worked out why it had happened in the first place, the doctors hadn’t provided great reassurances over the likelihood of it not happening again.
‘It’s really good of you. Thank you,’ Nathan replied.
‘I don’t think the doctors would have let you out without knowing someone would be around to keep an eye on you for the next couple of days,’ Emma said. All of Nathan’s flatmates worked full-time and none of them were able to drop work for anything less than a family emergency. Babysitting housemates didn’t seem to count.
‘Well, I’m glad to be here.’
‘And we’re glad to have you,’ Emma’s mother said.
She was right: Emma was glad too. After the worry of the past few days, it was reassuring to have him in the house, able to check on him as necessary.
It wasn’t long before her mum’s favourite game shows were on and not long after that her carer turned up. Nathan and Emma retreated upstairs. Emma felt a bit of a fraud, as she was perfectly well at the moment and would have happily sorted her mother’s dinner and put her to bed.
‘Are you okay if I come into your room? I feel weird just holing myself up in your mum’s room.’
‘Of course.’ Emma tried to say it in a chilled manner, like she was used to having handsome men spending time in her bedroom.
She was suddenly acutely aware of every item she had in her bedroom, as if looking at them for the first time. Pebbles that she’d found at beaches and turned into paperweights; an entire shelf of notepads filled with unfinished poems and story ideas. Even the books said things about her that she might not have wanted anyone to know: her penchant for bird watching, for a start. But here they were on display, the intimate parts of her nature out on show. She hadn’t realised that inviting someone into her own space would be quite so revealing.
Nathan started browsing the shelves. ‘What book were you reading to me at the hospital?’
Emma sat on the edge of her bed, not entirely sure where to place herself in her own space now she had company. ‘I didn’t realise you knew I’d read to you. I didn’t think you were awake.’
‘I wasn’t. I just thought you probably would have. Was it any of these?’
‘No, I figured my tastes differed to yours slightly.’
‘I never have spent enough time reading.’
There was an awkward silence for a couple of minutes while Nathan browsed the books on the shelves and Emma failed to find the right words. It wasn’t easy when she wasn’t sure what was going on between them.
‘We should choose the name for your charity and get together a list of things we need to do.’ Emma decided the best thing to do was to talk about something practical.
‘And we need to sort out your trip to go and see puffins. We have to try and fit that in before you have surgery. You might not feel like it for a while after that. I can research it, if you like? Check how easy the travel will be and see if we can get the ball rolling.’
Knowing how quickly Nathan had got her mother into the air, Emma was pretty certain, if he put himself in charge of arranging something, it would happen soon. ‘That would be great,’ she said, still not sure what to say or how to act. So much had happened since their kiss. There was every possibility he might not even remember it.
Emma yawned. It was still early evening, but it wasn’t a surprise to find that, after the past twenty-four hours, traces of exhaustion were beginning to show.
‘You need to sleep and get some rest. I’ll make sure your mum is okay. You have an early night,’ Nathan said, noticing her tiredness.
There had been far too many shifts in who was the carer and who was patient in the past few days. She wasn’t ready to take on the patient rol
e yet, but Nathan was right about her needing to rest. The last few days had left her exhausted to her core.
‘You need to rest too.’ Not that Emma wanted to push him out of her room. ‘You’ve been awake since three. You must be tired?’ If there was any hope that Nathan was going to make a move on her, it disappeared as he made his way towards the door.
‘I still feel strangely awake. I reckon I could go without sleep for another day or two. Being over-anaesthetised obviously comes with some benefits.’
‘Not sleeping isn’t a good thing.’ Emma couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something different about Nathan since he’d woken up. There was an unease in his character she’d not noticed before. ‘Come here.’ She patted a space on the bed beside her. Maybe if they closed the gap between them, things wouldn’t feel so strange.
Nathan hesitated for a moment, like he might take her up on her invite, but then thinking better of it, pulled away. ‘You need to get your rest. I’ll go and do some work. Because right now, not sleeping means not dreaming and I’m not going to miss doing that. Goodnight, Emma.’ Nathan waved goodbye as he drifted out of her bedroom.
Her heart sunk. Was the Nathan she’d brought home from the hospital the same one she’d taken there only a few days before? He was quieter and somehow less engaged, his rebuffing of her invitation proof of that. He was moving in the same way and saying all the right things, but there was something missing.
Of course, if he had no memory of their kiss on the morning of his botched surgery, that might explain it. His body language didn’t demonstrate any knowledge of their tryst. And so Emma was at a loss as to how to behave. They’d agreed to become parents together in the future, and yet she felt crushingly far apart from a man she’d felt so close to only a few days before.
The way he’d kissed her before they reached the hospital had her thinking he’d remove her clothes on the street given half a chance. This evening it was like such a thought had never existed in their lifetime. They were back to being strangers. United solely by their lumps.
Tiredness made Emma curl up into bed without changing into pyjamas or cleaning her teeth. Things like that seemed far too orderly and in keeping with normality. She felt neither of those right now.
She felt like she was stuck on the end of a parachute, but not with the wind gently guiding her in one direction. Instead it was pulling and shifting and pushing her this way and that. The responsibilities that were hers, the circumstances she never thought she would be in, the friendship that was more and yet not. All those strings and threads made her wonder if she was doing anything right.
It made her realise how a day had the power to change everything. That the things that could make somebody happy one moment might entirely shift and alter by the next. With each hour that passed, the landscape was changing. Sometimes, instead of never wasting an hour, she wanted to cling on to them so they wouldn’t ever pass.
It was hard when the needs of each person in this house and Emma’s life were altering.
Her mum had moved from an isolated woman to the person in charge.
Emma was no longer the carer, and soon she would need to be cared for.
Nathan had shifted from friend to something more, while, at the same time, something less. If only Emma wasn’t too tired to establish what. It was a pity she wasn’t able to stay awake, because who knew how much the landscape would change by morning.
Thirty-One
Nathan
There were sixty seconds in a minute.
There were sixty minutes in an hour.
The average adult human slept for seven to eight hours a night.
Nathan knew all these facts to be true.
He knew all these things because his brain had switched to hyperdrive. When they’d told him how long he’d been sleeping, it almost made sense because of the number of times he’d had the dream on repeat. Not once or twice, but a relentless cycle. It had been a never-ending whirr that wouldn’t switch off, and in his comatose state his confused thoughts had continued. What did this recurring snippet mean? And why had it changed?
Sadly, his almost meditative state hadn’t presented any answers. It had only fuelled his sense of concern. Right now he was trawling through the internet in the hope of shutting down some of those thoughts. He’d been doing it for more hours than anyone should in the middle of the night. It was an attempt to fill his head with noise while the rest of the house was quietly sleeping.
Being in someone else’s bedroom wasn’t helping. He didn’t want to go raiding drawers in the hope of finding entertainment – not when that would entail looking through Carole’s personal possessions. There were trinkets of jewellery on the dressing table, alongside half-finished embroidery projects. An unblinking doll peering at him as if he were doing something wrong.
And there it was again. It didn’t take much to trigger the memory.
Even awake, the dream presented itself whole and uncensored. It was like it wanted to be felt. It didn’t want to leave him.
Trying to make as little sound as possible, he grabbed a hoodie from his bag and threw it over the doll. The eyes were creeping him out and making him think of the last part of the dream. The new part. The baby crying. He’d taken it as a push towards deciding with Emma to have the fertility treatment. But what if, rather than encouragement, it was a warning?
Surely a man who’d been dreaming of his own death all his life should welcome this new variation? Surely a baby represented hope? A future that would continue even if he was gone. That was what he was trying to ensure happened, after all. But part of him was terrified.
Was the dream some kind of warning? The thought had been pulling at him for more hours than he cared to recall. Perhaps the dream had delivered the knowledge that he might die in order to make him pay more attention to the lump. Goodness knows how long he might have ignored the anomaly otherwise. And in the same way, perhaps the crying baby was a warning of a different kind. Maybe it was warning him not to risk becoming a father right now.
It was like chasing vapour trails. He was rational enough to know that none of it made sense. He just wasn’t smart enough to work out what to do.
All he knew was that it was his ridiculous non-stop thinking that was preventing him from being snuggled up with Emma right now. He’d seen the look in her eye. He knew she’d wanted more than a cosy chat. If he got that close to her, he knew he’d want to do more than just talk as well.
And he had to put a stop to that.
He knew he was overthinking everything, but the dream, going over and over in his head, was stopping him from seeing straight.
However much he wanted to have children in the future, he didn’t want to do anything to jeopardise the here and now. And because he’d been awake for too many hours, his imagination was in overdrive with the possibility of getting Emma pregnant.
Making love always held the potential to create life, and now that she’d started fertility treatment to allow the harvesting of her eggs, that chance would be even stronger.
That’s why things had to stop. It was a decision. It was a responsibility. They couldn’t risk doing something that might end up having consequences for Emma’s health.
The noise was so clear in his head it was impossible to drown it out. He’d tried with various methods, but even the sound of his favourite band, the Smashing Pumpkins, wasn’t working.
Inside his head there was a baby crying. Not a contented, happy cry. Not the gnarly cry of a baby that needed to be fed or burped or have its nappy changed.
It was the cry of a baby without a mother.
Nathan knew he couldn’t sleep with Emma. Because if he did and she fell pregnant, he already knew who she’d choose to save.
She would stop treatment.
She would save the baby.
And he couldn’t let that happen.
Nathan’s Diary
It’s amazing what you can get done in the wee small hours when it’s impossible to
sleep. I’ve been more productive in one night than I have in a long time. Anything to distract me, so that my thoughts don’t drift to the dream.
I’ve looked into indoor skydiving and have decided I’ll fund Rudi’s first dip into the sport.
I’ve done everything I can from behind a laptop to get the ball rolling to set up a charity.
I’ve planned and booked Emma’s trip to see puffins.
I have not yet ventured on to world domination. I don’t think I’m ready for that in this lifetime, especially when my days are numbered. Besides, there’s only so much you can do when everyone else is sleeping.
The point is, distraction is key at the moment.
Anything else means giving in to the reality…
Emma has cancer.
Pretty soon, I’m sure I’ll find out I hold the same fate. Every day from now on is a blessing. I’m regarding nights without sleep as a precious gift of extra time – and time shouldn’t be wasted.
Thirty-Two
Emma
Day Twenty-Eight
‘Wake up! You need to pack your bags.’
Emma wasn’t even out from under the duvet yet. She preferred to enjoy at least one cup of tea in the morning before talking to anyone. She normally made one on the sly before her mother woke up, sneaking it up to her bedroom to enjoy the combination of early morning caffeine and silence.
‘What for?’ Her voice was still a croak.
‘Puffins.’
Not only did Emma need fluid on board to help operate her speech, she also needed food for her brain to function. ‘What puffins?’
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