He knew he should arrange to go in and see Tish, the next time he went back to St Thomas’s for his outpatient’s appointment. He really should. He’d let Mo think he was in the loop, acted as if he’d been in to visit her again. Jake wasn’t sure why he’d done that. It was low.
He shifted and his leg throbbed. A wave of self-pity washed over him. The truth was that he wasn’t strong enough. He couldn’t face it. It wasn’t only the physical state of Tish. It was the pressure of dealing with Sal. And Fran and Marcus. All that emotion, all that worry and pent-up love. It was too much. He lay back, closed his eyes and listened to his mum singing along to Freddie Mercury on the radio in the kitchen as she crashed about making tea. It was soothing. Just for now – he decided – he was going to take his mum’s advice, which was to concentrate on getting himself better before he tried to think about anybody else.
Chapter 30
FRAN PUT her arms round Sal and hugged her. People moved past them, barely paying attention. They were in the hospital canteen, the place where relatives came for a break and the staff came to refuel. Crying, hugging, napping, arguing, beeps going off – it was all part of a normal lunchtime.
‘Sorry.’ Sal pulled away and scrubbed the tears off her cheeks with the heel of her hand. Sunlight washed the room. Someone ordered a large portion of chips.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Fran said.
‘No. I am sorry for losing it.’
Fran understood. After the endless weeks of waiting and worrying and stress, with every muscle in your body tensed, it was understandable that when the release came, you fell apart. A change of scene, that was what they needed. ‘Shall we go outside?’ There was a garden with planters and benches that ran alongside the canteen. Sal nodded.
They chose a bench at the far side and sat down. Sal took Fran’s hand. ‘I couldn’t have got through this without you. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Same here.’
‘I mean it.’
‘I know.’
‘I feel bad.
‘For God’s sake, why?’
‘For leaving you and Jess, and Marcus. In there…in that bloody awful place.’
Fran turned to face Sal. ‘It’s fantastic news that Tish is being moved off the ICU. We’re so happy that she’s turned the corner. Look at her now. Drinking on her own. Talking. It’s lovely to see.’ Sal teared up again. Fran chided her, ‘Don’t you dare.’
Sal launched into a frenzy of words. ‘If I think back to when she crashed,’ she swallowed, ‘and now. It’s amazing what’s possible. Once they got on top of the infection…I will keep praying for the same for Jess. You know that, don’t you? Just because I won’t be there, right across the way from you, don’t think that you won’t be in my thoughts. And I’ll text you. All the time. I’ll probably drive you mad. You will text me back when you can, won’t you? I’ll need to know what’s happening. Please, I can’t bear the thought that I won’t know what’s going on with Jess. And be honest. If you need me to come up, I will. I’ll come anyway, to visit, if they let me.’
Fran put her hand over Sal’s. ‘I promise. And I know you’ll be thinking of us.’ She took her hand away. ‘Now, don’t you need to get back upstairs? You’ve got some packing to do.’
Sal stood. Fran didn’t. ‘Aren’t you coming?’
Fran forced a smile. ‘I’m going to have another five or ten minutes of fresh air, then I’ll head back up.’ Sal hesitated. ‘You go. I’ll see you up there.’
Fran watched Sal walk back through the doors and travel the length of the dining room. Even from a distance there was a noticeable change in her gait. She was walking taller, her head up, looking forward – there was a lightness of step that had not been there before. Fran waited until Sal was gone, before letting her head drop into her hands.
There was no lifting of the weight for Fran. Her soul was heavy.
With her eyes closed, she felt the cool breeze on her skin. People walked past her. She kept her head in her hands, trying to reduce herself to a thing without thoughts. Not a mother. Not a wife. Not anything. She concentrated on the sounds – a burst of laughter, the scrape of a chair being pulled out in the dining room, the occasional bleep of the doctors’ pagers, something crashing on the serving hatch. She wished she could stay there for ever.
She couldn’t.
She lifted her head and opened her eyes. With one last glance up at the clear blue sky, she stood up.
Jess lay silent and unmoving up on the ward.
Marcus was sitting beside her, waiting.
They had a decision to make.
Chapter 31
THE MESSAGE went out to All Staff at the beginning of the day. It was read and passed on over and over again. Conversations were had about who could be spared and who could not. Far more wanted to attend than were able, but that was the way it was – even for this. Many of the frontline staff knew immediately that they wouldn’t be able to go. Their presence was required elsewhere. When your day job is a matter of life or death, the living take precedence. A number of people were secretly relieved to be denied permission. It felt wrong not to want to be there and wrong to be thankful to miss it.
Sal didn’t want to attend the vigil, but she felt she had to be there – she owed it to Fran and Marcus. When she emerged from the stairwell onto the corridor she felt very exposed, conscious that there were hundreds of pairs of eyes on her. Thankfully, Aiden, one of the nurses that she recognised from Tish’s time on the ICU, was there. He beckoned to her, creating a space between himself and a colleague, into which she slotted herself. Aiden smiled, his eyes kind. He asked how Tish was getting on. Sal reassured him, briefly, that she was doing well, then they fell silent.
As she stood waiting beside Aiden, on the hushed corridor, Sal’s decision to honour Fran and Marcus’s bravery began to feel like a terrible mistake. She was too close to this. Much, much too close. Their decision could have been hers. It could have been Tish – had very nearly been Tish. Would she have said ‘yes’? It was not a hypothetical question. It was real. Fran and Marcus had sat in a room while their daughter lay in a bed on the ICU ward only metres away, and they had been asked by the medical staff to switch off the machine that was keeping her alive.
How did you make such an unbearable decision?
How could you bear to let them go?
Really. How?
Your own daughter. Your flesh and blood. The person you love more than anyone else in the world. The person you can’t face life without.
And then. Once that impossible decision had been made – on the basis of the best available advice, and after days and nights of agonising contemplation – the doctors had asked the next question. Could the hospital take her organs? Would Fran and Marcus consent to their daughter being cut open and her heart, her lungs, her liver and God knows what else – Sal had heard that they could take the corneas from people’s eyes now – would they give permission for that as well?
How could you agree to such a thing?
Really. How?
If it had been Tish, would she have agreed? Would she have nodded and signed the paperwork, knowing the good it would do, the comfort that was supposed to come from it? Could she have found it within herself to accept that her grief might lead to someone else’s joy? Knowing all that, would Sal have been that brave?
How did you do that?
Really. How?
At 10.37 a.m. two nurses emerged from the ICU and held open the doors. The already hushed corridor fell absolutely silent. Sal leant back against the wall for support, her heart thudding.
They heard the rattle of the trolley first, then the ‘suck, tick-tick’ of the ventilator. Sal glanced down and saw the skin on Aiden’s fingers whiten as he squeezed his hands together. As a medical professional, he must have seen it all before, but he was still human – they all were. The trolley emerged from the ward, flanked by four nurses and a phalanx of machines. Sal recognised the pale-blue blanket that had been keeping Jess
warm for weeks. She concentrated on that, saw the outline of her feet beneath it. Instinctively Sal’s eyes travelled up the blanket to Jess’s face. It was uncovered. Of course it was. She was still alive. Her features were obscured by the clumsy ventilation tubes, but it was still Jess, pale-skinned, her lovely blonde hair – the object of Tish’s envy – a delicate fan around her head. Someone had obviously washed it specially. That’s what was so unbearable: it was still Jess, and yet it was not.
How do you force yourself to go through with it?
Really. How?
When the entourage drew level with Sal, she found herself stepping forward, compelled not to let them pass without some gesture of love and support. The trolley halted. She hugged Marcus, then Fran. Brief, wordless, fierce hugs. They received her affection, but didn’t respond. They felt like solid blocks of grief in her arms. Then the procession moved off again. As it made its way down the corridor, borne forward by the silent prayers of those in attendance, everyone bowed their heads.
Sal didn’t let herself cry until after the lift doors closed.
Chapter 32
THERE WAS no honour guard down on the surgical floor. It was empty.
They moved along the corridor slowly, encumbered by the equipment and the awful awareness of what was about to happen. Halfway down they turned into a side-room – the antechamber to one of the operating theatres. The porter positioned the bed in the centre of the room, and the nurses sorted out the machinery that was keeping Jess’s body functioning – physiologically functioning, but not alive. It was an important distinction. Jess was not living, in any meaningful sense any more; she hadn’t been for weeks. That’s what the counselling team had told them to hold on to. It was the only way. They’d been advised to move the dial back on the horrendous events of the past month – to retrain themselves to accept that Jess’s death had really occurred sometime during the forty-eight hours after the crash, when the aneurisms caused by the trauma of the car smashing into the wall had destroyed her brain.
They had been keeping vigil over an absence, not a presence.
But it didn’t feel like that. This was still their daughter.
The nurses slipped away quietly. As they departed, one of them whispered, ‘Goodbye, Jess.’ That left just Marcus, Fran and the donations coordinator. Marcus looked across at his wife. She was rigid, her hands gripping the guardrails on Jess’s bed. Her face shuttered.
The coordinator’s voice startled them both. ‘I’ll leave you alone for a few moments. But I’ll be outside, should you need me.’ Her shoes didn’t make a sound as she left.
Marcus and Fran stood on either side of the bed. The ventilator worked away. Jess lay waiting.
‘I can’t,’ Fran said.
‘We can,’ Marcus replied. Fran started shaking her head. Once she’d begun, she seemed unable to stop. Marcus heard himself say, ‘We have to. She’s gone.’ As if it was as simple as that.
‘But she’s right here, Marcus.’
They both looked down at Jess’s face. She was still, so obviously, their daughter. Jess had Fran’s cheekbones and nose; her lips and hair she’d inherited from Marcus; and the rest – as she’d like to proclaim, loud and proud – ‘was pure Jess’. Their daughter. Seventeen years old. Loving. Kind-hearted. Fierce, despite her delicate looks. Bad-tempered when she was hungry. Articulate. Fit. Funny. Bright.
Gone.
‘She’s not, Fran.’ Marcus hated himself for his brutality. ‘This isn’t Jess. Not any more. We have to let her go.’ He was ashamed that he had no comfort to offer Fran, other than clarity. They had to stick to what they had agreed. They had to go through with this. They had to honour Jess’s wishes. Why? For the people waiting to have their lives transformed by Jess’s donation? No. He didn’t care about any of that. Not now. Not in this moment. They had to do it because he couldn’t go on waiting and watching – not any more.
‘I can’t.’ Fran was still shaking her head and swaying. Marcus knew that she was on the verge of collapse.
‘We have to.’ He was shocked by the certainty of his own voice.
Fran stopped shaking her head. She lifted her chin and stared at him, her face raw. ‘I know.’ A sob stuck in her throat.
Neither of them moved.
Neither of them reached out to touch their daughter.
Neither of them spoke words of love to her.
Because it was impossible.
It was purgatory.
After what felt like an eternity or perhaps no time at all, the door opened and the coordinator came back into the room. She spoke softly, but firmly, forcing momentum upon them. ‘The team’s waiting. When you’re ready, I’ll take you up to the office and we can talk through the next steps.’
More silence, more excruciating inaction. Marcus caught her look towards the frosted-glass door and give a nod, some sort of signal. Two people in scrubs entered the room. They went to the workbench and began quietly moving equipment around. Part of the retrieval team? The reality of that word – its literal, violent meaning – hit Marcus in his stomach. There was no ‘not knowing’ what they were about to do. It had been explained to them, in detail – all part of the process of briefing and counselling that had led them to this point. They must leave Jess with the surgical team. They must let them take what they wanted. It was what they had agreed.
No.
Yes. They must. Jess was gone, never to come back to them. She was dead. This wasn’t her. It was a body.
But it was all they had left.
It was agony.
It had to end.
The coordinator moved to stand beside Fran. ‘Fran. Shall we?’ Her voice was kind, but firm. She placed her hand near, but not on, Fran’s arm – respect and insistence in one tiny gesture. It worked. Fran bent over the bed and gently kissed Jess on the forehead. She let go of the bed rails and stumbled backwards. The coordinator put out her hand to steady her. Fran leant against her and allowed herself to be half-guided, half-pushed out of the room.
Then there was just Marcus and Jess. Alone, together, at the end. Choking on a goodbye he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud, he touched his daughter’s hand, for the last time, ever, then turned and abandoned her.
Chapter 33
THE FIRST bunch of flowers was already there on the grass, in the lee of the factory wall, when Pete set off for work the following morning, but he didn’t notice them. He was in a rush. Claire was coming round to the house for the first time that evening. Calling in before they went off to the cinema – just a casual arrangement, nothing special. He had, however, spent two hours thoroughly cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom, just in case she had time for a drink before they set off.
When he returned that evening, early – time for a shower and brush-up – there was no missing the mound of flowers, teddies and candles that were piled up against the wall. He parked and got out of his car with a clenched stomach. Across the road a group of youngsters were adding their own tributes. One of the boys was obviously crying. His friends threaded their arms round him in support as they read the messages on the cards that other people had left. Even with the noise of the traffic, Pete could hear the cellophane on the bouquets crackling in the breeze.
So one of the girls had died. After all this time.
Pete let himself into the house and closed the door, but that didn’t stop the swill of bitter memories. A quick search online confirmed that it was the blonde girl who was in the front of the car. The article gave scant information. It just rehashed the details of the crash, confirmed her death and gave her age. She had been seventeen years old. At the top of the article there was photo. A close-up. In the photo the blonde girl was laughing, full of life. Her name was Jess Beaumont – someone’s daughter, sister, girlfriend.
Pete sat on the sofa and felt cold. He should have done more.
He rang Claire and cancelled – said he felt he was coming down with something. Then he stood by his lounge window and watched as the pile of tr
ibutes grew.
Chapter 34
THERE WERE a couple of casseroles on the doorstep when they arrived home. Fran picked them up and brought them through to the kitchen. She put them on the side – they would never eat them. She could sense Marcus standing behind her. The longer the silence went on, the harder it became to say anything. The pressure built. Fran’s headache worsened.
‘I’ll walk to the shop and get some basics.’ Marcus grabbed his keys and fled. The relief of getting away from each other was profound.
With Marcus gone, Fran was released. She walked through the rooms, touching the dusty surfaces, absorbing everything. Jess’s jacket on the back of one of the chairs in the kitchen; her college bag on the floor in the hall; the book she was halfway through reading in the lounge. Fran took the stairs slowly. On the landing her courage failed her. She turned and went into the bathroom, purely because it had a lock on the door and only a small, frosted-glass window, with no view. The bathroom was the closest thing to a safe room or a cell that they had. She pushed the lock across. She scanned the room slowly. A tube of Clearasil, her hairbrush, a pair of hoop earrings, her retainers on the shelf by the sink. Clear plastic moulds of her teeth. Two years of braces – worth all the cost and the effort. Her teeth had become much straighter, nearly perfect. She’d been happy with the result, more willing to smile in photos.
Fran looked around again, checking that she had noted everything. This was what she was going to have to do with the whole house: map every single thing in order to neutralise the power of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of everyday items. Only then might she be able to breathe in the space that her daughter no longer inhabited. The sudden need to pee caught Fran off-guard. She debated simply standing there and wetting herself, but the imperative to actually do something, however basic, won out. She tugged down her trousers and her knickers in one clumsy move and used the loo. Then, on a whim, she stripped off the rest of her clothes and stepped into the shower. The water was cold. She gasped. As it warmed, she heard her breathing gulp and swoop around the small room. The water pooled in the bottom of the shower, swirled around her feet, a fragile tether. It took quite a while before her breathing settled.
One Split Second: A thought-provoking novel about the limits of love and our astonishing capacity to heal Page 11