At that moment Sue breezed in.
‘You’ll be off to Radiology in the next ten minutes or so.’ Then she grinned. ‘And your wife is here.’
* * *
‘Richard?’
Joanna had a full thirty seconds standing behind the nurse before Richard noticed she was there. During that time a dozen different emotions battled with each other for her attention.
Her first and most overwhelming feeling was fear. Lying battered and bruised on the ED trolley and hooked up to an alarming number of monitors as well as two IVs, Richard was almost unrecognisable. He peered through swollen eyelids and appeared to be battling to remove the oxygen mask the nurse insisted on repositioning.
His left leg was immobilised in an air splint and a blood-soaked dressing covered his upper arm.
‘Richard,’ she said, a little louder. She suppressed an almost irresistible urge to rush to him and embrace him, kiss his swollen face and offer comfort with whatever resources she could muster. But he would be hurting and she didn’t want to make his pain any worse.
‘Joanna, you came.’ He suddenly noticed her and his initial attempt to smile turned into a grimace.
A mixture of relief and overpowering, all-consuming, gut-wrenching love took over her fear—he was alive and at least trying, though not too successfully, for cheerfulness.
‘I’ll just replace this dressing,’ Sue said as she donned gloves and replaced the sodden gauze and anchored it with a bandage. ‘How is your pain?’
‘Bearable,’ Richard said with a frustrated edge to his voice.
‘Out of ten?’
‘Seven, maybe six.’ His voice croaked and he frowned as he cleared his throat. Joanna’s heart went out to him. She could imagine him playing down his injuries for her benefit and by the tortured look on his face it was probably pain keeping him from drifting into a morphine-induced sleep.
‘Improving, then?’
‘A little.’
‘Okay. As long as your BP’s stable and normal Dr Headland’s ordered a bolus of painkiller before you have your X-rays. I’ll just check your blood pressure and then leave you two until the orderly comes.’
There was a brief moment of awkwardness when the nurse left but it didn’t take long before silent tears began running down Joanna’s cheeks and she leaned forward and kissed Richard on his bruised forehead.
‘I’m sorry…’ he whispered.
Joanna pulled herself away and reached for his hand.
‘No, how can you say that? You’re apologising?’
‘I wanted…’ He managed to pull off the mask and his words were husky with emotion. ‘I wanted to tell you…’ He hesitated as if he was choosing his words carefully. ‘I wanted tonight to be special.’ He paused again and took a moment to look at her as well as catch his breath. ‘Look at you. You’re the most beautiful woman…’
He closed his eyes and Joanna tried to wipe away her tears but she couldn’t stop them. Richard was lying in the resuscitation room, his body broken and no doubt facing a long and difficult road back to health, and all he was thinking about was her.
‘Shush.’ She laid a finger gently on his lips and was surprised at the coolness of his skin. ‘You don’t need to tell me this now. Save your energy.’
‘But I need to tell you. Before I go…If I have surgery…’
She suddenly realised he was thinking of the possibility of not surviving and she couldn’t bear it. She stopped crying and took a deep breath.
‘Don’t even think about it, Richard Howell. Not now or ever.’
He frowned and said quietly, ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ve fallen in love with you all over again,’ she whispered. ‘And I’m not going to let you have the slightest thought that you might leave me.’
The tears began again and this time a single drop of moisture escaped from Richard’s eye but he was smiling a devilishly crooked smile.
‘That’s just what I was trying to tell you.’
The door swung open and James Headland stood in the doorway with an orderly behind him.
‘How are you now?’ he asked as he grabbed the chart and nodded his approval.
‘Much better.’
He sent a glance in Joanna’s direction and she knew Richard would come through this. He was bracing himself for whatever it took and she was going to be there with him—all the way.
* * *
Joanna accompanied Richard to the X-ray department and then sat with him while he waited for the orthopaedic surgeon’s assessment. She shared the news that he needed the fracture of his femur fixed with an intramedullary nail—the sooner the better—and then anxiously waited four long hours while he was in surgery. The time dragged and she was overwhelmed with the news, at just after two in the morning, that the operation had been a success.
‘When can I see him?’ she asked the surgeon when he emerged from the operating rooms looking as weary as Joanna felt.
‘It will probably be another hour before he’s ready for transfer to Intensive Care—’
‘ICU! Is there something wrong?’
The surgeon must have read the look on her face as alarm. He touched her arm.
‘No, nothing’s wrong. Everything went smoothly in Theatre. He’s had a head injury, though, and lost a lot of blood. It’s just a precaution to watch him overnight, give him another unit of blood, make sure he’s stable before transferring him to the orthopaedic ward.’
Joanna still couldn’t relax and wasn’t going to leave until she saw him, even if it meant staying at the hospital all night.
‘So when can I see him?’ she repeated. ‘I need to know—’
The surgeon sighed. ‘You’re his wife, are you?’
‘Yes.’ Joanna was surprised how easy it was to slip into that role.
‘And a paediatric nurse?’
‘That’s right.’ She tried her hardest not to sound impatient.
‘If you put on a gown, mask and cap, you can pop into Recovery. It’s unlikely he’ll be awake as he’s on a fairly hefty dose of morphine. In fact, the best thing you can do after you see him would be to go home and get some rest. He should be well enough to have a visitor late this afternoon.’
What he was saying made sense and she was grateful for the time the doctor had spent with her and the concession he’d made in allowing her to go into the recovery ward.
‘Thank you.’ She held out her hand and he shook it briefly.
‘The change rooms are down there.’ He nodded in the direction of the operating theatres just before he strode away. Then he stopped and turned, smiling. ‘He’s lucky to have you and I’m as certain as I can be that he’ll recover.’
Joanna knew that nothing was certain in medicine but she accepted the reassurance and told herself something she often said to the distraught relatives of her own patients—that wasting energy on worrying achieved nothing. But she only half convinced herself and her anxiety escalated when, after quickly changing, she arrived in the recovery room.
‘You must be Mrs Howell?’ The nurse looked up briefly before glancing at the bag dripping blood into a vein in Richard’s arm and writing something on his chart.
‘Yes.’ The word came out as a whisper. She felt herself flushing.
From what she could see of Richard, he looked deathly pale and seemed to be hooked up to even more monitoring equipment than in the emergency department. The nurse beckoned her to come closer.
‘The anaesthetist has just taken his endotracheal tube out. He’s breathing well on his own and he even opened his eyes. He’ll probably be on the move within the next half-hour. He’s doing really well.’
Joanna sidled up to the trolley and tucked her fingers into the palm of one of his hands. He showed no sign of wakefulness at first but then slowly opened his eyes. His face, still swollen, had darkened with more bruising over the hours he had been in surgery.
‘Richard?’
His eyes slowly closed, as if it had been a great e
ffort to open them but, under the mask, she could tell he was trying to say something.
‘Don’t try and talk. I just needed to see you.’ She didn’t add that she’d wanted to make sure he was still alive, and that she was scared and confused, balanced on the edge of a bunch of emotions she hadn’t fully come to grips with. Her grief at the prospect of losing him had been acute and overwhelming.
She leaned over and kissed his cheek and in a husky whisper Joanna could barely understand he said, ‘I love you, Jo. I always have and I always will.’ His eyes opened again and were full of passion. ‘So much that it hurts more than…’ He squeezed her hand and then, before she had a chance to answer, he drifted off into a deep sleep. She could barely hold back the tears.
It must have been scarcely a minute or two that Joanna stood staring at the battered figure of the man she loved, but it seemed like an age. There was so much she wanted to tell him, so many words that had been left unsaid.
She turned as she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder.
‘Mr Nichols said you could only have five minutes. I’m sorry…’
‘I know. Thank you.’
She leaned close and kissed Richard again, whispering the same words he’d made such an effort to say to her a minute ago but knowing he wouldn’t hear her.
‘I’m sorry, but…’ The nurse smiled.
‘Yes, I know I must go.’
Joanna released Richard’s hand and walked out of the ward, suddenly overcome with tiredness. She needed to go home to try and get some sleep.
* * *
Richard groaned.
The dull pain in his leg was unremitting but bearable, as long as he didn’t move.
‘What the hell…?’ he muttered, then opened his eyes, glanced around him, and remembered.
He was in hospital. There’d been an accident—a nasty one—and he’d had an operation. He remembered a dream, so vivid it could almost have been real. He’d seen Joanna. His beautiful, caring, Joanna—and he’d told her he loved her.
The door of his room slowly opened and he was surprised at the ferocity of his desire for it to be her.
‘Dr Howell, you’re finally awake.’
Disappointment.
The middle-aged nurse bore no resemblance to his darling Jo.
Very perceptive of you to notice, he felt like saying, but simply nodded instead.
‘Good.’ She wheeled in the hardware required to do his obs. ‘How is the pain?’
He flinched as she looked as if she was about to prod his heavily bandaged leg but instead pinched his big toe.
‘Ouch.’ He uttered the protest out of surprise more than genuine pain but the ache in his leg seemed to go up a notch. The nurse raised her black, pencilled eyebrows but thankfully didn’t comment.
‘Seven out of ten,’ he finally said with a frown. He thought he had a reasonably high tolerance to pain, but he hadn’t broken the biggest long-bone in his body before.
‘I’ll give you a bolus of morphine, then, and now you’re awake I’ll organise PCA. I assume you know what that means.’
‘Yes.’ He didn’t have the energy to verify he was familiar with the system where he could give his own medication, the so-called patient-controlled analgesia.
The nurse checked his BP, temperature and oxygen saturation as well as his urine output. She jotted a note on his chart and told him she would be back in five or ten minutes with the morphine.
‘And you have a visitor.’
It was then he noticed Joanna hovering in the doorway with a broad grin on her face. It lasted only a moment and then her brow furrowed in an expression he’d seen many times.
Something was wrong. What had upset her? He wasn’t fooled by the smile and he was pretty sure his mind was clear, despite the cocktail of medications coursing through his veins.
‘Come in, Joanna.’ He went to stretch out his arms to give her a hug but got caught up in a tangle of tubes and wires. Before he had time to apologise she was at his bedside, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, her soft, warm lips on his cheek. God, her touch was more therapeutic than any drugs.
‘What time is it? I hope you haven’t been here all night.’ He glanced at the window, covered with Venetian blinds open just enough to see slivers of sky tinged with the orange-gold of a rising sun…Or was it setting?
‘I left about half past two this morning, after your op, and when I phoned at lunchtime they said you were still out of it.’ She ran gentle fingers over the back of his hand that wasn’t connected to an IV tube. Her touch felt so good. ‘It’s nearly seven o’clock.’
He paused for a moment, taking in what she’d said. He’d lost an entire day.
‘At night? And it’s Monday?’
‘That’s right.’
She withdrew her hand and pulled a chair close to the bed but he still had the impression something was wrong. Had the operation not gone as well as he had been led to believe? Had he done something to upset her? He couldn’t imagine what. He’d been unconscious for most of the day. Perhaps something had happened that had nothing to do with him. The thoughts began to spin in his head and he closed his eyes and took a couple of steadying breaths.
‘There’s something wrong, Jo. I can tell you’re upset. I know you must have been to hell and back over the last twenty-four hours but—’
‘There’s nothing wrong.’ She smiled with a return of the old warmth that he knew so well. ‘But, yes, it’s been a strain. I’m not the one with a metal spike in my leg, though, and a face that bears an uncanny resemblance to a half-inflated soccer ball.’
He laughed. And his awareness of the pain in his leg increased, but he felt a little better.
At that moment the nurse came in with his analgesia. She glanced at Joanna, who stood and dragged the chair a little away from the bed to give the nurse access to the arm with the drip.
‘Are you happy to stay while I set up the PCA?’
‘If it’s okay with you.’
‘No problem.’
Richard felt the effect of the bolus of medication almost immediately. The throbbing in his leg eased and a swooning light-headedness made the room spin. He closed his eyes and that was the last thing he clearly remembered until he felt a gentle squeeze of his hand.
‘I’m going now.’
He saw Joanna through a fuddled haze.
‘So soon? You’ve only just arrived.’
‘You’ve been asleep for…’ she looked at her watch ‘…five hours. It’s past midnight and I have to work tomorrow. I have an early. I’ll come in and see you after work.’ She grinned. ‘And Mr Nichols made a brief appearance and said you’re doing great.’
‘Midnight? I’m sorry…Of course you must go…Come here.’
He kissed her hand, drew her close then kissed her lips.
He wanted to reaffirm that he loved her but she pulled away, patted his hand and left the room before he could even say goodbye.
His earlier worries came rolling back. Something was definitely wrong. His heart did an uncomfortable somersault and then fell with a heavy thud and came to rest in the pit of his stomach.
She’d stopped loving him. And he was somehow to blame.
* * *
Joanna couldn’t tell him. It was too soon after his operation and it wasn’t fair to add her life-changing news when he’d been through what she assumed was one of the biggest traumas of his life.
She decided she’d leave it at least a few days, until he was over the worst of his post-operative pain. She’d know when the time was right. Or at least that’s what she kept telling herself, over and over.
She’d know when the time was right.
* * *
It was the fourth post-operative day and, apart from a nagging pain in his left thigh when the physio cajoled him into his daily exercises, Richard was feeling nearly normal. He had started eating and actually enjoying the hospital food. One of the IV lines and his urinary catheter had been removed the previous day and the freq
uency of his morphine injections was decreasing and being replaced by tablets.
What had been his prime motivation to make as speedy a recovery as he could was Joanna. She’d visited every day and they’d managed to fill in an hour or two chatting about the goings-on in Matilda Ward—how Alan Price had apparently welcomed a break in his retirement to return to work, Karen’s new boyfriend, the death of Barbara’s elderly father from a heart attack, and a dozen other snippets of inconsequential gossip.
Joanna seemed to have developed an uncanny knack for avoiding discussion of anything more personal than work, though.
So he was going to talk to her today. To explain that the dinner that had never happened was all part of a surprise that he hoped she’d be pleased with.
She was due any minute and he felt strangely nervous.
Half an hour later she arrived, looking absolutely gorgeous in a gauzy, floaty mini-dress that wasn’t sheer enough to be transparent but it certainly drew attention to Joanna’s feminine attributes.
‘You look fabulous,’ he said with a grin. ‘I love the dress.’
Her cheeks flushed. ‘It’s new. They had a fifty per cent off sale at Jenny Lee’s.’
‘It really suits you.’
‘Thanks.’
Small talk was all they’d managed over the last couple of days and Richard wondered if a serious talk would clear the air and at least restore their relationship to where it had been before the accident. Perhaps the drama of his injuries had swept them up in the idea that they loved each other but now she was having second thoughts.
Second thoughts? Was it possible?
He knew he still loved Joanna and he’d believed what she’d said on the night of the accident—that she loved him. But now he was beginning to have doubts of his own and was confused about whether the feeling was still reciprocated. Or perhaps she had told him in the heat of the moment.
Joanna rummaged in her bag and brought out a packet of photographs.
‘Lynne organised these. She said it might help you realise how much the staff and the kids all miss you.’ Her smile was one of genuine affection, most likely for her young charges whose smiles lit each snapshot.
How To Save a Marriage in a Million Page 16