“You don’t have to.” She laid her face against Sasha’s neck, tightened her hold around her body, and held her. “God, I’ve never, ever felt like this before.” She kissed Sasha’s neck and shoulder before finally settling on her lips again. “I’ve never said that to anyone else.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Jac whispered, then amended, “Well, except for Sophie and Mags. But that’s different.”
Sasha’s tears ran in small rivers from her eyes as she accepted the gift Jac was giving her. Her heart. Broken and patched up, and so, so fragile, and never entrusted to another soul before. Sasha reached between them and ran her finger down the scar on her chest.
She kissed Jac’s lips. “I love you.”
Jac’s love and passion swept over her like wildfire through dry shrubs, burning away the touch of any who had come before her, searing Sasha’s heart with the imprint of her own and marking her forever as Jac’s. There would be no other for her. Every cell in her body was branded with one simple word, Jac’s.
Chapter 26
“You’re looking very pleased with yourself, honey.” Fleur wiggled her finger in front of Sasha’s face and smirked. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” Sasha picked a blouse off the rack and held it against her body. “What do you think?”
“Black? What on earth do you want a black shirt for? With your colouring, you should go for bold colours. Bright, strong colours that will make people notice you from across the room.” Fleur fingered a lock of Sasha’s hair. “You got your father’s colouring.”
“I know.” Sasha took hold of Fleur’s hand, noting the dark rings under her eyes. They weren’t anything new. Not really. They’d been there since her father had passed away, but they seemed to be getting bigger lately. “Are you okay? You look tired.”
Fleur smiled and squeezed Sasha’s hand. “I’m fine, honey. Bobbi came to see me last night.”
“She did?”
Fleur nodded and moved to another rack of shirts.
“Is she okay? She hasn’t spoken to me for weeks.”
“I know. She’s…she’s struggling with all the changes, darling. But she’s getting there, she just needed a little time. I’ve invited her for tea tonight. You need to be there. You two need to make up.”
“I’ll be there. What time?”
“I told her six.” She swayed on her feet for a moment, then righted herself. “But perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea.”
Sasha had gripped her arms as she started to sway, dropping the shirt in preparation to catch her mother should she fall. It had been quite a common thing when she’d first started getting used to her prosthesis, but it had been a long time since Sasha had felt the need to stay close to Fleur just in case.
“Are you sure you’re all right? We can get you home if you’d rather go and lie down, Mum. It’s okay.”
Fleur shook her head. “No, I want to spend the day with you.”
“We can do that at home. Takeaway, blanket over us while we watch a film on the telly. I’ll make you some buttered popcorn if you like too. Then I’ll cook tea before Bobbi’s due to come around. What do you say?”
Fleur swayed again. Not a lot. But enough to worry Sasha.
“Mum, I really think you need to sit down for a bit, then I’m taking you home.”
“Sasha, don’t fuss so—”
Fleur didn’t finish her sentence before her good leg gave way and she fell awkwardly. Sasha did her best to catch her and support her head as she went down, but the space between the racks made it difficult. She pushed clothes and metal stands out of the way as she held on to Fleur’s tumbling body.
“Shit.” Sasha quickly checked Fleur’s back and neck in case she hit it on something when they landed, then shifted her into the recovery position, fingers pressed to her neck. She could feel Fleur’s breath against her cheek, but her pulse was weak and way too fast. And since when had she been so skinny? Her mum had always been slender, but she was nothing but skin and bones.
“Jac!” she shouted across the store. “Jac!”
“I’ve called an ambulance for you,” a voice said from behind Sasha’s shoulder. “The dispatcher wants to know if she’s breathing.”
“Yes. She’s unconscious, and her pulse is thready, but she is breathing.” Sasha continued to run her hands over her mother’s body, noting things she hadn’t before. The clothes her mother was wearing deliberately hid how much weight she’d lost. There were bruises on her arms. Big, black-and-purple bruises alongside some old faded yellow-and-green ones right at the crease of her elbow. The same places where they always took blood from her.
“Any change?” the woman asked, moving to the other side of Fleur.
Sasha shook her head. “Jac!” she shouted again.
“Where are you?” Jac’s voice drifted across the shop. The woman stood and waved her arms in the air. “Excuse me, let me through, please. Excuse me!” Jac’s voice held the notes of anxiety and fear as she pushed her way through the crowd that had started to gather. “What happened?” Jac knelt behind Fleur’s head.
“I don’t know. She just collapsed.”
“I’ve called an ambulance. They’re on the way,” the woman said.
“Thanks.” Jac held out her hand. “I’m Jac, this is Sasha, and this is Fleur.”
“Mary.”
Jac looked down. “Is she breathing?”
“She is, she’s just not coming around.” There were other bruises she started to notice, but it was the slight yellow pallor to her mother’s complexion that began to stand out to her. Sasha had long since become accustomed to her mother wearing a thicker layer of foundation. It had started when she’d battled her cancer and she’d been determined not to look “any sicker than she was”. So the foundation had come out to cover up the pasty pallor that had settled on her sunken cheeks. Sasha wiped at the make-up smeared across not only her mother’s face but her neck. Underneath, she was yellow. Jaundiced. She recalled the time a few months ago when she’d thought she’d seen the yellow cast to her mother’s skin but had passed it off as a play of the dim light. Had it really been just that? Or had there been more? Had this been staring her in the face all this time?
“Oh God.”
“What?” Jac asked.
“Why’s she yellow?” Sasha’s mind was racing a mile minute but shutting down in the same breath. The questions whirled through her brain, but there were no answers. “Pass me her bag.” She held out her hand and Jac gave it to her.
“Could it have something to do with that?” Mary pointed to Fleur’s necklace. “Isn’t that one of those medical-alert thingies? What’s wrong with her? The paramedics will need to know when they get here.”
Sasha shook her head as she pulled the necklace free of Fleur’s clothing. Diabetes it said on the back in big bold letters. “Mum doesn’t have diabetes,” Sasha whispered so quietly she was sure no one else could have possibly heard her.
Jac was going through Fleur’s bag and pulled out a small black wallet. She unzipped it to display a blood-sugar monitor, strips, a syringe, a vial of insulin, and a finger-prick device.
“Maybe it’s just her blood sugar.” Jac held out the kit to her. “Do you know how to use this stuff to test it?”
“Mum doesn’t have diabetes,” she said again. Louder this time. Did she? Sasha flashed on the image of a thin plastic strip, tipped at both ends with copper; stained with blood. It was a test strip. To monitor blood sugar. Oh God, what’s going on? What has Mum been hiding?
Jac looked at her, the kit, the necklace on Fleur’s chest, and frowned. “Then why does she have all the stuff?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on, Jac.”
Mary took the kit from Jac’s hand. “My son has diabetes. It’s quite simple to test.” With fast, efficient hands, Mary
assembled the kit, pricked Fleur’s finger, and obtained a reading that she said was pretty normal. Certainly not low enough to cause Fleur’s current state of unconsciousness. Jac thanked her profusely and started to put it all away as the paramedics came.
They operated with practiced ease and skill. Covered all the details they had to give and had Fleur on a trolley and en route to the ambulance before Sasha could even begin to decipher what was happening.
Before she knew it, she was in Jac’s car following the ambulance to the Manchester Royal Infirmary. A ball of dread sat like a lead weight on her chest, pressing down, crushing her. Each breath she pulled into her lungs took effort, and she wasn’t sure she’d make the next one.
“What’s wrong with my mum, Jac?”
“I don’t know, babe. But we’ll find out, okay? She’s going to the best place, and we’ll find out.”
There were worse hospitals in the world. There were better hospitals in the world. But Sasha hated them all equally. They all smelled the same no matter where they were or who was sitting next to you or how uncomfortable the bloody chairs were. They all smelled like fear, bleach, and death. Maybe a little bit melodramatic there, Sash. You don’t know anything’s seriously wrong with her. Sasha snorted to her own inner monologue. Yes, I do.
“Ms Adams?” A nurse stood in a doorway, holding it open behind her.
Sasha stood. “That’s me.”
“I’m Nurse Warren. I’ve been treating your mother. She’s stable, and okay for now. There’s an ambulance on the way to take her to the hospice.”
Sasha stumbled backwards into Jac’s arms. They were the only things preventing her from falling. She wrapped her fingers around Jac’s forearms. She needed to anchor herself, to find something to grip on to before she sank all the way down. She opened her mouth. She needed answers. She needed to know what the hell was going on. Because that sentence right there just didn’t make sense. Not. One. Fucking. Bit.
But she couldn’t. Not even a whimper passed her lips as she stared at the nurse. All blue scrubs and gentle smile. Understanding, piteous eyes that Sasha wanted to scratch right out along with that lying tongue.
“I’m sorry, what?” Jac asked for her. “What do you mean hospice?”
She nodded. Like one of those fucking Churchill nodding dogs, and Sasha wanted to rip off her bobbing head. But she couldn’t even move.
“I’m sorry, who are you?”
“Sorry, Jac Kensington. I’m Sasha’s…partner.”
The nurse looked at their joined hands and smiled. “Of course. Well, yes. At this stage, I’m afraid it really is the best place for her now.”
“Wh-what do you mean at this stage?” Sasha’s voice sounded alien to her own ears.
“At this stage of her illness. There’s nothing more we can do for her but keep her comfortable. She has a place waiting for her at St Ann’s Hospice. I understand it’s been arranged for some time now.”
“But she—she’s not ill. She beat the cancer. Years ago.”
Jac’s arms tightened around her body, supporting her as her knees gave way. Puzzle pieces started to click into place. The weight loss she’d been hiding with baggy clothes and heavy jumpers. The increase in weed consumption. The more frequent trips to the chemist for her prescriptions. The bruises. Diabetes. Jaundice.
“Oh God. Why didn’t she tell me?”
The nurse’s face dropped. Her sad, empathetic smile slid from her face, and a look of horror settled in its place. “I’m so sorry. I thought—I thought you knew.”
Sasha crumpled, clinging to Jac’s arms. “What kind?”
“I’m sorry, I think maybe you should speak to your mother.”
“I will.” Sasha didn’t recognise the cold edge to her voice. “But right now, you’re here. Now tell me what, exactly, is killing my mother.”
“Sash, baby, it’s okay,” Jac whispered in her ear.
“No, it’s not. It’s not okay, Jac. It’s never going to be okay. My mother’s dying.” She pointed behind the nurse. “She’s through there, dying, and she didn’t even tell me.” She found strength in the anger that was boiling in her gut and used it to force herself to her feet. She clutched on to the nurse’s arm. “Now you are going to tell me what’s wrong with her, and then you’re going to take me to see her.”
“I think it might be best—”
“I don’t care what you think!” Sasha shouted. “You’ve already dropped the ball and spilled the secret. You might as well finish the job.”
A security guard stepped forwards and made to grab at Sasha’s arm. Sasha glared at him, but Nurse Warren told him to back off.
“You’re right.” She held her hand out and indicated a room off to the side. “Let’s go in there, and I’ll answer your questions.”
Sasha pulled her jumper down and stalked into the room. She wanted to slam the door closed, but Jac and the nurse were too close behind her. She paced back and forth in the tiny room. Two steps one way, two steps back.
“She has pancreatic cancer,” the nurse began. “Looking at her notes, she was diagnosed with it about nine months ago—”
“Nine months?”
The nurse nodded. “She was offered a range of treatments, as are standard, but the cancer was already at stage four when they found it.”
“Meaning?”
“Her prognosis, even with treatment, wasn’t good.”
“So what are they doing? What have they been doing?”
“All they could. Monitoring her condition. Prescribing pain medication. Everything she’d let them do.”
“What about operating on it? Chemo? Radiation? She had all that last time.”
“She refused treatment.”
“Don’t be stupid. No one in their right mind would refuse treatment.”
“I’m sorry, at this stage I can only tell you what’s in the file. We’ve given your mother some heavy painkillers, and it’s making her drift in and out of consciousness. We thought that best until she was settled at the hospice where they can manage her pain levels best. But it says very clearly in her file that treatment was refused and she is DNR.”
“DNR? DNR as in ‘do not resuscitate’?”
“Yes.”
Sasha covered her face with her hands, trying to physically push the tears away, to stop them falling, because she knew that once they started, they were never going to stop. Pushing them up through her hair, gripping it into her fists, she pulled at her hair until the pain outside was enough to distract her from the pain inside. If only for a second.
She’s dying. She not even fighting it. And she didn’t even tell me. Why? Why? Why? Why?
“How long?”
“It’s difficult to say.”
“You’re sending her to the hospice. They don’t do that if they’ve got months left to go. How fucking long?”
“A week. Maybe two.”
Sasha collapsed to her knees and threw up. Tears streamed down her face, mingled with the vomit and the mucus running from her nose. But she didn’t care. She didn’t care how it looked or that it stank. On her hands and knees in the middle of the tiny relatives’ room, she cried and screamed and emptied her stomach until all that was left in it was the hardening stone of grief.
Chapter 27
The walls at the hospice care facility were yellow. Like a reflection of the sun streaming through the open blinds that covered the window. It wasn’t what Sasha had expected. There was so much light. It was everywhere. And not the horrid buzzing fluorescent light that itched behind your eyeballs and made your skin crawl. It was natural light wherever possible. Spotlights and lamps by bedsides in each individual’s room. Individual. Person. Not patient. Not service user. Not dead man walking.
Sasha’s mouth still tasted like vomit. It didn’t seem to matter that she’d brushed her teeth and chewed gum a
ll the way from the hospital to this place. This…the last place her mother would see.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Jac asked quietly.
Sasha didn’t answer. She had too many questions she needed answers to, but Jac didn’t have any of them. Only her mother did. And she was still sleeping off the painkillers they’d given her to make her comfortable for the ambulance ride.
It was just the three of them in the room. Fleur lay on the hospital bed, a thin tube in her arm, connecting her to a bag of fluids. The nurse had told Sasha they would discuss medication with Fleur when she woke up but expected they’d fix her up with a morphine pump, a device that would allow Fleur to top up her pain relief when she needed it but without allowing her to administer enough to OD on. For now, she was only receiving saline.
She looked so small. Like a child in an adult-sized bed, and it only served to emphasise even more how fragile she’d become. And Sasha hadn’t even been noticing. She saw her mother every day. Every single fucking day, and she hadn’t noticed when the weight had started to fall off her. She hadn’t noticed when her face had started to turn yellow. Hadn’t noticed when she’d developed fucking diabetes. She could scream, if only it would do any good.
But it wouldn’t. It was far too late for that to help anyone now.
“Would it help if I went and packed a bag for her? Maybe brought a few of her things here. To make it a bit more personal. Would she like that?” Jac asked.
Sasha looked at her for the first time since Fleur had been wheeled into the room. She wasn’t sure if Jac was offering this to get away from Sasha or to give Sasha a break from her. Either way, right then, Sasha didn’t care. She wanted to speak to her mother alone, so having Jac leave would give them both some space.
“That’s very thoughtful of you.” She waved her hand towards her bag. “My house keys are in there. Mum keeps a wheely suitcase on top of her wardrobe. She used to use it all the time when she was coming into hospital.” Sasha’s voice faltered on the last words, cracking enough for some of her pain to leak out. “Sorry.” She said the word. She knew she did. But no sound passed her lips. None at all.
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