by Lucy Dawson
‘Nothing’s wrong, Tom,’ I say wearily, suddenly feeling totally exhausted. Liar liar, pants on fire . . . Nothing’s wrong? It’s never been more wrong in my entire life.
I sit forward and put my head in my hands for a moment and try to regain some composure. What the hell am I doing here? How has this happened? Tom leans towards me and rubs my back for a second, rather awkwardly. I sit back up.
‘Better?’ he says uncertainly and I nod my head, although to be honest I’m not really.
‘You probably need something to eat,’ he says. ‘I expect . . .’
But I’m not listening, because right at that precise moment, although I think I might have imagined it, I’m sure I see a tiny movement of a finger on the sheet. Did Gretchen just move her hand?
Oh holy Christ.
I look immediately at Tom, but he’s staring at me intently.
She did, I’m sure she did. Oh my God. Oh my God.
I start to shake, but try to make out like everything is normal and I haven’t just seen anything. At all. Is she coming round? She can’t! She simply can’t.
‘You look pretty pale,’ Tom says. ‘I mean even if you just have a bar of chocolate I think it’d do you good. Want me to give you some change?’
The nurse who has just been quizzing me appears in the doorway. ‘Alice, could I just –’
And then we all see Gretchen lightly twitch her head. Unmistakably. An alarm starts to sound again as I jerk my chair backwards and jump to my feet like I’ve had an electric shock. The chair bangs off the back of the wall behind me with a plastic crack. I can’t take these fucking sirens going off every second – it’s shooting what’s left of my nerves to pieces.
‘Shit!’ Tom exclaims in shock and then a huge smile spreads over his face. ‘Did you see that?’ he shouts, twisting to me then twisting back eagerly. ‘She moved!’
I cover my mouth with my hand and run from the room. I can hear the nurse calling my name again.
I slam down the corridor and into the ladies’ loos, smashing into a cubicle, and dry retch over the bowl. My teeth start to chatter. I think I am moaning ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck . . .’ I can’t be sure. I hear the main door open and the nurse say ‘Alice?’ more calmly this time. She pushes on the door and because it isn’t locked and it’s a very tiny space, the door bangs lightly into my arm and I can see her face through the slit.
‘Alice, are you all right?’
‘Is she coming round? She is, isn’t she?’ I blurt desperately, then I say it. The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. ‘She can’t wake up – she just can’t!’
The nurse, to give her credit, does not look horrified. She just says very slowly, ‘You’re very distressed, in a heightened situation, but . . .’
I barely hear her. I can see Gretchen swallowing the pills again. Oh God, oh God. It doesn’t make me a bad person, it doesn’t. She asked me to help her . . .
‘Help her?’ the nurse says and I realise I’ve just said all that out loud.
There is a pause that seems to last a lifetime.
‘Alice,’ she says eventually. ‘You didn’t help Gretchen to do this, did you?’
I look at her and I can see, under that calm exterior, her mind racing through textbook phrases . . . assisted suicide . . . helping a severely depressed person to die, however good the intentions seem . . . illegal . . . carries prison sentence . . . more than a decade. Taking your own life by your own hand is not illegal. Helping someone to do it is.
‘Is that why you don’t want Gretchen to wake up, Alice?’ she says.
I make a sort of strangulated noise and then blurt, ‘I never wanted this.’
‘Of course you didn’t,’ she says softly. ‘What you’re feeling is very normal, Alice.’
No it isn’t! Nothing about this is normal – nothing at all – it’s totally fucked up! How can she tell what I’m feeling is OK?
‘You’re right,’ she continues, like she’s sneaking up on a dangerous cat she wants to trick into a basket, ‘it doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s very hard to watch someone you love in pain and struggling.’
I watch her creep closer and suddenly I feel exhausted. I just want it all to be over now. I can’t do this any more. I’m so sorry, so sorry.
‘I thought . . . and she had this plan and I said it was stupid and wrong,’ I’m struggling to get the words out, gulping my breath and shaking, ‘She said she’d do it anyway and I had to help her . . . she swallowed them . . . and I didn’t do it. She was waiting and I didn’t, I just sat there and—’ I gasp. ‘Oh God, oh God. She’d just keep doing this over and over. Hurting herself, hurting those who love her. Is it wrong not to want that for any of us?’
I look at the nurse, utterly terrified.
‘Did Gretchen ask you to help her die? Is that why you don’t want her to wake up, because you’re scared it’ll all come out?’
I shake my head vehemently. ‘No! She –’
But then I hear the door open. The nurse turns her head and I hear a male voice – it’s Tom. ‘Is she in here? Al?’
‘I’m here!’ I say desperately and then the nurse is standing back and Tom’s opening the door. ‘It’s OK!’ he says. ‘It was just an alarm because she moved her head – but that’s a good thing, sweetheart – a really good thing. Don’t be scared! It’s going to be all right.’ He looks at me, his face knitted with concern.
I sniff and tip my head back, trying so, so hard to get myself under control. ‘I’m sorry!’ I say and tears rush to my eyes again.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ he says. ‘You’re shattered, it’s practically the middle of the night . . . Come on. Come back in the room with me.’
I can’t! She’s waking up! But I can’t stay here either – not with this nurse.
He holds a hand out and without looking at her, my head lowered, I slink past and bolt from the room. I wonder what she is thinking and who she is going to tell. I didn’t actually admit anything though, did I? Very nearly – but not quite.
Thank God for Tom.
Chapter Eighteen
The walk back to the room feels like the longest one in the world. I put one foot in front of the other, watching them taking me there. I know that she won’t be able to just sit up and talk, that she’ll be drowsy and confused, but it won’t be long until she does know where she is. I have to go, I have to . . .
We round the corner and Bailey is back, listening earnestly to a chiselled-looking doctor, nodding and saying, ‘I see.’ The doctor looks brisk and impersonal, his features are rather too hard, but the younger new nurse at the back of the room seems to have come over all coy and distracted, so perhaps he is the hospital hottie. He glances briefly at Gretchen as he discusses her. She is mercifully still again and I get the immediate feeling he regards the physical manifestation of a bunch of symptoms as an irritation. Gretchen is just another body to him, a mass of cells. And we are hangers-on who are rather getting in the way.
‘So that’s about everything, I think,’ he says, looking again at the notes in his hand briefly before murmuring smoothly, ‘Thank you, nurse,’ and passing them to her as if they were an empty martini glass.
He prepares to sweep out of the room when Tom says clearly and firmly, ‘So is Gretchen now showing signs of improvement after that earlier scare?’
The doctor looks at Tom as if someone vaguely familiar has approached him at the golf club whose name and status he can’t quite remember, but he’s pretty certain isn’t worth bothering with. He glances at Bailey enquiringly and Bailey says, ‘It’s fine, I’d like them to be aware of everything that’s going on.’
At that, I see a flash of irritation on the doctor’s face, because he’s going to have to repeat himself. But then just as quickly he fixes it into an expression that must have been labelled ‘Concerned Assurance’, when he reached in and pulled it out of the box marked ‘Doctors’ Faces for Unimportant Friends and Relatives’.
‘Hello,’ he nods in
introduction, ‘I’m Dr Benedict. Gretchen has ingested a severe mixture of drugs and alcohol,’ he says with some pace. ‘They have induced the early feature of coma and, as you have already seen, unfortunately that carries a significant risk of cardiac arrest. There are also a number of adverse side effects, including a risk of respiratory depression and renal failure, among others. It is however positive that she has exhibited signs of movement and—’
Then he stops because an alarm goes off again, but this is our third time now so we are used to it.
‘As if on cue,’ he says dryly and glances behind him as the nurse reaches across Gretchen.
We wait for a second. ‘You all right there?’ he asks, slightly tersely, waiting to continue.
‘Her sats have just dropped,’ the nurse says, ‘I’m going to have to suction her.’
‘Is that a good or bad thing?’ Bailey looks at Dr Benedict, desperate for some assurance, but he’s scanning the monitors swiftly as the nurse is concentrating on some sort of tube and pump-like apparatus.
‘OK, guys. I’m just going to ask you to step outside for a moment so we can clear her airways,’ the doctor tells us firmly. Tom and I now know the drill well enough to move straight away. Bailey, however, starts to panic. ‘Why? Can’t she breathe or something? I thought she was waking up?’
Another nurse appears. ‘Please can you just wait outside?’ Benedict says to us and then adds irritably to a nurse, ‘Shut that alarm down!’
‘Come on, sis!’ Bailey pleads desperately, ignoring him and looking at Gretchen. ‘Breathe!’
‘Bailey, come on!’ Tom grabs him. ‘Let them help her.’
‘Get off!’ Bailey shoves him off roughly. ‘Don’t do this to me, Gretch!’ he says warningly, staring down at her, tears welling up in his eyes. ‘Don’t you dare do this to me!’ He raises his hand up to his mouth and bites down furiously on a balled-up fist. ‘I know you can hear me!’
Back in the sickly spearmint room, we wait silently. Tom and Bailey aren’t speaking to each other, of course, and I have nothing I want to say. I am numb – both feet on the ground, hands in my lap – just staring straight ahead.
I don’t know how long we sit like this, I’ve stopped noticing time. We are all lined up along one wall and I am uncomfortably sandwiched between them, strapped into a rickety rollercoaster car. I have survived one round of loops and dives but I can sense that this drift, along the flat straight bit, is about to end. We are picking up speed again.
Sure enough, Dr Benedict eventually appears, accompanied by the nurse who followed me into the loos. He explains in a calm voice that Gretchen’s condition has unfortunately now ‘significantly deteriorated’. I am aware that the nurse is watching me carefully.
No one says anything, but one of the boys, I don’t know which, makes a frightened gulping sound.
Dr Benedict waits for his words to sink in and then continues. ‘Unfortunately secondary complications often arise and Gretchen has now developed respiratory difficulties. We’ve removed a mucus plug using suction. Did she have a cold, flu, maybe a chest infection before she—’ He stops briefly, clearly thinking of a way to avoid saying ‘tried to commit suicide’ and plumps cleverly for ‘was admitted?’
Tom nods. ‘She had a cold.’
‘She’s also a smoker, I believe?’ Dr Benedict says. ‘When a patient is in a coma and ventilated they are unable to do things like clear mucus build-ups from an infection, as we would do normally by moving and throat clearing. Her blood gases were also quite poor and we’ve had to increase her oxygen support to sixty per cent.’
‘But she was waking up!’ Tom says quickly. ‘We saw her move!’
Benedict’s eyes alight on him. ‘As I said, she has now developed a secondary complication. While it seems Gretchen was recovering from the effects of her overdose and her earlier heart problems, we are now actually going to have to sedate her because we don’t want her to fight the intubation as she regains consciousness; that’s the tube in her mouth so she can breathe,’ he adds when Bailey looks blankly at him. ‘We now have a new set of priorities.’
‘Could she die?’ Bailey pales. ‘Could these complications kill her?’
Benedict does not falter and looks Bailey in the eye. ‘She is very seriously ill, yes,’ he says. There is a painful silence. ‘But we’ll know more in the morning.’ He doesn’t hold eye contact while saying that, however.
‘How long will she be sedated for?’ I can’t not ask.
‘As long as she requires significant oxygen support,’ Benedict replies. ‘Then, all being well, we could lower her oxygen support and gradually stop her sedation. Then we would remove her ventilation. But let’s see where we are tomorrow.’ He gives what I imagine he thinks is a concerned yet reassuring smile. Do they practise them in the mirror at home, I wonder? I am not fooled.
Tom and Bailey stand up, so automatically I do too. ‘Thank you,’ Bailey says dully and one by one we file out of the relatives’ room.
I am halfway up the corridor when I realise I’ve left my bag under the seat, so I double back alone. My footfall is soft and tired. The owners of the two voices I hear drifting back out to me clearly haven’t heard me approaching. I pause. It’s Benedict and the nurse.
‘I was talking with the best friend . . .’
The nurse doesn’t sound soothing any more. She sounds urgent. My heart stops.
‘I think she might have had something to do with the suicide attempt. She started to tell me about a “plan” they had but then her boyfriend walked in, only he’s not her boyfriend and—’
‘Nurse,’ Benedict interrupts boredly, ‘I’m starving and due home for dinner. What exactly are you saying?’
‘The friend, she’s called Alice, said she didn’t want Gretchen to suffer any more.’ The nurse doesn’t sound in the least bit thrown by Benedict’s brusque tone; instead she is determined, convinced. ‘She said that she didn’t want her to wake up. And I don’t think Gretchen was unconscious when Alice found her – she said the front door was open, but that doesn’t ring true . . . And she became agitated when I suggested she might have been involved.’
I hear Benedict snort. ‘Hardly surprising. Relatives tend to get a little touchy about unfounded allegations of a very serious nature.’
‘Dr Benedict, I didn’t accuse her of anything. I think she was on the verge of confessing that she helped her do it. That’s assisted killing – murder!’
Benedict laughs a light, patronising laugh. ‘Don’t you think you might have been watching too many TV dramas?’
‘But I’m supposed to tell someone if I think something illegal is going on, or think there is something or someone that could be harmful to the patient,’ the nurse persists. ‘Well, I’m telling you!’
Benedict sighs. ‘OK. Run me through what she said . . .’
Oh no. Oh no no no!
‘She started to say they had a plan! What if she meant a plan to help Gretchen die? She said Gretchen asked her for help.’
No, I didn’t! Did I?
‘Help her to do it? Or help to stop her doing it?’ Judging by the tone of Benedict’s voice, I imagine he is shrugging and looking at the nurse like she is a half-wit. ‘What did this girl actually say? Did she say, “I helped her commit suicide”?’
‘No, but—’
‘Well, what did she say?’
‘Nothing exactly, but . . .’
‘Nothing exactly,’ Benedict repeats in disbelief.
I start to exhale . . . he doesn’t believe her.
‘I asked if she’d helped her and she said no, then she was about to—’
‘So actually she denied it?’
‘But don’t you think—’
‘No,’ Benedict says crossly. ‘I try not to unless absolutely necessary.’
I start to back away in relief but then I hear her say very firmly and insistently, ‘Dr Benedict, I know something is wrong.’ There is a pause and I imagine he has stopped and turned to look at he
r.
He sighs and I hear him say, ‘OK, OK. Just keep an eye on everything if it makes you feel better. Monitor her.’
‘I would, but I’m going off shift, that’s why I wanted to tell you.’
‘All right, I’ll monitor things, and when I go I’ll tell someone else to. Leave it with me.’
I hurry away at that – I’ll come back for my bag. I walk quickly back up the corridor. Thank God that interfering nurse is leaving, but is that doctor going to be watching me? Will he actually tell someone else when he leaves? He sounded like he was just saying it to shut her up, but still, still . . .
Tom and Bailey are sitting and staring at Gretchen, who actually now looks very calm and peaceful, not at all like she is fighting to stay alive. I sit down.
The only sound is the bleep, bleep of the machines and people walking up and down outside. I try to focus on that, rather than worrying about the nursing staff. The sound of everyday life going on beyond these thin, nondescript walls makes me flinch. I count up to seven bleeps, but then Bailey suddenly blurts miserably, ‘I knew I was going to miss the plane. We had an end of shoot party last night – I overslept and I knew I wouldn’t make it on time so I called and went on standby.’
Tom looks at him in disbelief. ‘This happened because you went to a party?’
‘If I could go back in time, I’d get that plane and spare all of us this, I promise.’ He shoots Tom a haunted look. ‘You can’t blame me any more than I blame myself, for what it’s worth.’
Tears rise to my eyes as I look at him sitting there, holding himself responsible when I know it is not his fault at all. Oh what have we done, Gretchen?
‘You went to a bloody party!’ Tom repeats, unable to believe his ears.
‘Yes, but—’ begins Bailey.
‘Stop it, please!’ I cry, finally reaching my absolute limit and jumping up.
I shove my chair back and run from the room as fast as I can.
Chapter Nineteen
‘I’m just so, so sorry,’ Gretchen whispered so quietly I could barely hear her. She was lying on the sofa bed in Bailey’s flat. I was seated opposite her. ‘I didn’t realise. I didn’t mean to mess everything up . . .’