Home for the Holidays

by Sue Moorcroft

  ‘Brr, he must have gone into the nesting box part to get away from the cold,’ Alexia observed, pushing her hands in her pockets and hunching her shoulders. ‘Look at the frost on the twigs.’

  Ben stopped short. ‘The door’s open!’ He blinked several times, as if that would magically clear his vision and he’d realise his eyes had been playing tricks.

  ‘Oh, no!’ But Alexia could obviously see exactly the same as him. ‘How on earth did that happen?’

  ‘It must be the wind.’ Ben rattled the door in its frame and sure enough the simple catch began to drop out with the vibration. ‘Crap! This is my fault.’ He raised the torch to make absolutely certain that Barney wasn’t in the run or nesting box.

  And then ‘Hehhhhhhh!’ Gold-grey feathers glowing in the torchlight, Barney flappety-hopped out from behind the run like a child triumphantly revealing himself at the end of a game of hide and seek.

  ‘Barney!’ Alexia cried thankfully.

  Ben felt almost weak with relief. Unable to take off, Barney would have had no defence if a patrolling fox had caught his scent. ‘Let’s stick him back in the run for a minute while I fetch his tub. He’ll have to stay indoors tonight.’ Barney didn’t at all object to being shepherded back into the run and Alexia stayed to check the door didn’t blow open again while Ben jogged to the house.

  By the time he returned, Alexia’s teeth were chattering and Ben made short work of popping Barney into the tub. ‘You get off home. I’ll settle Barney then give Gabe his meds and see if he wants another drink.’

  They said their goodnights. Ben shone his torch to help her see her way down the track; a small figure bundled up in her coat, hurrying to get out of the cold.

  After watching her disappear from sight he went indoors, fed Barney, saw to Gabe, then fell into bed, glad to close his eyes.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In the morning a hoar frost fringed every twig and blade of grass in her garden. Alexia paused to notice how pretty Main Road looked as the early light seemed to coat the houses in glitter.

  ‘Come on!’ urged Carola, hopping from foot to foot to keep warm.

  ‘Sorry.’ Shivering, Alexia fumbled with the key as she opened up the workshop, knowing Carola was anxious to begin on the preparatory work for painting a tall narrow corner dresser someone had donated. ‘You’ve picked up another scratch on your husband’s Defender.’ It made a matching pair with the ding Carola had picked up at the radio station.

  Carola didn’t even glance behind her at the unfortunate vehicle. ‘It’s not very big. It was one of those little posts in the supermarket car park. Stupid things.’

  ‘I’m getting worried when you park next to me,’ Alexia joked.

  ‘I wouldn’t bump into your car.’ Carola followed Alexia into the workshop and turned on both heaters.

  ‘You can’t this morning because I’m driving it to Gabe’s so I can take my laptop and everything.’ She took a good look around the workshop and the sea green tables and chairs crammed into the available floor space. ‘You’re doing a fantastic job. I need to make more space for you to work in but I don’t think I can, yet. The plasterers will be working at The Angel or I’d ask Ben if he could move some of it there in his truck.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘We might have to halt production until this lot can be moved but we’ve only got about half of what we need.’

  Carola turned an appalled face on her. ‘Stop?’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Alexia assured her hurriedly, taken aback by Carola’s horror. Once Carola had committed herself to The Angel she’d certainly put her whole heart into the project. Alexia gave her a consolatory hug, not wanting to damage their blossoming friendship by breaking disappointing news. ‘But you can’t stack stuff up when the paint’s so fresh because it will stick and mark.’

  Carola jutted out her chin. ‘I’ll start taking them up to my garage at home in the Land Rover. It’s a double and I hardly ever put a car in it.’

  ‘Great, if you don’t mind that.’ Alexia disengaged herself and glanced at her watch. ‘I’ll see you later. If you want to leave, just lock up and stick the key through my front door.’

  Fastening her scarf a little tighter, she braved the cold once more and grabbed everything she needed from the house to pile into the car, shivering as she drove the short journey to Gabe’s.

  She arrived to find Ben tying up the door to the temporary owl house with string.

  ‘I wish I’d done this last night instead of bringing Barney in,’ he said grimly. ‘Now he’s able to hop out of his tub he’s crapped all over the kitchen. Bloody bird.’

  ‘Hehhhhhhh,’ Barney added, hopping up onto a branch.

  ‘And how’s Gabe?’ Alexia lengthened her step to keep up as Ben strode back across the yard to the house.

  ‘No better. Worse, in fact. Most of the fluids I get down him are coming back. This infection seems to be eating him up.’ He looked at Alexia and she saw the fear in his eyes. ‘Even though you’ll be here I think I need to come back at lunch to see how he is. Maybe get some advice from the NHS helpline.’

  Alexia’s blood ran colder than even November frost warranted. ‘Do you think … he’s actually in danger?’ Her voice came out high and small on the crisp morning air.

  For several moments Ben didn’t respond. Then, ‘That’s what I’m scared of,’ he admitted hoarsely.

  Silently, they stepped into the warmth of Gabe’s kitchen.

  Ben gazed around with an expression of despair at the pungent white splotches on the floor and some of the other perches to which Barney’s hops could propel him. ‘And I’ve got to clean this lot up before I go to work.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Alexia volunteered immediately. ‘Don’t be late, especially if you have to try and wangle enough of a lunch break to get back here. It won’t take me long.’

  He turned his grey gaze on her. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ she replied firmly.

  With voluble thanks, and instructions to ring him if she needed him, Ben hurried out. After a few moments Alexia heard his truck start up and then the sound of his engine grumbled off down the track. Sighing, she found the antibacterial spray and spent the next twenty minutes cleaning up owl poop, glad that Barney’s fluttering hops couldn’t spring him as high as the worktops or table. At least the kitchen smelled a little sweeter by the time she gave her hands a good wash at the end.

  With a glance at the clock, she hurriedly fed Luke, who’d begun to rub around her ankles, his usual hint that his belly was rumbling, then carried a cup of tea up to Gabe, creeping into his bedroom, which was really beginning to smell like a sick room. ‘I’ve brought you a drink.’ She gazed down at the man she’d known for a good part of her life, the man she called a true friend, the man who would normally be pestering her to make him mince pies by now, and her heart did a nosedive.

  He looked terrible. His cheeks were sunken, his hair lank and snaggly, his heavy breathing punctuated by peculiar squeaks. ‘Gabe,’ she said, more loudly, her heart doing a panicky little flip.

  Then Gabe stirred and opened his eyes. ‘I’m not well.’

  Relief flooding through her that she’d been able to rouse him, Alexia lodged the mug of tea on his bedside. ‘You’re certainly not. Ben said you have to have lots to drink.’

  Gabe exploded with coughs, covering his mouth with one hand and holding his chest with the other. His eyes widened as he crowed for breath then, gradually, the coughing calmed. ‘My chest hurts. Ow.’ He sucked in another whistling breath. ‘It hurts down my sides, too.’

  ‘Do you fancy a cuppa?’ Alexia asked gently.

  ‘I keep water down better.’

  ‘I’ll get you a fresh glassful.’ She had to rouse him again when she returned a minute later.

  He sipped from the glass after raising himself weakly on one elbow. ‘It’s not time for my medicine, is it?’

  ‘Not till lunch time.’

  Gabe sank back down and closed his eyes again.

&nb
sp; Horrified by this weak and wobbly version of the Gabe she knew and loved, Alexia cast about for ways to help. ‘Do you want the TV on? Or me to read to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shall I sit with you?’

  ‘No.’

  Alexia trudged back downstairs with foreboding as heavy as rocks around her heart. If anything were needed to convince her that Gabe’s condition was grave it was the omission of those pleases and thank yous. Their absence was as alien as Gabe’s unwashed hair.

  With Luke for company, sleeping off his breakfast in Gabe’s chair, Alexia set herself up at the kitchen table and tried to become immersed in collating estimates from bricklayers and damp-treatment specialists. It was hard to settle, though, and she kept creeping upstairs every time Gabe finished one of his wracking bouts of coughing to check he was still in one piece.

  When she heard the sound of the truck lurching up the track shortly after one, she jumped up, ready to meet Ben at the door. ‘I’ve given him his next dose of antibiotics but he coughed until he was sick right afterwards. I think you need to speak to someone.’

  Ben didn’t even run upstairs to check for himself. He nodded once, went very white, and crossed the room to ring 111, bouncing off the furniture in his haste. Within twenty minutes Dr Worthington had rung him back and within two hours the ambulance arrived.

  Although the green-clad paramedics, one male and one female, were unhurried and calm, they were swiftly about their business. They clipped a thing on Gabe’s finger to measure his oxygen levels then gave him oxygen via a mask and used words like ‘cyanose’ and took readings again. It wasn’t until they’d ‘got his sats up’ that they reached agreement to move him.

  Friendly and cheerful, they explained what they were going to do then moved Gabe smoothly onto a big sort of chair thing and strapped him in. Down the stairs. Into the ambulance. Checked his oxygen saturation again.

  ‘We’re going to take a steady ride to Peterborough City Hospital,’ the male paramedic told Ben. ‘Want to hop in?’

  Ben did.

  In no time Alexia, shivering despite her coat, was watching the big vehicle dip and lurch down the track, her stomach feeling as if she’d lunched on concrete. When the ambulance had vanished from sight she trailed back to the warmth of Gabe’s kitchen and gazed about with no idea what she should do.

  She couldn’t settle to Elton’s stupid costing.

  There was no one to make tea for.

  No one to check up on or give meds to.

  No point banking up the range because she didn’t know when anyone would be staying here again.

  From old habit she tried to ring Jodie, thinking that maybe she’d cry, ‘Come round to Mum’s and we’ll make you a cuppa. You can tell us all about poor Gabe.’ Jodie had known Gabe just as long as Alexia had, after all. But Jodie’s phone went straight to voicemail and Alexia didn’t feel like leaving a message.

  Numbly, she gathered up her things, threw them in her car and went home.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ben had never been in an ambulance. Now that he was belted into a seat on one side of one with no view out, he didn’t particularly like it. It was probably the lack of visual references that made him feel vaguely sick as they followed the curves of Main Road out of Middledip, he told himself. Or the antiseptic and medicinal smell of the ambulance interior.

  Or that Gabe lay on the other side of the vehicle, his face grey and beaded with sweat, the female paramedic sitting beside him doing observations. Gabe’s eyes were shut. He was so unresponsive that, his noisy breathing drowned out by the rumble of the wheels on the road, only a growing and shrinking patch of condensation on his oxygen mask reassured Ben that life was not extinct.

  At least the paramedic driving wasn’t sounding the sirens or hammering around corners. Ben would surely then have been sick. From fear.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Is he OK?’ He felt helpless with the width of the ambulance between him and Gabe.

  The paramedic looked up with a reassuring smile. ‘No deterioration. He’s holding his own.’

  Ben thanked her but he didn’t find that very bloody reassuring. He wanted her to exclaim that a bit of oxygen had been all that Gabe needed. That the trip to hospital was a precaution and Gabe would be back in his own home by evening. He wanted Gabe to open his eyes and ask what all the fuss was about and demand to know who would feed his chickens.

  He wanted reassurances that didn’t come.

  It seemed hours passed in the claustrophobic confines of the wallowing ambulance full of frightening equipment. Ben tried to read their labels to pass the time but that just made him feel sicker. Finally the vehicle stopped and the engine fell silent.

  Ben was thankful to be able to take a deep breath of fresh air as the doors were flung open. ‘Just give us a minute,’ the male paramedic called, as the female reported Gabe’s oxygen saturation levels before they wheeled him out of the rear exit. Happily for Ben’s heart rate the female paramedic opened the side door to release Ben back into the real world without delay. ‘Just stick with us while we get your uncle admitted,’ she suggested briskly.

  Just try and shake me, Ben thought.

  The process of hospital admission seemed interminable. They began in the ‘ambulance stream’ – which had a lot in common with a trolley in a corridor – and Gabe’s care was passed to a member of hospital staff who began the process of assessment as the paramedics said goodbye. Ben did remember to thank them, though he was preoccupied with trying to assess Gabe himself and watch what the member of hospital staff was doing. They quickly progressed to resus where someone else assessed Gabe, Gabe stirring every now and then to try and answer a question, Ben filling in the blanks. Every new medical professional Ben and Gabe encountered gave their name but didn’t announce their role or title.

  Things speeded up. A porter pushed Gabe along several corridors to X-ray, Ben walking alongside. There Ben had to wait outside, holding Gabe’s old, holey slippers, wanting to find a Gents to use but frightened to leave in case Gabe was whizzed on his journey through the massive hospital and Ben lost him.

  From X-ray the porter pushed Gabe to a holding bay to wait for a doctor. Gabe slept. Ben fidgeted. He could hear goings on in other cubicles but could see very little but the patient in the cubicle opposite, who was looking very apologetic that she couldn’t produce a urine sample for a nurse.

  Then a tall doctor with black hair and golden skin arrived and Gabe alternately roused and dozed through his examination.

  ‘Is he going to be OK?’ Ben asked at the end of it.

  The doctor smiled. ‘He’s quite unwell, as you’re aware. His X-ray shows severe pneumonia in both left and right lungs and he’s obviously developed pleurisy, which is a common complication. As the antibiotics prescribed by his GP haven’t helped enough I think we’re going to have to keep him here for a while.’

  ‘He often coughed the antibiotics back up.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘We can administer fluids and antibiotics intravenously. Someone will be along to get your uncle up onto a ward when a bed’s available.’ He shook hands with Ben and was gone.

  ‘Was that a doctor?’ Gabe croaked through his oxygen mask.

  Ben moved swiftly to the head of the bed, glad to see Gabe had roused on his own. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But he was in his pyjamas.’

  For the first time since he’d arrived at Gabe’s at lunchtime, Ben grinned. ‘They’re hospital scrubs.’

  ‘Oh. No white coat these days?’ Gabe was asleep before Ben could reply and slept through his admission to a high dependency unit.

  Hours later, from a chair next to the bed, Ben watched Gabe’s still figure. Propped up on crisp white pillows, antibiotics and fluids flowed into Gabe’s wasted arms through thin tubes that seemed to glow in the subdued lighting the hospital favoured in the late evening. Oxygen hissed comfortingly into the mask covering Gabe’s mouth and nose, easing his breathlessness and marginally improving
his colour.

  A benefit of Gabe having an alcove to himself was that nobody asked Ben to respect visiting hours. He was able to simply sit, monitoring Gabe’s breathing and remembering boyhood trips to watch birds or swim in the sea or climb to the top of a hill solely to see how the world looked from a new angle.

  In those days, Gabe had been there for Ben.

  And now Ben was here for Gabe. He’d listed himself as next of kin on the hospital records, even though he presumed that, as Gabe had no children of his own, Penny legally owned that title. But she wasn’t here and Ben was.

  Almost as if she’d read his thoughts across several counties, his phone vibrated on a text from her.

  Mum: Do you think you’ll be coming home for Christmas? Dad and I are hoping you will. Come for the week, if you like. We might have a NYE party. x

  Ben read it twice. Checked today’s date. He supposed mid-November wasn’t too early to be making festive plans but it felt incongruous in this world of hissing oxygen, swishing trolleys and hushed nurses in the corridor outside. A number of pithy retorts sprang to his mind but he reminded himself that Penny didn’t know her brother was in hospital.

  Ben: Thanks for the invitation. Of course I’ll see you at some point but I don’t think I’ll manage several days …

  He paused to review that thought. What would he be doing at Christmas? So far he’d thought of it only as a date by which Alexia insisted The Angel would be open. Last year, though acutely aware of not spending Christmas with Imogen, he’d been living in Didbury so had visited his parents on Christmas Day. The atmosphere had been subdued, his parents sighing over Lloyd’s second Christmas ‘inside’ and feeling guilty to be feasting on home-cooked turkey with all the trimmings. Ben had spent the rest of the holiday period working grimly on selling his business and the marital home. And the Christmas before had passed in a haze of pain in the aftermath of the accident.