She didn’t stop crying until Noah stretched out on the bed on the other side of her and handed her her bottle.
She sucked her bottle contentedly, holding it with one hand, stroking Vincent’s velvet shirt with her other.
Noah was quiet too, his eyes on Emily, and she turned her head a little to look at him, shifting her hand to stroke Noah’s close cropped beard.
After a few minutes her sucking slowed and her eyes began to close.
Noah said quietly, “Come on, little angel, let’s put you back into bed.”
Vincent kissed Emily’s cheek and watched Noah cradle Emily in his arms and stand up from the bed and carry her off to bed.
Noah was back in a minute, closing and locking the door, then clambering back onto the bed, and Vincent couldn’t stop himself from smiling with anticipation. Emily was asleep now, and would sleep until morning. There was no one else in the house, they were alone. This was the time when they could be themselves instead of parents, when they could be lovers.
Noah was grinning too and he reached for the buttons of Vincent’s shirt. “God,” he whispered, “I’ve been hanging out for this all day.”
“Yeah,” Vincent agreed. “Me too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Emily leaned over and kissed Noah goodbye, then threw herself out of the car and into the chaotic press of bodies streaming through the school gates. Noah watched until she was safely inside school grounds, then checked his watch. If he really hurried, and was extremely lucky with parking, he still might make his 9.30 tutorial.
Vincent usually took Emily to school on a Wednesday morning, so Noah didn’t have this rush, but not this morning. Vincent was still in bed with a rotten headache when Noah was ready to go. He’d had it since the previous evening, and it’d been so bad they hadn’t had sex last night.
Noah checked his watch again and grimaced. He knew he really wasn’t going to make it to the tute on time. Maybe he should go home and check on Vincent. Maybe, if he took Vincent some maté and rubbed his shoulders and neck, and if his headache eased, they could fuck.
Noah pulled back out into the traffic, only heading back towards home. His anthropology tute could be missed.
Noah flicked the kettle on as he passed through the kitchen, dropping his keys and backpack containing his laptop onto the kitchen counter.
Usually he thundered up the stairs, just like Emily did and Ben used to, but he kept it quiet in case Vincent had gone back to sleep.
The bed was empty when he pushed the bedroom door open, quilt and sheets in a rumpled pile at the base. His hopes lifted and he thought it a good sign that Vincent was up, probably showering. “Hey, Vincent,” he called out. “Feeling better?”
The water wasn’t running, so Noah stuck his head around the door to ask Vincent if he wanted maté or coffee.
Vincent was slumped naked on the floor, pale against the dark tiles, and Noah could smell toothpaste and vomit. Fear clutched at him, but he squashed it as he pushed the door open. “DR ABC,” he recited to himself out loud, long forgotten habits resurfacing as he repeated the acronym for emergency first aid. “DRABC.”
“Danger.” Had Vincent electrocuted himself? He couldn’t see any water on the floor, only vomit and urine. There were no appliances in sight either, so Noah dropped to his knees beside Vincent’s body.
“Response,” he continued. He shook Vincent’s shoulders sharply. “Vincent! Wake up!” No response.
“Airway.” He could do ‘airway’. He rolled Vincent onto his side and pushed two fingers into his mouth, clearing away toothpaste foam and bile, tilting his head and making sure anything else could drain out of Vincent’s mouth.
Noah was trembling with fear now. He was at ‘B’ and Vincent wasn’t responding. “Breathing.” He mouthed a silent prayer and pressed his ear next to Vincent’s mouth. “Yes!” There it was, the clear sound of him exhaling. Noah exhaled too, sudden relief washing through him. Vincent was breathing. He wasn’t dead.
With a little more confidence, Noah said, “Circulation next, just to be sure.” Noah pressed his fingers against Vincent’s neck, fumbling around for his pulse. It was there, too fast and a little fluttery, but still there.
Noah reached for his cell phone and with only one fumble, dialed 911.
The operator kept talking to him in her calm, nasal twang, as he held Vincent’s hand. Fear clutched at him. Vincent was twitching slightly, and Noah muttered a desperate “Fuck,” under his breath and reached for a towel to push under Vincent’s head to cushion it from the hard tiles.
“He’s fitting,” he told the operator urgently. “What can I do?”
“Go and let the paramedics in, love,” the operator said. “They just radioed that you’ve got security gates. You’ve got to go let them in.”
Noah dropped the phone and bolted down the stairs, throwing the front door open and hitting the manual button to open the gates from the inside.
“This way, quickly,” he told the paramedics, and he charged back up the stairs again.
They ran. He credited them for that. They followed him up the stairs, and when he pointed at the bedroom door and said, “Through there, in the bathroom,” they quickly pushed past him.
Noah’s heart was pounding, and he was shaking uncontrollably as he sat on the edge of the bed. He could hear the paramedics talking to each other, then the crackle of a radio as one ordered a bus. Nausea hit Noah, hit him hard, and he bolted for Emily’s bathroom, managing to get to her sink before he started vomiting.
He staggered back to sit on the edge of the bed again, their bed, and he couldn’t stop himself from shaking. One of the medics had moved and he could see Vincent now, plastic cuff around his neck, a plastic tube in his mouth with the oxygen bottle attached. ‘Christ,’ he thought numbly. He had to call people. He had to call Ben.
He heard the sirens outside this time and one of the medics called out to him, “That’s the ambulance. Go and show them in, please.”
Noah blinked. That was him, he had to do that.
He ran back down the stairs to find two more medics, carrying a stretcher between them, coming through the front doors. “Upstairs,” he told them, pointing towards the staircase, and the woman looked over her shoulder. “Please tell us he weighs less than 300 lbs.”
Noah nodded, not able to make sense of why she was asking as he followed them back up the stairs. ‘The stairs of course’ he realized. They didn’t want to carry someone really heavy down the stairs.
When the four medics between them carried Vincent and the stretcher out of the bedroom, Noah looked back into the bathroom for his phone. It was there on the floor, amongst the litter of plastic and paper wrappers left by the medics, and the other mess. He grabbed it, and ran downstairs into the kitchen to snatch his keys and wallet.
They were loading Vincent into the ambulance when Noah slammed the front door shut. “You can ride up front in the bus if you want.” He looked grateful and scrambled aboard, ignoring the gathered crowd of curious neighbours, doing up his seat belt.
The driver nodded at him and said sympathetically. “Rough day?”
Noah nodded back. “Yeah. Can I use my phone in here?”
“Sure, traffic’s not busy, we can wait to flick the sirens on while you make a call.”
Noah blinked. He hadn’t thought of the noise of the sirens, he was just worried about the phone interfering with any of their equipment.
He opened his phone up, and scrolled down to find ‘Ben work’.
Someone else answered Ben’s phone, and assured Noah they would go and find Ben immediately. Ben came on the phone a few seconds later. “Hi, Noah, What’s up? Brian said it was urgent.”
Noah took a deep breath to stop himself from sobbing. “It’s Vincent. He’s… Something’s badly wrong… You have to come… Now.”
“Where are you? Where is he?”
“In the ambulance on our way to…” He didn’t know.
The driver said, “We
’re going to Netherfeld, the ER there, tell him to meet you there.”
Noah nodded his gratitude to the driver. “Netherfeld… You have to go there…” Noah did sob then, a strange strangled noise. “Ben, hurry, please!”
There were rustling and thudding noises from Ben’s end of the phone. “OK, I’ll be on the first flight. I’ll have to turn my phone off while I’m in the air, but call me as soon as you know anything, leave a message… and tell Dad I love him if you get the chance.”
“I will.”
He could hear Ben breathing hard for a moment before his phone clicked off. Ben must have been running through the office.
This couldn’t be happening. Noah chewed his thumbnail and stared out of the window blankly.
The driver flicked the sirens on causing Noah to return with a start, and put his phone away. They slowed down to go through an intersection against the lights, the traffic parting around the ambulance.
Noah’s mind spun. He couldn’t be taking Vincent to hospital. Not Vincent. Vincent couldn’t be dying. They all loved him too much. He loved Vincent too much. Vincent and Emily were everything to him, his life, his family. Vincent couldn’t be dying, because he’d never told him he loved him.
Through all the years together, through every time they had held each other, talked to each other, he had never said the words. At first he’d been too scared and uncertain to tell him. Then as Emily grew he’d been confident that Vincent knew, that the way Noah felt was beyond mere words. Now he’d give anything for Vincent to hear him say it just once.
He craned his head around, trying to see through the sliding partition behind him, but could only make out bits of equipment and the side of the medic’s head. He turned back to the front of the ambulance and closed his eyes and prayed.
At the hospital he was politely but firmly led away to a waiting room before Vincent was even slid out of the back of the ambulance. The nurse who led him there promised that the doctor would come and see him as soon as they knew anything, then she left Noah.
The room was crowded, a strange mix of distraught relatives, patients who were low priority, and the homeless. The big sign announced, ‘No Cell phones’ so Noah numbly found his way down a corridor to the exit.
Once outside, he turned his back on the huddled smokers, flipped open his phone and hit the speed dial.
“Ella,” he said shakily, when the phone answered.
“Hi Noah. You OK? You sound like you’ve been crying.”
“I’m not OK. Vincent’s in hospital. Will you go and get Emily? She should be here with me when he wakes up. If.”
“Fuck. What happened? A car crash?”
“No. He collapsed at home. It looks bad, Ella, he’s been fitting or something.” Noah began to cry again then, leaning against the concrete wall beside him, one hand over his face, the other pressing the phone to his ear.
“Noah, love, hang in there. Where are you? Do you want me to come and wait with you for a while before I get Emily?”
“Will you? Just until I hear from the doctors what’s happened?”
“Goddess knows, between the pair of us, we’ve loved that man for the better part of thirty years. That’s got to count for something.”
Noah looked up when Ella touched his shoulder, and stood and hugged her tightly. So different from what she had been a couple of years before, Ella was thin, still recovering from her struggle with breast cancer the previous year. They simply held each other for a moment. “Have you heard anything?” she finally asked.
“Yes. They think he’s had a stroke. He’s got to have a CT scan before they know if it’s a clot or a bleed. Then they’ll know how to treat it. I had to sign consent forms for it,” he said, repeating what the doctor had told him.
Ella sat down beside him and leant her head on his shoulder. “Fuck. Have you seen him?”
Noah shook his head. “They said…they said he’d deteriorated… that I could see him after the CT scan...”
“I called Marie. She’s doing a working for him now. The whole coven will get together tonight too.” Her hand stroked his shoulder. “Is Ben on his way?” she asked, and Noah nodded. “Are you sure you want me to get Emily? I don’t think she should see you like this. She’s going to be upset enough already,” she said gently.
“Family of Dresden,” a voice on a public address system scratched, and Noah jolted.
“Fuck,” he said, and was across the crowded room to where a nurse was holding a microphone in her hand.
She smiled anonymously at him. “This way, the doctor will see you now.”
The doctor was harassed and nervous and looked impossibly young, sticking a pen into her tangle of bleached hair and twisting it again and again. Noah sat down opposite her and tried to compose himself.
“There’s good news and bad news,” she said. “The good news is that the CVA was caused by a clot not an aneurism.”
Noah looked at her blankly.
“Cerebral vascular accident. Stroke. We’ve treated your partner with anti-coagulants and done a thrombolysis procedure and dissolved the clot, so blood’s flowing through that part of his brain again. If it had been an aneurism, a bleed, we might have had to go in and clip the artery. And the pooled blood causes damage too. The anticonvulsants we’ve given him have stopped him from fitting. That’s the good news. But there’s plenty of bad news. He has an underlying heart disorder that caused the clot. Because of this, he arrested during the CT scan. He resussed well, but it’s never a good thing. Means he’ll be in Intensive Care here for a while, until we’re sure he’s not going to arrest again.”
Noah blinked. “How long’s a while? Is he going to be alright?”
The young woman shrugged at him. “As long as we need to, or until someone in more urgent need of the bed comes in, then we’ll move him to High Dependency. And it depends what you mean by alright. Can we keep him alive? Probably. Will it happen again? Probably not, especially if he takes anti-coagulants and stops smoking, and we can get on top of the heart problems.”
“Christ, he’s been quitting for the past ten years,” Noah muttered. Ever since Noah had fallen pregnant, Vincent had been stopping smoking.
“Ah, another person under the misconception that you can be ‘giving up’ while still lighting up. Nicotine on the fingers is a give away,” the doctor pointed out. “As for what sort of damage his brain has suffered, I can’t tell you. Not yet anyway. The CT scan shows some probable damage, but until he wakes up, we just don’t know.”
The doctor leant across the table covered in files and patted Noah’s hand sympathetically. “You can go sit with him in Intensive Care, at least until somebody trips over you. Be there for him when he wakes up.”
“If… if I hadn’t found him, he would have arrested at home, right?” Noah asked, his brain beginning to put together the pieces.
The doctor nodded. “He wouldn’t be waking up.”
Noah sat down tentatively on the chair the nurse pointed at and let himself look at Vincent. He looked like he was asleep, except he never slept flat on his back, and there were tubes coming out of him, and monitors stuck on him. The bank of machines beside him showed what looked to Noah’s eyes like ordinary patterns. There was the up and down trace of his heart, something flashing rhythmically for his pulse, what looked like a percentage reading of 99 for his oxygen. The tube in his throat was scariest, strapped in place, making a faint whistling sound.
Noah reached out and carefully pressed his fingers against Vincent’s hand. He was cool to touch, and his skin felt strange to Noah. Noah took his hand in his own.
The nurse leant across, adjusting things, then wrote something down on the huge chart at the end of the bed, then disappeared behind the neighboring curtain. Noah leant forward and whispered, “Don’t leave me, I love you too much. I’m not ready to let you go.”
There were tubes snaking out of Vincent’s shoulder from a dressing, and Noah’s eyes followed them up to a drip, then back down ag
ain. “Please come back to me,” he pleaded. “I promise I’ll look after you.”
Time crept by. The nurse asked Noah to leave every twenty minutes or so, and he sat numbly in the Intensive Care waiting room, ignoring the other desperate relatives, until he was called back. He messaged Ben, whose phone was off, and called Vincent’s mom and brothers. They’d all be here soon, and he’d have to start dealing with them too.
The waiting room door pushed open, and Noah looked up as Emily came in. She was tall for her age, already up to Ella’s shoulder, and not really pretty anymore. She might have Noah’s coloring, but she had Vincent’s strong face, too solid a jaw for a ten year old, sharp cheekbones now her baby fat was melting away. She’d probably be striking later on, but right now she was all angles, elbows, attitude and dubious personal hygiene. She had grass and gravel stains on the knees of her jeans, which she pulled up with one hand automatically. There were holes in the toes of her sneakers that hadn’t been there when she had gone to school, and there was ink on her cheek. She was so much like Vincent that Noah couldn’t breathe for a moment.
Her face was blotched red and pink from crying, and Noah held his arms open for her. She hugged him tight, and Noah looked up at Ella.
“Any news?” she asked and Noah shook his head.
A nurse opened the waiting room door. “Noah, you can go back in.”
Noah pulled Emily back a little. “Do you want to see Dad?” he asked, wiping the dampness of her cheeks with his thumb. “He’s asleep, so you can talk to him, but he can’t talk to us right now, OK? And he’s got tubes in him too.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Emily asked. “What’s wrong with Da?” Noah’s own heart ached a little at her use of her early childhood name for Vincent. Once she’d started school, she had begun calling them ‘Dad’ and ‘Daddy.’ It had been years since Noah had heard her use her toddler names for them.
Noah paused. They had a policy of not lying to Emily about the adult world, of letting her have information about important things like the circumstances of her conception and birth. This was another time for honesty.
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