Love Byte

by David Atkinson

  She smiled at me, which was the first time anyone had smiled since I’d arrived in Hell. Miss Patel glanced at some notes she had resting on her lap, then spoke.

  ‘Amy has responded well to treatment and although she’s still sedated we are now scaling down the antibiotic cocktail she’s been receiving. Your daughter is going to be fine.’

  I was speechless. I felt like going down onto my knees and worshipping this woman in front of me. I could have kissed her hands or feet. A broad grin crossed my face and I managed to utter the immortal line, ‘Oh thank you, Doctor.’

  After I’d said it I realized it sounded more like a line out of a Carry On film, but I didn’t care, my precious baby was going to be fine and nothing else mattered.

  My spirits had lifted but I continued my bedside vigil as Amy was still sedated. Sometime during the following twenty-four hours I slipped into a deep sleep, fell out of my chair and bruised my knee. The noise I made doing this persuaded the nursing staff to insist I moved myself to room 101 and slept there. I pushed my padded chair down the hospital corridor and sulked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Finally, on the third morning, I reluctantly left Amy sleeping peacefully in her hospital bed. Most of the wires and tubes had now been removed and she looked more like my daughter, and less like a teenager’s science experiment gone wrong.

  She had been moved into a quiet side room and although the doctors all reassured me she would now be fine, I still had to be practically dragged from the building by Pauline, who promised to stay with her until I went home, showered and changed the clothes I had been wearing for three days. I was definitely starting to whiff a bit. She also suggested I slept for a few hours before coming back to relieve her. As I drove home I noticed, when I glanced into the rear view mirror, that my eyes were bloodshot. They felt gritty and sore, so maybe a few hours’ sleep would be a good idea. I had also been suffering from an aching shoulder for most of the morning which I attributed to sleeping uncomfortably in the padded wooden chair the previous few days.

  I drove into my designated parking space in the basement of my building, clambered wearily from the car and took the lift up to my flat. I didn’t have the energy to walk up the stairs. I was beat. However, when I opened the door to my apartment, thoughts of sleep immediately vanished from my mind. Someone had been into my home. My iPad was lying smashed to pieces on the floor. There was a dent in the wall where it had obviously been flung with some force. The glass shelves that had held a few ornaments (none of them mine) had been trashed and numerous plates, cups, saucers and most of my drinking glasses had been thrown around the living room and kitchen. A few dents were evident here and there in the plaster indicating where they had been flung, again with force. A few of the cups hadn’t broken and were scattered around the room like someone had lost the plot at a chimps’ tea-party. Worst of all, however, was that the picture of me, Lindsay and Amy had been ripped from its frame and torn in half. The frame and glass had then been smashed.

  I was tired, angry and wasn’t thinking straight. I had endured a horrible few days and couldn’t cope with much more. I Googled the local police station number on my iPhone. Although I had been burgled and violated – was that the right word? – it didn’t feel like a 999 job. Given the recent emergency situation I had experienced with Amy, I was awake enough to realize I shouldn’t misuse the emergency services.

  A bored sounding voice answered the phone on the third ring and I explained my predicament. The bored voice perked up considerably and, after taking my address and mobile number, promised to send someone round within the hour.

  I had been hoping maybe they could come over in a few days as I was anxious to get back to the hospital, I needed time to clean myself up so maybe an hour would be ok. I thanked the voice and hung up.

  While I was waiting I removed my rancid clothes and socks and dumped them into the washing basket. If the police arrived and saw me in my current state, they would have assumed I was the burglar and arrested me. I shaved the stubble from my face and then stood under the shower for a long time, letting the hot water and steam cleanse me. I washed my greasy hair and made sure every inch of my body was soaped and rinsed clean before stepping out of the shower cubicle.

  I padded through to my bedroom and lay down on my bed for a few moments, enjoying the feeling of being naked, warm and clean.

  It would have been so easy to slip into a deep sleep. Instead I got off the bed, slipped into a clean pair of boxer shorts and wriggled into a clean shirt. I was towel drying my hair when the intercom buzzed. That was quick, I thought. Much less than an hour – the police must have been having a slow day! I dropped my damp towel onto my bed and padded over to answer the door. Two male officers came into my apartment. One was tall and dark with Mediterranean features which reminded me of Jamie. That made me a little uneasy as it suddenly occurred to me that maybe he had something to do with this; he did have a fiery temper. The other policeman was smaller with a pinched nose and watery eyes.

  Initially I was uncomfortable with the way they both stared at me, then suddenly realized that I hadn’t put my jeans on yet and was standing in my shirt and boxers. I smiled an apology and ran back into my bedroom, and pulled on my strides and a pair of slippers.

  When I returned I apologized and explained I’d just come out of the shower.

  I offered them a drink which they both accepted. I started to gingerly make my way across the debris to the kitchen area when Mediterranean policeman said, ‘Try not to touch anything.’

  I stopped in my tracks between a broken dinner plate and a rectangular glass vase which was missing one of its sides. I didn’t even know there was a glass vase in the apartment. Maybe the burglar brought it with them to add to the general mayhem. It was more than likely though that – like the salmon and the Cornettos – it had been just pushed to the back of something somewhere.

  ‘How am I supposed to get you a drink without touching anything?’ I asked quite reasonably without turning round.

  They both looked at each other; policeman number two said, ‘Well it’s just for fingerprints, you see. Have you got a towel you could use to open the fridge?’

  I nodded and wrapped a tea-towel around my hand. I fetched three diet cokes from the fridge, then looked around for glasses. I studied the floor and realized none of them had survived the carnage.

  ‘Sorry, I seem to be fresh out of glasses,’ I observed drily and carefully made my way back across the room, handing them a can each. I opened mine and drank deeply, glad of the caffeine hit.

  The police introduced themselves and gave me their cards. The watery-eyed officer was called Detective Sergeant Geoff Mokes and the other one Detective Constable Giovanni MacDonald.

  I was surprised to learn that it was the watery-eyed Mokes who was the senior officer. It was his colleague who had an air of authority about him. I wondered about the name too – Giovanni MacDonald – a real cultural mix there. They were very pleasant and took it in turns to ask questions. They were also very sympathetic when I explained where I’d been for the last few days.

  ‘Must have been a very upsetting experience for you then to come back here and find everything smashed up?’ asked Mokes.

  I shrugged. After the few days I’d had, the fact that Amy was going to be OK made everything else feel irrelevant. If the apartment building had been burned to the ground I probably wouldn’t have cared. They might not have let me back into the hospital due to being too stinky, but that didn’t matter so long as my baby was all right. As far as I was concerned, this was simply a minor annoyance that was keeping me from her.

  Mokes took my shrug to mean I was tired.

  ‘We can come back later if you want but as I’m sure you’d rather be focused on your daughter I’ll try and hurry along, OK?’

  I nodded gratefully. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Have you any idea how the
intruder got into your apartment, the door appears sound and no windows are broken. . . ?’

  He left the question hanging and I realized that of course there was no sign of a forced entry.

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ I offered lamely.

  Mokes continued. ‘Does anyone else besides your daughter and partner live here. . . ?

  ‘My wife’s dead, so it’s just me and Amy.’

  The revelation of my wife’s death changed the officer’s attitude slightly, and they took another look around the apartment as if to size up the possibility that maybe I hadn’t been burgled at all and this was how I normally lived. Even in my exhausted state I picked up on it. It was something I had grown used to over the previous few months.

  They evidently decided that nobody could live in such a wasteland and DS Mokes mumbled some apology and carried on.

  ‘What has been taken from the apartment? Have you managed to look yet?’

  I sighed, ‘I don’t think anything has been taken, I only rent the place so not much in here is actually mine. A lot’s broken but nothing seems to be missing.’

  MacDonald added a pennyworth. ‘So we are looking at malicious damage rather than burglary then?’

  ‘Is there a difference?’ I asked.

  Both of the officers looked at each other and smiled, I could see the police joke coming but couldn’t get out of the way.

  ‘About eighteen months,’ they said almost together and laughed.

  I couldn’t help smiling. It was infectious.

  Moke closed his notebook. ‘Do you mind if we have a look around before we decide what to do next?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ I said. ‘Try not to break anything.’ I’m not sure they appreciated my tired joke but they got up and walked across the apartment, broken glass and crockery crunched under their feet.

  A few minutes later I was almost dozing on the couch when Officer MacDonald shouted, ‘Mr Hunter, could you come through here please?’

  Both officers were in Amy’s room.

  I walked slowly, avoiding the detritus. When I entered the room I immediately saw what had made them so excited. It pulled me from my stupor. Huge red letters were scrawled on Amy’s wall (in lipstick I discovered later) that said:

  Fuck Of and Die

  ‘Have you upset anyone recently?’ DC MacDonald asked me.

  I nodded my head sadly. ‘Yeah, I’ve upset everyone recently.’

  The light went on in DS Mokes’s eyes.

  ‘Do any of them have a key?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I volunteered reluctantly.

  As soon as I saw the words I knew who it was, unless I’d upset some demented hairdresser (which I remembered I had). A quick mental calculation told me that this wouldn’t be from Terry (or her sister). The message was clearly from Amanda who had no doubt been stressed when she’d scrawled the letters onto the wall, causing the spelling mistake.

  I reluctantly admitted to the officers that I knew who had done the damage and that I wouldn’t be pressing any charges. I apologized for wasting their time. They were sympathetic and suggested I changed the locks.

  I let them out the door, grabbed the sweeping brush from the hall cupboard and started to clean up the worst of the mess. I was not going to get any rest but, in any event, I was too wired now to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I drove back to the hospital leisurely in marked contrast to my last emotionally charged trip. As I walked through the entrance, the clinical smell reminded me of my sense of panic from a few days earlier when I had wondered if my little angel, the most precious thing in the world to me, would ever make it out of there again.

  Amy was still snoozing when I got back up to her room. The consultant, Miss Patel, warned me that she was likely to sleep a lot over the next few days as her body recovered.

  ‘The healing process has less to do with drugs and more to do with the body taking back control of things,’ had been the paediatrician’s parting wisdom when she had placed her hand reassuringly on my shoulder, and left to tend to what she described as ‘more urgent cases’. The fact that Amy was no longer on her priority list gave me more confidence than anything else she did or said, and I at last accepted that my precious baby would be home with me soon.

  One more night (not a cue for a Phil Collins song) was how much longer they wanted Amy to stay in hospital. I wondered, if I had been a single mother rather than a single father, they would have reacted differently. Did they suspect that Amy was being neglected? That I, a single (or rather, widowed) man was in some way less capable of caring for his child than a woman would have been? Maybe I was just being paranoid but suspected that this was how the world worked. I was able to understand their doubts. I had them myself. I also fully expected some kind of referral to the social work department in the months ahead – sooner if they ever found out about my apartment being trashed.

  I realized that over the previous weeks I had become self-absorbed and obsessed with sex and women, behaving like some animal in musk. I had to shoulder most of the blame for that, but Lindsay had started it all and was continuing it. During the long hours of sitting by Amy’s bed, as I watched and listened to the machines blink and bleep, I had realized that those few weeks of bad behaviour (which is how I’d labelled it in my head) had nothing to do with Amy’s illness. It had just been a coincidence, but the guilt and fear I had experienced made everything seem scarier than it should have been. I likened it to waking from a nightmare bathed in cold sweat, where the memory gradually melts away as the sun comes up.

  As soon as I returned to Amy’s room, Pauline left for home, anxious to recharge her batteries. She wouldn’t return that day as I’d assured her that the worst was over and I’d stay with Amy until I could take her home. I’d not mentioned the trashed apartment. That would wait until later – she’d had enough worry for the time being. Besides, I wasn’t sure how or where I could even begin an explanation.

  Amy’s small room was cluttered with equipment, most of which thankfully was not in use. When I gently touched Amy’s face she murmured quietly but remained asleep. Her skin was surprisingly cool even though the hospital room was uncomfortably warm. She’d had no nourishment for three days and was probably burning fat reserves. Her slim frame would not have much of that and I decided to make sure she ate some food when she awoke later.

  A nurse appeared and smiled a greeting in recognition. I had become a semi-permanent fixture lately, and would be glad to get home despite the wonderful work and unselfish devotion of the medical staff.

  I slumped into the uncomfortable chair beside her bed. My padded one was probably still in room 101. I considered fetching it but I had received some strange looks previously when I had wheeled it along the hospital corridor, and to be honest I was too tired to repeat the exercise. Despite the hardness of the seat I almost immediately slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep. When I was awoken later by plates clattering as the catering staff delivered food, the sun had slipped from the sky and the room was dark. The room was lit by a small lamp beside Amy’s bed. Amy was awake.

  ‘Daddy’, she cried and beamed at me. My heart broke and I buried my face into her hair, breathing in her scent. I let the tears pour down my face which made her hair damp. The nurse wandered into the room, noticed my tears and wandered back out again with a smile on her face. My show of emotion might have just staved off a visit from a social worker for the time being.

  Amy was allowed to leave the next morning, and as I strapped her into her car seat she asked ‘Is Mummy home?’

  I had absolutely no idea where that had come from. She had never referred to Lindsay in any form that made sense in any way – except when she had seen her in photographs or the wedding DVD, and even then she had no point of reference as she could not remember Lindsay. I planned on telling her all about her mother and what had happened when she was old enough
to understand, I was sure that would have been when she was about five, not two and a half.

  I finished strapping her in and gave her a hug. ‘No, sweetie, Mummy isn’t at home, Mummy is in Heaven.’

  That seemed to satisfy her for the moment and her attention was distracted by her favourite teddy which I had brought with me in the car. Then she asked, ‘Daddy, when I go to Heaven, will you come with me?’

  I stared at her in the rear view mirror until the vision misted over as tears filled my eyes and poured down my face. That was probably one of the most heart-breaking things I had ever heard in my life. I sniffed and tried not to let her see me crying and I answered in a broken voice, ‘Of course, baby, but that won’t be for a very, very long time.’

  Amy seemed to think that over, then asked, ‘Will teddy go to Heaven?’

  I wasn’t sure where all this stuff was coming from, it was as if her illness had opened up a part of her brain that had been dormant before, or maybe this was what happened at her age. It was all a bit of a mystery to me. I would need to Google it later. Parenting via the Internet! Maybe I should have phoned social services and reported myself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I spent the rest of the day in the apartment trying to cater to Amy’s every whim and desire, and I let her eat anything she wanted, which wasn’t much apart from sweets and crisps as I had very little proper food in the flat. She seemed to have shrugged off her illness pretty well. I just assumed that the recovery rate of children at her age was very fast.

  As the day wore on I noticed she was more tired than usual and, I thought, painfully thin. Pauline arrived later and brought lunch for everyone, guessing correctly that I would have no food in the flat. Pauline cuddled Amy and said she looked fine and would soon regain any weight she’d lost.

  After lunch Pauline left to go shopping, as her boyfriend was due home the following day and they had booked into a romantic country house hotel for a few days.