by Dani Atkins
Infuriatingly the traffic was heavy and the roads were congested on the route to the hospital. We’d been stuck in a bumper-to-bumper jam for nearly five minutes, and if I’d had even the vaguest notion of where the hospital was located, I would have fled the cab and run full pelt through the snow-flecked streets to get to him. Instead I leant forward and rapped on the glass partition.
‘I need to get to the hospital really quickly. Is there another route you can take?’
‘You’re not having a baby back there, are you?’ quipped the cabbie with a cheeky grin. He had no idea that his irreverent jest was going to be my tipping point, but he got it soon enough as he witnessed my face contort as the tears I had been trying to suppress managed to find a way out. The irony of his words was as black as the paintwork of his cab.
‘My husband has had a heart attack,’ I replied, the tremor in my voice matched only by my trembling lower lip. ‘I really need to get to the hospital urgently.’
‘Blimey love. I’m sorry. I was just kidding with you. I had no idea this was a real emergency.’
He sat up a little straighter in his seat and gripped the wheel more firmly beneath his nicotine-stained fingers. I guess there are two things cab drivers are just itching to hear: Follow that cab and It’s an emergency.
‘You might want to buckle up, back there,’ the driver advised as he swung the cab down a narrow side street.
I scarcely noticed our breakneck journey through the winding London streets. My mind was too full of David. How could this be happening to him, to us? Every time I closed my eyes I tried to imagine my strong and energetic husband rendered so weak and incapable that he had to be lifted onto a stretcher and into the back of an ambulance. It was incongruous and my fear-frozen brain just couldn’t equate that image with the man who had carried me over his shoulder and into our bedroom just last week, dropping me squarely into the centre of our queen-sized bed. ‘I thought we were going out?’ I had said, watching as he tugged off his tie, quickly cast aside his shirt and unzipped his custom-made suit trousers. ‘I’ve lost my appetite,’ he had growled hungrily, as he lowered himself on top of me. ‘But luckily only for food,’ he had added, nibbling at the curve of my neck in the way that he knew drove me absolutely crazy.
How could he have gone from that passionate strong man to someone who had to be carried out of a department store in less than seven days? It made no sense.
I don’t think I have ever been more grateful to see anything than I was to spot the first blue road sign with the large white letter H in its centre. ‘Two minutes more,’ the cab driver confirmed, glancing back at me over his shoulder, which considering the speed he was driving he probably shouldn’t be doing. We pulled in at the main entrance to Accident and Emergency and, as thankful as I was that we had finally arrived, I was strangely reluctant to step out of the cab. Once I left it and walked through those sliding glass double doors it was all going to be real. David would be a patient; a sick person lying in a high metal-framed bed; a name written up in scrawling handwriting on a whiteboard in a ward. He wouldn’t be just mine; it would no longer be just the two of us.
‘I can’t really stop here,’ prompted the cab driver regretfully. ‘This bay is only for the ambulances to drop off.’ As if in confirmation one pulled in directly in front of us, its siren still wailing.
‘Sorry,’ I said, reaching for the door handle with a hand that was visibly trembling and stepped out into the cold afternoon, surprised to find that the day was already turning dark.
A paramedic ran around to the back of the ambulance that had just arrived and flung wide its doors. I felt my entire body stiffen in fear as I craned my neck, trying to see who was about to be lifted from within it. A small clutch of medical staff burst out of the building and slid into action in the way I had seen on countless television hospital dramas. Only this time it wasn’t just make-believe. This time someone’s life really was hanging in the balance. Was it David’s? I felt sick and giddy and that wasn’t just because I was holding my breath fearfully as the patient was lifted down and then speedily trundled through the snow and into the hospital.
As they ran I caught a few snippets of their rapidly barked-out assessment. ‘Hypothermic male aged . . .’ ‘. . . frozen ice . . .’ ‘. . . vital signs . . .’ ‘. . . core temperature . . .’
The only thing I could make out of the heavily cocooned figure, swaddled in red blankets on the stretcher, was a thatch of sandy-blond hair. It wasn’t David.
‘Are you going to be okay on your own? Have you got someone meeting you here? Would you like me to park up and come in with you?’
The cab driver’s kind words almost set me off again. ‘No. Thank you though, that was really thoughtful of you. But I’ll be fine.’ I added a mental postscript, or I will be as soon as I know he’s okay.
It was the first time I had ever seen a London cabbie look apologetic for the size of the fare, but I paid it without a second thought. ‘Good luck to you and your husband,’ he said gruffly and patted my hand awkwardly as he passed me my change.
I could still feel him watching me as I walked through the doors into the Accident and Emergency department. It was only the sound of an approaching siren, heralding the arrival of another new casualty, that prompted him to re-start his engine and pull away.
My legs were trembling so much as I approached the main reception desk it felt like I’d just spent half an hour on a cross-trainer. But no amount of exercise had ever made my heart pound so much I could scarcely hear past its throb in my ears, or cover the palms of my hands in an unpleasant sweaty film. Fear was the only thing that could do that. And I was terrified. My torture was prolonged just that little bit longer because both of the receptionists were busily engaged on telephone calls and although I was only kept waiting for a minute or two, by the time one of them did replace her handset and look up, my anxiety levels had rocketed right off the scale. Was I already too late?
‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. Can I help you?’
At last. The shaky voice that came out of my throat was so far removed from my usual tone, I could scarcely recognise it as my own. ‘I had a call to say that my husband – David Williams – was being brought here by ambulance. Could you tell me where I can find him, please?’
I’m sure the woman wasn’t being deliberately slow, but it seemed to take her an agonisingly long time to type David’s name into the hospital’s computer system and begin her search. ‘Sorry, we have a new IT program that we’re still getting to grips with,’ she explained, as she waited for the screen before her to respond. I was good with computers, it was part of my job, and it was all I could do to stop myself from yanking the keyboard towards me in an attempt to speed up the process myself. I wasn’t usually this way, but stress can do funny things to a person when someone you love is in danger.
Finally her screen flickered back with an answer. I stared intently at the woman as her eyes scanned the information. Lines of text were reflected in the lenses of her spectacles, but there was no way I could decipher them. What wasn’t hard to make out however was the sudden sobering of her face as she verified David’s status. It was suddenly getting much harder to breathe.
‘Mrs Williams, your husband was brought in with a suspected MI. He was brought into A&E and is currently about to be moved up to ICU.’
Did no one use full words in a hospital any more – was it all just acronyms? But I still understood what she was saying, far better than I wanted to.
‘Can I see him?’
She frowned, as though what I was asking presented a problem, and beneath the fear and terror a spark of anger flared. No one was going to keep me from David’s side, no matter what hospital rules or protocol I broke to get there.
‘Normally we ask relatives to wait until the patient has been transferred and settled into the Intensive Care ward,’ she explained. Then she saw my face. ‘But let me see if I can get someone to take you through to triage before he’s moved.�
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‘Thank you,’ I murmured gratefully.
The receptionist picked up the phone and punched some numbers into the keypad. I strained my ears, trying uselessly to hear whatever was being said, which was made much harder by the arrival of a family group at the desk beside me. I glanced up at a husband and wife who had their arms protectively around their three young children, each of whom was crying noisily.
‘Let me just ask this nice lady if she can tell us anything,’ said the man to the oldest boy, who had a blanket draped around him, and strangely was the one making the most noise. ‘It’s not your fault, Marty. You’re not to blame, but you need to hush now.’
He most certainly did, I thought, briefly wondering if it was an elderly relative they were here for. Then all thoughts of the group beside me were instantly abandoned as my own receptionist smiled gently. ‘Okay, good news, Mrs Williams. Someone will be out in just a moment to take you to him.’
‘Thank you. Thank you so much,’ I said on a small broken sob. I caught a look of sympathy on the face of the mother from the family group beside me. We were all victims in this place, and while none of us were actually wounded ourselves, we were all in pain.
I followed a nurse young enough to look like she was wearing a dressing-up outfit for a costume party through to the area where David had been taken. I’d always felt far happier when the medical staff looked old enough to have been doing this for more than just a few months. I was hoping whichever doctor was looking after David was positively ancient.
If it hadn’t been for the nurse who was walking directly in front of me, I would have walked straight past David’s bed. But in fairness when I had last seen him, just eight hours earlier, he hadn’t been hooked up with wires, tubes and electrodes to a series of extremely scary-looking machines. He also hadn’t been that particular shade of grey that is seldom seen on human skin. There was another nurse stationed at his bedside, who was partially blocking me from David’s view as she adjusted the thin lines of plastic tubing that fed into his nostrils. I was glad I had a moment to compose myself and swallow down the disappointed hope that all that had been wrong with him was just a bad case of indigestion. They didn’t expend this much effort for something that a couple of antacids could have fixed.
I edged past the nurses. ‘Hey, you,’ I said.
His eyes were closed, but they flickered open when he heard my voice.
‘Charlotte,’ the voice that was pretending to be David’s replied. I knew all of his voices: the professional one; the impatient driver one; the thoughtful son phoning his mother one, and my one, the deep sexy burr thickening and lowering his tone when he spoke just to me. And this weak and thin strain wasn’t one of his at all. I reached for his hand, hesitating when I saw something that looked like a clothes peg attached to one finger, and then lifted it regardless. His fingers curled around mine, but there was no strength in them.
‘Look at you; I leave you alone for just five minutes and find you in bed surrounded by a load of women. Typical.’ The nurse on the far side of the bed gave me a quick glimmer of a smile, but the one at the foot of the bed who was scribbling something on David’s chart raised her eyebrows, as though my frivolity offended her. Okay, I don’t like you, I decided. You don’t know either of us, nor the deep threads of humour that ran like strands of steel weaving through our relationship, binding us closer together than I could ever have imagined it was possible to feel.
I lifted his hand to my lips and it felt heavy, like I was doing all the work. Like it was lifeless. I tried to stop the thought from showing on my face. I kissed his knuckles and I knew my eyes were over-bright and glittering with tears. I furiously blinked them back. ‘What happened to you?’
‘Your husband collapsed with chest pains,’ came the response from the foot of the bed. I ignored her. That much I already knew.
‘I just came over really breathless and dizzy,’ David supplied, his words an obvious effort as he struggled to breathe and talk simultaneously. Something he’d been able to do just fine only a few hours earlier. ‘This damn flu bug is a real killer.’ He saw the horror in my eyes and gasped out a reassurance. ‘Not literally, sweetheart.’
I saw a look flash between the two female professionals. Neither of them thought this was the flu, and nor did I. ‘Have the doctors told you what’s wrong yet?’ He shook his head, and I could see how much even that small manoeuvre exhausted him.
‘He’s been scheduled for tests, but first we need to get him upstairs to ICU and stabilised. They’ll be able to give you more information as soon as the results are back,’ advised Good Nurse.
As they spoke, the nurses began making preparations to detach David from the fixed monitors in the ward and move him onto portable units. The fact that his condition was so precarious he needed to be continually monitored wasn’t lost to me. If anything, my anxiety levels were now even greater than they’d been before. A beefy-looking orderly turned up and stood by the bed in readiness for David’s move.
‘I can come with, can’t I?’ I asked, not for a moment expecting the answer would be no.
‘No,’ said Bad Nurse, and she didn’t even glance my way or offer a reason.
Good Nurse filled the breach. ‘I’m so sorry, but for the safety of your husband we can’t do that. We aren’t allowed to let relatives accompany patients while they’re being transferred to the ICU.’ She at least sounded genuinely apologetic, but honestly what did they think I was going to do? Get in the way of the stretcher and make it crash? Then I saw the level of professional concern being directed at the man who meant everything to me, and realised they were worried about David crashing in a totally different way. Should anything happen to him during the move, they didn’t want to be hampered by panicking family members.
‘Okay, I understand. But will someone let me know the minute I can come up?’
‘Of course we will.’
I looked down at David who, even as sick as he was, looked surprised at my lack of resistance. I wasn’t usually one to back down from a confrontation, a fact we both knew only too well. But any comment he might have been about to make was forgotten when he caught sight of the right-hand side of my face.
‘What happened to your cheek? You’re bleeding,’ he asked in wheezy concern.
I raised my fingers gingerly to the area he was looking at with obvious anxiety. It made my heart ache that he was the one lying on a stretcher, yet he was still stressing about some silly scratch on my face that I couldn’t even feel. I ran my fingertips across the smooth skin of my cheek and felt the lines of dried crusty residue on them. I gave a watery smile.
‘Manicuritis Interruptus,’ I said, showing him the hand of smudged nails with the same blood-red colour as the marks on my face. He gave a small laugh, or tried to, but it ended in a terrifying moment of watching as he struggled to catch his breath. Whatever those damn tubes up his nose were doing, they certainly weren’t giving him enough oxygen. I have to say this for Bad Nurse, she was quick enough when she pulled them free and rapidly replaced them with a full oxygen mask. It was probably less than a minute before David was breathing more comfortably again, but it felt like much longer.
‘We need to get him upstairs now,’ said my least favourite nurse, but I agreed. Take him anywhere you want as long as it has all the necessary equipment to make him better, to make him David again.
‘Let’s just take this off for a moment so you can kiss him goodbye properly,’ said the Good Nurse kindly, lifting the elasticated straps away from David’s nose and mouth. I didn’t like the words ‘kiss him goodbye’. It sounded terrifyingly prophetic.
I bent down and very gently pressed my lips to his. Our eyes locked as I slowly broke contact. ‘You take my breath away’ – the memory of him saying those words to me, just two nights ago suddenly filled my head. We had just made love, and I was lying in the strong circle of his arms, my head resting on his hard muscled chest, listening to the pounding of his heart gradually slowing dow
n. His words had been romantic and tender at the time, now they just sounded like yet another dreadful prophecy.
‘I’ll be up as soon as they let me,’ I promised, holding his hand even as the bed began to be wheeled away.
‘I love you,’ said David, his voice muffled and distorted by the mask.
‘I love you too,’ I replied, as the orderly gave one more push on the bed and our contact was broken. I smiled at him as they wheeled him out of the bay, down the corridor and through a set of double swing doors. I waited until I was sure they were out of earshot, then standing on the tiled rectangle where his bed had stood, I burst into loud and terrified sobs.
Ally
I’d never been in the back of a police car before. Well, why would I? I’ve never broken the law, never been arrested, never even protested or demonstrated about anything when I was at university, although I knew plenty of people who did. All I could think of as we hurtled through the dark December afternoon was how much Jake would have loved this. He was really into police cars, fire engines and flashing lights and sirens, well at least that was this year’s fascination. Last year it had been all about dinosaurs, before that . . . I shook my head and rubbed the bridge of my nose. What did it matter? I was only trying to distract myself from the real reason why I was tearing through thirty-mile-an-hour zones at twice that speed, going through red lights at junctions and overtaking vehicles on the wrong side of the road. Jake would have loved it, every bit as much as I, most definitely, did not.
But the officer had been right, we reached the hospital much quicker than I could ever have achieved. They drove straight into the ambulance bay, the rotating light on the car’s roof illuminating an eerie blue sphere around us. I was out of the vehicle even before the driver had pulled on the emergency brake, moving too fast on the slippery pavement. Luckily the second policeman had jumped out almost as quickly, and grabbed on to my elbow when I lost my footing on the dusting of snow in my haste to get inside. Joe was here, somewhere in this monolithic block of concrete and glass he was close by, and his nearness pulled and drew me like an enormous magnet.