‘Too busy,’ said Daddy, who sat next to Nikki, her hand in his. ‘When will the doctors come to us? This ward round is taking too long.’
Nikki looked at Elijah. His eyes, too, were frozen half shut, suspended somewhere – like the rest of him, like them all – between night and day, or life and death. She wanted so much for him to open his eyes and look at her, and cry warm tears. A tube came out from his nose and connected him to a breathing machine that made sucking noises and then beeped. It was quite therapeutic, the noise of the machine. Especially during last night. She’d spent the night with her head resting on the side of his bed, curled over her bump, despite the nurses’ insistence that she rest.
‘I don’t want to rest,’ she’d said. Nikki didn’t want to do anything else but be next to Elijah. The baby was pressing on her bladder; she had to force herself to go to the toilet, and she ran back, squirting alcohol gel on her hands on the way. She didn’t want to waste time washing her hands in the toilets. What if … The thought was too much to bear. The baby inside her kicked, as if it sensed Nikki’s mood. Impossible, Obi had said. But nothing was impossible, she thought, looking at Elijah. Her beautiful son, with his eyes stuck half shut and three tubes sticking out of his neck carrying his blood in and out, the shape of them making him look like he was a strange exotic flower. My son.
‘Is it that same doctor?’ Daddy squeezed her hand and looked over Nikki’s shoulder at Obi, who alternated between waiting by the bedside and pacing the corridors outside, his face puffed up from crying. ‘He was nice.’
‘They’re all being nice,’ whispered Obi. ‘That’s their job. But I liked the one who was really honest.’ He turned his head away. Nikki had noticed that he couldn’t look at his dad, or her. It was as if he’d gone into a bubble. She reached behind her and took his arm, pulling him round her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Obi whispered. ‘I’m sorry for all of it.’
Nikki looked at him. ‘You can hold his hand if you want,’ she said. ‘He might be able to hear us.’
Instead of Obi pulling away, as Nikki had thought he would, he leant towards her. ‘Do you think he can hear us?’
She turned. Seeing Obi cry was almost the worst part of it. His face had given up already; it was a different face, one that couldn’t fix everything, that got things wrong sometimes. Very wrong.
‘I got the letters from Ricardo, written to Elijah. He told me to read the latest one, if we had the chance.’
Nikki let go of Daddy’s hand. ‘What do you mean? What letters?’
‘The letters from her – from Deborah. She’s been writing to him all this time. Ricardo kept them. The letters,’ said Obi. ‘Oh, Nik, the letters …’
Nikki looked at Elijah and listened for the sucking ventilator noises and she looked at the screen above him with the waves. She looked back at his face, his soft skin, the shape of his ear.
‘I don’t want to see them,’ Nikki whispered.
The door near the bed-space buzzed and Chanel and Jasmin were there. Chanel was wearing, for the first time since they had been adults, a white shirt and pair of jeans – no rips – and trainers. Her face was drawn and grey, the patches underneath her eyes almost hollow. Nikki realised she wasn’t wearing any make-up. Not a scrap.
Jasmin stood beside her, her ponytail perfectly still as she looked at Elijah. ‘Why have they made him into a robot?’ she said. And then she began to cry. Chanel held her.
‘I saw him jump down,’ Jasmin said, ‘and I tried to flash my torch and I told him that he couldn’t really fly, not really, just like I’m not really going to America, not really, but he wouldn’t listen; he just jumped right out the window and I saw him smash.’ She sobbed. ‘Mummy, I saw him. I’m not really going to America, Mummy, am I? I don’t want to go to America, Mummy; I want to stay with you …’
‘Shhh …’ Chanel hushed Jasmin’s head and pulled her close, kissed her. ‘You’re not going anywhere, baby. Not ever. Come on, Jasmin. Let’s say hi to Elijah and then get a cup of tea. OK?’
Jasmin went to the other side of the bed, ignoring the nurse who was injecting something into a bag of fluid. She bent down to Elijah and kissed his cheek. ‘I meant what I said with my torch,’ she said between sobs. ‘You’re my best friend.’
Chanel took her back to the door, where she turned and looked at Nikki and put her hand over her heart, before opening the door and ushering Jasmin out.
Daddy looked up at the nurse. Another nurse had come and alarms were beeping on Elijah’s monitor and people were rushing. ‘I think I’ll leave you both to have some time,’ he said to Nikki. ‘But I need to speak to you first.’ He looked at her. ‘He needs to hear those letters,’ Daddy said. ‘He doesn’t think his mother loved him. That’s why he jumped. He was trying to prove there was a wizard inside him. He told me he wanted to prove it.’ His voice was breaking. ‘I should have said something, stopped it …’
‘You couldn’t have known what he was thinking,’ said Nikki. ‘None of us did.’
Daddy sat on the end of the bed, ignoring all the rushing going on around him. He picked up Elijah’s hand, careful not to dislodge the tubes coming from it.
‘You are the best grandson a man could ever ask for,’ he said. He began to cry. ‘Don’t worry, little Elijah. The wizard is gone now.’ He bent over and kissed Elijah on the forehead, at the point where the bandage met his skin. ‘The wizard is gone now.’
Daddy kissed Nikki on the way out and put his hand on Obi’s shoulder, then left the ward without looking back.
Obi picked up Nikki’s hand and squeezed. He smiled, kissed her tears. Nikki looked at the letters he took out of his coat pocket and nodded.
He started to read, his voice clear and unbroken, louder than the alarms, louder than the machines:
‘Elijah, this will be my last letter. I need to go home. I want to be near my family and feel the sun on my face, smell the fiery air and walk barefoot on warm red earth. I want to feel my heart swell with the music of your baba and sing with the words of Uncle Pastor.
I want you to do some things for me, Elijah.’
Obi paused and sniffed. Nikki leant closer to him to see the letter. She rested her head on his strong shoulder. She wanted to see her writing. Nikki gasped.
The words that Obi spoke were there in front of them, but they were surrounded by scribblings and drawings of demonic faces, piercing eyes. Nikki’s breathing slowed down to almost nothing. The entire border of the page was a mess of lines and squares, horrible pictures drawn in biro – scratched so hard the paper had ripped in places. It shocked Nikki to see Deborah’s pictures. It made her think how difficult it must have been to get the beautiful sentences out, to force the important words to stand out. Nikki focused her eyes on the sentence at the centre of the page:
I need to go home.
Obi looked at Nikki. He kissed her nose, then her cheek, and pulled her closer to him. And, with his other hand, he lowered the letter and began to read again, his words strong and true and sure, and so kind – the kindest words he’d ever said – and filled with emotion and love, and Nikki loved Obi then more than she’d ever loved him before.
She bent down and put her cheek next to Elijah’s. She breathed him in, whispered, ‘I will love you forever,’ closed her eyes and tuned out all the alarms and bleeps. She listenedonly to the sound of Elijah inside her heart, telling her that he loved dogs and laughing like a child should, and the voice of Obi reading to their son:
‘I want you to visit Nigeria one day, and find your family.
I want you to be a good son for your new mum and dad, as you were to me and Baba. And grow up safe and tall and happy. Because that will make me prouder of you than any woman who ever lived. Come find me one day, Elijah. Find me in a place where women are kings, and where we will look at the stars together and you will tell me everything. I will tell you all about how much you are loved.
I will be waiting for you there.
Deborah.’
<
br /> There were running footsteps and machines starting up, and someone shouting, and moving in front of Elijah. ‘What’s happening?’ Nikki opened her eyes, sat up.
The numbers on the computer were all changing. Everything bleeped a high-pitched sound. A doctor and two nurses were by the bed. One of them closed the curtain around the bed-space. A red trolley was wheeled in, with tiny drawers. A cardboard tray sat on top, which a nurse put syringes on, with bright labels attached to them. A bag of fluid appeared, a box that had the words CRASH BLOOD. A drawer was taken out of the red trolley; inside was a metal blade with a green handle and long thin plastic tubes. A green bag attached to oxygen was put on Elijah’s pillow and a nurse took him off the ventilator and hooked him up to the green bag. Elijah’s chest bubbled. Everything alarmed. One nurse pulled back the covers and stuck stickers on top of Elijah’s skin, then attached him to another machine, switched it on. Nikki sawthe pattern of Elijah’s heartbeat on the machine: the pattern was changing, the squiggly lines becoming bigger.
‘What’s happening?’ said Nikki. They were inside the curtain. ‘Do you want to stay?’ a nurse asked them. Nikki nodded. She looked at Obi and searched for something in his face that told her everything would somehow be OK. She thought she heard a baby cry. ‘What’s happening?’
The nurses looked to one another. They were flicking through his notes, looking at the alarms, pulling on aprons and gloves. The nurse with the green bag stuck a long thin tube down Elijah’s breathing tube and suctioned out fluid. She put the breathing machine back on. Nikki could see the outline of more nurses and another doctor appearing behind the curtain. She could see one of them pick up the telephone and another pull a red emergency bell. Time slowed down.
One of the nurses stood over Elijah on the opposite side of the bed. ‘Elijah’s heart isn’t pumping properly,’ she said. ‘It’s slowing down and we’re giving him some medicine to try and speed it up. OK?’
Obi pulled Nikki towards him. He held her so close she could barely breathe. Then he let her go and moved their chairs a few inches forwards, right next to Elijah’s bed, and they both touched him. Elijah, waxy and grey, his chest rising artificially high with each breath. The shape of his eyebrows, his curled eyelashes, perfect lips. Nikki looked at their son. The nurse was giving an injection of something into one of the lines in Elijah’s neck. Then the line on the monitor flattened. She pressed her fingers against the side of Elijah’s neck. Nikki wanted to pull her off and shout:
LEAVE MY SON ALONE!
‘He’s arrested!’ The nurse climbed on to the bed and, with one of her hands, she started pushing down hard on to Elijah’s chest.
Nikki screamed. A nurse stood next to them and helped Nikki up from the chair, then moved the chairs back out of the way. ‘You can stay if you want,’ she said. ‘Elijah’s heart has stopped and we’re trying to get it started. There will be lots of people rushing around, but you can be with him. If you want?’
Nikki looked at Obi. His face was wet with tears. A doctor came in and began pushing some more medicine into Elijah’s neck. Another nurse stood over Elijah’s body and squeezed a bag of blood into him.
Nikki didn’t want to see it. She wanted to close her eyes and not ever see her son being pressed down into the bed so hard, listen to the sound of his bones cracking under the weight of the nurse’s hand. She didn’t want to see blood squeezed into his little body. She didn’t want to see Obi’s face wet with tears. But she walked forwards, anyway, pulled Obi with her, reached out and held Elijah’s hand.
It was cold. So cold.
She watched Elijah’s skin glow bright then dull: a candle blown out in darkness.
‘I don’t regret it,’ she said. ‘Not even now. I don’t regret a minute of it.’ She looked up at Obi’s face. ‘I’m not sorry at all,’ she whispered.
Nikki held Elijah’s cold hand and lifted it, kissed him. She told him in her heart that she loved him, and always would, and she understood. She understood. She looked at Elijah’s little hand in hers, studied the lines on his palm, the shape of each of his fingers, his short half-bitten nails.
The nurses and doctors around the bed were starting to look at each other. ‘We’ve had no change,’ they said. Thenurse next to Nikki put her arm on her shoulder. ‘We are doing our very best, but Elijah’s heart is not responding to the treatment,’ she said.
His heart is broken, thought Nikki. She looked at him, blocking out all the medical staff. She had never seen a more beautiful face. For some reason, his scar had almost disappeared and his skin looked perfectly smooth, untouched, fresh and new. Obi exhaled next to her. She thought of Elijah’s wide-open, loving eyes, his kindness, his hand in hers. ‘He was ours for a while, wasn’t he?’ she whispered.
‘Is everyone agreed?’ The doctor holding the green oxygen bag looked at everyone’s face, disconnected it; the nurse pressing on Elijah’s chest stopped moving her hand, rested it on top of his heart, looked at Nikki and Obi.
Obi made a sound that came from somewhere deep inside him. Nikki made no sound at all. They left, one by one, until only one nurse remained. She pulled the sheet up to Elijah’s face. ‘I’m going to let you have some time,’ she said. ‘But I’ll be right outside the curtain.’
She left and drew the curtain back around them. Nikki didn’t move. Obi sobbed. Then she climbed on to the bed, right next to Elijah, and got underneath the sheet. She looked at him, focusing on a tiny ringlet curl at the nape of his neck. She pressed her body against his and held him, his arms, his back. She kissed and kissed his face and held him tight, put her head next to his chest, listening carefully for the sound of his heartbeat.
FORTY-THREE
I can hear the sea come in and out, the whoosh of water on sand. The colours of Nigeria are behind Mama, but I’m not looking at her photograph.
The air smells of burning rubber, sugar cane, sweat and heat. It is throat-burning hot. The heat weaves patterns, and light washes the colour from everything. Mosquitoes buzz around my head, sometimes landing on my chest; I flick them quickly, slapping hard. But they bite me anyway. I feel the bite, strong, on my chest, making my whole body jolt upwards every so often, then sink back down.
Nigeria is brighter and louder than England. I can tell that already. The light changes and the washed-out brightness gives way to colour: the green of the trees, the blue of the sky, the yellow of the sun, the red of the ground. I have never felt hotter. The heat fills a hole that was there. I hear Yoruba. I recognise Mama’s language, but not the words. But Dad lifts his head, and smiles. The mosquitoes are biting and biting my chest. I tell Mum. But she holds my hand. ‘Stop biting him,’ she whispers to them. ‘Don’t hurt my son.’
And suddenly Mama is there right in front of me and her arms reach forwards. I run like I’ve never run before, my legs faster and faster until dust is rising up behind me in a cloud. The sun burns my neck and back and makes everything smell warm. I can hear waves whooshing in and out. Mama’s arms wrap around me and I breathe in her skin, the smell of burning sweet plantain, and she’s so soft. Softer than anything I’ve ever felt. I run my hands over her skin and lock my arms inside hers. Our eyes look and I see my reflection inside her eyes, small and not frightened at all, and the whole world is safe. She sings and laughs and behind her I see two men waving, and one is Granddad and I don’t know if the other man is Baba or if it’s Dad; maybe they are the same now, but he’s strong and big and happy. Chioma is playing in the sand with lots of children and Mum is here too, with my sister high up on her back like a Nigerian baby, and they’re smiling and laughing and Mum’s face is not sad at all; the hurt is all gone. I feel all at once in a rush what it is to have a sister. Jasmin and Chanel are not here, but I somehow know they are in America and eating hotdogs and Aunty Chanel is married to a cowboy and Jasmin has her own horse. She’s waving at me. And Ricardo is in Brazil on the beach wearing new flip-flops, and he has a son there all of his own, a small boy from Brazil who looks a little bit l
ike me but who didn’t have any family at all. That’s not like me. I have so much family. They are all around me now and I am full with the sound of them, the sun burning all of our heads, making us laugh together. The mosquitoes stop biting my chest now. I am glad. I look at Mum and Dad. ‘Thank you!’ I shout. ‘It doesn’t hurt any more.’
And then Mama pulls me even closer until I’m part of her own skin again, and our blood is the same and she whispers to my heart, in my own language:
‘Little Nigeria, I love you like the world has never known love.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to: Christine Green, Natalie Butlin, George Hamilton-Jones, Claire Anderson-Wheeler, Jane Wood, Katie Gordon and the Quercus team. Most of all, thanks to Alex Watson for the information on therapeutic social work, but also for everything else. You are an inspiration.
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