Summer on the Turquoise Coast

by Summer on the Turquoise Coast (retail) (epub)

  ‘Shush a minute, Alice. It’s our Nina and I think there’s summat wrong. Nina?’

  ‘’Ere, give the phone to me. Nina? Nina, love? What is it?’

  ‘Gran,’ Nina managed to choke out.

  Silence. Then, ‘What about your gran?’

  Nina could see her mother, standing in the kitchen, the phone gripped in her hand, worry on her face and her dad hovering over her shoulder, trying to listen.

  ‘She’s in hospital. Oh, Mum, you have to come, I don’t know what happened, but it looks serious. She’s in intensive care, and is wired up to all these machines, and—’ Nina sobbed, ‘I think she’s going to die.’

  ‘What is it? What’s happened? Is Nina alright?’ her dad was saying.

  ‘Hang on, Derek, Nina’s fine. It’s Mum,’ her mother said.

  ‘What about your mother? What’s she done?’

  ‘Will you shut up and stop blathering in my ear.’ There was the sound of a muffled scuffle, then her mother was back on the line. ‘Carry on, poppet. Why is she in hospital?’

  Her mother’s calm, assured voice comforted Nina, and the hysteria threatening to engulf her retreated slightly. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I haven’t spoken to a doctor yet.’

  ‘Right, listen to me. Call me back when you know something. Derek, get on the internet and find out when the next flight is.’ A pause. Nina heard her father speaking but couldn’t make out the words. ‘No, I don’t care which bloody airline or how much it costs. Just book us on the damn thing!’ Another pause, then, ‘Sorry, love, just trying to get your father organised. Ring me back as soon as you know something more definite, and I might be able to give you an estimated time of arrival. Try easyJet,’ she called to Derek, and Nina simply knew that once her mother had got off the phone, she’d take over the search for flights, not trusting her father to do a proper job.

  That was where Nina got her own practicality and common sense from – her mother – but she didn’t have much in the way of common sense right now. Whoever said she was good in a crisis had been blatantly lying.

  Nina took a deep breath, held it for a count of ten, then let it out slowly.

  ‘Nina? Nina? You still there, love?’

  ‘I’m still here, Mum. Look, don’t book anything yet, let me find out what’s going on first and I’ll call you back.’

  ‘I’m coming out on the next flight, whether you want me to or not,’ her mother retorted. ‘I don’t like the thought of you all alone in a foreign country.’

  ‘I’m twenty-eight, I can cope.’ As soon as she’d said it, Nina realised it was the truth. She could cope. Whatever this was, whatever the outcome, Nina would deal with it.

  Then her mother’s next words brought fresh tears to Nina’s eyes, as Alice said in a small voice. ‘She’s my mother, Nina. I have to be there.’

  A pat on her arm. Nina looked around. The nurse from earlier beckoned her.

  ‘Doktor, she said, pointing down the corridor.

  ‘Gotta go, Mum, the doctor is here. I’ll ring you in a minute.’

  There was no change in Flossie as Nina dashed into the room. She hadn’t really expected there to be but…

  Asdan was speaking to the doctor, and an elderly man with grey in his hair and a kindly expression. His English, it turned out, was way better than Asdan’s.

  ‘Miss…?’ He held a hand out and Nina shook it.

  ‘Clarke,’ Nina said. ‘And this is Leo—’ she stopped, mortified. She’d spent the night in his arms and she didn’t even know his surname.

  ‘Leo Waters,’ Leo said, stepping forward to shake the doctor’s hand.

  ‘I am Doctor Macar, and I have been treating the patient. I understand Mrs Gibbins is your grandmother?’ He carried on when Nina nodded. ‘She has suffered an ischaemia, a stroke caused by a blood clot. We know this because we did a scan,’ he added as if he thought he wouldn’t be believed. ‘The clot was affecting the flow of blood to her brain. Now,’ he held up a hand as Nina let out a gasp. ‘We have treated her by performing a… how do you say it?’ He took out his phone and pressed a few buttons. ‘Ah, it is the same!’ he said triumphantly. ‘We performed a trombektomi this afternoon, which involved inserting a small instrument into Mrs Gibbins groin and up into the brain.’

  He traced the path of this instrument with his finger on his own body, stopping and tapping when he came to his head. It must be a really, really small instrument, Nina thought randomly.

  ‘Once in the brain, we sucked the blood clot out, restoring normal blood flow. Mrs Gibbins is lucky – we treated her within two hours of the stroke occurring. The clot was on one of the large arteries,’ he pointed to his head again. ‘Any more delay and the treatment would not have been as effective.’

  ‘What is the prognosis?’ Nina asked, cautious hope rising as she listened to him speak.

  Leo slipped a hand in hers and squeezed.

  ‘We cannot tell until your grandmother is conscious and we have run tests. The damage may be minimal or it may be severe. However, we are treating her with medicines to control her pain and to reduce the risk of further clots forming. She may have to take these for some time, but her own doctor will advise her when she returns home.’

  Flossie wasn’t out of the woods yet, but Nina wanted to believe the doctor was hopeful. Of course, he had to be cautious, she understood that, but he sounded hopeful. Didn’t he? She leaned against Leo, drawing strength from him, and he slipped his hand out of hers and encircled her waist.

  ‘When will she regain consciousness?’ Nina asked.

  ‘She is not unconscious. She is sleeping. We had to sedate her heavily to perform the trombektomi. She will wake in a while, but may be confused, and may have some degree of paralysis.’

  ‘Will she be able to talk?’

  ‘The stroke was on the right hemisphere of her brain, so her speech will not be affected. She may be paralysed on the left side, she may have memory problems, and her vision may be affected, and there could be some drooping of the mouth. Each stroke is different and no two patients are affected in the same way. At eighty-four, there is the possibility she will take longer than a younger person to recover.’

  ‘Eighty-four?’ whispered Leo, his lips close to her ear.

  ‘She lied,’ Nina said out of the side of her mouth. ‘She seems to be doing it a lot, lately.’

  The doctor was still talking. ‘We have to test for these things when she awakes, though not today. Today I go home to my family and a meal. You should do the same.’

  Nina was horrified. ‘I’m not going to leave her!’ she declared. ‘You should go, though,’ she said to Leo. ‘There’s no point in both of us being here.’

  ‘Yes, there is. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay as long as you need me, or want me to.’

  The doctor spoke to Asdan, who nodded. Nina had no idea how much of the previous conversation he’d understood, and she hoped Dr Macar was bringing him up to speed.

  ‘I have authorisation to book you into a hotel nearby,’ Asdan said when the doctor had finished speaking. ‘Athena Holidays will cover the cost for tonight, but you must contact your insurance company as soon as possible.’

  More Turkish, more nods.

  ‘The doctor says a hotel which is only five minutes from here is good. I will telephone and arrange. I will tell them to expect you.’

  ‘Tell them we might not check in until tomorrow,’ Leo said. ‘We’ll wait here until Mrs Gibbins wakes up and we are sure she is okay.’

  Asdan left to make the call, but Nina had one final question before she let the doctor go.

  ‘When can she go home?’

  The doctor sucked his teeth and shook his head. ‘Not for some days. Ten maybe. I do not like stroke victims flying too soon. Air pressure, you understand.’

  Ten days. How was she going to cope for ten days?

  Chapter 30

  ‘It’s all her fault, I should never have agreed to such a stupid idea.’ Nina’s mothe
r cried down the phone. ‘A stroke. Oh poor Mum.’

  ‘Agreed to what?’

  ‘Your grandmother taking you on holiday. Derek, don’t forget your Athlete’s Foot cream.’ She resumed her conversation with Nina, but Nina noticed it wasn’t at the point she’d left it. ‘It’s the heat, it plays havoc with your dad’s feet,’ her mother said.

  ‘I thought I was taking her on holiday, not the other way around.’

  ‘That’s what she wanted you to think,’ her mother said, darkly. ‘Did they say how the operation went?’

  ‘It wasn’t an operation, it was a procedure. I think it went well.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘No idea. Going back to the holiday,’ Nina said, more to keep her mind off the tiny figure in the bed in room five-oh-three. ‘Why did she want me to think I was taking her? I was taking her… well, accompanying her.’

  ‘Do we have to do this now?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Bring up the past.’

  ‘It’s hardly the past – it was only three weeks ago!’

  ‘Your dad and I have got a plane to catch.’

  ‘You don’t have to leave for a couple of hours. You told me the plane doesn’t take off until seven tomorrow. You could have time to have a nap before you leave for the airport, if you wanted.’

  ‘How can I sleep knowing my baby and my mother are on the other side of the world with god knows what’s happening to them.’

  ‘I think the happening has already happened. Just tell me, Mum.’

  The phone went silent but Nina heard her mother breathing. She heaved in a breath of her own and let it out slowly. She was exhausted and it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. She had the shakes too, though those could be from tiredness, hunger or shock. Leo had gone off to find coffee and food. Not that she wanted food, because her stomach was in knots even though she hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. Neither of them had. A coffee would be good though.

  ‘Your grandmother,’ Alice began and Nina noticed how Flossie had suddenly become your grandmother rather than my mother, as if Alice was distancing herself from the events. ‘She booked the holiday after we had that little chat about you going away with her.’

  ‘After! Did you know she was lying about it being Grandad’s last holiday?’

  Her mother sniffed loudly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she told me her plan before you arrived.’

  ‘I didn’t mean, “why did you know she was telling porkies”, I meant why did she tell them in the first place?’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t have agreed to go. Not there anyway. You’d have insisted on Bournemouth or Torquay, or somewhere equally boring.’

  Oh, Turkey hadn’t been boring. Nina certainly couldn’t say that about it.

  ‘I wished you had stayed in England. Or Wales even.’ The way her mother said Wales, it sounded as if it was out in the wilds where bears and antelopes roamed, not a few miles away on the other side of the Malvern Hills.

  ‘I wish we had, too,’ Nina said. ‘But you still haven’t answered my question. Why?’

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, or shout at me,’ Alice sniffed loudly again, ‘but Grannie thought you could do with some livening up. She wanted you to have some fun.’

  This time Nina’s deep breath was from anger. Here she was, stuck in a foreign hospital, tired, worried out of her mind, still sweaty and salty from the beach, and her grandmother wanted her to have fun?

  ‘Fun? Fun! I’m not bloody well having fun now, am I?’ Nina shouted, earning a frown from the nurse in charge. ‘Sorry,’ she said, lowering her voice.

  ‘Apology accepted,’ her mother said.

  ‘I wasn’t apologising to you!’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You don’t deserve an apology. You’re as bad as she is. Are you seriously telling me that Gran concocted some cock-and-bull story about booking a holiday for her and Grandad to get me to go away somewhere fun with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when I agreed, she went out and booked a hotel which is supposed to be for people between thirty and forty-five because she thought I needed some livening up? Are you aware how ridiculous that sounds?’

  ‘Now you put it like that…’

  ‘Do you know what she’s been getting up to on this fun holiday?’

  ‘You said you were having a lovely time when you phoned last Saturday,’ her mother interrupted.

  ‘That was so you wouldn’t worry. On the first day I caught her downing vodka cocktails and playing a game of pin the penis on the man.’

  ‘Was he naked? I bet that hurt.’

  ‘It was a cardboard one.’

  ‘Penis?’

  ‘Man, penis, both, what does it matter?’

  ‘Phew, you had me crossing my legs for a minute, and I don’t even have a penis.’

  Nina wasn’t at all comfortable with her mother saying “penis”. It wasn’t right. Besides, Alice was trying to turn the conversation.

  ‘She’s got me scuba diving, paragliding, going to beach parties.’ Nina added.

  ‘It sounds like you had a good time,’ Alice said.

  Instead of being on Nina’s side in all this, Mum was on her grandmother’s, seeing nothing wrong with fraudulently getting her daughter to go on holidays with an alcoholic octogenarian who has an adrenalin addiction. God, her mother was so annoying. She got it from Grannie. Thankfully the annoying gene seemed to have skipped a generation. No wonder Nina liked calm and peaceful, orderly and organised. She’d had enough of the opposite while she was growing up. It had been like living in an episode of Absolutely Fabulous, with her gran playing the drunken Patsy and her mother playing the other one, what’s-her-name, it was on the tip of her tongue.

  Which meant Nina must be Saffron. She was, wasn’t she? She was the sensible one, the grown-up one, and though Alice was a total adult most of the time, her mother did have a bit of fey about her. Mum hadn’t really grown up, despite the sensible, responsible job she had. Take last year, for instance – her mother and father went to Disneyland, two middle-aged people on their own, without kids. Hardly a crime, but most of her friends’ parents were going on sedate cruises down the Rhine. Then there was this mad idea they had of selling the family home and going to live in a yurt in Mongolia for a couple of years. Who did something like that at their age? They spoke of retirement as though it was going to be all their Christmases rolled into one and they could act like kids again.

  Talking of Christmas, her dad still trod in a tray of flour, donned his work boots, and stamped around the living room, leaving a trail of “Santa’s Footprints”, and Nina was twenty-eight (though she did spend Christmas with the oldies because her own house was lonely and she didn’t fancy cooking Christmas dinner for one), and her brother was eighteen and had stopped believing in Santa Claus when he was ten, and had caught his father in the act of making the man in the red suit’s footprints. No wonder Nina’s version of fun, and her parents’ version, were two distinctly separate animals. And look where their version had got them – Gran in a Turkish hospital, and Nina worrying herself sick. Her family would be the death of her!

  Best not think about… you know… death…, because it might tempt fate, she thought. ‘Just get here, Mum,’ Nina sighed.

  ‘Love you,’ her mother replied. ‘Over and out.’

  Dear lord, give me strength, Nina prayed as the returned to her gran’s bedside.

  ‘What time will your parents be here?’ Leo handed her a cup of steaming coffee and a slice of pizza as she sat down.

  ‘Their flight is at seven, so four hours in the air, an hour to go through passport control and argue with a taxi driver, another hour from the airport, and Turkey is two hours ahead,’ she counted on her fingers. ‘Three this afternoon?’

  She sipped her coffee and studied the greasy mass of bread, tomatoes, and cheese.

  ‘Pide,’ Leo said. ‘It’s like a pizza but not quite. I
t was all they had unless you wanted a soggy salad.’

  Nina grimaced. She didn’t particularly want either.

  ‘You have to eat,’ he insisted, taking a huge bite out of his pizza.

  It’s alright for you, she grumbled silently to herself, it wasn’t your grandmother lying in that bed. An uncharitable thought, Nina knew, considering he was still by her side. He didn’t need to be, and she wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d gone back to his hotel. After all, they’d only just met, and it wasn’t as if they were in a relationship or anything.

  She checked the old woman once more (it was weird how quickly she’d fallen in to the habit of watching for the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest), but apart from that small movement, there were no other obvious signs of life. Flossie’s skin had lost its tan colour, and verged on grey and sallow, her mouth was open, and her teeth were missing. Come to think of it, where were her dentures?

  Nina had to find them – if Flossie woke to discover her teeth missing there’d be the devil to pay. She put her coffee and pizza down, and went to look.

  They weren’t in the bathroom, nor on the unit next to the bed. They weren’t by the sink where visitors and nurses washed their hands. They weren’t anywhere. Suddenly her grandmother’s teeth were the most important thing in the world. She had to find them.

  Hunting with single-minded determination, she searched every inch of the room.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Leo whispered, speaking quietly because of the lateness of the night, or was it the earliness of the morning. She’d lost track of time. All she knew was it was dark and they’d been in the hospital for what seemed like hours.

  ‘Gran’s false teeth,’ she said.

  ‘They’ll turn up, and she probably won’t need them for a few days,’ he pointed out. ‘I’m sure they’ll be found before then.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re certain, because I’m not,’ she snapped, then burst into tears.

  ‘Come here, my love.’ He gathered her to him and held her tight, whilst she sobbed as if her heart would break.

  ‘Your parents will be here tomorrow.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Today,’ he amended. ‘But until then you’re not on your own. You’ve got me.’