by Dani Atkins
His head lifted at my question and the hands fell away from his eyes. They were the brightest blue I’d ever seen, their colour made more brilliant by the bright red lids surrounding them. It was a clashing combination, and yet weirdly didn’t detract from the fact that he was an exceptionally good-looking man.
‘All right?’ he queried, his voice a low rumble. He shook his head, and his dishevelled dark blond hair fell shaggily over his eyes. He swept it back and looked at me properly for the first time. ‘No. Not really.’
He said nothing more, and I sensed the next comment was mine to make . . . if only I knew what it should be. ‘Is there something I can do?’
He shook his head sadly.
‘Or someone I can get for you? Are you here with anyone?’
His face contorted in a wince of pain and unconsciously his eyes went to the doors of the Intensive Care Unit. And suddenly I knew exactly who he was. I’d seen his photograph in the local newspaper several weeks ago, not long after the accident. But the memory of the picture of him smiling beside a tall beautiful brunette was a million miles removed from the way he looked tonight.
Driven by an unexpected instinct, I reached out my hand and laid it lightly on the man’s forearm. His skin was tanned and warm, the hairs soft and unfamiliar against my palm. It had been quite a while, I realised, since I’d last touched a man. ‘Well, I was just about to get a coffee,’ I said, adopting a tone that I hoped sounded compassionate, but not too pushy. ‘Can I get you one?’
He took a long moment, as though my words, so mundane and everyday, had to force their way through a fog of misery to make themselves understood. Then he nodded, just once. I approached the machine and started feeding it coins. I figured asking him how he took his caffeine was going to be too much of a challenge, so I opted for hot, black and sweet.
With the two Styrofoam cups in hand, I turned back to face him again. Thankfully he was no longer crying openly, because if he had been there was a good chance that I’d have joined in. This was the real story the newspaper article had failed to cover, this was the truth behind the gossipy snippets overheard in the hospital corridors or lifts. Here was a man who had lost the woman he loved; lost her perhaps for ever – and their unborn child. Who couldn’t help but feel his pain?
‘Why don’t we sit down for a minute?’ I suggested, nodding in the direction of the relatives’ room. Through the open door I could see it was empty.
He followed me silently, and when I held out one of the blistering hot coffees he took it and immediately began to sip it. It was hot – too hot probably, but he didn’t appear to notice. I lowered myself onto a chair and after a moment he took a seat in the row opposite me.
‘I’m sorry for that little display out there,’ he said, breaking the silence before I had a chance to. He nodded in the direction of the vending machine, as though a trace of his distraught-self still stood there as a reminder. ‘I try not to do that in public, if I can help it.’
‘There’s absolutely no need to apologise. I quite understand. I’ve been there.’ His head came up and I realised how stupid and unthinking my comment had been. Of course I hadn’t been there. I hadn’t lost the person I loved most in the world in a dreadful accident. I hadn’t known the pain of realising the future I’d planned had suddenly been ripped out of my grasp.
‘My mother . . . she was in this hospital for quite a while before she passed away.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said, strangely reversing the roles and comforting me.
‘You’re here because of your fiancée, aren’t you?’ I questioned hesitantly, wondering how many degrees of awkward this was going to be if I had mistakenly placed him. But I knew from the twist of his mouth that my guess had been bullseye-accurate.
‘I guess everyone around here has heard about Maddie?’ he asked quietly. There was something about the way that he said her name that touched a chord deep within me. For a moment I wondered what it would feel like to have a man love you that much. I’d never even come close.
‘Is there . . . has something . . . has there been any change?’ I asked clumsily.
He shook his head, looking deep into the bottom of his almost empty cup, as though the words he was looking for were to be found there among the coffee dregs. ‘No. No change. None at all,’ he answered sadly, and suddenly I thought I understood the reason for his despair. I had no medical training, but I’d spent long enough volunteering at the hospital to know that the longer a patient remains unresponsive, the less optimistic the medical professionals were of a good outcome.
‘Are you a doctor here?’ he asked.
I gave a small laugh of surprise and then quickly smothered it, because it seemed totally wrong in the presence of such sadness. ‘No. Nothing like that. Although I do spend an awful lot of my time here.’
He looked up and did a fairly reasonable impersonation of someone who was politely interested. I sat up straighter and pointed at my chest, before realising how totally inappropriate that was. Inviting a man – particularly one grieving for his injured fiancée – to direct his attention to your right boob is always ill-advised.
‘Volunteer,’ I supplied quickly, before he had need to lean closer and read the word printed on the small green badge. ‘I read to the patients – mainly those on the geriatric ward,’ I added. I thrust out my hand, like an over-eager candidate at a job interview. ‘I’m Chloe. Chloe Barnes.’
A fleeting smile curved on his lips, giving me a glimpse of how he must look when he wasn’t in torment. It was pretty devastating.
‘Ryan Turner,’ he said, allowing his long firm grip to join with mine across the coffee table that separated us. His mouth twisted wryly. ‘But you probably already knew that.’
I nodded sympathetically. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine how terrible this must be for you and your fiancée’s family.’
‘The worst of it is there’s not a damn thing anyone can do to bring her back quicker,’ he said, his voice suddenly bitter. He got to his feet, his pent-up frustration evident in the way he lobbed the empty cup into a nearby bin. ‘You’d give everything you own, do anything you could to help someone you love. But having to sit by helplessly and wait, without knowing how long for . . . well, that’s what can bring you down, the way it did me tonight.’
‘You mustn’t give up hope,’ I said determinedly, wondering how far I was overstepping the mark, talking like this to someone I didn’t even know. ‘It sounds like—’ for a moment I struggled, before his fiancée’s name popped into my head. ‘It sounds like Maddie has a lot to live for and come back to. I’m sure she’ll wake up soon.’
‘Thank you.’ This time the smile Ryan gave me wasn’t twisted in pain. ‘I think I needed to hear someone say that tonight.’
‘I mean it. I know it might sound weird, particularly as we’ve only just met, but I’ve got a really strong feeling that everything’s going to work out for you. Everyone here at the hospital is rooting for her – for all of you. We’re all wishing and hoping that she finds her way back to you. Everyone wants this story to have a happy ending.’
2018
Six years later I stood in my perfect cream-coloured kitchen, my hands trembling so much that I splashed small puddles of boiling water all over the worktop as I attempted to fill my mother’s best teapot. It was a little too late in the day to finally remember that old adage about being careful what you wished for . . . The words from my past had come back to haunt me, as had the woman who’d inspired them.
I jumped like a red-handed cat burglar as the kitchen door swung open. I must have been a bit too slow wiping the worried expression from my face, because Ryan’s eyes darkened in concern.
‘Everything okay in here?’
In here was fine. In here it was business as usual. It was only in the warm cosy lounge that everything we took for granted in our lives was being spectacularly rearranged.
‘Fine, why?’ I asked, trying to remember the exact facial muscles I
needed to use to manufacture a smile. I must have found some of them, for Ryan relaxed visibly, his broad shoulders dropping several centimetres as the tension fled from his body. He crossed over to stand behind me and wound his arms around my waist and I leant back against him, allowing the strength of his body to be my buttress. He was like a wall: strong, solid and supporting. At times I leant on him; at others he leant on me. That’s what marriage was all about. But what would happen if something (or someone) tore at our foundations, like a tornado. Walls can crumble, and if they do would either of us be left with enough strength to support each other?
‘You were taking a long time with the tea.’
‘It’s the type that you have to let brew,’ I replied. As I slipped out of his hold I saw his briefly raised eyebrows as he took in the teapot, the best china, and the neatly set tray.
‘Anyone would think we were entertaining royalty,’ he said, his voice gently trying to tease me out of the panic he must surely know I was feeling.
‘Not really,’ I said with a nonchalant shrug that neither of us believed. My eyes went to the closed kitchen door, and took an imaginary journey through its wooden panels to the room on the other side of the hall.
‘Shouldn’t you be in there with them? Is it safe, leaving her alone with Hope so soon?’
For a second Ryan looked so dumbfounded, I wondered if the words had become garbled on their way out of my mouth. ‘Safe?’ he queried, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard. ‘What do you mean “safe”? You’re not suggesting that Maddie poses some kind of threat to Hope? That she’d ever harm her in any way?’
He was so defensive, it was all I could do not to gasp. So here it was. So soon. I thought it would have taken much longer before we reached the point where Ryan would consider taking sides. Stupid, stupid, me.
‘No. No. Of course not. Well, not physically or anything,’ I said, my words tripping over each other as I tried to step out of the quicksand I’d inadvertently walked into. ‘I just meant that she might say something that would confuse Hope or worry her. She did seem a little . . . unprepared . . . when she first got here today.’
Ryan’s laugh was short and humourless. ‘Well you can hardly blame her for that, can you? I think the same could probably be said for all of us. How the fuck are any of us meant to prepare for something like this?’
How indeed?
Ryan stayed with me in the kitchen while I finished making the tea, leaning comfortably against the worktop and swiping the occasional biscuit from the plate I’d carefully arranged. I’d like to think he stayed to keep me company rather than to prevent anything unpleasant finding its way into the bottom of Maddie’s teacup, but I could hardly blame him not for trusting me to behave. I had been acting a little crazy ever since the night the telephone had rung to say the miracle everyone had stopped waiting for had finally happened.
He held open the kitchen door and I ducked beneath his arm, the items on the tray performing a tuneful percussion of cutlery on china. Ryan’s hand rested briefly against my cheek as I passed him, and I turned my face into his palm, inhaling the warm calming smell of him.
‘It’s all going to work out fine, Chloe. Trust me. I’ve got a really strong feeling about it.’
I smiled but said nothing, because once, on a night a very long time ago, I’d had one of those too.
My eyes went to Hope the moment I entered the room, it was as instinctive to me as breathing. Down the aisles of a supermarket; by the shoreline at the beach; on the edge of the playground in the park, I kept up a mother’s surveillance, 24/7. I always had.
Hope was still on the mat before the fire, crouched low over her colourful brick construction, as she busily created a new wing for Barbie’s latest mansion. Only she wasn’t alone on the floor. Another head was also bent low, almost touching hers, and I swallowed down a mouthful of something vile-tasting and venomous which threatened to choke me. Long swathes of dark identically coloured hair swung down, like a set of curtains. They entwined and mingled as through their DNA was pulling the strands together like a magnet.
To be fair, as soon as we entered the room Maddie nimbly slid back onto the settee cushions. I set down the tray and apparently must have done all the things a hostess is supposed to do. I even managed a genuine smile when Ryan winked at me from across the room. I could do this; I might not like it, but I could do it.
If Hope had been just a few years older perhaps she’d have been able to detect the underlying current that ran beneath the skin of every topic we covered that afternoon. But a five-year-old isn’t interested in the conversation of grownups, and frankly I don’t think even the adults were paying much attention to what we were talking about. Maddie’s eyes were constantly on her daughter, drinking her in like a person dying of thirst, while my own mouth and throat felt dry and scratchy with fear. When Hope suddenly sprang up from the floor and went to sit beside Maddie, a surge of jealousy rushed through my veins, like a virus.
‘You’ve got really pretty hair,’ my little girl said, reaching out and picking up a long silky handful.
‘Hope,’ I cautioned. ‘You shouldn’t do that without asking.’ Hope’s small rosebud lips dropped open in surprise. Perhaps my voice had been a bit sharper than was necessary, which made Maddie’s automatic response sound like honey on my vinegar.
‘That’s all right. She’s fine.’
Hope wriggled closer to her natural mother, and I died a little inside. This was how it was going to be . . . a multitude of tiny losses as Maddie slowly regained what was hers, and I was left holding just wisps of memories.
‘Your hair looks like mine,’ Hope declared artlessly.
Maddie’s eyes went to Ryan’s and I suddenly felt like an intruder in my own home as something private was communicated between them.
‘I think yours is much prettier,’ declared Maddie, and whatever she was about to say next died in her throat as Hope’s took a single strand of hair and wound it around her index finger. It was something I knew Ryan used to do whenever he visited Maddie. It was their ‘thing’. Had Hope somehow drawn on a memory of seeing her father do that at the hospital when she was only a toddler? I shivered despite the heat from the fire and glanced over to where Ryan stood. I knew his face, every line, every contour, but the expression on it now I’d never seen before.
‘Would you read me a story?’ Hope asked, shattering the spell that had fallen over the room. I smiled gratefully, like a panicked swimmer who’d just discovered their feet can touch the bottom of the pool. Books were the legacy I had passed on to Hope. Her face, her hair, her eyes, they all came from Maddie, but books were from me.
‘Can Maddie read me a story, Mummy?’ asked my five-year-old, unknowingly finding the sharpest knife in the drawer to slice me with.
‘Yes, of course she can. If she’d like to,’ I managed to say, past the huge obstruction that suddenly appeared to have lodged in my throat.
‘I’d love to.’ Maddie didn’t even bother pretending she wasn’t delighted as her daughter ran from the room to fetch a book. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked as soon as Hope’s feet could be heard thundering up the stairs.
‘No. Of course not,’ I said, lying as convincingly as I could.
There’s a big old-fashioned bookcase in Hope’s bedroom. I found it in a junk shop, and painstakingly rubbed it down and painted it bright pink and added silver star-shaped stencils. Each of its five shelves is stacked with books. Some of them are old favourites that we’ve shared together a hundred times or more. Others are new, with stories and adventures waiting for us to discover.
Hope was back so quickly I felt sure she must have plucked the first random book her small hand fell upon. She entered the room at a run, and leapt up onto the sofa as though it was a trampoline. I glanced over at Ryan, waiting to see if he would chastise her, but his face was a frozen unreadable mask as he watched his daughter inch up to the woman he had once intended to marry. When Maddie raised her
arm, Hope wriggled up against her, like a missing piece in a jigsaw finally completing a puzzle. It wasn’t until she passed the book into Maddie’s hands that I understood the expression on Ryan’s face. On the front cover was an instantly recognisable illustration. A beautiful young woman, with porcelain white skin and long black hair, lying in a glass coffin, lost to the world in an unwakeable sleep. Was it coincidence that out of every book in her room, Hope had chosen Snow White for Maddie to read to her? No. I really didn’t think it was.
Chapter 8
2012
I never made it back down to the geriatric ward on the night I first met Ryan. I didn’t even notice the passing of the minutes until I heard a distant clang of a handbell, signalling the end of visiting hours.
I jumped guiltily to my feet. ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve kept you away from your fiancée and now visiting is over.’ He smiled kindly down at me as he got to his feet. We’d been sitting down for so long I had forgotten how tall he was.
‘Don’t worry about it. They’re pretty relaxed as far as visiting time goes for Maddie.’ He gave a shrug and a small grin, and suddenly I caught a glimpse of the young boy he’d once been, beneath the surface of the man. ‘I often spend the night here, sitting by her bed. I just can’t bear the thought of her opening her eyes for the first time and not finding me there.’
Inexplicably his admission made me want to cry. To have someone love you with that kind of devotion is the stuff you read about in books, or see in films, it wasn’t something I’d ever come across in real life. Despite the tragedy of her accident, Madeline Chambers was still a very lucky woman. I hoped she knew how much this man loved her, how every word, phrase and expression on his face declared it to be true.