by Dani Atkins
‘It’s been very nice meeting you, Chloe Barnes,’ Ryan said, once again holding out his hand to me. This time when our hands locked neither of us moved, which meant for several seconds this tall handsome man, with the world’s saddest eyes, simply stood in the hospital relatives’ room holding my hand. My heart took a stumble from its normal rhythm, although I’m sure his knew no such malfunction.
‘I hope you get good news very soon,’ I said, wishing there was something more I could say to let him know how very much I meant that.
Perhaps he did anyway, because his eyes softened and crinkled at the edges as he replied. ‘Thank you, Chloe, for saying that and for listening to me tonight. It really helped, more than you know.’
The warm glow of his parting words stayed with me, like the lyrics of a song that gets stuck in your head. I heard them again as I walked down the six flights of stairs to the foyer; they followed me as I crossed the hospital grounds in the cool night air, and were still whispering in my ear as I waited alone at the bus stop. I never once stopped to question why a stranger – someone who I would probably never see again – had affected me so much. It was almost as though my body already knew something my head and heart wouldn’t discover for a very long time.
For once I hardly noticed the echoing quiet of the empty house as I let myself into the home my mother and I had shared. Even the customary twinge of sadness at the row of empty coat hooks had lost its usual sting. I’d changed nothing since she’d died, keeping the house locked in its own time warp. I’m sure a psychologist would say this reflected an inability to accept that my mother had gone. But they’d be wrong, because she’d been leaving me in small painful increments for years before she died. Her illness had meant that she’d bricked herself up into her own life, and I’d never been able to find the right words or tools to break down the walls she’d built.
‘I should get a cat,’ I said out loud to the empty house as I crossed to the kitchen, flicking on every light switch I passed. My electricity bills were horrendous, but I hated the dark. ‘Or a canary. They’d at least be able to talk back,’ I added, knowing very well that I would get neither. What I probably should get was a lodger. There were three empty bedrooms in the large Victorian house, which were big enough to bring in some additional income. And company, whispered a quiet voice in the back of my mind, which I largely tried to ignore.
I wasn’t lonely. I had my job at the library, my friends at my book group, and of course I had the hospital. My life was okay. ‘Alone does not mean lonely,’ I told the empty kitchen, failing to appreciate the irony of my denial as I spoke to no one at all.
My stomach was grumbling for something more satisfying than the bowl of muesli I usually managed to silence it with, so I pulled a loaf and a slab of cheese from the fridge and piled jagged hunks of cheddar onto slices of bread, and slid them under the grill. As I waited for it to brown, I pulled out the recycling crate from the floor of the larder. The kitchen tiles felt cold against my bare knees as I dropped down and began to rummage through the stack of local newspapers, delving beneath several weeks’ worth of editions before finally finding the one I was looking for.
It felt a little odd staring into Ryan’s eyes for the second time in one evening. Of course the pixelated black-and-white newspaper image couldn’t properly convey the deep blue of his irises, or the warmth that shone through them whenever he spoke of Maddie. With the newspaper propped up against a ketchup bottle, I picked up half a slice of cheesy snack and studied the photograph more closely, this time turning my attention to the other person in the image. I’d remembered that Ryan’s fiancée had been attractive, but I realised now that I’d been wrong. She was so much more than that; she was beautiful. Looking closer, I was overwhelmed by the love and happiness that radiated from the couple who smiled back at the camera lens, never knowing that the joy they felt at that moment was destined to be so short-lived. It made me want to crawl into the photo to warn them both to cherish every moment, because tragedy was on its way.
Eventually I tore my attention away from the image and directed it towards the article beneath. I read it twice from start to finish, as though there was a chance I might be quizzed on it later. The three-columned report stuck in my head, like a bur. It would be a while before I could forget the words of the witness who recounted how Maddie had been thrown through the air like a rag doll, or the bystander who clearly blamed himself when he told the reporter: ‘I should have called out a warning sooner.’ But the line that affected me most was the one where another onlooker spoke of the victim’s distraught fiancé, cradling her body on the tarmac as they waited for the ambulance.
I folded up the newspaper, laid it to one side and stared down at my plate. The toast had grown cold, the cheese had congealed unappealingly, and speckled all over the willow-patterned plate were a collection of glittering teardrops that I hadn’t even known were falling.
By the following morning I’d gained a little more distance and with it some perspective. It was a sad story, of course it was, but I worked as a volunteer in a hospital; I heard a lot of sad stories. Some of them turned out okay and others didn’t . . . but that was life. You couldn’t invite every tragedy into your heart. My day job was the place where I could find the ‘happy-ever-after’ endings, within the pages of a book. In the place where I worked at night, they were considerably rarer.
Not that the library was the calming refuge that it once had been. For months ominous rumours of closures and cutbacks had circulated like gathering thunderheads. Every head-office memo we received made it impossible to ignore the fact that redundancies might be unavoidable.
I saw Ryan several times over the following weeks, but never to speak to. He was behind the closing lift doors that slid shut as I pressed the call button, or walking out of the cafeteria exit as I was coming through the entrance. After our conversation in the relatives’ room it was only natural for me to wonder if there’d been any improvement in his fiancée’s condition. What wouldn’t be natural was for me to actively seek him out. And so I didn’t. But that didn’t stop me from eavesdropping on conversations, my ears pricking up whenever the word ‘miracle’ was mentioned. But interest in the accident which had left the young bride-to-be in a coma had begun to fade. In a hospital there’s always some new tragedy waiting in the wings to push the last one out of the way.
The lift was taking a very long time, and despite the weight of the book bag cutting painfully into my shoulder, I was considering heading for the stairs when a voice behind me said my name. I’d known who it was before I turned around to face him. How strange to have committed his voice to memory without even realising I’d done so.
‘Hello, Ryan,’ I said, looking up into his face and hoping I’d been quick enough to mask the shock from showing when I saw the changes the last few weeks had brought about. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine,’ he replied, which was clearly far from true. He looked unbelievably tired, and there was a gauntness to his cheeks that I’m sure hadn’t been there on the night in the relatives’ room. It made me want to ask if he was eating properly, but obviously we were practically strangers, and that was none of my business. I could only hope that question – and others like it – were being asked by his family and friends.
A soft ping sounded behind me, announcing the lift had finally arrived, but I made no move to turn around. ‘How’s Madeline doing?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer to that question. There was always someone on the nursing staff who was willing to answer my frequent enquiries about the comatose patient on the sixth floor. They’d stopped asking why I was so interested, which was just as well because I never had found an adequate answer to that one.
My face remained sympathetic as I allowed Ryan to tell me what I already knew; there’d been no change in Maddie, which was causing her team of doctors continued concern. ‘It was her birthday last week,’ Ryan confided, his voice so low I had to lean in closer to hear his words. His mouth formed
something that resembled a smile. ‘I brought in a cake, and a bottle of champagne.’ He concentrated his attention for several moments on a nearby noticeboard advertising an upcoming Pilates class, which I was pretty sure he had no intention of joining. ‘Pretty stupid, huh?’ he said turning back to me with a sound that resembled a laugh gone wrong.
My eyes felt as though someone was pricking them repeatedly with a long fine needle, and I blinked furiously until the sensation faded. ‘No,’ I said, pleased that there was only a minimal wobble in my voice. ‘Not stupid at all. What if she’d opened her eyes right then and you’d not brought her anything? She’d have been furious.’
I wasn’t expecting the sound of his laughter, nor the way I felt disproportionately pleased to have broken him free from his sombre mood. I wondered when he’d last laughed like that. It was yet another question that wasn’t mine to ask.
Ryan looked at me for a long moment, and there was a similar expression of gratitude on his face to the one I’d seen at our first meeting. ‘You’re a very good volunteer, Chloe Barnes, and a good listener. The hospital is lucky to have you.’ I felt myself fluff up, like a peacock, at the compliment. ‘Even if you have got a shockingly sweet tooth,’ he added with a grin, glancing down at the jumbo-sized packets of jelly babies that I’d totally forgotten were cradled in my arms.
My cheeks flooded with colour as though a switch had been pulled ‘Oh these? They’re not for me. They’re for a friend.’
‘Of course they are,’ he said, nodding solemnly. It was my first glimpse of his sense of humour.
‘They’re not mine, honestly,’ I assured him, laughing. ‘They’re for Gladys; she’s one of the old ladies I read to here. She has a passion for jelly babies and grisly murder stories. I keep her supplied with both.’
There was an expression on Ryan’s face that I knew I would be trying to decipher long into the evening ahead. ‘Like I said, the hospital and the patients are lucky to have you.’ He glanced down then at the complex diver-style watch on his wrist, and I felt rather than heard the pull of his fiancée up on the sixth floor. ‘I should go,’ he said, as though he’d only just realised how many non-Maddie moments he had carelessly squandered in my company.
‘Go,’ I said, nodding towards the double doors that led to the stairwell. He went through them so rapidly that they continued to swing on their hinges long after his pounding legs had carried him several floors closer to the woman he loved.
‘What will you do with the two afternoons you’ve now got free?’ Sally asked me, delving into the carrier bag and passing me one of the cellophane-wrapped sandwiches. We’d headed for a small park just around the corner from the library, for a commiseratory meal-deal picnic lunch following the meeting at the library that morning. Although none of the staff had been laid off, we were all going to have to reduce our hours.
Apart from a few buggy-pushing mothers, and duck-feeding OAPs, we had the park to ourselves. The schools had gone back several weeks earlier, and although we were enjoying an unexpectedly warm September, autumn was quietly knocking on the door. She’d already left her calling card in the scattering of russet-brown leaves that littered the grass.
‘Me?’ I said, throwing the crust from my chicken sandwich towards a hopeful duck who’d headed our way at the sight of brown paper bags. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll do some more hours at the hospital.’
Sally took a long swig of drink from her can, before replying. ‘You should join a club or something. Meet some new people.’
I smiled at her as I lobbed the duck yet another chunk of bread. ‘Meet a man, you mean?’ I teased.
Sally shrugged as though this idea hadn’t occurred to her, and then grinned mischievously. ‘I don’t know how come you haven’t snaffled up a hot doctor, or even one of the patients by now,’ she declared.
‘Most of the patients I meet are in their eighties,’ I said, balling up the remains of my sandwich bag and dropping it into the bin beside us. ‘And the doctors are either straight out of university and barely shaving, or happily married middle-aged men. In real life it’s nothing like Grey’s Anatomy, you know.’
‘I just think you’re not looking hard enough,’ Sally said, getting to her feet with obvious reluctance. ‘I bet the right man is out there – he’s probably right under your nose.’
I laughed and linked my arm through hers. ‘You weren’t tidying up the Mills and Boon shelf by any chance this morning, were you?’ I teased, trying to divert her away from a topic that was starting to make the back of my neck feel prickly and uncomfortable.
‘Is something wrong? I thought you’d be pleased with the suggestion. After all, you are always asking about her.’
That is definitely going to have to stop, I thought, staring at the kindly ward sister, sitting behind a desk fast-disappearing under a mountain of hospital files and paperwork. I shook my head and summoned an innocuous smile to my lips, when what I felt like doing was chewing on them anxiously. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to spend some of my volunteer hours on the sixth floor. What worried me more, was just how much I did. Was my interest in the love story of a couple I knew virtually nothing about in danger of tipping over into an obsession? Why was I so fascinated about a woman I had never met? And why should the tragedy of two total strangers continue to keep slowly infiltrating into my thoughts?
‘Look, why don’t you go up to the sixth floor and have a chat with the patient’s fiancé. I hear he’s a really nice guy, and he’ll be able to give you a better idea of the kind of assistance you could offer them.’ It was a reasonable suggestion and there wasn’t a single thing about it that should have made my heart suddenly pound like crazy, or the palms of my hands turn sticky with sweat. And yet it did.
‘If you don’t feel comfortable helping them out after you’ve spoken to him, we can always work out some polite excuse between us. But to be perfectly honest, Chloe, I think you’re going to be of far more value to them in the afternoons than you are down here.’ She made a valid point. The patients on the geriatric ward seemed to have more visitors in the afternoons than they did in the evenings, making me largely surplus to requirements.
I got carefully to my feet in the small office, which wasn’t much bigger than a broom cupboard. How could I possibly explain to the woman on the other side of the desk the peculiar feeling of serendipity that had overwhelmed me as I listened to her suggestion? It was as if threads of coincidence were once again stitching my life to Ryan and his pregnant fiancé.
‘Okay. I’ll go and see if I can find him,’ I said.
‘Good girl,’ said Sister with a satisfied sigh. I could practically see her drawing a thick black line through Sort out Volunteer Request on her mental ‘to do’ list.
I didn’t run up the steps to the sixth floor. I took each tread slowly and carefully, as though my sedate pace would somehow calm my racing thoughts. I could feel an inner tug of war going on, which made my stomach twist and knot uncomfortably. One side of the rope was trying to pull me further into Maddie’s world, and the other end was desperately trying to anchor me as far away from it as I could get.
I didn’t need to ask anyone which was the room where the comatose patient Madeline Chambers lay, and yet I still hesitated in the corridor. I stood hovering for a minute, until I felt a hand lightly touch my shoulder. I turned around, and knew an unexpected moment of disappointment when I saw that the person standing in front of me was one of the nurses who used to work on the geriatric ward.
‘Hey, Chloe. How are you?’
I mumbled something about being fine, which was such a lie you would have thought a member of the medical profession would have been able to instantly tell that I was most definitely not fine. The nurse however continued to smile at me warmly, guessing nothing at all of my inner turmoil.
‘Are you here about spending some of your voluntary hours with Maddie Chambers?’
It threw me for a moment that everybody in the hospital seemed to know everyone else’
s business. It was a reminder that a secret here would be almost impossible to keep.
‘Yes, I am.’ I glanced towards Maddie’s closed door. ‘But I don’t want to disturb her fiancé when he’s here visiting her.’
The nurse, whose name I suddenly remembered was Abby, shook her head and laughed quietly. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that. He practically lives here. He’s always with her.’
Then why do they need me? That was the question that sprang to mind, but never actually made it to my lips. It was probably one that Ryan could best answer himself.
‘I think I’ll wait in the relatives’ room for a bit,’ I suggested. ‘But if you get a free moment, Abby, would you mind letting him know that I’m here?’
Abby looked a little surprised by my request, but after a moment gave a friendly toothy smile and a small shrug. ‘Okay, sure. No problem.’
I sat on the same chair in the relatives’ room that I’d occupied on the night I’d first met Ryan, but after a few seconds I jumped up and moved to another. I wanted our meeting today to feel totally different to that first one; to feel professional. I certainly had no intention of letting him see how conflicted I was about getting further drawn in to their story.
I would give him ten minutes, I resolved, checking my watch against the clock on the wall. If he hadn’t shown up by then, I’d go back down to my regular ward and catch him at another time. Or not at all, a quiet voice whispered in the back of my head.
He arrived in less than four minutes.
‘Chloe. How are you? You’re looking well,’ Ryan said with a welcoming smile, as he walked through the door.
I thought he might possibly be confusing my warm flustered flush with good health, but I wasn’t going to contradict him. The polite thing to say in response was Thank you, or So do you, except I couldn’t say that in all conscience, because he didn’t look very well at all. I did a quick mental calculation to work out how long he’d been living on this particular knife-edge, and realised it must now be over ten weeks. No wonder the poor man looked haggard.