by Dani Atkins
‘I was really hoping the volunteer would be you. I thought about asking specifically, but wasn’t sure if that’d be a bit weird.’
I looked into the warm, but tired, eyes of the man who crossed my mind on practically a daily basis, and I still had no idea why. I was definitely not the right person to talk to about weird.
‘I’m happy to help, if I can. How is Madeline doing?’
‘Her friends call her Maddie,’ Ryan said, by way of an answer, as though lifting up a corner of a blanket and inviting me under it. ‘Physically, she’s made a remarkable recovery from the terrible injuries she received in the accident.’
For a horrible moment I pictured it. The ugly phrase from the newspaper about ‘flying through the air like a rag doll’ was a hard one to shake off. I swallowed uncomfortably. ‘And . . . and the baby?’ I asked hesitantly.
Ryan’s smile softened and became something so beautiful I could have stared at it for hours and never got bored. ‘Our little miracle?’ he said, and even the words he used were warm and glowing, as though they’d been glazed in honey. ‘She’s doing very, very, well.’
‘You know it’s a girl then?’
He nodded, and there was a father’s pride in his eyes for the child he had yet to meet. ‘She’s a survivor. Just like her mum. The doctors can’t quite believe it, but Maddie’s having a textbook pregnancy.’
I had a burning curiosity – or nosiness, to give it its true name – to ask what would happen when the time came for the baby to be born, but that felt like a step too far into their personal life. So instead I sat up a little straighter in my seat, and tried to sound brisk and professional.
‘So how exactly can I help out during my volunteer hours? What do you need from me?’
Ryan, who had until then been leaning casually against the wall, crossed the small room to drop down onto the chair beside me. I could feel the heat of his arm as it brushed against mine on the shared armrest.
‘Up until now I’ve been able to spend pretty much all of my time here with Maddie.’ I kept my face politely blank, because this wasn’t something I was supposed to know. ‘But there’s only so much leave or goodwill my company are able to give me.’ Ryan sighed, and I heard concern in the sound. ‘Basically, if I want to keep my job – and I need to keep my job – I’m going to have to go back to work, at least part-time.’
I thought I could see where the role he was asking me to play was going to come in, but I just nodded encouragingly and waited for him to continue.
‘Maddie’s parents live quite a distance away, and her mum is—’ He broke off suddenly as though he’d thought better of whatever it was he’d been about to say. ‘She’s not able to do the journey that often, so her dad is only able to come and visit Maddie for a couple of days a week.’
Ryan leant back in his chair, lifted both arms and began to rub distractedly at the stiff knotted muscles of his neck. Too many nights spent sleeping upright in an uncomfortable hospital chair will do that, I thought sympathetically.
‘I’m not sure how much you know about patients who’re in a coma,’ he said.
More than I probably should, and more than I’m willing to admit to. ‘A little,’ I replied.
‘Well, one of the few things they’ve told us we can do to help is to keep giving Maddie as much sensory stimulation as possible. The more we talk to her, touch her hand, play her music and just generally interact with her, well . . . the better the chances are of her coming out of it sooner.’ There was a sadness around his eyes as he sighed and added: ‘Or so they say.’
‘And you’d like me to sit with Maddie when you’re not able to be here?’
He nodded, and drew his lower lip in between his teeth. I addressed my reply to a particularly interesting fire notice fixed to the wall. ‘I’d be happy to do that. It’s very similar to what I do down on the other ward anyway.’
Relief exuded from him, like heat from a fire. ‘Oh, that’s really great news. I was hoping you’d say yes.’
I gave something that I hoped looked like a casual shrug. ‘It’s what I do. I’m happy to help.’
‘I know, and I also know that it shouldn’t matter who it is, but I wanted Maddie to spend time with someone I felt sure she’d like.’ He gave a slightly embarrassed laugh. ‘I must be getting a bit punchy from lack of sleep. I don’t want to come across like some kind of idiot, but I just feel like you and Maddie would get on together.’ He looked me straight in the eyes. ‘We tend to have similar tastes in people.’
There was a compliment in there, and I didn’t have to excavate too deep to uncover it, but with admirable restraint I kept it safely buried.
‘So when would you like me to start?’
He got to his feet, and I followed suit. It felt like that moment at the end of a job interview, when he was meant to say We’ll be in touch, and I’d hold out my hand and say something like It was a pleasure meeting you.
‘How about right now?’
‘Now?’ My voice sounded like a parrot who’d taken a sneaky draught of helium.
‘If you’re free? I’d like to introduce the two of you – if that doesn’t sound too strange?’
I shook my head, and felt the ends of my long bob graze the skin between my shoulder blades. ‘Her room’s this way,’ Ryan said, heading towards the door, which he held open for me.
I smiled, and successfully managed not to say: Yes, I know. This is just another patient, I kept telling myself as I walked behind Ryan down the glaringly bright fluorescent-lit corridor. I’d helped scores and scores of them during my time as a volunteer. This was no different. Maddie was just another patient.
Except of course, she wasn’t. I think I already knew that, even before Ryan’s hand paused momentarily on the door handle. ‘Okay?’ he asked, looking down at me with an encouraging smile.
‘Okay,’ I confirmed. His fingers tightened around the handle and the door began to open. And with my first step over the threshold, my future took on a whole new direction.
‘Maddie, hello sweetheart. It’s Ryan. I’ve brought someone to meet you.’
Chapter 9
2018
‘I think today went really well. Don’t you?’
I carried on tipping strawberry-scented bubble bath under the running water from the taps, with the precision of a scientist in a laboratory. In the room next door I could hear Hope singing happily. The first meeting with her birth mother had left no scar, no damage. At least not on her, and that was what was important here, I reminded myself.
‘I’m sorry about next Saturday. I should probably have checked with you first.’
Yes, you should, I said silently to the mini-torrent cascading into the bathtub. I turned and looked over my shoulder at Ryan. ‘No. That was fine. It’s perfectly natural to have asked her. I would probably have suggested it myself if it had occurred to me.’ Really? questioned a voice that only I could hear. I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear and got up from my kneeling position on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor.
‘I’ll need to have a quiet word with the other mums first. Just to make sure they know not to say anything.’
I could see a reflection of Ryan’s puzzled expression in the steam-covered bathroom mirror. He looked like a man lost in a mist. ‘The resemblance between them is even more noticeable now that Maddie is awake.’ I explained. ‘We don’t want one of them saying anything.’
Ryan pulled me gently into his arms. ‘My hands are all soapy,’ I said in a token protest as they pressed up against the material of his shirt. Beneath my palms I could feel the slow and steady beat of his heart. Its familiar rhythm calmed me, the way it did late at night when he pulled me against him in our big double bed, and I fell asleep with my cheek resting against his chest.
‘You won’t lose her,’ he whispered into the wisps of blond hair tickling beneath his chin. ‘I won’t let you lose her,’ he promised. My soapy hands slid around him, leaving a small damp trail to show their passag
e.
‘I know that,’ I said calmly. Except I saw the reflection of my face in that same bathroom mirror, and it wasn’t calm at all. It looked terrified.
We had successfully navigated almost two hours of what had to be one of the most unusual mother-and-child reunions to have ever taken place. The only awkward moment had come after Maddie had finished reading yet another chapter to Hope, and had closed the book with a sad look in her eyes. She glanced down at her watch, and I tried not to heave a sigh of relief that the ordeal was almost over.
‘This has been a lovely afternoon. Thank you for inviting me Ryan – and Chloe, of course,’ Maddie added hurriedly. My polite smile didn’t wobble, which I was very pleased about.
‘We’re so glad you were able to come,’ said Ryan, getting easily to his feet and putting his arm casually around my shoulders. Don’t do that, I silently tried to telegraph, by tensing up beneath his touch. He must have realised, because he allowed his hand to slide off my shoulder and down my arm. But it was too late, Maddie had seen it, and there was a brief stricken look on her face.
It disappeared the only way that it possibly could, when her daughter leapt off the seat they had shared and placed her hand in Maddie’s. Maddie looked down, and the genuine delight on her face at Hope’s generous heart broke mine a little bit more.
‘Will you come back again? We haven’t finished the story and I’ve lots more books in my room that I want to hear again.’
I couldn’t blame Hope for her enthusiasm. She had a new and exciting relation who clearly wanted to spend time with her. She was new and shiny . . . and I was just—
‘Mummy.’ My head shot up, and so did Maddie’s. Ryan looked uncomfortable.
‘Yes, Pumpkin?’ I replied.
‘Can Maddie come back again soon?’
‘Yes, of course she can.’ I looked into the grown-up version of my daughter’s beautiful blue eyes, and saw gratitude in their sapphire depths. This was the plan we’d agreed on, I was just sticking to it, that’s all. But perhaps she had doubted that we would keep to our word.
‘Why don’t you join us next Saturday?’ suggested Ryan innocently. My eyes darted to his, and it was only then that he realised his invitation was something we should probably have discussed in advance.
‘What’s happening next Saturday?’ asked Maddie, her glance going from Ryan to me. An unexpected stab of pity slipped between my ribs and pierced the shell around my heart. It was so wrong that she didn’t know. All of it was so very wrong.
It was probably Ryan’s place to answer, not mine, but neither of us got the chance, because a much younger voice piped up with the answer.
‘It’s my birthday,’ Hope declared with an infectious giggle and a dance of pure excitement. ‘It’s the day I was born.’
The look in Maddie’s eyes still haunted me as I held my little girl’s hand to steady her as she stepped into the deep sea of white bubbles of her evening bath. Maddie’s pale face had looked shocked, and then her eyes had started to glisten like polished gemstones. She hadn’t known. And why should she? Perhaps the maths simply hadn’t occurred to her. After all, she’d had a lot to cope with recently. But I could see the guilt beneath the pain. Maddie’s emotions were all new, and it was obvious she hadn’t yet mastered the art of hiding them very well. She was a mother who hadn’t even known the date of her own child’s birthday.
‘I . . . I didn’t know,’ her eyes went to Ryan, and some of the sympathy I felt for her withered as they exchanged a look that felt as though it held a thousand memories.
‘That’s okay. You’ve still got time to buy me a present,’ said Hope, effectively defusing the bomb in the room with a very childlike response.
‘Hope!’ I cried, sounding shocked, but actually feeling relieved that the moment had been neutralised so effectively. ‘You can’t say something like that to someone you don’t—’
Maddie turned to me, and finished the sentence I should never have started ‘—know very well?’
Hope looked up at the three adults who were all exchanging looks. For the first time, perhaps she sensed something of the undercurrent of emotions bubbling quietly beneath the seemingly tranquil surface of the afternoon.
‘But Maddie’s not a stranger, Mummy, is she? I would never say that to a proper stranger. But Maddie is kind of like my new relative, so doesn’t that make her part of our family? Wasn’t that what you said this morning?’
She had me there, that clever little girl of mine who saw so much without realising what she was seeing.
‘Yes I did, Pumpkin. I did.’
Hours later, when the house was dark and quiet, when Hope was fast asleep in the room beside ours, Ryan’s hands slid around my body and drew me against him. I wriggled back into the curve of him, my body and his automatically responding to our closeness. ‘You did good today, Mrs Turner. I was so proud of the way you were with Maddie.’
‘How did you expect me to be?’ I whispered into my pillow, feeling a single tear escape from the corner of my eye and disappear into the soft cotton cover.
‘Exactly the way you were,’ he said, and I felt the sadness ebb away a little at his faith in me.
‘She was my friend,’ I whispered softly into the darkness of our room. ‘She may not remember it; she certainly won’t want to hear about it – especially now. But for a long time that was the way I thought of her. She was my sleeping friend.’
‘I guess that was always going to end whenever she woke up,’ Ryan said sadly, and for a moment I wondered why – even now – he still didn’t get it.
I turned in his arms, my lips soft as they kissed his shoulder. ‘No, it ended a long time before that.’
Ryan kissed me then, and neither of us needed to finish that sentence, because some things don’t have to be spoken out loud to be true.
My friendship with Maddie Chambers faltered and then failed when I fell in love with the man she had planned to marry.
2012
‘Why don’t I go and get us some coffee and leave you two to chat for a bit?’
I looked across the room at Ryan, certain the surprise on my face was as prominent as a blush. My glance dropped to the figure lying motionless and silent on the bed and then back to him. Any ‘chatting’ going on here was definitely going to be of the one-sided variety.
And yet from the moment I’d followed him into her room, I’d been impressed and incredibly moved by the very natural and loving way Ryan was with Maddie. He’d crossed to her bedside and very gently pressed his mouth to her lips. ‘Hello, baby,’ he said so softly, that I knew his words had been meant for her unhearing ears only. When he introduced me, and explained that I’d be coming in to visit her from time to time, Ryan held Maddie’s immobile hand in his, his thumb running slowly in a caress across her palm as he spoke. My own hand tingled as though it could feel his touch upon it, but Maddie’s never moved.
He chatted so comfortably to the woman in the bed, he made it very easy to believe that at any moment those ivory-white eyelids were about to spring open, or the slightly parted lips would curve into a smile at something he’d said. If I hadn’t been around hospitals for as long as I had, I would almost have believed it myself.
But after spending several minutes recounting an amusing story about something that had happened to one of their friends, only two voices joined together in laughter at the end of the anecdote: his and mine. For a moment I glimpsed the raw pain on Ryan’s face at her lack of reaction, but he masked it so quickly, that afterwards I wondered if I’d simply imagined it.
I’d taken up an unobtrusive position in one corner of the room, feeling strangely as if I was watching the two of them act out a scene in a terribly sad film; the kind that you know is going to have you reaching for the tissues by the time the credits are rolling. Here was a man whose heart was clearly breaking, over and over again; who was fighting to bring back the woman he loved the only way he knew how. The enormity of his feelings filled the room, making it hard
to breathe.
With uncanny intuition, Ryan must have picked up on my vague discomfort, which I’m sure was why he’d left Maddie and me alone for a while. I stood silently at the edge of the room for several moments after he’d left, closing the door quietly behind him. I felt nervous and awkward in a way I don’t ever remember being before with a hospital patient. I cast my eyes around the room, taking in the line of get-well cards on the window ledge, and the collection of shiny foil helium balloons tied to the handles of a locker. Maddie was clearly popular and had many friends. It was only when I looked a little closer that I noticed the corners of several of the cards had begun to curl at the edges, and their print was starting to fade. The balloons too showed signs of age, their words of greeting now blurred in the wrinkles of the foil. I sighed sadly. It happened this way, when patients had been in hospital for as long as Maddie had. People didn’t stop caring, but eventually they went back to their own lives. Life went on. This is why they need you here, an inner voice quietly reminded me. It was the impetus I needed to push myself away from the wall and approach the bed.
For a moment I said nothing, just stared down at the woman whose tragedy had reached out and touched a chord deep within me, and had inexplicably refused to let go. I cleared my throat, as though I was about to say something really important, when in fact nothing could have been further from the truth.
‘Erm . . . do you mind if I sit down?’ I asked the beautiful young woman in the high hospital bed. I pulled out a chair, paused for a ridiculous moment, as though expecting a reply, and then lowered myself onto the seat with a small embarrassed cough.
‘You’re much younger than the people I normally spend time with here,’ I told Maddie, my eyes going to the unmistakable bump on her stomach, which rose like a dome beneath the blanket. ‘I’m more used to asking people about their grandchildren and families, or listening to them talk about what they did when they were my age.’ I gave a small laugh. ‘I don’t suppose you and I can do that, can we? I’m twenty-seven, by the way, in case you were wondering. I guess we must be about the same age.’ I sighed and closed my eyes. I was babbling, and if Maddie could hear me, I imagined she’d be rolling her comatose eyes in despair. This is the most interesting person you could find to sit with me? she’d silently be asking Ryan. And truthfully, based on what she had to go on so far, I could hardly blame her.