While I Was Sleeping

by Dani Atkins

  ‘Hello,’ I said, craning my head out into the hall to see who it was who’d left the miniature workman at my door. A few seconds later, heavy-booted footsteps crossed the chequered tiled hallway.

  ‘Sam. You were meant to wait in the car,’ said Mitch reprovingly, shaking his head, and looking more than ever like a large shaggy bear. My less-than-conventional-landlord placed an arm around the shoulders of the young boy, pulling him close.

  I smiled down at the child, before looking up and sharing it with Mitch. ‘I’m not sure the plumber you’ve hired is actually old enough to drive.’

  Mitch’s laughter boomed around the hallway like a runaway echo. I half expected one of my new neighbours (none of whom I’d met yet) to open their front door to investigate the thunderous sound.

  ‘Sorry, Maddie. I hope we’re not too early.’ As I hadn’t even realised they were coming, there really wasn’t an answer to that one, and it didn’t look as if Mitch expected one as he bent to retrieve the tool box, lifting it easily, as though it contained nothing heavier than feathers.

  He strode towards the kitchen, his young son at his heels. ‘I couldn’t get hold of an emergency plumber for today, so Sam and I decided it would be fun to fix your leak ourselves.’

  I glanced down at the solemn-faced little boy, who looked like he might need convincing on the ‘fun’ element of that particular activity, and reminded myself not to bother asking Mitch for tips on how to amuse young children.

  ‘You’ll be like Bob the Builder,’ I said, smiling engagingly at Sam. He gave me a look as if he was almost sorry for me. I guessed Bob’s appeal must be with a younger demographic. If I’d needed further proof that I knew absolutely nothing at all about children, it was right there on Sam’s face.

  ‘You didn’t have to give up your Sunday morning to do this,’ I said, turning to Mitch as he began to lay out an impressive array of tools onto a large cloth. I wondered if the number of wrenches required was an indicator of how long it would take to fix the leak. As surreptitiously as I could, I glanced at my watch and chewed worriedly on my lip. Was it too rude to ask how long this would all take?

  ‘It’s no problem at all,’ Mitch said breezily. ‘It shouldn’t take us too long and then we’re off to the park to kick a football around.’ His smile wavered when he caught the expression on my face. Suddenly he looked awkward, and the top half of his cheeks – the only bit visible above his beard – coloured. I’d made him blush. Again. ‘Unless now isn’t a good time . . .’ he said, glancing around him as if it had only just occurred to him that he might have been interrupting something. I flushed myself when I realised he thought I might not be alone in the flat. The unlikeliness of that almost made me laugh out loud.

  ‘Now is fine,’ I assured him, crossing to the coffee maker and switching it on. ‘It’s only that I have a train to catch later. I’m going to spend a couple of days with my dad,’ I added, supplying an explanation he hadn’t asked for.

  ‘Ah, that’ll be nice,’ Mitch declared, dropping to the floor and disappearing beneath my sink. ‘I’ll work fast then, and get out of your way.’

  ‘So did your daughter enjoy her birthday party?’ asked Mitch, treading carelessly with his huge size thirteen feet, all over the secret I was having to keep.

  I glanced around the room and almost laughed at my own jumpiness. Here, at least, it was safe to admit to being Hope’s mother.

  ‘I think so. Of course, I don’t know how these things usually go. It was my first children’s party for several decades.’

  ‘You’ll get the hang of them,’ Mitch said assuredly.

  It had been surprisingly easy chatting to him about the events of the previous day, including the doll’s house versus kitten climax. It reminded me of all the times we used to chat in the past; the only difference now was that he was fixing my sink and not my computer.

  ‘How do you do it, Mitch?’ I asked, dropping my voice down low so that his son couldn’t hear us above the crashing noises as robot and truck repeatedly collided. ‘How do you get used to not being there in their life, all the time?’

  Mitch scooted out from beneath the cupboard, and for once the easy, ready, twinkle had disappeared from his eyes. ‘It’s about the quality of the time you spend with your child, not the quantity. It’s about giving up your ego and realising it’s not a territory battle. It’s about making them realise a boy with two dads gets twice as much love. There are fathers who live under the same roof as their kids who have no idea about the things that matter to them.’ Mitch looked over at his son, who was happily munching on what had to be his tenth chocolate biscuit. I might not know much about children, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t a good idea.

  ‘Sam is the most important person in my world. I know it, and more importantly, he knows it.’ Mitch’s voice dropped, and I crouched down low beside him to hear whatever secret he was about to share. ‘Sam gets nightmares, real scary-monsters-under-the-bed ones. So a few months ago I gave him an old mobile phone of mine, with my number programmed in it. Now, when a scary dream wakes him in the night, he can call out for his mum or his step-dad, or he can phone me, and I’ll do my monster-chasing spell over the phone.’ He looked sheepish, as if waiting for me to laugh at this giant of a man who chanted incantations to dispel scary goblins in the middle of the night. But laughing was the last thing I felt like doing. I was much more likely to cry.

  ‘You’re a very good dad, Mitch.’ His face split with a grin; a delighted grizzly bear, sitting on my kitchen floor with a wrench in his hand.

  ‘Okay, try that tap,’ he commanded, his voice gruff with embarrassment. Water gushed into the sink, and not a single drop leaked out from the joint he’d fixed.

  ‘And you’re not a bad plumber either,’ I added with a smile.

  It must have been a difficult and painful decision for my dad not to bring my mum to the hospital when I’d finally woken up from the coma. He’d had to balance my need to see her with the impact it would have on her peace of mind. And as painful as it was to accept, I hadn’t been in a position to argue when he’d said he thought it would be better to wait until I was well enough to go to the home and visit her.

  ‘She has a routine, Maddie, and any departure from it throws her.’

  ‘Don’t you think she’d want to see me though?’ I’d asked, my eyes filling with tears, like a small abandoned child in need of her mum, instead of a grown woman who should know better.

  ‘If your mum was who she once was, a squadron of marines couldn’t keep her from your bedside, my love,’ my dad had replied, picking up my hand and holding it gently. ‘But she’s not that person any more. She just looks like her.’

  It had been a very long wait from the time I’d first opened my eyes until today. And it was strange to realise that my separation from my mother was about as long as my own daughter’s had been from me. Our lives had become a tangled ball of string, and the weird serendipity made my head hurt whenever I tried to unravel it.

  It wasn’t the unfamiliarity of my father’s new home that I found so heartbreaking. It was actually seeing once again the few familiar cherished possessions he’d taken from his old life, to transplant into his new one. I ran my hand over a small side table, a lamp with a tasselled shade, and a remembered painting, as though reacquainting myself with old friends. I tried not to think about all the things that should have been here in his new home with him, the most notable of which being my mother.

  ‘You need to keep your expectations low,’ my father had advised, as we’d walked together up the drive of the single-storey white building where my mother now lived. I’d nodded, but despite his words of caution, there was no stopping my expectations from bobbing persistently up to the surface, like tiny unsinkable buoys.

  ‘Be prepared for her not to recognise you, my love,’ he warned, signing us both in at the reception desk. ‘There are days when she doesn’t even know me. And she gets confused sometimes when Ryan and Chloe bring Hope for a visit
.’

  The cut of jealousy had gone deep as I thought of Chloe spending time with my mother, while I had slept on, oblivious to a world slipping away through my fingers. That’s why the timing of my visit was important, because Ryan, Chloe and Hope had plans to visit the following week, for a belated celebration of Hope’s birthday with her grandparents. I wasn’t invited to that one, which I knew was sensible because it would only confuse both my mother and my daughter. But it stung nonetheless. I’d spent so much time on the outside because of my coma, and now that I was awake it didn’t seem fair that I was still there, with my face pressed up against the window of the life that should have been mine.

  My nose twitched involuntarily as we walked side by side down a maze of twisting corridors to my mother’s room. My father spotted it, and offered an apology. ‘You get used to it after a while. I hardly notice the smell at all these days.’

  The smile I gave him in reply was a little sad. ‘Actually, I was thinking that it smelled like home . . . like the hospital,’ I amended. I’d have given anything to wipe that particular expression from his eyes, but there was no time, because he’d already come to a halt beside a white panelled door. A small card bearing my mother’s name was set into a slot beside the frame.

  The room was bigger than I’d been expecting, separated into two distinct areas by an archway. My mother was in the section that was furnished as a lounge. My eyes flew past coffee tables, a bookcase and a television, to settle hungrily on the grey-haired woman staring out through a set of French windows at the bleak barren gardens. She was smiling wistfully, as if what she saw wasn’t bare winter branches and grey skies, but lush green grass and trees full of foliage and flowers. She always had loved her garden. She took a long time turning around, the vista beyond the panes clearly more of a draw than the sound of the opening door.

  I didn’t realise I was holding my breath until I began to feel slightly light-headed from doing so. Her face strangely looked no older, although the grey in her hair had quadrupled. Her back was still ramrod straight, and I heard the echo of a thousand reminders flying back through the years of her constantly telling me to stand tall and not to slouch. Unconsciously I found myself drawing up straighter and pulling my shoulders back to greet the mother whose eyes showed no flicker of recognition as they fluttered over me. They went straight to my father, and on seeing his smile, she mimicked it.

  ‘Hello, Faye. How are you today, my darling?’ Her brow furrowed, and I realised she was giving his question her most serious consideration.

  ‘I’m well, thank you . . .’ My heart broke a little as I saw her grappling to remember my father’s name.

  ‘Bill,’ provided my father, crossing the room to take the hand of the woman he loved in his. How did he do this, day after day? Where did he find the strength?

  ‘I’ve brought someone very special with me today,’ said my dad carefully. ‘Do you know who this is?’

  My mother’s eyes travelled over me, strangely starting at my booted feet and working their way upwards. I could tell when they reached my face, for the furrows on her brow deepened. The lump in my throat made it hard to swallow as I stood, mannequin still, waiting for my mother to recognise her only daughter. Slowly, with polite regret, she shook her head.

  ‘Are you one of my doctors?’ she guessed, her hand coming up and toying with the neckline of her silky blouse.

  ‘No, my love. Look closer,’ urged my father. ‘You know who this is.’ With his free hand he beckoned me to come further into the room. My legs felt shaky as I took three steps towards the window.

  Her eyes examined me, feature by feature, as though a clue was cunningly concealed among them. The arch of my eyebrows was the same as hers, the bright blue of my eyes was different from the milky opal of her irises, but their shape was practically identical. Her fingers fluttered at her throat, and I saw the tremor of a pulse beating behind the restless digits. ‘You don’t work here, do you,’ she said, more statement than question.

  I shook my head, bracing myself for the impact of her denouncement, which I could see was coming. Her seeking hand slid around her neck. And suddenly my heart started to beat a little faster.

  ‘I’m sorry. I feel I should know who you are, but I can’t quite place you.’

  I saw my father’s lips part, to reveal my identity, but I shook my head slightly. There were tears in my eyes, but a small smile on my lips. My mother had finally found what she’d been searching for, and gently tugged on a thin silver chain, pulling free the necklace that I’d given her when I was sixteen years old. She ran the chain through her fingers, until she reached the silver pendant with the word ‘Mum’ on it. Her fingertips grazed backwards and forwards over it, as though reading it in Braille.

  ‘No, dear. I’m sorry. I don’t remember you.’

  Except somewhere, somehow, I felt that just maybe, she did.

  My dad caved after an hour, and to be honest I’m surprised he lasted that long. As we’d sat drinking the cups of tea he’d fetched from the residents’ lounge, I could practically feel the pulse of his thought waves, trying to telepathically identify me to my mother. I would have been just as happy to allow her to remember me in her own time. The important thing for me was that I was here spending time with her, even if she didn’t know who I was. But perhaps I was deluding myself into thinking this was only a temporary obstacle.

  ‘What did you say your name was again, dear?’ asked my mother, her face wearing a politely interested expression.

  My eyes went to hers and didn’t fall away as I repeated the name she had chosen for me thirty-four years earlier. ‘Madeline. My name is Madeline.’

  Her eyes fluttered, like a frightened bird’s, and then automatically went to my father, her source of calm and stability. His face was beseeching her to remember, but all she appeared to be was confused.

  ‘Well. How very strange. That’s my daughter’s name.’

  I tried to turn my small sob into a cough, but I don’t think I did a very good job of it. I knew I should have been expecting this, but it was still a shock.

  My father got out of his seat to crouch down beside her armchair. Very tenderly he took one of her wrinkled hands in his. ‘This is Maddie, Faye. This is our daughter. She came back to us.’

  For a moment I thought he’d broken through the walls her dementia had built, but then she shook her head in denial. ‘No. Of course this isn’t Maddie. Don’t be ridiculous. Maddie’s at school,’ she declared, looking across the room at the gold carriage clock on top of the bookcase, and from there to two silver-framed photographs showing a pretty little girl with bright blue eyes and long dark hair. One of them was Hope, the other one was me.

  ‘So, now you see how it is.’

  I walked over to the French windows and stood shoulder to shoulder with the only parent who knew I had returned. It was starting to snow, and the floodlights in the care home grounds were picking up the falling flakes, making it look like a fiercely shaken snow globe.

  ‘I thought that when she saw me . . . when she realised I’d come out of the coma . . .’

  His arm came up around me, and my head fell onto his shoulder, as if it was suddenly too heavy for my neck. ‘She doesn’t remember any of that, Maddie. She did for a while, she certainly understood what was going on when Hope was born, but then . . .’ His voice trailed away and I could tell by the gruffness of his tone that he was determined not to cry in front of me. But the thought of him crying alone was even harder to bear. ‘I think this was the only way she could cope with what happened to you, to let her illness take it all away.’

  ‘But what about you? How do you cope? How do you manage to keep coming here, day after day, knowing that some days she can’t even remember your name?’

  My father was of a generation that always kept a neatly laundered handkerchief in a pocket, and he extracted it now and pressed it into my hand. ‘Where else would I be except at the side of the woman I love? Somewhere inside there is still
the girl I fell in love with. She’s still the bride I couldn’t wait to marry; she’s the one I promised to grow old with. The goalposts might have moved, but there’s nowhere else I could be in the world, except at her side.’

  Something deep inside me began to tear very slowly apart, like the ripping of a seam. Because those were the words I once believed Ryan would have said . . . about me. Until the day came when he stopped waiting and made the decision to move on without me.

  My mother’s return from her evening meal made us both turn towards the door. The carer who’d escorted her to her room settled her in a chair. ‘I’ll be back to get you ready for bed when your family have gone, my lovely,’ she promised before slipping out of the room to allow us to say our goodbyes.

  My mother stared curiously after the woman, and I could see something glimmer briefly in her eyes like the sputtering of a match in the dark. I don’t think my father saw, for he bent to kiss her cheek and reached for his thick woollen coat. ‘I’m going to go and bring the car to the front entrance. I don’t want you trudging around in the cold and ending up back in hospital.’ He was being over-protective, but I knew better than to argue with him on this one. I nodded and watched him go.

  I wasn’t aware that my mother had heard his comment until I turned back to face her. That light was back in her eyes, burning more brightly now, trying to shine a spotlight through the fog of confusion.

  ‘You’ve been in hospital?’ her question was tentative.

  I nodded. ‘For quite a long time.’

  ‘You were sick?’ she asked, but there was doubt in her voice, as if she knew that wasn’t quite right. The room went very still. It felt as if something almost supernatural was happening and I wished my father was here to see it, because it felt ephemeral and fleeting, as if I was trying to grasp hold of wisps of smoke with my bare hands.

  ‘You were in an accident?’ she queried hesitantly.

  I nodded, because this time I was too choked to speak. She was remembering. I had no idea how long this precious moment would last before the veils of forgetfulness fell over her memory, and I was too scared to do or say anything that might break the spell.