by Dani Atkins
She looked embarrassed, the way she always did whenever we had this conversation. ‘Yeah, well that’s what happens when you don’t have a job, people take advantage of your good nature.’ She took her eyes off the road and pulled a silly face so I could tell she was joking. But I’d known that anyway. ‘And I was going to have to collect Hope from school every day until you got your licence back, so it made sense to do this too.’
She made it sound like giving up six weeks to help look after me was a small deal, but it wasn’t. Not for me at least. It was a huge one. ‘I just want you to know how grateful I am.’
She squirmed in the driver’s seat, and I knew I should stop now or risk making her feel truly uncomfortable. ‘You’re a good friend,’ I said, reaching out my hand to cover hers on the steering wheel.
I’d never called her that before. I’d always felt our extraordinary relationship defied all conventional labels, but for some unknown reason, today I felt a burning need to say the words out loud. To make sure she knew how I felt.
‘And you’re a pain in the arse,’ she said. And it would have been a perfect way to have shot me down, if only her eyes hadn’t been glinting brightly, or her deep red lips hadn’t betrayed her with a tremble.
Maddie
‘We’re home,’ I said, shaking Chloe gently. Beneath her jumper I could feel the bones of her shoulder. They seemed a little more pronounced to me than they’d once been. It was yet another concern to add to my growing list to discuss with Ryan.
Chloe’s pale grey eyes swam for a moment before coming into focus and realising we were now parked in her driveway. ‘Sorry. I must have gone straight out. I didn’t snore, did I?’
‘All the way back,’ I said, walking round to the passenger side in case she needed help walking up the path. Not that I’d be of much use to her today if she did, I thought, wishing I could shake off the vague head-full-of-cotton-wool feeling that had made concentrating throughout the familiar drive much harder than it should have been. It was probably just as well Chloe had been asleep, because she would certainly have complained about the heater which I’d had blasting out hot air throughout our return journey. Not that it had helped, for I still hadn’t been able to banish the icy chills running through me. It looked as if Chloe might be right; I’d caught Hope’s bug.
‘Shall I make us some tea?’ I asked after Chloe had located her key and let us into the house.
It had stopped feeling odd, opening up the kitchen cabinets and rummaging in the drawers of her domain, some time ago. I was used to working among other women’s things, I thought, as I dropped teabags into the mugs and waited for the kettle to boil. Everything I ever used, every single thing, belonged to either Mitch’s grandmother, or to Chloe. Nothing was really mine. Perhaps it was time to do something about that?
‘Shall we take these into the lounge?’ I asked, as though I was the host here instead of her. The fact that Chloe didn’t appear to find that odd was further proof that she was struggling today.
I took her arm as we crossed the hallway, because it was easier to help her to the settee than worry about how I’d pick her up off the floor if she didn’t make it there. Even so, I hadn’t been expecting her to lean on me quite so heavily, and by the time I had settled her back on the couch, I could feel a slick film of perspiration drenching my body.
When Hope was dropped off by one of the other mothers some twenty minutes later, I could legitimately have left and gone back to my own flat. But there was something that was niggling me, a cautionary voice warning me not to leave until Ryan had returned.
‘Do you mind if I stick around here for a while?’ I asked nonchalantly, as though I had no other plans, and hadn’t just rattled off a message to Mitch cancelling our arrangements for that evening. He’d understand; I knew that. And I wouldn’t need to explain or justify which member of the Turner family needed me most: Hope or Chloe. Either way, Mitch would get it.
‘I thought you had a date,’ Chloe murmured.
Even without the finger gestures, I knew she’d put the word in inverted commas. To be honest, my relationship with Mitch was probably as much of a mystery to me as it was to her. It was more than friendship, of that I was certain, but it wasn’t a romance. For a while I’d thought it might be, but we were like a train that had somehow found itself shunted into the sidings. It was as if we were waiting for something. But I had absolutely no idea what for.
‘My date cancelled on me,’ I lied.
‘Then he’s an idiot,’ said Chloe with unexpectedly fierce loyalty. ‘Any man who’d let you slip through his fingers is plain dumb.’ She stopped suddenly and we shared a slightly uncomfortable moment, as we realised she’d just described the actions of her own husband.
After Hope left Chloe’s side to play on the floor with her cat, Chloe got shakily to her feet. ‘Do you know what, I think I will go and lie down for a while. Is that okay with both of you?’
Hope nodded happily.
‘Do you need a hand getting upstairs?’
Chloe shook her head, her eyes going instantly to the little girl on the floor. One day, when she was old enough to understand, I promised myself I would tell Hope how courageously Chloe had fought against her illness, so that Hope’s childhood could remain as unscathed as possible. One day she would know everything her mother had done. I would tell her.
I watched Chloe leave the room; saw the way she rested her hand on almost every piece of furniture as she passed, as if she needed them all for support. I switched on the television, but found it almost impossible to concentrate on the flickering images on the screen. I found myself listening out for the sound of Chloe’s careful tread on the stairs, and then the sound of her footsteps in the upstairs hall.
A wave of concern swelled up within me for no reason whatsoever, and I sprang suddenly to my feet. For the second time that day I felt my head start to spin.
‘I’m just going upstairs to check on your mum,’ I said to the back of my daughter’s head. She nodded, absorbed with whatever was happening on the television.
She didn’t turn around.
Chloe
The weariness was all-consuming, trying to suck me under. Each foot felt as though it had weights strapped onto it, like astronaut shoes or those funny boots that divers wear. I paused, one hand already on my bedroom door, when Maddie said something from the hallway below. I turned around as she began to rapidly climb the stairs.
There was a moment when I didn’t realise anything was wrong. Maddie stood before me, as she’d done countless times before. A glimpse into the future of how Hope would look one day: tall, slender and beautiful . . . and pale. Always pale. And yet, this time even her lips seemed strangely bleached of colour. And then I noticed her hand on the wooden banister, not resting on it lightly for balance, but clawed like a bird’s, almost gouging into the rail for support. She was looking at me, straight into my eyes . . . and then suddenly she was gone, tumbling back with an almost slow-motion balletic grace down the stairs she had just run up.
There was a crash; a horrible, horrible, crash and then the lounge door was flung open and Hope hurtled through it. She saw Maddie, lying crumpled at the foot of the stairs and the cry she gave as she ran towards her echoed not just through the house but through my very soul.
‘Mummy!’
It was the first time Hope had ever called her that, and Maddie never even heard it.
Chapter 22
Chloe
I saw Ryan before he saw me. I saw the expression on his face as Hope catapulted into him. I saw the look in his eyes before he found me behind the glass doors. It answered a thousand middle-of-the-night questions, which I knew I would never need to ask again.
Time passes differently in a hospital. When you’re a patient, each day feels like a week. But when you’re waiting for news of someone you care about, each minute feels like a lifetime.
I had no idea how long it had been since the paramedics had brought us here. The time Hope and I
spent in the bleak impersonal waiting area might already have tumbled from minutes into hours, for all I knew. My priorities were split; but however anxious I was about Maddie, at least she had a team of people working on her. All Hope had was me. I rocked her in my arms, soothing her with words and promises that could all very well be lies. How could I tell her that everything will be all right after we’d both seen Maddie carried from our home on a stretcher? Those words should have no place in my vocabulary, not when the sound of the ambulance siren was still echoing in my ears.
I didn’t attempt to phone Ryan when we first arrived at the hospital. A quick glance at the clock had told me he’d be driving on the motorway by then, which was neither the time nor the place to receive bad news. Although if there was a location where getting that kind of information was less devastating, I had yet to discover it.
Eventually, when Hope’s sobs had settled to soft hiccups, I gently eased myself away from her. ‘I’m just going to go in that room to phone Daddy,’ I said, pointing to an adjacent office with a full-length glass door. ‘You’ll be able to see me all the time. But I need to go somewhere quiet so I won’t disturb anyone.’
Thankfully, Hope didn’t seem to notice that there was no one around who could possibly be disturbed by my call. There are things no child should ever see or hear. Watching one mother desperately trying to save the life of her other one was definitely high on that list. I had no intention of adding to the damage by letting her hear my call to Ryan.
Reception in the hospital was typically poor, and I could feel my agitation rising as I strode the perimeter of the room, my phone held out like a divining rod, searching for a signal. When eventually I found some, my fingers were slow and clumsy on the keypad as I made the call.
Voicemail. I stared at the device as though it was deliberately trying to make a terrible day worse. There was an almost irresistible urge to hurl the useless piece of technology at the wall, but good sense won through and I chose to leave a message instead. But I was interrupted by a commotion from the corridor.
Even through the closed glass doors I could hear a loud pounding sound, like a jack-hammer on tarmac, or feet slapping heavily on a tiled surface. With the phone still pressed to my ear, my eyes went to Hope. I saw the moment when her look of uncertainty dissolved into one of indescribable relief. There was only one person in the world capable of producing that look, not just on her, but on me too.
I spun around and saw Ryan running at speed down the empty hospital corridor. He was moving so fast each foot barely seemed to make contact with the floor before it was leaping upwards, taking him forward. A man who could run that fast didn’t deserve to come fifth in any race.
But more startling than the speed of his approach was the expression on his face. If that look had a name, it would have to be apocalyptic. For it was the look of a man facing the destruction of his very own world.
Hope was suddenly gone in a blur of arms and legs as she leapt from the seats to run towards her father. Ryan said something, which I couldn’t quite catch through the door, but Hope’s answer came through clearly enough.
‘They took Mummy away in an ambulance.’
I saw her words rock him, even as he scooped her up into his arms. There was an agony on his face, the kind I hope I will never see again.
I flung open the door and the immediate relief in his eyes humbled me as I stumbled towards them both. Somehow he managed to free one arm to draw me fiercely against his side.
‘I was just trying to call you,’ I said, my voice muffled against the solid wall of his chest.
‘I got home early. There was no there.’
I couldn’t even begin to imagine the horror he must have lived through. ‘Then one of the neighbours came out and said she’d seen an ambulance, and that a woman had been taken away. I thought . . . I thought . . .’
‘It was Maddie,’ I said, my voice cracking on her name.
He nodded, and his arm tightened around me as he said gruffly, ‘I’ve been trying your phone and hers for the entire drive here. No one picked up. I didn’t know who . . .’ He took a long breath, to steady himself. ‘And then, just now, when Hope said it was Mummy . . .’
Hope’s face was awash with tears as she swivelled in her father’s arms. Her eyes, Maddie’s eyes, met mine.
‘It was her mummy,’ I said, reaching out and gently touching our child’s cheek. ‘Just not this one.’
After Ryan had lowered Hope back onto the plastic seats, I quickly explained what had happened.
‘So she fell?’ he asked, clearly struggling to imagine it. He was lucky. Somehow I didn’t think I’d ever be able to erase the memory of it.
‘Yes. But something was wrong before that. That was why she fell.’
‘And the doctors haven’t said anything yet?’
I shook my head.
‘I should call Bill,’ Ryan said. My glance went to Hope and he nodded. ‘I’ll go outside.’ He turned to leave and then suddenly came back to press a single hard kiss on my mouth. The taste of fear still lingered on his lips. ‘God forgive me for saying this,’ his voice was a hoarse admission, ‘but if it had to be anyone—’
It was an hour before anyone came to speak to us. Sixty minutes when the worry gradually fermented into the kind of anxiety that should carry its own health warning. By the time a vaguely familiar figure emerged through the double swing doors, I could practically taste a sick dread rising up from some unspeakable well within me. The memory of Maddie’s still and unmoving mouth beneath mine, the frantic searching for a pulse under my inexperienced fingers was something that would haunt me forever, whatever happened next.
Ryan got to his feet and extended his hand to the doctor. There was recognition on both of their faces, and suddenly I realised why the doctor looked familiar. He’d been Maddie’s physician. The fact that he’d been summoned to attend to her now should have calmed and reassured me. Instead it did the exact opposite.
Hope had thankfully fallen asleep, curled up in a ball on the vinyl chairs, allowing the doctor to speak frankly to us both. Even before he began to talk, I knew the news was bad. I recognised that look. I’d seen doctors and nurses employ it more times than I cared to remember when I’d worked on the geriatric ward. I’d seen it too at first-hand, when the doctors had taken me aside from my own mother’s hospital bed.
‘Obviously we will continue to do all that we can for Maddie, but—’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said, my voice sounding almost angry. ‘Was it the flu that made her fall? Is that what happened?’
There was a look of compassion on the doctor’s face, and also one of regret. ‘I don’t believe Maddie has the flu.’
Ryan and I shared an equally confused look. I asked the question we were both thinking: ‘Then what happened? Why did she collapse?’
In answer the doctor walked a few steps further away from our sleeping child and motioned towards a row of vinyl chairs, indicating that we should sit down.
‘Maddie has been experiencing certain problems over the last month or so.’
My eyes went to Ryan, as if secrets had been kept from me. Secrets he knew about. But the shocked expression on his face told me he was as much in the dark as I was.
‘What problems?’
The consultant appeared unfazed by our reaction. No doubt he had seen them all. Grief hits families in many different ways. And despite what anyone might say to the contrary, we were, most definitely, Maddie’s family.
‘We had reason to believe the after-effects of her coma were beginning to present themselves. She had developed symptoms that were causing us considerable concern.’
‘So why didn’t you do something about them?’ Ryan’s voice was a curious mixture of grief and anger.
‘Because Maddie wouldn’t allow us to. Not yet. She was adamant; she refused to come in for any of the tests until the end of October. She said whatever we had to do would have to wait until then.’ The consultant looked genuinely
pained that his hands had been tied. ‘She never would explain what was so important that she had to delay her own treatment.’
I looked over at Hope. Fast asleep, dreaming of a happier day; a different day; one that wouldn’t end with the destruction of her world.
‘Me,’ I said, my voice small but knowing. ‘I was the reason she was waiting. She wanted me to get better first. She put me—’ I shook my head, because that wasn’t right either. I looked at Ryan and then slowly back at Hope. My family. The most precious thing in my world. How could I not have seen that we were also the most precious thing in Maddie’s too. ‘She put us first,’ I said sadly.
The room was quiet and although I had never set foot in it before, it was horribly familiar. Ryan had taken Hope down to the cafeteria to get something to eat, but I had refused to go.
‘Someone should stay with her,’ I said, my eyes locking on his as we travelled back to another time and place where we’d both said these words before.
‘You’ve not been well,’ Ryan protested, his eyes travelling over my face.
‘I’m well enough to sit with her,’ I insisted determinedly. ‘I’m not leaving her until Bill gets here.’ Ryan nodded slowly.
I was glad when he and Hope had left for the cafeteria. I stood at the edge of the room and was rocked by the feeling of déjà vu. ‘Hello, Maddie. It’s Chloe.’ The old greeting tripped from my lips like liquid honey.
I pulled up a chair beside the bed and reached for her hand. It was cool and utterly immobile. With difficulty I wound our fingers around each other. I needed to make sure she could feel me. I had to believe that she still could.
‘The thing is,’ the consultant had said before leading us to the room where Maddie was lying, ‘we never really understood what had happened to make her wake up a year ago. It never made sense – not medically. It was almost unheard of. But this regression; this slipping back into a coma . . . Well, I have to be honest, we have no idea what’s caused that either. But this, or something like it, has always been our biggest fear. Maddie knew that, right from the very beginning. She always knew this could happen.’