I turn around. She looks quite ridiculous with her red hair and her crumpled clothes. Her hands are held open beseechingly. It’s a grand gesture, almost biblical in stature. Dahlia always laughingly said she was a drama queen of the highest order.
‘He said she’s in a coma that she might never wake up from,’ I say. My voice sounds normal, casual even.
Numbly, I watch her sink to the ground. A man goes to help her and I turn around and walk out of the hospital. Noah is outside. He must have seen me because he is holding the car park ticket.
‘Where to?’ he asks me.
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
We get into the car. ‘Want me to take you home?’
‘No.’
‘How about some food?’
‘No.’
‘Want a drink?’
It is ten o’clock in the morning and I haven’t slept all night. ‘Yeah.’
To my surprise he takes me to his home. A large apartment in Kensington overlooking the park. If I had been of a different mind I would have appreciated the luxurious décor and congratulated him on his taste. I would have been happy that all the little deals I passed his way have not been blown away on women and wine. But I’m not of a mind to think those things. I remain numb. From head to toe I can’t feel anything. I sit on his couch and watch him pour a large measure of brandy. He walks over and puts it in my hand.
I take it and down it in one long swallow.
‘Her mother and sister will be here in eight hours. If you want, I can go on my own to pick them up from the airport,’ he offers.
All your sins come back to haunt you. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ll go with you.’
We drink together in complete silence. Not one word is exchanged. When the bottle is empty Noah opens another. I can feel myself going down and it is a relief. It is a relief to let go and sink somewhere where there is no me and no Dahlia. There is just nothing. It’s a good place.
‘You’ll wake me when it’s time?’ I ask blearily.
Noah seems totally unaffected by the amount of alcohol he has consumed. ‘Yeah, boss. Sleep now. I’ll wake you.’
With a sigh I give in to blessed sleep.
Daisy is nothing like Dahlia. She is dark blonde with freckles, a boyish figure and sky blue eyes. I can imagine her smiling. She has that type of face. At the moment though she is not smiling. She is holding on to her mother protectively and looking around anxiously. Dahlia’s mother on the other hand looks completely lost and frightened.
I smooth down my freshly showered hair and walk up to them.
‘Mrs. Fury,’ I say.
She turns to me with searching, wide eyes. ‘Yes,’ she whispers.
‘I’m Zane.’
‘Oh,’ she gasps. ‘You’re the one who’s taking care of my daughter.’
I wince inwardly. ‘She’s still in hospital. If you come with me I’ll take you there after you’ve had a little rest at the hotel.’
‘Yes, that would be good,’ she says, her eyes confused and uncertain. Now I know why Dahlia is so protective of her mother and treats her as if she is a little kid.
‘No, I want to see Dahlia straightaway,’ Daisy says. She turns to her mother. ‘It’ll only take a little while to see her, Mom. Let’s go see Dahlia first.’
Her mother nods vigorously. ‘Yes, yes, that’s a much better idea.’
I turn towards her sister. ‘Good to finally meet you, Daisy.’
She nods slowly. ‘Yeah. Thanks for taking care of my sister.’
‘Right, let’s go,’ I say, picking up the suitcase. Daisy is carrying a backpack. ‘Would you like me to help you with that?’
‘No, it’s not heavy,’ she replies.
We get outside and Noah takes the suitcase off me and the backpack off Daisy. While Noah is putting their luggage into the boot, I open the door, and first Daisy, then her mother slip into the car. I close the door and get into the front passenger seat. We drive in silence. The only sound comes from the stereo system.
We get to the hospital and I wait outside in the corridor while they go into Dahlia’s room. They are with her for about fifteen minutes. When they come out both are in tears.
‘I can’t believe it,’ her mother cries.
‘I’m very sorry, Mrs. Fury,’ I say automatically. ‘My driver will take you to your hotel,’ I tell them.
‘Can I talk to you alone for a minute?’ Daisy asks.
‘Yeah, sure. If you step this way.’ I show her to the door of the stairwell.
‘Why is there a security guard outside my sister’s room? Is she still in danger?’
‘No. No. It’s just a precaution.’
Her brow knits and she looks at me suspiciously. ‘A precaution against what?’
‘Nothing. I’m just paranoid.’
She hugs herself and shivers. ‘The bomb was meant for you, wasn’t it?’
For a moment the world goes very black. If she only knew how the guilt is eating me alive. I nod.
‘Why?’ she asks curiously. ‘You’re not just a businessman?’
‘No. I’m a criminal,’ I admit flatly. I guess that is what I am.
Her eyes pop open. ‘What?’
‘Organized crime. That’s my game. I run a large and successful criminal enterprise.’
She takes a deep breath. ‘What is it that you do?’ she asks.
‘It’s not important. Your sister knew what I did.’
‘And she was OK with what you do?’ she asks incredulously.
‘No,’ I choke.
‘So why are you still doing it?’
‘Because I’m good at this.’ In fact, I’m fucking brilliant at it. I’m so good I make it look easy. Lenny couldn’t help himself. He thought he could take over my show if he got rid of me.
Daisy stares hard at me. ‘Can’t you see that you have only reaped what you have sown. You’ve hurt others and now you are being hurt. You have to stop or this cycle of pain will never end. You have to tell her that you have stopped. You sent her away. You have to bring her back.’
I don’t say anything. I just freeze.
‘Do you or don’t you love my sister?’
‘I do.’
‘Then go and make it better. Stop what you’re doing.’
She takes a step towards me and I have to suppress the urge to step back. I am holding on to my sanity by a thin thread. Her innocence and naivety threatens it.
‘We should go,’ I say, my voice harsh.
‘Yes, run. Run as far as you want, but you can never run away from the knowledge that you can do more for her. Much more. You can bring her back.’
I open the door. Yes, I’m running away. I have to. I can’t let her go on. She doesn’t know: I’ve got nothing. There is nothing in me worth believing in. I’m the reason Dahlia is lying there, bandaged, silent, with machines keeping her alive.
Thirty-two
Daisy Fury
‘Mom, do you mind if I just have a moment alone with Dahlia?’ I ask.
‘Of course not. I’ll just go get a cup of coffee,’ mom replies, and bustles out of the room.
I go close to Dahlia. Her injuries are severe, but they are all internal. Except for the tube in her mouth, her face is as clean and pure as a sleeping angel. Looking at her I still can’t believe what has happened. When I first wake up in the morning and I am still foggy with sleep, the thought of Dahlia being hurt in a bomb blast feels like it must have been a nightmare from the night before.
‘Mom and me have to go back this evening, Dahlia,’ I tell her, stroking her skin tenderly. ‘You know that promotion I was talking about? Well, turns out being management means you can never take time off unless you book it well in advance. I’ve been told that if I don’t go back soon I’ll lose my job. We need the money, especially now, with you being ill and not able to send money back anymore. I’ll have to support Mom on my own.’
I clear my throat.
‘I feel really, really bad, but Stella—I really, real
ly like her by the way—said there is no point in my staying, and that coma, or no coma, you wouldn’t want me to hang around doing nothing. Especially since, in her own words, “you’re a fat lot of good to her staying here.” She’s funny, your Stella.’
There is truly nothing to chuckle about, but I force one.
‘Anyway, the good thing is Stella said that as soon as you get out of ICU and she’s allowed to bring her phone into your room, she’ll either FaceTime or Skype me so Mom and me can see you and talk to you.’
I pause.
‘Mom really wanted me to leave her here with you, but she looks so lost and frightened, Dahlia. Without me here she’d be an emotional wreck and of no use to you anyway, so I’m taking her back with me. I’m afraid she might go into a deep depression. It’ll be better for her to be home with all the things she’s familiar with.’
There is no reply but the steady rasp of the machine breathing for her.
‘Besides, Zane says we can come back anytime, and he’ll even pay for us so we’ll both be back real soon.’
I bend down and kiss her cool cheek.
‘I’ll pray for you. I’ll pray real hard, sis. You will get better. I know you will.’
Dahlia makes no response.
I go really close to her ear and whisper, ‘I know it was Zane that took me and I forgive him. So there is nothing for you to worry about or feel guilty about. I love you with all my heart.’
I think I must have really believed that she would open her eyes then, but she doesn’t. I straighten, and bite back the sob that rises up my throat at the thought of leaving her.
‘Bye bye, Dahlia. I love you,’ I say, my fingers trailing on her skin.
I go outside and my mother is standing in the middle of the corridor.
‘I thought you were going to get yourself some coffee,’ I say.
‘I changed my mind,’ she says, but in such a small voice I realize she was probably too frightened to go and get it in case she got lost in this maze of corridors. She has never been to England before. It’s all so foreign and frightening to her. Seeing her standing there makes me feel a bit better about my decision not to leave her behind.
I will have to trust in Zane’s love. At least for now.
I call Noah. ‘I’d like to see Zane before we leave today,’ I say.
‘Sure. I’ll arrange something with him and call you back.’
Zane
‘Do you believe in miracles?’ Daisy asks.
I shake my head slowly.
She smiles, a thing that makes her glow like she is lit up from the inside. ‘I do. I believe miracles happen all the time. My rescue was a miracle.’
I keep my face expressionless. Her rescue was no miracle. It was a ruthless gamble. A brutal mating technique.
She comes closer and again I have that uncomfortable sensation to move back. Perhaps because she is too pure, too innocent. It’s like a sinner going too close to the altar.
‘I’ve been on the net researching comas and there is no doubt that miracles happen. There are all kinds of miraculous accounts of patients coming out of comas even after long periods of time. Some of the stories were about people who woke up after days, weeks and months, but some were truly miraculous. A guy called Terry Wallis spontaneously began speaking after nineteen years in a minimally conscious state.’
She is speaking fast and with suppressed excitement.
‘And then this Polish guy had to be introduced to his eleven grandchildren who were all born while he was in a coma! After all those years he woke up. Then there is this other guy who was in a vegetative state for seven years. One day his family was arguing in his room about what to do about an illness he’d contracted. They were trying to decide if they should go ahead with surgery to remove some fluid from his lungs or simply let him die, when he started talking. There were so many cases of people coming out of comas when music was played to them. One girl that the doctors said would never wake up again smiled to Adele’s music, and two days later she woke up from her long sleep.’
Her eyes shine brightly.
‘In another case a man woke up and said, “Pepsi.” A lot of the survivors said the compassion and caring of the people around them helped the most. They said that even though they couldn’t move they could hear.’
She sniffs and tears suddenly swim in her eyes.
‘The reason I’m telling you all this is because I recognized a great strength in you back when we spoke in the staircase landing. A weaker man would have lied, but you told me the truth about who you are and what you do, even though it was brutal and ugly.’
Tears start running down her cheeks, but she ignores them.
‘I know I have no right, and it’s a very big ask, but I’m asking you here and now, before I leave, to use that strength to help my sister. Please, Zane, don’t give up on her, no matter how difficult it seems. She is in there somewhere, and maybe she can even hear us. She just needs some time to find her way out again. She will come out of it. I know it. I feel it.’
I hang on to her words ferociously. In my black cage her words shine like gold, or fools gold. Whatever she’s selling I’m buying.
Time passes by slowly, tearing us to pieces. The event is unredeemable,
almost like an ancient and cursed action.
-Giancarlo Signorini
Thirty-three
Zane
After Daisy and her mother leave I spiral into something akin to madness. I become highly-strung, restless, prone to fits of violent rages, and lose all interest in business. When I undertake it, it is without pleasure and reluctantly. I don’t even know why I do it any more. Money is wasted on me. I have no real use for it as I have no desire to do anything. I stay away from society, hiding from everyone, and hating everything.
I haven’t even played the piano.
I jump when the phone rings and answer it with my heart banging in my chest until I find out the reason for the call has nothing to do with her. When I go to visit her I pause, every nerve in my body trembling, before I enter her hospital room. I’m terrified I might find that she has stopped breathing.
I am shit scared I will lose my little fish.
My home has become a prison, and some nights while I am wandering alone in this vast house I feel like Michelangelo’s envelope of skin. Tortured, empty and suffering endlessly.
Once I went to confession.
The priest had an easy answer.
Repent.
‘Will that bring her back?’ I asked.
‘Well, no, but it will save your soul.’
I don’t care about my fucking soul. That’s irretrievably damned. Everything that is still sane in my body tells me it can’t be that easy. Say I’m sorry and wipe out all the pain and suffering I’ve caused? No, no, no. That’s a fool’s game. Her sister is right. This is my punishment. A living hell. I walked out of God’s house even more desperate than when I entered it.
In the end it is Noah who holds out a rope for me to climb out of my deep darkness. He arranges for me to go to Nimes in France to meet with a very brave Frenchwoman called Bernadette. She lives in a house she custom built, and named Mas du bel athléte dormant— the House of the Beautiful Sleeping Athlete.
Her story started when her husband, Jean-Pierre Adams, a famous footballer, went for routine knee surgery to repair a sports-related injury. He never woke up from the anesthesia. He was thirty-four years old and that happened thirty-three years ago.
A part of me doesn’t want to meet her. I refuse to believe that Dahlia won’t wake up in the next few days or weeks, but another part of me knows that I can learn a lot from her. Dahlia has just been moved out of ICU and I don’t want to keep her in hospital a day longer than necessary. I know I can get a better and a more dedicated staff to care for her at home, and I am terrified she will succumb to one of these virulent strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria that exist in hospitals. Dr. Medhi’s warning about pneumonia still sends shivers down my back.
<
br /> Bernadette is seventy-two years old, but her nails are painted red, her make-up is immaculate, and her blonde hair beautifully coiffured. If I saw her in the street I would not have picked her out to be the extraordinary woman who has dedicated her thirty-three years of taking care of her vegetative husband in the hope that he will eventually wake up.
She tells me they met at a dance in the 1960s. The memory makes her smile. ‘He was joie de vivre in human form’ she says wistfully.
Now her husband feels, smells, hears and jumps when a dog barks, but he cannot see, crack a joke, laugh, or dance.
Her day starts before seven. After a solitary breakfast it becomes a mix of changing clothes, shaving, preparing and blending food, feeding him, helping him go to the toilet. Sometimes when he has a bad night she spends the night with him too.
She takes me to his room and something inside me dies. He has hardly aged but for a few white hairs. However, he is a shell of the vibrant joie de vivre man in the photographs she showed me. He lies there as still as a breathing corpse. I simply cannot imagine this life for Dahlia and me.
‘He can recognize the sound of my voice,’ she says looking at my aghast face.
I turn towards her in surprise. ‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ she confirms.
‘How can you tell?’
‘When you love someone you can tell,’ she says with conviction.
‘I see,’ I say politely.
‘Yes, that is why you must keep talking to her. It is love that heals beyond all else.’
At the end of my visit I take her hand in mine to thank her for agreeing to see me, and she grasps my hand with both of hers and says, ‘It is worth keeping her alive, Zane. Medical science evolves. If one day they know what to do with her, you will be ready. One day she will come out of it.’
In two hours I am back in England and I go straight to the hospital. I walk in on a nurse washing Dahlia and it is almost too painful to watch. To see those beautiful limbs that had been so full of life and vitality handled as if they belonged to an inert puppet. The nurse looks up at me and smiles in an encouraging fashion.
You Don't Own Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (The Russian Don Book 2) Page 15