by Lily Harlem
Chapter Twelve
Northampton was cast in shadows. A dull gray Monday that had brought drizzle to the park around the museum and thankfully sent the peacock searching for shelter—although that didn’t stop me warily looking at the darkness beneath the enormous, leaf-heavy oak trees, or glancing nervously in the direction of the aviary.
I wandered in through the open door of Ruben’s workplace, the quiet stillness once again wrapping around me. This time the reception area didn’t send my nerves skittering; instead, it sent them jumping up and down with excitement, happy anticipation. I was looking forward to seeing Ruben. My morning had dragged as I’d counted the hours until we’d be together. The thought of lunch with him, having a look around the museum with him, hearing his voice, seeing his smile, had been like a crane lifting that damn weight out of my belly. It was a relief to see it go, to feel a lightness that allowed me to breathe.
The same lady as before sat at the leaflet-cluttered desk. Today she had on a navy fleece, and her name badge—Ethel—was pinned upside down. I smiled and walked up to the desk, decided not to tell her, it added to the charm of the place.
“Hello again,” she said, shutting the thin paperback she was reading. “Have you come to see the rest of the museum?”
I was surprised she remembered me and smiled. “Yes, I…er…Ruben said he’d show me around.”
She nodded seriously, the small red bead earrings she wore swinging in time with her movements. “I’m sure he did, a pretty girl like you.”
I clasped my hands in front of me, glanced up the stairs. I’d hoped he’d be hanging about, waiting.
She smiled, and her face softened. “He told me to expect you. Go straight up the stairs, through the Saints room and then push through the door that says Staff Only. His office is at the end, you’ll see it.”
“Okay, thanks.” I touched my hair, hoping the breeze hadn’t messed it up too much.
The museum was silent as I went up a level and walked through the first room. It was dedicated to the cobbling industry Northampton had been famous for. Old leather shoes in various states of disrepair were displayed in glass cabinets. None of them anything I’d want to wear.
The next room was exactly what Ethel had described. But not saints of the holy variety, this was the Saints rugby team, Northampton’s pride and joy, and by the looks of the trophies and accolades, well worth that pride.
I spotted the Staff Only door and pushed though it, feeling a smile already growing. The short corridor was empty, the walls a dull green, the carpet a faded orange. The door at the very end was ajar.
“Ruben?” I called, stepping toward it.
No answer.
I pushed it open. “Hey, there you are,” I said.
He sat behind a dark wooden desk, a tired smile on his face, his arms folded in front of him.
“Shit, what’s wrong?”
“Not feeling so great today.”
“No kidding, you look bloody terrible.” I dropped my bag on a straight-backed chair and rushed around the desk.
He straightened, as though stiff and aching, and swung his seat so he was facing me. His eyes were sunken, and he had mauve crescents beneath them. The rest of his face was pale and sallow.
I dropped to my knees, rested my hands on his legs. “You need to see a doctor.”
“I’ll be fine. It’s probably just a cold.”
“It’s never just a cold for someone who’s got a new heart, Ruben.”
He shrugged, just a little.
“Seriously, I’m no medic but even I know you need to see someone.” I reached up, touched his cheek. He was cool, and I didn’t like it at all. “Have you got a specialist doctor you can ring?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“So why didn’t you?” Irritation snapped at my heels. “Ruben, you’re sick, we need to get you better.” He had to get better. I needed him.
“I might look like shit, but you look pretty,” he said, squeezing my hand and giving me another one of his tired smiles.
Damn, I wanted to shake him. “Don’t change the subject. Where is the number for your doctor?”
He sighed, as if defeated. “In here.” He pulled out his wallet and plucked a business card from it. “I’ll call him now.”
“Yes, you do that.” I stood, folded my arms, and resisted the urge to tap my foot. How could he have let himself get so ill? Didn’t he know he was all I had? Didn’t he understand Matt’s heart was doing its best but still, he had to take care of it?
A sudden thought hit me. What if it was my fault he was ill? Maybe it was that dash back from the cinema in the rain that had caused him to become sick? We’d gotten so wet, splashing through puddles and that car soaking us. That couldn’t be good for him, surely.
“Hello, Andrew, it’s Ruben Strong, sorry to bother you.” Ruben glanced at me, and I wanted to clip his ear for worrying about bothering his doctor when he looked like the gray day outside and was probably spiking a fever.
“Not so good actually. I think I’ve picked up a cold or a virus or something.” There was a pause. “Yes, I increased them this morning when I first felt ill…temperature, I think so.”
I nibbled on a loose bit of skin by my thumbnail, watching Ruben doodle figures of eight on a notepad in front of him.
“I can be there in half an hour, yes. Thanks.”
He clicked off the phone.
“Well,” I said, touching his hair, stroking it back from his face and feeling terrible for being cross with him when he appeared completely drained of energy.
He glanced up at me, his eyelids so heavy they were only half open. “He wants me to get to Northampton General, he’s based in Oxford but he’ll call and tell them to expect me and what drugs I need.” He shrugged sadly. “It’s happened a couple of times before.”
I stooped and kissed his head. “Then come on, I’ll drive you. I’m parked just outside.”
He nodded.
“Can you walk that far?”
“Yes, don’t fuss. I’ll be fine.” He set his jaw determinedly and stood.
“I’ll go and get it then, drive it up to the front.”
“Okay.”
I grabbed my bag and dashed out of the door. Adrenaline spurred me on as I galloped past the Saints, the shoes, then down the stairs.
“What’s the rush?” Ethel said, standing as I reached the bottom.
“He’s ill, I’ve got to get him to hospital.”
She put her hands beneath her chin as if in prayer. “Oh dear, I thought he seemed tired earlier, and here he’s been…all morning up there, unwell. Oh dear…”
“It’s all right.” I touched her shoulder. “He’s spoken to his doctor—”
“The heart one, the specialist?”
“Yes, and he needs some medication, as soon as possible.”
Ethel started to walk left, changed her mind and walked right. “Oh dear,” she said again.
“Listen, are you going to be able to lock up here. I don’t want Ruben worrying about it.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll get the keys off him when he comes down.” She glanced up the stairs. “Oh dear.”
“Yes, you do that and I’ll go and fetch my car.”
* * * * *
The bleeping of the cardiac monitor made me feel physically sick. The last time I’d heard that rhythmic sound I’d been holding Matt’s hand and he’d been lying in Intensive Care. The ventilator had hissed and whirred at his side, his chest had moved up and down in synchrony with it.
He hadn’t really been there, so they’d told me, but it had felt like it.
I clutched Ruben’s hand the same way as I’d held Matt’s, within both of mine, clasping it tight. He was asleep, had been for an hour, but I couldn’t bear the thought of letting his hand go, of walking away from another man lying on a hospital bed and never seeing him again.
After the bustle of Ruben’s arrival—an X-ray, blood tests and hooking him up to monitors and a drip—a yo
ung nurse had fluffed his pillow, taken his temperature again and told him that rest was the best thing now. He just needed to let the medicine do its job. She’d left the room then, shutting the door and leaving us alone.
I studied his sleeping face. He had more color since the oxygen tube had been placed beneath his nose. The grayness had gone, his lips pink again, their normal shade as opposed to whitish.
He was breathing steadily and his skin, although still a fraction too warm, had lost the clamminess I’d felt earlier. The bed sheets were rolled down to his waist, and I set my attention on his scar and thought of his new heart pounding away, working its hardest to do its job even though Ruben’s body saw it as an invader.
Weariness suddenly took over me. I couldn’t imagine going home to sleep, so I rested my head on the bed, next to our joined hands, and shut my eyes.
I must have slept for a while, because when the click of the door woke me, the shadows in the room had stretched and the sun had come out, creating a diamond shape on the wall behind Ruben’s bed.
“Oh, I’m very sorry, I…didn’t realize.”
I turned at the sound of a female voice. Standing in the doorway was a middle-aged couple. They were both tall, she had hair in a neat, pale blonde bob, and his was gray and short.
I cleared my throat, sat up straighter, kept Ruben’s hand in both of mine.
“Er, hello,” I said.
The couple continued to stare at me.
I glanced at Ruben; he was snoring softly.
“How is he?” the man said, stepping into the room. He had the same soft brown eyes as Ruben and moved in a similar long-limbed way.
“He just needs to wait for the medicines to work and then he’ll feel fine,” I said. “So the doctor told us.”
“Well, that sounds encouraging.” He smiled. “I’m Trevor, Ruben’s father.”
“Hello, nice to meet you. I’m Katie.”
“And this is my wife, Veronica, his mother.”
Veronica Strong crossed the room. She was elegant in neat trousers, a pale blue blouse and a string of pearls that had been wrapped twice around her neck.
“Hello,” I said.
She smiled but only briefly, because then she took Ruben’s other hand in hers, being careful of the drip, and studied him. Her whole posture projected worry and fear. She nibbled on her bottom lip and frowned.
“When did he get ill?” she asked.
“I saw him at lunchtime. He said he’d been feeling under the weather since this morning.”
“Well, at least he caught it quickly this time. He can be so stubborn.”
“I made him call the doctor.”
“Good, thank you.”
I nodded.
She let her gaze roam over me, frowned slightly. “I didn’t know he was seeing anyone,” she said. “I thought he would have mentioned it—”
“Veronica,” Trevor said.
She turned her mouth down and shook her head. “I’m sorry, that was rude of me.” She looked at Ruben again.
“It’s okay, us, Ruben and I, it’s all been a bit of a whirlwind, we’ve got close fast.” I paused, thought how deeply he’d gotten under my skin. “Happens like that sometimes, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” She glanced at me again, slightly suspiciously.
“Hey, Mum, Dad,” Ruben said in a croaky voice. “You got the message I left you then.”
“Yes, we came straight here,” Veronica said. “How are you feeling?”
“Not so bad, been worse.”
“Well, we know that, son,” Trevor said, putting a pile of magazines on the table at the end of the bed, all motor related. “The thing is, how long are you planning on being in here instead of out courting this beautiful lady?”
Ruben smiled at his father and then at me. “This is Katie,” he said. “Sorry, I should have introduced you.”
“We’ve done that already,” Veronica said. “But you didn’t mention Katie when I spoke to you yesterday.”
“No, well, we’re still getting used to there being an us, aren’t we?” He turned his hand over and took hold of mine, instead of me holding his.
“Yes,” I said with a smile. “You look better now than you did earlier.”
“I feel it. Thanks for driving me here.”
“As if you need to say thanks.”
Veronica picked up a glass of water. “You should drink,” she said to Ruben.
He let go of my hand, drank as instructed.
“Have you eaten?” he said to me then turned to his mother. “We we’re going for lunch. We never made it.”
“No, I’m not hungry.”
“You have to eat, Katie.” He frowned at me.
“I will, later.”
“I could murder a cup of tea after the drive here,” Veronica said. “Come on, Katie, let’s go to the canteen together.”
She and Ruben both held the same determined expression, the same set to their jaws, the same sure look in their eyes. I could refuse, stamp my feet and demand that I not be told what to do. But I couldn’t be bothered, my emotional energy was running on low today, and a cup of tea was tempting.
“Yes, you ladies go and chatter, I need the inside gossip about the race on Saturday,” Trevor said, tapping the side of his nose. “And no doubt it’ll be juicy if Dean Cudditch has anything to do with it.”
Ruben laughed, and the sound settled in my chest like a tonic.
“Of course it is,” he said. “Dean is always flying by the seat of his pants.”
Ten minutes later, I was nursing a cup of tea and an egg and cress sandwich bought for me, with much insistence, by Veronica.
She plucked a tub of sweeteners from her handbag, added one to her tea and stirred. I looked at the enormous rock on her left ring finger alongside a thick gold band then glanced at my bare one.
“So how did you two meet?” she asked, smiling stiffly.
“I was wandering around the museum and we got chatting.”
She nodded, took a sip of tea.
“He saved me, from a peacock. It was trying to attack me.”
She smiled. “Really, that’s quite a way to meet.”
“I suppose.”
“Why don’t you eat, Katie? You don’t look like you can afford to lose weight.”
I resisted responding with a sharp comment and tore the cellophane off the wrapped sandwich.
“And are you from around here?”
I held back a sigh. This was going to be a serious grilling. But what the hell, Ruben, like Matt had been to his mother, was clearly the light of her life. Heck, he was the light in mine now, so we shared a common interest. I’d give her what she wanted. Well, most of it.
“No, I’m born and raised in Yorkshire. I moved here from Leicester, where I’d been working for several years. I needed a change.”
“Oh, had something gone wrong in Leicester?”
“No, I just wanted to transfer jobs. I work at Skin Deep, in town.”
“Oh, yes, very nice.”
I picked up a sandwich, nibbled the corner. “It is nice, the staff are friendly and I like the products, plus it’s very convenient.”
“For what?”
“I mean, it’s low stress, that suits me.”
She raised her eyebrows.
I took a proper bite of sandwich, studied the iridescent sheen on her pearls, and then when I’d swallowed said, “I’ve never been a career girl, no wild ambitions to climb the dizzy heights of the corporate ladder and change the world.”
“Oh, that’s unusual these days. I thought all you young ladies were ready to take on anything.”
“Not me.”
She tipped her head, urging me to go on.
I braced, steadying myself on the wire, an invisible balancing pole in my hands keeping me on the straight and narrow and leaving the hurricane of emotions down below. “I fell in love, Mrs. Strong, when I was young. We got married, Matt and I, we settled down, planned a family, a boy and a
girl. I wanted to be a mother, a wife, a friend, a lover. I was so close to having all of those things, but then one day everything changed.”
I had her attention now. Her mask had slipped. She wasn’t being the suspicious, protective parent anymore. She was curious. She wanted to know what had happened to me. Did she imagine I’d run away and left my family? Maybe she thought I’d become a druggie or an alcoholic and they’d all left me. Maybe I’d committed some horrible crime and been locked up at Her Majesties pleasure for the last few years.
“What changed?” she asked quietly.
I set the sandwich aside. “He died, my husband. He was killed in an accident, and my life was turned upside down.” My voice broke on the last word, but I held it together. Disguised it well. I hoped.
Instantly she reached out and placed her hand on mine. “I’m sorry.”
I nodded. Would she still be sorry if she knew my husband’s death had saved her son? Would she still regret my loss? What if she could turn the clock back for Matt, would she save him?
What ifs served no use. I’d learned that as sure as I’d learned the earth kept spinning. What ifs had tortured me to no avail.
“It was hard,” I said, “grief is a persistent beast that takes a long time to fight. Beating it is impossible, learning to live with it the best you can do.”
“It’s not a pleasant path to walk or even consider walking.” She removed her hand and curled it around her cup. “Has Ruben told you his history?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“All of it?”
“I think so.”
“He nearly died, too, you know?”
“Because of his heart?”
“Yes. His illness made him very sick. He became half the man he was, less even.”
“That must have been horrible to see.”
“Agony for his father and I. He was literally slipping away before our very eyes, and there was nothing we could do but hope for a miracle.”
“Miracles are in short supply.”
“Yes, but we were lucky. We were blessed with one.”
I’d given them their miracle. I could have said no to the organ retrieval team, because it had been up to me, my decision entirely, no persuasion, no convincing. But I hadn’t said no. In the foggy corners of my agonized brain I’d dredged up the answer yes.