A Sky Full of Stars

by Dani Atkins

  I’d always thought of myself as being good in a crisis, but delayed shock was rendering me sloppy and useless. I realised I shouldn’t be taking Connor anywhere without first letting Alex know what had happened.

  Careful not to cause him any more pain, I readjusted my hold on the boy in my arms and reached into the back pocket of my jeans for my phone. My moan of disbelief momentarily silenced Connor’s sobs. The screen wasn’t just cracked, it was destroyed. It looked as though it had been ground underfoot by a belligerent giant. Turning it on was futile, but I tried to anyway. Nothing. Although there was a calming voice in my head, telling me not to panic, I appeared to be doing a pretty effective job of ignoring it.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Connor cried, catching my despair as though it was a virus.

  ‘Nothing, sweetie. We’re just going to have to wait until we get to the hospital before we can call your daddy. Don’t worry,’ I added, as I set off again at a breath-stealing jog in the hunt for my car.

  We hurried up and down the rows of parked vehicles to the low background drone of Connor’s whimpers. There was a stitch in my side that felt like a burning stab wound, and hot salty tears of frustration were starting to blur my vision. Where the hell was my car? And then, two rows away, I finally saw a blink of headlights in response to the summons from my key fob. Unthinkingly, I ran towards it and was suddenly dazzled by another set of headlights. I froze in their twin beams like a terrified rabbit as the shriek of hastily applied brakes filled the car park. I was trembling so violently from the near miss, I was slow to realise the driver had leapt out of their car and was racing towards us.

  ‘Molly! What’s wrong? What’s happened?’

  Alex’s voice was taut with concern. And I could hardly blame him for that. He’d entrusted his precious child into my care and just a few hours later he’d found me with his injured little boy in my arms, running wildly around a car park like a crazy person. I shouldn’t have been left in charge of a goldfish, much less someone’s child.

  ‘Molly?’ Alex urged again, already shepherding us towards his car.

  I quickly explained what had happened on the rink and braced myself for the censure I deserved.

  ‘Get in the car,’ was all he said, his tone tense but controlled.

  I climbed into the rear seat carefully, Connor still attached as though he’d been welded to me. Somehow Alex managed to secure a seatbelt around both of us; although he was careful, Connor’s yelp of pain was inevitable. Too late, I remembered my first-aid training about not moving a casualty.

  ‘Should we call an ambulance?’ I asked worriedly.

  Alex’s face was a mask, allowing no glimpse of his emotions. ‘No. I can get him to the hospital faster.’ He jumped back into the car with the dexterity of a getaway driver and was already gunning the engine as he slammed shut the door. ‘Just hold onto him tightly for me. Keep him safe.’

  I nodded, my own face a white, tear-stained reflection in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t need to be told twice.

  36

  Molly

  I never intended to deliberately mislead the hospital staff. But like an actor who keeps missing their cue, I failed to seize each opportunity to correct the hospital’s mistaken assumption that I was Connor’s mum.

  I should have mentioned it to the woman on reception, who looked surprised when I failed to answer almost every question about Connor’s medical history. ‘His dad will know the answer to that one,’ started to wear thin after the fifth time of repeating it.

  I should definitely have mentioned it to the doctor in Triage, who comfortingly told me, ‘It’s always much worse for the parents than it is for the children.’ But as Alex still hadn’t joined us in A & E at that point, I was afraid they wouldn’t examine Connor’s arm without a parent present. Is it still lying if you simply don’t say anything, I wondered? If it was, then I could live with my deception.

  We were asked to return to the waiting area until they called us up to Radiology for X-rays. Connor looked like a wounded soldier beside me, with his arm now dressed in a temporary sling. My gaze kept flashing from him to the doors of the department. Where was Alex? How could it possibly be taking this long to park his car? I reached for my phone, before remembering my fall had turned it into a useless piece of junk.

  I was used to hospitals and had been in and out of them more times than I could count since becoming ill. But I truly didn’t think I had ever been inside one this hot before. Despite pulling off my coat, I felt as though I was quietly cooking as we sat waiting on the uncomfortable plastic chairs. Perspiration was trickling down my back faster than raindrops on a window pane, and it was impossible to know if the shivers juddering through me were from nerves or a fever.

  ‘Connor Stevens?’ called out a woman, referring to a file in her hands.

  I got to my feet a little too quickly and felt the head rush of an incipient faint. Don’t you dare, I warned my treacherous body.

  ‘Here,’ I replied to the woman wearing a tunic with Radiology printed across it.

  We followed her to the bank of lifts, after the receptionist had assured me she would send my ‘husband’ up as soon as he arrived. I glanced down nervously at Connor, who must surely have heard every single occasion when I’d failed to correct the mistake. His eyes looked troubled, and he reached out for me with his uninjured arm as we stepped into the lift.

  ‘Your mummy will be able to come into the room with you when we take a picture of your poorly arm,’ the woman from Radiology told him kindly.

  Connor’s eyes darted between me and the woman. I held my breath, waiting for him to correct her, but he said nothing.

  Another set of chairs in another hospital corridor. This one seemed, impossibly, even hotter than the one we’d just left. The door in front of us opened, and a radiographer emerged carrying a lead-lined apron, which I presumed was for me. I could see Connor craning past the man and catching his first glimpse of the machinery within the room. Fear was coming off him in palpable waves. My arm tightened automatically around his small shoulders, and it was a shock to discover he was trembling even more violently than me.

  ‘Do you think we could just have a minute to—’ I began, before the ping of the lift cut me off.

  Alex ran through the opening doors like he was on his way to put out a fire.

  ‘Thank God,’ I breathed in relief. ‘What took you so long?’ Even to my own ears, I sounded like an angry spouse.

  ‘Some idiot drove straight into my car in the multi-storey,’ he said.

  Connor’s eyes widened in terror.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he reassured him, looking down with a worried expression at the sling protecting Connor’s arm.

  ‘I’m afraid only one parent can accompany the patient,’ said the radiographer, extending the protective apron in our direction. ‘Who would you like with you, young man? Your daddy or your mummy?’

  It was all too much for Connor. And who could blame him. With an anguished wail, he looked from me to Alex and then said the words that sliced into me like a knife.

  ‘She’s not my mummy. I don’t know where my mummy has gone.’

  It took a good ten minutes before our combined efforts managed to calm Connor down enough so they could take the X-ray. Alex obviously accompanied him because, as Connor had so accurately pointed out, I had no place being there. As they stood to go in, I managed to catch the radiographer’s attention to quietly ask, ‘Is there a water fountain somewhere nearby?’ The stress of the last few minutes had done nothing to reduce what felt like my sky-high temperature.

  ‘There’s one just down the corridor.’

  I waited until Alex and Connor had disappeared before getting to my feet. The room swirled around me like a centrifuge before eventually coming to a standstill. I trailed one hand against the wall for support as I slowly negotiated my way along the corridor. Beneath my feet the linoleum felt as if it was buckling and rippling, as though in an earthquake.

  The wat
er I splashed on my face helped a little, and I drank greedily from a conical paper cup. From what felt like miles away, I could still hear Connor crying. I turned too quickly, aware that he and Alex had now emerged from the X-ray room, but they were fuzzy and indistinct, as though lost in fog. I took two faltering steps and the fog rolled towards me, swallowing me up.

  For the second time that day I fell to the floor. But this time I didn’t get up again.

  37

  Alex

  The order in which he made the phone calls was telling. It was as though his subconscious knew – even before he did – that the final call would be the most important and the hardest to make. Jamie had been shocked, Barbara had been thrown into a state of panic. But Mac… Mac had been… Alex could only think back to that dreadful day the previous year in a different hospital. Mac, Alex realised, had reacted just as he himself had done on learning what had happened to Lisa.

  The phone rang long enough for Alex to be convinced it was about to go to voicemail. He closed his eyes and replayed again that awful moment when he’d seen Molly collapse. Even though he’d known there was no chance of reaching her in time, he’d still sprinted down the hospital corridor towards her. She was unconscious before he got there. Two doctors who happened to be walking in the opposite direction were already crouched down beside her.

  He’d stepped back shakily, giving them space but unable to take his eyes off Molly’s terrifyingly pale face. The doctors fired questions up at him, but all he could see was the concern in their eyes as they tried to find a pulse. For one dreadful moment he didn’t think there was one. His knees felt like buckling as the two doctors exchanged worried glances.

  ‘Got it! It’s weak and thready, but at least it’s there.’

  There was already an orderly running down the corridor pushing a stretcher, and Alex flattened himself against the wall to get out of their way.

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’ one of the doctors asked.

  ‘Her name is Molly Kendall, she’s thirty-two years old, and in April of last year she had a heart transplant.’

  *

  ‘Hi, Alex. What’s up?’ Mac’s voice jolted him straight back into the present.

  ‘I… I’m calling from the hospital.’ Alex thought he heard a sharply indrawn breath at the other end of the phone line. Had he got this right? He was trusting his intuition here – something Lisa would have found hilariously funny.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Mac shot back, and the fear was already there in his voice. Alex knew from personal experience what it took to put it there. It took caring about someone you simply couldn’t imagine living without.

  ‘It’s Molly,’ Alex said.

  ‘Which hospital?’

  To Alex’s ears it sounded as though Mac was already running. He gave the details as coherently as he could. ‘They’ve taken her into ICU. I’ll meet you there.’

  They both hung up without saying goodbye, unwilling to squander a single second.

  It was impossible for Alex not to travel back in time as he paced the corridor outside the Intensive Care ward. The last time he’d been in a place like this, when the life of someone he loved was hanging in the balance, it had ended in his worst nightmare. Was history about to repeat itself?

  He collapsed onto a nearby plastic chair, his head dropping into his hands. It was different this time. What he felt for Molly was a kind of love – but not the type he and Lisa had shared. How had it taken him this long to finally recognise that although the heart of the woman he loved continued to beat, that woman wasn’t Lisa, and never could be? And that the heart which had once loved him now belonged to another man. A man who Alex imagined was at this very moment breaking every speed limit to reach Molly’s side.

  For so long, Alex had believed Lisa’s heart had come back to him, but he knew better now. He finally realised it lived on to find love again. He groaned softly, because all he’d done was get in the way of allowing that to happen. He’d seen the attraction between Molly and Mac. He’d seen the way Mac looked at her, noted how his voice subtly changed whenever he casually asked Alex about Molly. The signs had all been there, painted in letters ten foot high, and yet he’d still refused to acknowledge them. Something was keeping the two of them apart, and Alex had been far too slow to realise that ‘something’ was very probably him.

  He glanced worriedly at his watch. The kindly woman from Radiography who’d volunteered to keep Connor with her for a while should probably be relieved of that responsibility now. It had allowed him to accompany Molly to the ICU, but Alex had other responsibilities he had to consider and prioritise.

  Five more minutes, he promised himself. If Mac isn’t here by then, I’m sorry, Molly, but I’m going to have to leave you. Was she even aware he was there, he wondered – pacing the corridor outside the ward, jumping up hopefully every time a doctor emerged, only to slump back down again at the lack of news.

  He heard Mac before he saw him. The pounding of feet racing along the corridor, the deep rumble of a hastily asked question, and then suddenly the buzz of the doors opening as the man who cared about Molly more than perhaps even he knew, raced towards him.

  Neither of the men were natural huggers, and yet they embraced like brothers. When they broke apart it wasn’t at all clear who had been supporting who.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ Mac implored, his head nodding as Alex shared the limited information he had.

  ‘She assumed she was coming down with a bug,’ Alex explained, feeling more than a little stupid as Mac shook his head gravely. He clearly knew far more about organ rejection than Alex did.

  ‘Fever and chills are classic symptoms of rejection. Molly should have known that.’

  Alex wondered if what Mac really meant was that he should have known that. If so, he was right. He’d brought these four people into his life and made friends of each of them, but he’d never moved past the way they’d met. If he cared about them the way he claimed, he ought to have been looking out for them, the way Lisa always looked out for her friends. He’d failed them, all of them, and by association that meant he’d failed Lisa too.

  ‘Have they said what they’re doing for her?’ Mac asked, his eyes flicking towards the closed doors of the unit.

  Alex shook his head.

  ‘They can reverse it,’ Mac said. ‘If they’ve caught it early enough, they can reverse the rejection.’

  Alex’s smile was too weak to sustain for more than a few seconds. From the look of Molly when they’d rushed her here, that window of opportunity might have been and gone.

  *

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Connor said miserably, his cornflower-blue eyes flooding with tears. ‘I shouted at Molly that she wasn’t my mummy, and that made her so sad, she fell down on the floor.’

  Alex swallowed the golf ball lodged in his throat. ‘No, sweetheart. It’s nothing to do with anything you said or did. Molly got sick, that’s why she fell down. But now the doctors are giving her some super-strong medicine that’ll make her better again.’ He was lying to Connor, and the consequences of doing so weren’t lost on him.

  ‘Can we go and see her?’ Connor begged. ‘I want to tell her I’m sorry.’

  Alex pulled Connor against his chest, mindful of the wrist that was now dressed in a splint. ‘I’m sorry, champ, they’ve got strict rules about children visiting the patients where Molly is.’

  And even if they didn’t, there was no way he was going to allow Connor to see what he’d seen when he’d left the ICU. The thirty seconds he’d been allowed at Molly’s bedside had reminded him all too vividly of his first visit to Lisa after the train crash. He would never put his son through that.

  ‘Besides, we need to get home to check on Lunar. She’s never been on her own for this long before.’

  There was no victory to be had in playing the one ace in his hand, Alex thought miserably. But he wanted Connor back home and as far away as possible from this place where lives were sometimes miraculou
sly saved and sometimes tragically lost.

  *

  Alex eyed the tray of cremated chicken goujons and tried to decide if any could be salvaged. He was halfway to the kitchen bin when the doorbell rang.

  At first glance Barbara appeared to be perfectly composed and coping well. But as she bustled into his kitchen, Alex noticed the buttons of her cardigan were incorrectly fastened, and she was wearing mismatched shoes.

  ‘I do hope you haven’t already eaten,’ she said, setting down the tea-towel-covered dish she’d brought with her in the taxi.

  Alex glanced ruefully at the charred remains on the grill tray. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Good, because for some strange reason I made a simply enormous shepherd’s pie this afternoon. Far too big for just me.’ She reached over and gently squeezed Alex’s forearm. ‘It’s almost like I knew,’ she added softly.

  He smiled back. ‘Thank you for coming at such short notice. It’s really good of you.’

  Barbara waved her hand, flapping away his nonsense. ‘Where else would I possibly be at a time like this?’

  Alex’s throat tightened as he turned towards the bin. He spent far longer than was necessary dispatching the ruined chicken goujons to its depths, before eventually swivelling round.

  ‘I thought Mac might appreciate some company at the hospital. Or maybe we could take it in shifts to sit with Molly.’

  Barbara nodded, and without bothering to ask, switched on his oven and slid her dish inside.

  ‘Did anyone reach Molly’s mother yet? How do you even get a message to someone on a cruise ship, anyway?’

  Alex shook his head worriedly. ‘Molly will have to give us the details when she wakes up.’ His eyes locked with Barbara’s, knowing both of them had mentally substituted an ‘if’ into that sentence.