by Bowes, K T
Hana sat up and reached for her mobile phone charging next to the bed. She almost knocked over the drink and peering in it, was inclined to agree with Amy. There was definitely something else in there. Hana unplugged the phone and then held it for some time, contemplating. After staring at the screen until her eyes became unfocussed, she texted the message.
‘Logan’s in the hospital. Tama broke his arm and did internal damage. Keep away from him, Anka. Stay where you are. Bo says Ivan has filed a missing report for you. Be careful. H. x’
There was no reply so Hana got up and used the landline to check on her husband. Comfortable, that word again. They didn’t seem worried, but then they also made it quite clear visiting wasn’t until eleven. “I’m getting dressed now,” Hana informed her guests. “I need to be at the hospital when the doors open. I want to see him and reassure myself he’s ok.”
“How about I drop you off, Mum,” Bodie offered. “We’re going to sort out my new room and try and make it into a half decent home.”
“I would be really grateful!” Hana gushed. “I hate that multi-storey car park.”
Jas still bounced around like a wind-up toy, shouting out possible names for Hana, but Amy managed to get him under control enough to wash and dress him and settled him down with a drink at the kitchen table. He intermittently pestered Bodie, having decided to call him, ‘Dad,’ which he did with great gusto and enjoyment. Hana watched the little boy with interest.
He was very much like a younger version of his father and despite the lack of contact until now, it was fascinating how the mannerisms and idiosyncrasies were the same. As Amy took Jas out into the hall to get his shoes on, Hana reached out and held Bodie’s forearm. “Jas calls you Dad,” she said and he nodded. “You need to do this right, Bo, you’ll damage him badly if you get it wrong.”
Bodie nodded, putting his hand over hers. “I know, Mum. Whatever happens between me and Amy, I’ll always be his dad and I’m not going to trade that for anything. Mine screwed it up. I’m not going to copy him.”
Hana smiled and inwardly prayed he would be able to stick to that promise, for Jas’ sake. Her brain wandered to the last sentence and she paled, the smile wiped from her pretty lips. Did he really think Vik screwed up parenting by dying? Surely he wasn’t suggesting it was on purpose? Hana opened her mouth to speak and then thought better of it. She put the bad memory to the back of her mind, brushing it off in her present turmoil and dismissing it as Bodie being dramatic.
They travelled to town in Bodie’s car, with Jas and Hana sitting in the back. Jas was safely belted into his booster seat and Hana had to laugh to herself when the bouncing boy got into the car, stuck his thumb straight into his mouth and went to sleep before they reached the gates. She thought again how amazing the child was, knowing she was getting very attached to him. “Cute boy,” she said and stroked his other hand, gratified when his fingers clasped around hers.
Hana was spat out at the hospital at ten to eleven, making her way quickly up to the ward. She joined the queue of people waiting to go in and pitied some of the unfortunates inside as she observed their visitors. One family ate an entire packet of grapes and a box of chocolates in the ten minutes by the sliding doors, finally going in empty handed. Another group contained a screaming toddler, which showed no sign of letting up the dreadful wail as he was carried in and one elderly gentleman kept spitting phlegm into a filthy hanky, loudly and without embarrassment.
As the guests filed past, Hana stopped to check the board showing patients’ names. It was late the previous night and she’d had enough trouble finding the exit, let alone remembering where Logan was wheeled to. She was startled unexpectedly by the feel of a hand snaking around her waist and turned to find her husband standing close to her. He put his face into her neck, breathing in the lingering scent of shampoo on her hair. Hana spun round and put her arms around Logan’s neck, holding onto him tightly. His hair was wet and he wore yesterday’s clothes, including the baggy track-pants. “Hey gorgeous,” his voice was sultry and despite his ragged appearance, he was still as sexy as ever.
As Hana pulled gently away from him, she noticed the metal thing he held onto. It was like a tall coat hanger with a bag of fluid dangling down from the top and from a lower rung, another sack of awful red looking stuff. It had wheels and Logan pushed it around like a shopping trolley with horrid things dangling. The higher bag containing the clear liquid sent a tube into Logan’s hand, but the tubing from the red one disappeared under his shirt and ended presumably somewhere inside. Hana felt appalled and the severity of it hit her afresh. “I missed you so much,” she sniffed, trying not to tear up as they walked slowly back to Logan’s bed. He trailed his new apparatus without complaint and Hana tried to think of something helpful to say.
“I brought you some stuff.” With trembling fingers, she unpacked the small black bag containing Logan’s wash things, razor and a change of clothes and undies. Knowing the reputation of hospital food she also produced an unopened packet of biscuits and some chocolate bars. “I thought you’d be flat on your back in bed,” Hana smiled, getting better control of her tears. “I didn’t expect you to be up and about already.”
“Don’t have much choice in here. They wake you up all through the night fiddling around with something and then start the real rattling and crashing around 6am. I think they want me out. This nurse actually thought she was coming in the shower with me, but then the male nurse turned up and sent her away. He waited outside for me. There’s no privacy in here, I hate it.”
Hana gulped, guilt landing like a brick in her stomach. “I didn’t have a choice, Loge. It was bad. You’ve had major surgery. It’s not like I could have fixed it with a needle and thread! I did what I thought was right.”
“I know,” Logan conceded. “Apart from day clinics for minor stuff, I avoid these places. When Kane and Barry cut me open that time, a social worker turned up at the hospital and started asking really awkward questions. Mum couldn’t cope with it and just left me there. Jack picked me up a week later.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry.” Hana bent down to undo the bag, trying not to see the internal pain in her husband’s eyes. “But I didn’t see any alternative.”
Perhaps a bed ridden, drugged up Logan would have been easier to handle than the hurt, angry man next to her. “Hop back into bed,” Hana suggested. You’re shivering.”
Logan’s face projected pure agony as he sat on the bed and tried to swing his legs round. As Hana struggled to work the pedal to raise the bed up, a nurse appeared with a plastic cup containing drugs for Logan. She pushed a completely different pedal from the one Hana wrestled with and the bed rose elegantly up.
“Oh. Oops.” Hana felt incompetent in the face of such efficiency, but the nurse was gentle and kind.
“It’s fine,” she smiled. “There’s an art to it.”
Logan looked pale and his skin was slightly grey from the effort of walking the short distance down to the entrance of the ward. “I can’t believe I feel worse than before,” he complained to the nurse, finding no sympathy with that train of conversation.
“You’re lucky,” she calmly informed him. “You should have got help sooner.”
Logan shrugged and asked when he was going home. He obviously asked that particular question on a relentless loop as Hana saw the nurse raise her eyebrows before smiling politely and moving away.
“What did the surgeon say to you?” asked Hana, remembering the conversation with the Ngaruawahia doctor the night before.
Logan lay back on his pillows, pulled a face and sighed as though bored. “Told me how lucky I was, how they removed my spleen and stopped the bleeding. They called me an idiot and said I should have been examined when they cast my arm, blah blah blah…”
“The doctor said you had a couple of broken ribs,” ventured Hana, knowing Logan was trying to play the whole thing down. “That’s meant to be really painful. How on earth did you cope all week in so much discomfort?�
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“I’ve done worse,” was all he would say and Hana got the feeling the subject was fully closed. For once she kept quiet, not wanting to argue with her stubborn husband.
Logan rang Angus on Hana’s mobile phone and explained he was in the hospital. Hana heard him reassuring Angus it was nothing to do with the men pursuing Hana, but a stupid coincidence. “Yeah, I probably won’t be in work tomorrow but I might be all right for Tuesday.”
Hana got up shaking her head in disbelief and gazed out of the huge windows for a while, watching the world outside moving on, regardless of the agonies of people inside. They were on the seventh floor and the view was spectacular. To the west was Hamilton Lake, shimmering and rippling in the steady breeze, a few brave and dedicated kayakers paddling on its surface like tiny, decorative figures on a cake. Directly ahead was the city, looming out of the ground, some two-storey buildings shamed out by the multi-storey ones such as the council offices. They crowded round each other, like school children grouping together for a class photograph, the big kids pushing out the little ones.
Hana leaned her hands on a low windowsill and bent forward so she could see straight down. A grey road, maybe Pembroke Street, headed straight for the building and from that height looked as though it went underneath. Hana knew it didn’t, but the perspective was convincing and she leaned further forward than she should. There was a loud bang as her forehead hit the window. “Ouch!” she complained. It hurt, but she resisted the urge to rub at the bruise already aching and tingling. Slowly Hana turned around, looking at the other patients in the room to see if they noticed. An elderly man slept in the bed opposite Logan and next to him, a man listened to hospital radio through headphones.
Relieved, Hana turned towards her husband, dismayed to see Logan still on the phone to Angus, but trying really hard not to laugh. It looked as though the action was painful and Hana felt justified. “Serves you right!” she mouthed to him. Eventually, Logan rang off and lay back against his pillows, clutching his stomach and groaning.
“It wasn’t that funny,” Hana said indignantly, “I only bumped my head!”
Logan laughed harder, a painful hitch in his breathing and Hana felt annoyed, knitting her brows and glaring. It wasn’t until much later he was able to collect himself enough to explain his amusement. “How long ago did you put Angus’ number in your phone?”
“Years ago. I think it was the day after Vik died. He came to see me, why?”
Logan held the phone out to her so she could see the screen. Hana stared at the familiar contacts list and shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Look,” Logan insisted. “Look at what’s missing.”
“Oh!” Hana’s frustration was superseded by her spectacular pout. “Well, it was extenuating circumstances.”
The small spelling error went unnoticed for almost nine years. Angus Blair was inadvertently entered without the ‘g.’ In the grand scheme of things, it was minor, but in the face of a perfectionist English teacher, absolutely vital.
“Argh, crap that hurt!” Logan slumped against his pillows, colour returning to his cheeks with the mirth.
“Serves you right!” Hana bit. “I didn’t come to be insulted.” She temporarily withdrew the sympathetic vote and grumpily ate the fruit salad Logan hadn’t managed at breakfast. Everything seemed to come wrapped in some way, either with plastic, foil or cling-film.
“I worked in a hospital one summer,” she said, trying to jolly her way out of a brewing argument. “I got left to make breakfast by myself one day. It was awful. I had to do everything, cook, clean, wash up, the whole job, all by myself. It was in the days of cook-chill, when food arrived frozen and was put into a big steel regenerator to be heated up. The food had to be at seventy-nine degrees centigrade before it was fit for human consumption. Otherwise, there was the possibility of food poisoning.”
“A woman of many talents,” Logan smiled, still clutching his stomach and pressing against the wounds to stave off the pain.
“It was a dreadful day actually,” Hana informed her husband as her tongue negotiated an awkward piece of pineapple. “I burned a whole pile of toast in response to the irritated badgering of nursing staff who wanted to keep to their strict timetable. There was only one person in the kitchen and that person was making it up as I went along. Apparently the geriatrics injured themselves on my boiled eggs and someone said they were recycling my porridge as tile grout. The cereal went ok though although not much can go wrong with cereal.” Hana smiled beautifully as her husband writhed in discomfort.
“Stop, woman! You’re doing this on purpose.” Logan clutched his guts and groaned, trying not to laugh.
Undeterred, Hana continued, “Once the ordeal of breakfast was over, it was on to the drinks round, then cleaning, then getting ready for lunch. By the time the enormous steel shelving unit containing the frozen food arrived, I was almost caught up, apart from the porridge saucepan which needed a few more hours soaking. The regenerator was already heating up because a supervisor came and put it on and I started cooking the food. It was hard work getting it all in there tray after tray and putting it onto the heated trolleys. It would have been all right if it hadn’t been for that one metal dish of mashed potato, which absolutely refused to heat up to the correct temperature. After half an hour of bombing the tray of fluffy white mash in the huge metal machine, I was frantic and sweating. I pushed the special thermometer into the mixture so often it resembled the surface of the moon. The nursing staff wouldn’t listen to me. They swooped on the kitchen like locusts and came back with empty trays and lorry loads of washing up. I’ve never been so glad to see the end of a day.”
“Please stop,” Logan wept. “It’s not even funny. It’s the way you’re telling it.”
“It wasn’t funny,” Hana said, hiding the fruit salad pot under the silver tureen. “The next day, my team leader was back and I was gratefully restored to the role of ‘chief pot and bottle washer.’ But the ward resembled the Marie Celeste. Everyone had disappeared. All day I waited trembling for the investigators from the health department, convinced the geriatrics all died in the night from my poisonous mash.” Twenty-five years on and she shuddered at the memory of it. “It was the scariest job I’ve ever had and I went back to working in the bar after that, while Vik looked after Bodie at night.” She wiped her lips with a serviette. “I think I might be traumatised.”
Logan took more pain killers and kindly added the missing ‘g’ into the contacts settings. His discussion with the principal was frank but brief. “Angus says you have to stay off work until the end of the term,” Logan informed his wife. The two men between them decided the situation merited it. Hana had taken little sick leave over the last fifteen years and Angus decided to let her take it in one lump. Full pay for the next few weeks.
“I have work to do,” Hana whined and protested, “If Sheila’s still off there’ll be nobody else working!”
Logan laughingly informed her Peter North was the current ‘Teacher in Charge of Careers and Guidance Counselling’ and Hana went skywards, actually getting out of her seat in consternation at the thought of Pete picking his nose and then using her keyboard. “He’d better not be shedding skin and pie crumbs all over my chair!”
Eventually, Logan calmed her down and spoke reason to her. He opted not to tell her the deciding factor; the uninvited ‘visitors’ at the Gordonton House on Friday night. Luckily no-one was home, but the place was severely trashed, in particular, Henrietta’s room.
“Do as you’re told, woman,” Logan warned her. “Don’t make me tie you to the sink.” His tone was jovial but Hana knew he wasn’t messing around.
Bodie Amy and Jas arrived before one thirty to pick up Hana. Logan made a pretence of needing Bodie’s help to walk to the bathroom and gave him the latest news on the way. “So,” said Bodie, clarifying things in his head, “Mum’s showing on the staff contact list as living at the Gordonton House? I think I remember her sending me some
garbled text about not giving out your address to anyone.”
“Yeah,” replied Logan, “I got that too. But the staff list was updated recently and the personal assistant must have made a mistake. That, or Hana asked her to put that address. I don’t want to ask her about it right now. But it does mean it’s someone inside school who’s involved with all this. I’m putting my money on this ‘friend’ of Mrs Bowman’s. Someone’s going to have to talk to her.”
“Yep,” answered the younger man, “but it needs to be handled carefully. Otherwise we’ll never catch him.”
They were standing outside the door marked ‘Patient Toilet’ and a nurse raised her eyebrows at them as she moved quickly by with a pile of sheets. Bodie inclined his head towards the door. “Do you need it then or not?”
Logan shrugged and put his hand on the door handle. “Now I’ve made all this effort to get here, I probably should.”
Bodie smiled and shook his head. “You sound like a girl!” But he waited for him anyway.
Hana was reluctant to leave when the bell sounded. She acknowledged all the reasons why the visiting hours were in place. Open visiting left patients vulnerable to a constant stream of loud and noisy groups at all hours of the day and meant belongings were at risk from so many people roaming around unchecked. The tighter times made perfect sense, unless you were a newly married wife who desperately wanted to be with her husband. The next slot didn’t begin until half past four and Hana agonised about whether to go all the way home or hang around town. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered to her husband as she planted a gentle kiss on his stubbly face. “I want to be with you but I have nowhere to go in between. It’s crazy.”
Logan squeezed her hand. “It’s fine, babe. I love seeing you but I also understand about the distance and parking and everything.”
Hana felt increasingly daunted by the knowledge she would have this dilemma every day until Logan was able to go home.