by Bowes, K T
“I know you don’t believe me,” Hana insisted, “but he’s definitely been getting better and he’d even started eating properly.”
“I have no idea how, Mrs Du Rose. His insides were a mess.”
Logan woke up twice and Hana was able to give him a small drink around six in the morning, after the apparatus was removed from his face. When he next woke up over five hours later, he was in a single room on a different ward. He was out of danger, the intravenous antibiotics had kicked in strongly and the infection halted its steady rampage through his body.
“Hey, babe.” Hana stroked Logan’s hair back from his face, struggling to keep the wobble out of her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me you were in so much pain?”
Logan’s eyes fluttered and closed, the answer dying on his lips.
Staff moved him out of intensive care around eight o’clock in the morning, as an emergency patient required the space. Hana felt momentarily piqued until as they were leaving, she saw the incoming patient. A teenage boy lay splayed on a gurney, victim of a car accident after a night out. His face was so mashed he was hardly distinguishable as a human being. Hana prayed he would be well and got obediently into the lift following her husband’s bed, unseen by the mother with the glassy eyes who followed the destroyed body of her son, still wearing her nightdress and slippers.
Hana stared out of the window for the hundredth time, turning when she heard Logan snuffling. He moved his head and in a voice hoarse from the surgical tubes called out, “Han! Han!”
She heard the fear and panic growing in his voice. Less than a metre away, Hana rose from her seat and gripped his hand hard. “Where am I?” he asked and Hana felt pity rise in her chest, doing battle with her overwhelming relief.
“Hospital,” she said gently, her mouth close to his ear. “You got sick last night, don’t you remember?”
“No, no, no, oh not again. Take me home, don’t leave me here, please? They don’t understand, help me get out.” Logan struggled to surface, fighting the urge to be drowned in the sleep which hauled temptingly at him. He wanted to reassure her, but the words wouldn’t come, he couldn’t think what it was he wanted to say and slipped down into the abyss again. Hana rested her forehead on his hand, trying not to put any weight on it. The cast gripped around the skin, reminding her of the beginning of the whole thing. His other hand had been used to get the lifesaving lines in, the green cannula sticking out awkwardly against the olive skin and the glaringly white sheet and she was too frightened to even hold it. Streaks of blood covered the arm around it, so much blood for just a few needles and Hana stared at it, perplexed. Perhaps the nursing staff were rougher than usual due to the nature of the emergency.
She felt sick with relief, not just because Logan was starting to wake up more but because in calling her name, he allowed Hana to stamp on Caroline’s memory once and for all. Until he spoke, it didn’t actually occur to Hana he might have called for his former lover even in confusion, but it did now. Now that he hadn’t.
The nurse who cared for Logan through the night, popped her head round the door. “Hana, your son’s here. Shall I send him through? I’m just going off duty now.”
“Thanks for everything.” Hana hugged the slightly built brunette, aware she had worked past her shift to make sure Logan was settled.
Bodie appeared in the doorway, looking drawn and tired. And in uniform. “They wouldn’t let me in this morning,” he said, evidently annoyed, “I did come, Mum, I drove down but they wouldn’t let me in.” He seemed upset and Hana let go of Logan’s hand to hug her son.
“It’s ok,” she said, “I know.”
He wasn’t technically a near relative and she guessed he only gained entrance now because of his uniform. She figured he wore it exactly for that reason. There was only one seat so Hana used the excuse of stretching her legs for Bodie to sit down on it. He looked warily at Logan, forced to acknowledge how dangerously close to dying the tall man came. Bodie focussed on the streaks of blood around Logan’s mouth and wondered what he could say to fill the void which opened up around them both. “Mum, we stayed at the house. Was that ok?”
Hana nodded and smiled. It was comforting to know someone was up there. “Jas was…well, he was…” Bodie struggled for the word, “inconsolable.”
“Maybe he could visit,” Hana suggested quietly, not knowing if it was a good idea even as she heard the words come out of her mouth. “Maybe wait a few days.”
Bodie nodded. He hoisted a bag from by his feet. “Amy packed you some stuff,” adding, “and Logan. I hope it’s all ok?”
Hana thanked him. She could use some freshening up herself. Yesterday’s shower seemed a long time ago. “Your phone’s in there too, you must have left it. Izzie’s been going nuts, she had a scan yesterday.”
“On a Saturday?” asked Hana, her eyes growing wide and frightened. Bodie got up and went to her, taking both her hands in his, wanting her to listen properly to what he was going to say.
“Izzie didn’t feel so good so they took her in for a scan. But the baby’s absolutely fine, Mum. It’s perfect.” Hana’s hand moved instinctively to cover her mouth. She was relieved for Izzie and Marcus, but Bodie hadn’t finished, “The thing is though; it’s twins.”
Hana’s jaw dropped and she stared intently at her son in case he was joking. Despite the smile on his face, she saw no teasing. She felt the giggle rising in her chest. Here she was in her mid-forties, newly married, in a hospital room on a critical ward with her husband who almost died in the night. A month ago she had one grandbaby and now she had four. It was more than just surreal, it was bizarre!
Hana felt overwhelmed with life. “Twins!” The word kept buzzing through her frazzled, tired brain, making almost no sense at all and she strained to catch hold of it, but it was like trying to knit with fog.
“What’s all the fuss?” The voice was hoarse and the lips it came through were cracked and sore, but Logan was awake and lucid. Immediately Hana was by his side, kissing him gently on his forehead. Bodie squeezed into the space between Hana and the bed, taking Logan’s fingers in his and pressing them lightly.
“Hey Grandpa,” he said jokily, “nice of you to join us.”
Logan’s eyes were still glassy, but he fought to stay awake and smiled back at Bodie. “I need to go on shift,” said Bodie quietly to Hana, “but I’ll come back later.” He patted Logan’s leg through the covers, the only part he dare touch for fear of hurting him and left with a wave.
Hana drew the chair up closer to the bed and leaned near to her husband. He needed water and she found the straw from earlier on, but he couldn’t seem to take much. She daren’t try to alter the pillows in case she damaged him; he seemed so thin and fragile in the giant white bed.
As Logan came round more, he seemed increasingly annoyed at having ended up back in the hospital. “It was such a mission getting out of here, how come I’m back in again?” he grumbled, unable to grasp the enormity of the state he was reduced to. Hana was arguing with him when Dr Singh walked through the door. She wasn’t surprised when he stifled a yawn. He looked only marginally less exhausted than her. “Gosh, don’t you sleep?” she remarked, amazement in her voice.
He waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, you know, they stand me in a corner and recharge me like Frankenstein every few hours.” He laughed wearily and Hana pitied him. He peered at the scribblings on the clipboard at the end of Logan’s bed. Hana looked at them earlier, but they obviously made more sense to Dr Singh. “So, from what I just overheard, you have no comprehension of your condition when you were admitted last night?” He peered over his glasses at Logan and Hana sank into the visitor’s chair, relieved someone else was willing to do battle with her stubborn husband.
Dr Singh stood where all the monitors clicked, pinged and dripped steadily, checking meters and measurements. Then he pulled back the covers from Logan’s stomach.
The skin on his abdomen and chest was iodine yellow and a fresh line of stit
ches rose under the dressing, which absorbed a goodly amount of bloody liquid. The wound itself was ten centimetres longer than it had been and the area was bruised and swollen. The doctor clicked his teeth together and looked long and hard at Logan, who stared back at him. “You know,” Dr Singh tutted, “if you told your wife you were in pain occasionally, things like this wouldn’t happen. She said you ate well and yet your stomach was leaking, so you must have been faking it. You must have been vomiting blood for days. There’s no shame in admitting you hurt.”
Hana watched Logan’s face carefully. To the doctor it must have seemed unreadable but to her it was like an open book, unexpectedly clear. She saw it flash across his expression, so fleetingly and yet evident, there is great shame in admitting you hurt. She ached deeply for him. She would probably never understand why he was like this but at least she could read him a little better.
A sudden memory of Caroline’s face floated past and Hana felt a flash of sympathy for her. Perhaps all her awful behaviour was about getting Logan to really feel something for her, or at least to show it. Hana felt the advantage of not having been part of his growing-up-life and wondered why he was so different with her, when he was so closed with everyone else.
The doctor turned to Hana and shrugged, obviously considering giving up on Logan and communicating with her instead, but something stopped him. “Mr Du Rose, are you comfortable for me to talk to you with your wife present?”
Logan looked quizzically at him and then remembered. He studied Hana’s surprised face and felt the weight of secrets. He gave the doctor the smallest nod and silent communication passed between them. Dr Singh shrugged and turned to Hana. “Your husband needed a number of inoculations following the original surgery, but somehow picked up an infection anyway, which the spleen was not there to fight. That appears to be under some control, although he will be here on intravenous antibiotics for the next few days and tablets for longer. A tear occurred internally, linked to the removal of the spleen, which caused this latest bleed. We had significant problems in surgery last time with his blood pressure and…other things, but it was much worse this time. His BP is extremely low and we’ll need to check him for that regularly, which is bound to irritate him.” Dr Singh winked at Hana. “He may require treatment for it while we get everything else sorted.”
The doctor stifled another yawn and turned back to Logan. “You’re not healing very quickly. I don’t think the break in your arm is setting and looking at the other scarring on your body, I suspect this is going to take a while too. Talk to me about any blood problems you usually experience?”
Logan shook his head slowly, possibly trying to recollect but more Hana suspected, trying to drown out what the doctor was saying with something in his own head.
“Well,” continued the doctor, “we’ll be checking everything.” He stressed the everything forcefully, but sadly it lost its emphasis in the yawn that punctuated it. The doctor rubbed his eyes and then smiled at Hana, “I have my daughter’s eighth birthday party to contend with this afternoon so if you will excuse me, I really need to go home and get ahead of my sleep.”
Hana thanked him, but followed him out of the room to ask one particular question. “Why did you ask about blood problems?”
The doctor visibly blanched. “I thought as much. You really need to speak to your husband.”
Hana went back to Logan, hoping the doctor was wrong. Numerous awful blood condition sprung to mind, none of them accurately relayed to her panicking brain. Surely if Logan had been ill all these years, there would have been more obvious signs. He would have told her. The gash on his side happened years and years ago. “Logan, can we talk?” she asked softly, her lips centimetres from his.
Logan shook his head. “Later?” he asked and his eyes pleaded for clemency. Hana sat with him and chatted quietly until he fell asleep again, instinctively knowing he would stall as long as possible. A tea trolley rattled round and Hana was offered a drink which she gratefully accepted from the young lady pushing it. Fortunately, there was a bathroom attached to Logan’s room and Hana used it to freshen up and change into the clothes Amy kindly packed for her.
Hana was able to stay with Logan for the rest of the day. She sat close to him while he slept, studying him as she never could in his waking hours. Fingers which were never free from fidgeting lay peacefully on the white sheets and Hana stroked them gently, counting the cuts and scars until she couldn’t remember the number and had to start again. Logan’s dark wavy hair was pushed back from his face, rolling across his head and curling onto the sheets. His laughing eyes stayed shut, black lashes flickering occasionally against flushed, olive cheeks. “I love you, Logan Du Rose,” Hana whispered. “Even if you are as stubborn and arrogant as one of your stallions!” Hana stroked his cheek, feeling the dark stubble under her fingers and noticing how it grew lighter either side of his chin. “Oh no!” she groaned, laying her head on his inert shoulder. “Being with me is aging you!”
Hana left at six in the evening when Bodie finished his shift and insisted she go with him. Logan was much better by then, more lucid and talkative - when he was awake. The rest of the time he slept deeply and unaided, if Hana didn’t count the drip with goodness-knows-what being pushed into his blood stream.
Hana returned to Culver’s Cottage with Bodie in Amy’s car to find Jas sitting by the fire in his pyjamas reading a storybook and Amy making a scratch dinner from the contents of the fridge. Hana walked into the living room, seeing it through eyes that had forgotten its newly decorated state. Jas was overjoyed to see her. “Sit with me and read, Hanny.”
Hana was exhausted but didn’t have the heart to reject him and sat with him until dinner was ready.
They all sat around the kitchen table eating what looked like the left overs of Maihi’s soup, turned into a pie and jacket potatoes. Hana was starving, realising she hadn’t eaten for over twenty four hours, but the food didn’t seem to want to go down and she quit half way through. Amy suggested she go and relax and get a shower and Hana left the table gratefully, hearing as she walked down the hall, Jas stating, “Om errrr! Well, Hanny can’t have any pudding now then!”
“And nor can you unless you get that eaten!” Amy replied and Hana smiled to herself.
Hana used Bodie’s BMW to drive herself to the hospital the following day. Logan was still in the critical care ward but not for long.
“We’re transferring your husband over to the general surgical ward for his recovery,” a smiling nurse told Hana. Her heart sank as she realised they were going literally back to square one.
“Oh, please no?” she begged. “This is not going to end well.”
Shortly before midday, as Hana packed Logan’s stuff back into the bag ready for his move, there was a knock on the door and when it swung open, she saw Alfred stood awkwardly in the doorframe.
Logan seemed surprised to see him and flicked a questioning look in Hana’s direction. “Don’t look at me, I didn’t call anyone,” she said under her breath. Logan heard and narrowed his eyes at her.
Alfred loped across to his son’s bed and embraced him roughly, plonking a bunch of squishy-looking purple grapes down on the bedspread. “I wanted to see how you were doing,” Alfred said. “Is it like the other times?”
Logan shot a concerned look in Hana’s direction and Alfred immediately shut up. The old man looked tired and Hana left the room, partly to find him coffee and also to give the men a chance to talk without her there. You’re going to tell me, Logan Du Rose, she vowed to herself. I can’t live with all these secrets!
Hana found the lovely housekeeper from critical care clearing up the dishes from morning tea and chatted whilst using the facilities to make Alfred a strong coffee with the four sugars he asked for.
“Dad did ‘caller ID’ on the new mobile Mum persuaded him to get and used it to check up on me. He got Amy on the landline at the house.”
“Yes, Miriam sends you both her love,” Alfred said with a smil
e, as he took his drink carefully from Hana. But not herself, thought Hana unkindly.
As Alfred sipped his hot drink, the porters arrived to move Logan down the four floors to the ward. Hana and Alfred followed behind, carrying all the stuff he acquired over the past few days. Hana’s heart quailed as she found herself back on the unfriendly surgical ward. The porter pushed Logan past the Rottweiler receptionist but Alfred and Hana were not so lucky, stopped dead in their tracks with her it’s-not-visiting-time-yet mantra. Once again she refused to budge and they found themselves sat in the smelly visitors’ room with the broken television.
Hana felt sick to her stomach at being back in this situation again and could see no way out of it. Alfred, refusing to accept the inevitable, approached the receptionist again and returned with as great a sense of injustice as poor Hana. “This is typical!” Alfred raged. “Damned useless health system. What does it take for them to let me sit with my son a couple of hours after he nearly died?”
An hour later and they were finally allowed back in to visit Logan, who looked thoroughly fed up, back in his bed near the window. Hana hugged and kissed him, perching gently on the side of his bed with her arm around his shoulders, but Alfred paced up and down at the end of the bed venting his particular brand of verbal bile.
“You shouldn’t have called an ambulance,” Logan said and he looked cross. Immediately, Hana bridled and withdrew her arm.
“Fine! So I should just let you die then?” she argued, the weight of misery finding a foothold in her soul again.
“No, I guess not.” Logan’s slender fingers traced a line along Hana’s thigh sending shivers down her back.
“Stop it, bad boy,” she whispered with a quick glance at Alfred. “You don’t deserve anything.” Logan bit his bottom lip, revealing his perfect, white teeth and smiling with his eyes. “Does nothing hold you back?” Hana lowered her voice and her husband raised one eyebrow sexily.