by Lia Louis
The clock on the wall ticks. 2:45.
That’s the thing about the middle of the night and its loneliness and bad memories. It makes you clamour for comfort and safety. And it’s why I texted Ed in the car park, as I steeled myself to go inside. This is the hospital we came to when they called us about Daisy. I remember everything about it – the car parking space, the overpowering rose-water perfume of the nurse who greeted us, the agony in Daisy’s mum’s face, the man with the huge red umbrella who blocked the entrance way, how the colour felt too bright for my world where everything was fading to grey …
I’d opened Ed’s message in the car, as rain spat against the glass from the black sky then I’d saved his number in my phone, pasting over the old number that I’d never had the heart to delete.
‘Mum’s in hospital,’ I’d texted him. ‘I’m here on my own. Are you working now? Noelle x’
While a part of me hopes he never sees it, another part of me – a slightly larger part, that sits in my chest, an open chasm, would give anything to see him push through the two double doors now, scrubs on, cheeky grin. A familiar face. The face of someone who knew me. Who knows me. Knows us, Mum, Dilly and me, and our little clockwork life that was part of his for twelve years.
An elevator bell sounds, and for a moment, I think it’s Mum, but it’s a group of nurses, and a frail, tiny woman, who barely looks alive, being wheeled silently on a bed. Red polished fingernails peep from beneath the crisp, white sheets. I wonder if she had any idea those fingers would be resting on a stretcher, while strangers push her down a corridor, wires snaking from her skin, as she painted them. And I understand why Mum hates hospitals, why so many people do. No other place has that feeling of otherworldliness, and that heavy static air it always has, of lives ending and changing and beginning, all at once. And I suddenly feel alone. And I suppose that’s because I am alone. With all of it.
I bring my coffee to my lips, just for something to do with my shaking hands, when the double doors open – a sound like something stuck, unsticking. And it takes only a second for him to stop in his tracks, at the same second my heart does the same behind my ribs, as if someone pulled the power cord.
It’s – no. No. Way.
Sam.
American Sam from the motorway. Right in front of me. Tall. Real. Here.
He freezes, his mouth gawping open, the same as mine, a takeaway coffee cup still in his hand.
‘Oh my God.’ Each tiny-sounding word catches in my throat.
‘Noelle,’ he says. ‘Noelle, are you – God, are you OK?’
And it’s then, finally, that I cry.
Chapter Eleven
I think from the sight of me, Sam assumed there was something far more wrong than there actually is.
‘It’s my mum,’ I’d snivelled and then I’d launched into a violent, mad-sounding sob, completely out of nowhere and completely to my surprise. I can’t remember the last time I cried in front of anyone – well, besides when I cried in front of the entire M4 and most notably, Sam, but in my defence, I didn’t actually realise I had. But it was too late. Once I started, I couldn’t stop, and Sam gently put his arms around me. I cried into his jumper, his chest hard and warm beneath the dark fabric. He smelled exactly like he smelled on the motorway that night. Showers. Cedary aftershave. Fresh laundry. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, drawing back. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m a mess – a bloody wreck. And you! I mean, are you OK? I haven’t even––’
‘I’m fine,’ he said calmly. ‘It’s my dad. He has some stuff going on. But he’s OK.’
We sat down eventually, and Sam handed me a tissue from a packet in his jeans as I waffle about Mum, about the X-ray, about not knowing where she is.
‘You’re organised,’ I said thickly, and he’d laughed and said, ‘You saw me produce a first-aid kit from my bag on a motorway, and tissues surprise you?’
The tears that I dabbed away were for Mum, yes, but that’s not what they were entirely. That worry wasn’t enough to cause a waterfall of spontaneous, snotty, embarrassing sobs. It was the loneliness, I think. That huge yawn of loneliness I felt in that moment on the bench in the waiting room that felt so gaping and black and barren that I felt like I might be swallowed whole, never to be seen again. Then Sam appeared, like he did on that snowy motorway, just when I needed someone the most.
‘Do you think it’s broken?’ Sam asks now, and I explain to him what happened, now the tears have stopped, as we sit on the plastic hard-backed chairs, a vending machine whirring and clinking beside us, its blue light turning Sam’s white Converse shoes light blue. I tell him about Mum and the ladder. About Dilly waking me, and the ambulance, even the part about texting Ed, and he listens. He tells me he broke his leg in high school, that he’s dealt with climbers with broken everything and up mountains, miles from help, and everything was fine, and now you’d never know, and it just feels so nice because his brown eyes have not left my face and he’s listening as if everything depends on the words spilling from my mouth. It’s like we’re in the car. It’s like we’ve picked up where we left off.
‘What?’ Sam says, a smile at the corner of his mouth. I realise I’ve stopped talking and I’m just looking at him.
‘Just – you’re here. Don’t you think this is so … mad.’
‘Mad.’ Sam laughs. ‘Seems to be our thing.’
Butterflies then. Completely out of nowhere, a burst, set free.
‘And you’re back for your dad?’ I ask. ‘Is he all right?’
Sam pauses, looks down at his hands, clasped in his lap. ‘Back for dad, but also work. I was in Wales. I’ve been in Wales for a week actually. Got a new job over there. But then I got the call. He fell. Again. But he’s doing OK.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Sam shrugs. ‘It is what it is,’ he says simply, and says nothing else.
‘And so, what, you live in Wales now?’
Sam nods, pushes a hand through his dark hair. ‘For a little while. It was sort of why I was back, last month. Setting things up. You know, when you and I … met.’
I feel something open in my chest when he says those words, looks at me from under those black lashes. Plus: Wales. That’s not far at all. An hour or two on the train, perhaps. We could stay in touch. We could be friends. We could be … no. No, stop it, Noelle. No need to go bollocks deep. You do not want to be that woman in a hedge with the beard and funny glasses.
‘That’s exciting,’ I say. ‘New job. Closer to your dad.’
Sam gives a mournful smile, as if he doesn’t think it’s exciting at all. ‘I guess so,’ he says. ‘I mean, the Wales job is good. It’s over in Snowdon which is cool. I just wasn’t expecting to be here so soon. Back here, I mean.’
‘Well, I’m sort of glad you are,’ I say, and Sam doesn’t say anything, he just gives a small, quiet smile.
We sit in silence for a while, side by side in the quiet, shiny-floored waiting room. I can’t believe he’s here. I can’t believe we’ve bumped into each other again. I think of the website, the emails I wanted to send, and I’m tempted to tell him, for a moment, but I don’t. The clatter of a bed being pushed down the corridor echoes, and shortly it appears, being pushed by three nurses. One of them smiles at us as they pass.
‘I hate hospitals,’ I whisper out of the side of my mouth.
‘Me too,’ says Sam.
‘And they’re even worse in the middle of the night. I’m no good in the middle of the night.’
Sam makes a sound – like a deep bemused half-chuckle in his throat, and motions with a hand up to the clock on the wall. It’s one of those clocks that sat in every classroom at school. White, circular, rounded black numbers. ‘Three-fifteen,’ he says, then he leans, nudges my arm gently with his. ‘I seem to remember we did OK with three-fifteen in the car. Eating those crisis group cookies. I think you told me the story about Dilly’s drummer and the dominatrix at about three-fifteen.’
I laugh quietly, the sound echoing around the sile
nt waiting room, like giggles in a church. ‘I love that you’re here,’ I say quietly. ‘I mean of course I don’t love that you’re here, because being here means something bad’s happened, but – it’s so nice to see you again.’
‘Ditto,’ is all Sam says. Then he touches his arm to mine again but stays there longer this time. ‘Noelle not-Gallagher.’
We both buy two more plastic-tasting machine coffees, and sit together, talk some more, about Sam’s flight, about the weather, about the traffic jam. Sam tells me he told a friend about the back-of-a-lorry cheese sandwiches, and about the driver with the banjo, and I wonder if he talked about me too, about the weirdly perfect time we had, just like I did with Charlie – in absolute microscopic Holmes and Watson detail.
The vending machine clicks and hums, and the low ring of a hospital phone sounds in the distance. Silence falls between us, and I notice my old friends the stars are back, racing under my skin.
‘Have I missed anything else?’ I ask. ‘In what, four, five weeks. Climbed any good rocks lately?’
‘Of course,’ Sam says.
‘I still think you’re slightly insane by the way.’
‘So, I’m never getting you up a rock face, then?’
He flashes a playful smile and my stomach flips over. God, he’s handsome. Really handsome, in a sort of classic way. Dark eyes, square jaw, straight nose. ‘You’re all about noses and chins,’ said Dilly once. ‘You have a type, and it’s always about strong noses and chins. So predictable. Live a little. Try a rounded face from time to time, Noelle. A chin that couldn’t cut pie.’
‘And how about you?’ Sam asks. ‘Have I missed any Post-it action?’ I like his voice. The accent, of course, but it’s deep and croaks at the end of some of the words in that sexy, raspy, rumbling sort of way. I tried to mimic it once, to Charlie, who said I sounded like the voice from the Saw films.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Steve and Candice are getting married. Did I tell you that? Yup. The Post-its were only the start of their love story.’
‘Holy shit, really?’
‘I know – I mean, I’d be lying if there wasn’t a part of me that was slightly jealous …’
‘Well, same …’
‘Mr Attwood?’
We look up, almost in unison. A woman stands in the doorway, in a blue nurse’s tunic, pale, tired eyes, a rosy smile. ‘The doctor’s arrived.’
Sam clears his throat, places his large hands on his thighs. ‘Thank you, nurse.’
She nods, then turns on her heel, the door swinging closed behind her.
Sam nods at me. ‘I better um – look, I hope your mom is OK, Noelle,’ he says gently. Then he touches my hand, a brush, so briefly, and there is no jumping away this time, from either of us, but the jolt through my body is the exact same. Electric. Sparks. Aura-exploding energy or whatever Charlie and Theo say it is. He stands.
‘Should we …’ I jump up. ‘Maybe we should … I dunno.’ It’s not every day that this happens, is it? That two strangers from two totally different countries, separate continents, bump into each other twice in mere weeks. Maybe I am meant to know Sam. Maybe bumping into him is a sign, like Charlie, like Theo said. ‘Do you want to keep in touch?’ Fuck it. I’ve said it now. It’s out there. Can’t take it back.
Sam doesn’t reply right away, and heat works its way up my back like I’m suddenly standing too close to an open flame. I wish I hadn’t asked. Me and the Moomin on my pyjama top stare at him, waiting.
‘W-we could swap emails or numbers or something?’ I carry on. ‘But of course, no pressure if … well, you must be busy and stuff and … climbing and …’ Oh, God. Shut up, me. Close the bloody cupboard.
Sam swallows, scratches the back of his neck. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Of course. Sure. But I actually – don’t have my phone with me …’
‘Here.’ I lean to a low oval wooden table of leaflets and information booklets fanned next to the vending machine and take the first random pamphlet my hand finds – a leaflet calling for blood donations. I pull a pen from my bag and scrawl my mobile number on it. ‘There we go,’ I say, handing it over. ‘Old-fashioned way. Like Steve and Candice.’
Crayfish Face times one hundred at those last words.
‘Cool,’ he says, smiling, folding it over in his hand. ‘Thanks. Take care, Noelle.’
And just like when I got home from that freezing night in March, it’s like he was never there at all.
Chapter Twelve
I wake to the sound of a shutter going up, the warmth of a familiar hand on mine.
‘Nellie?’
My eyes snap open, and almost instantly, they start to water under the harsh, bright fluorescents. There are three more people on the waiting room chairs now, all bright-eyed and awake, smelling of toothpaste and perfume. The fresh faces of people who had a good night’s sleep and got up, washed and dressed ready for their appointments. And it takes a second or two for me to gather my bearings, to realise that Ed is here, stooping over me, scrubs on, his caramel waves arranged in that rough pushed-off-his-forehead quiff I used to love looping my fingers through as he slowly woke up beside me in the mornings. At the sight of him, my heart collapses to my stomach.
‘I got your message,’ he says, brightly. ‘Came in a little earlier.’
I sit up. My neck’s so stiff from napping on this chair, I’m surprised when it doesn’t creak like an old garden gate. ‘Do you know where Mum is? She went for an X-ray, but I’ve not heard anything. I – I fell asleep.’
‘I just got here,’ he says. ‘But I can find out.’
I sit up, my head rushing, starting to thump, right behind the eyes. Ed is already over at the little window, and a receptionist is nodding at him, her hand hovering over the phone, the bangles at her wrists jangling, like keys. I run my hands through my mad curls, try to tame them, because without seeing them, I know they’ve all come together in a mass that looks part Halloween Mad Scientist wig.
‘Receptionist’s gonna call down to A&E,’ he says, striding back to me. He crouches, a hand landing on my arm, his shoes squeaking on the shiny floor. ‘See what happened after the X-ray. Hopefully she isn’t still waiting.’
I nod. He stares at me, and I stare back at him, magnetised. Ed. My Ed for so long that I almost forgot there was ever a time without him. I’d always taken it for granted, that we were together. Other people broke up, not us. Not Ed and Noelle. We were the ones discussing other people’s breakups in the comfort of our safe little indestructible bubble. ‘Did you hear? Such a shame. I really thought they’d go the distance, you know,’ we’d say, while feeling secretly smug that we were the ones who’d done it – been through the mill of life and were still strong and together. I didn’t for a minute stop to think anyone would ever be discussing us one day. We just were. There was no part of me that ever expected us not to be.
‘I shouldn’t have texted you,’ I say.
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘No, I really shouldn’t have.’
‘Seriously, Nellie.’ He looks at me, and silence puffs its way up between us again, an invisible cloud. And as much as I’ve said words to the opposite, I am glad I texted him, and I’m glad he’s here. Because if we were still together, if things were different, this is where he’d be, the way he always was. Sleeping on my floor for fourteen nights straight after Daisy died, crying with me, holding my hand, shushing me to sleep, listening as I relentlessly, torturously replayed that night in words, going over and over what I could’ve done, and what might’ve been. Then as the years went on, cooking my favourite breakfasts to cheer me up on hormonal, PMS-fuelled Saturday mornings (‘A Nutella nightmare,’ he’d grin, placing chocolate-drenched waffles in front of me). Excitedly showing me websites of night schools and workshops in Oregon, streets away from the hospital he’d be working in. ‘Look, Nell. Floristry workshops, business courses … and see, there’re loads of shops and restaurants nearby, for you to get a job while you’re studying, so we can still save.’
All that hope he had for us both – to tick the boxes his brothers and their wives seemed to be ticking with their eyes closed. Dream jobs. Savings accounts. Mortgages – lighting his eyes up. I remember the way it disappeared too, as if I’d blown it out, like candles on a cake, when I told him I had to stay.
‘What’s the time?’ I ask Ed now. A man a few seats away from me coughs into a pale blue handkerchief and a baby starts crying, although I can’t see one.
‘Half seven,’ says Ed. ‘I start at nine. Although, now I’m here, there’s no way I’m going to get away with sitting chilling till then.’ He gives me a wide, cheeky smile. ‘Come on. Let’s get you some breakfast.’
Ed McDonnell saved my life.
I know if I were to mention this to someone, say it out loud, they would either a) assume I was ill, or in some sort of freak accident, and he was all doctory and heroic and literally saved my flailing heart, or b) assume I’m one of those gooey, twee sort of people who collect sickly Pinterest quotes and say things like ‘You saved my life, the day I met you.’ But I don’t mean it in either of those ways. I mean it literally. Because Ed did save my life. Without Ed, I wouldn’t be alive. Because fifteen years ago, on January ninth, Ed stopped me getting into a car that would’ve killed me. Into a car that killed my best friend, and soon after, Lee, the driver, the boy she fancied, from the plumbing course. The one she’d whimsically daydream about, collecting his secret smiles and flirty looks in her diary (and texts to Charlie and me.) And regardless of how inadvertent, how by chance, every day that I have lived since then, feels as if it’s owed in some small way, to Ed. I’m here, because of Ed. And I kept living, after Daisy, because Ed gave me reason to. So when I’m thinking about him too much, when I’m scrolling his Twitter page, squashing cereal straight from the packet into my mouth while zooming in on that photo he had up of the pretty auburn-haired woman with the good eyebrows and bad breath, and when I reach out and know, against my better judgement, that I shouldn’t, I give myself a little pass. A little, ‘Well, yes, you really shouldn’t be lying awake at midnight torturing yourself with images of Ed in an open white shirt, hair blowing in the wind, and whoever that pile of auburn waves is draped across his lap, but who can blame you, Noelle Butterby? It’s Ed. The man saved your life.’ And I know many would advise against this, sitting opposite him in this bustling hospital canteen that smells like crispy bacon and filter coffee. But I can’t help it. There’s a huge part of me that’s more than happy to be sitting in front of him. It feels safe. It feels like home.