I rake my fingers through his hair. “Whyyyyy?” I whine. God, I hate early mornings.
“We have a plane to catch.” He laces his fingers and rests his hands across my boobs, then rests his chin on his hands as he looks up at me. “Have you had a good holiday?”
I smile at him. “I’ve had a great holiday, but I think you and me need a nice quiet weekend away somewhere to recover.” He gives me a lazy smile.
“You know that won’t happen. You’ll arrange it all, but then at the last minute, you won’t be able to leave the kids; same as every other time we’ve tried to get away by ourselves.” I swallow down the lump that’s unexpectedly appeared in my throat.
After Cam was shot, I saw a counsellor for months as I was a mess of Georgia proportions and was eventually diagnosed with adult separation anxiety. I’ve gotten a little better, but I still have an unreasonable need to know where my husband and children are pretty much all of the time.
When the doctors finally came and told us that Cam had survived the surgery, they said the damage wasn’t as severe as they had first thought. Because of the awkward angle and Cam’s muscle density, the bullet had gone into his chest and through into the top of his right arm, only nicking his brachial artery. He had still bled out his entire blood supply and had been transfused with twelve units while they tried to stabilise him and during the surgery. As well as his heart stopping three times, he also went into anaphylactic shock on the operating table, probably caused by the rate at which blood and fluids were being pumped into him. When the doctor came and explained all of this and concluded that Cam would most likely pull through, I held Harry against my chest and finally let go of my tears.
*
That all happened over five years ago now and our life since then has been so much more than I could ever have hoped or dreamed it could be in those first dark days.
Cam remained in an induced coma for two days while his body recovered and repaired itself. During that time, plans had to be made for Tamara’s funeral. Her dad was a drunken mess and kept referring everything back to Cam. There was no one else to take charge, so I did what I thought Cam would want me to do and arranged a funeral for her. I didn’t do it because I wanted praise or recognition. I did it because it’s what Cam would’ve done and because she was Harry’s mum, and one day, he might want to know about his mum’s funeral.
With the help of Mum, Jim and Ash, we picked a coffin and headstone and arranged a church service. The only people to attend were Tamara’s Dad and my family, who were there to support me, and on Harry’s behalf.
Cam started to be brought out of his coma around the third day after his surgery. By day five, I was threatening to put him back in a coma, permanently. He was the worst patient I had ever known, and I’m sure the staff of the Royal Free Hospital felt exactly the same way. He was miserable, short tempered and did nothing but complain. He refused to take his meds as he didn’t like the fact they made him sleepy and refused point blank to allow the nurses to give him a bed bath.
How nurse Jen and her team didn’t strangle or inject him with something that would stop his mouth from working, I will never know.
We were told in the beginning that Cam would require a two to three week hospital stay. He discharged himself on day eight and I brought him home in the hope that being at home would improve his temperament. It didn’t. Nothing was right. He wanted to drink bourbon, but I knew that would be dangerous with all the meds he was taking. He wanted sex, but the doctor had recommended abstaining for a couple of weeks. He didn’t like any of the dinners I cooked him, and he complained constantly of being bored. In the end, I shagged his brains out and he slept for a solid nine hours afterwards.
We employed a nurse to come in and change his dressing and check all of his vitals twice a day. So, two weeks after the shooting when I came home from a trip to the supermarket with Harry, after leaving Cam in the care of the nurse, and found the house empty with only a note telling me he had popped to the club to sort out some business, I finally lost it. Really lost it. I threw a chair across the room, swiped the kettle and all of my storage jars containing tea, sugar and biscuits off the bench top, and went for the fruit bowl next. I only stopped then because H, who was still strapped into his car seat, which I had sat on the kitchen table, began to cry after the big ceramic fruit bowl my mum had bought us in Portugal crashed to the tiled floor and made him jump.
I calmed myself down and marched back out to my car, strapped Harry in and headed to the club, dodging the photographers who’d been camped at my gates for the past two weeks.
*