She finished the meeting and then went to the Infirmary. Mark had suffered a stroke. “He’s only fifty-four,” she said.
He was paralyzed down one side and could not speak. “People do sometimes make a good recovery from this kind of stroke,” the doctor said. “But there may be another clot, and while we’re doing what we can, it doesn’t look good.”
She called the children, pushing ten pences into the pay phone in the hospital corridor. Helen said she’d be there in half an hour. “Don’s setting up a big system in Torrisholme so he’s not here. I’ll drop Tamsin with Bethany if that’s all right.”
“You do that. She’s at home with Alestra tonight. And tell her where I am and that I may be late and she shouldn’t worry.”
Doug was in London, working on a new album. He refused to come. “Dad and I have always hated each other. There’s no point pretending anything different, Mum.”
“I know you’ve always had a difficult relationship, but that might be a reason to try to reconcile now before it’s too late.”
Doug blew a raspberry down the phone. “I’m sorry, Mum, but there’s no point, and I’m not buying into all that hypocrisy.”
She left a message for George to be relayed to the moonbase when possible. “I know you won’t be able to come, and your father can’t speak, but if you send a message I’ll make sure to read it to him,” she said, after she had explained the situation.
Cathy was out. Trish left a message with the nanny and said that she would call again later.
Helen arrived as she was on her way back to the ward where Mark was. She was hugely pregnant and her walk was a waddle. “I could hardly fit behind the wheel of the car,” she said. “Tell me it’s not the same ward where they had Gran that time? I couldn’t stand the irony.”
“It’s a men’s ward, but it’s very similar,” Trish admitted.
Mark glared at them from the bed when they went in. Helen went over and took his good hand. “Are you all right, Dad?”
Trish did not ask how he could possibly be considered to be all right. She saw the body in the bed as the shell of the man she had loved and hated and finally pitied. She pitied him even more now. She was trying to think what she was going to do if he did not die. If he recovered that was all well and good, but what if he continued to live in a state of paralysis, as so many people did after strokes? She did not want to have him at home, she shrank from the thought, but what else was there? She couldn’t cast the burden onto the children. He bellowed suddenly, making both of them jump and bringing in a nurse.
“What does he want?” Helen asked the nurse.
“No telling when they’re in this state,” the nurse said.
Trish went to try Cathy again and this time caught her. “I can come, but it’s going to be very complicated,” Cathy said. “Should I bring Jamie? Dad’s only seen him once.”
“Do whatever is easiest,” Trish said. “This might be a false alarm. He has had a stroke, but he could live for years.”
“Or he could die tonight,” Cathy said. “But it’s so late now. I’ll come first thing in the morning, I should be there by lunch time.”
Trish went back in. “Cathy’s coming tomorrow,” she said.
“Good,” Helen said.
Mark grimaced, or perhaps it was supposed to be a smile. A nurse came in and took his blood pressure and adjusted the drip in his arm. “I think I should go and collect Tamsin and get her home to bed,” Helen said. “It’s getting late.”
“Yes, go and come back tomorrow,” the nurse said. “He’ll probably sleep now.”
So Trish went home. Helen took Tamsin and went home, and she and Bethany sat in the kitchen and drank chamomile tea. “How is he really?” Bethany asked.
Trish explained concisely. “Sometimes people live for years and years in that condition. He could die at any minute, and I think it would be a blessing if he did. What am I going to do if he doesn’t?”
“It’s not your responsibility,” Bethany said. “You’re divorced. They shouldn’t even have called you really.”
“I feel so sorry for him seeing him so helpless like that,” Trish said. “And I did say ‘in sickness and in health’.”
“That doesn’t count after divorce,” Bethany said. “It gets cancelled out.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” Trish sighed.
“Go to bed. And don’t feel responsible for him.”
Trish went to bed, and was roused by the telephone in the small hours. She thought it must mean that Mark had died, but it was Don. “Helen wanted me to tell you that she has gone into labor. She’s gone to the Infirmary in the ambulance. I’m going to bring Tamsin to your place and then join her there.”