There’s less information on the other woman, only a brief article in Nebraska News. The baby, a little girl this time, stopped growing and was delivered by C-section prematurely. She was too small and her lungs were undeveloped. She died a week after delivery. Her mother, at the time of writing, seemed to be recovering. I imagine what it must be like, to discover your body had nurtured and given birth to a little girl, that she died without ever leaving the blankness of the hospital rooms, and all the while you were fast asleep, a red scar grinning up at you, the only proof of her existence.
Sharma thinks Cassie is about twelve weeks. We’ll know for sure in a few hours. I’ve never got that far so I don’t know how it feels, but I’ve imagined it. The swelling, sore breasts, the hormone surges, jeans feeling tighter. I can’t imagine not knowing at twelve weeks. But then, if she did know, why didn’t she visit her GP? Tell her husband?
‘Every woman is different,’ I parrot to myself, thinking of the countless gynaecologists and fertility experts who have said those same words to me. I think of the fair man, who I know now is Jonny Parker, Cassie’s neighbour who ran onto the ward last night. I see distressed, reactionary friends and family every day; people are always trying to visit out of hours. But Jonny was different; he said he had to tell Cassie something, and when I wouldn’t let him get close enough to her, he told me at least a part of what he wanted Cassie to know. Just before the security guys took him away, he said, ‘She was scared.’
And I saw in that moment in his eyes that Cassie feeling scared was worse than any other punishment he could suffer.
I’ll have to write about Jonny’s visit in Cassie’s notes later today. I’ll tell Paula to play it down to Jack and Charlotte. The last thing we want is for them to worry he’ll come back. I shut the computer down and decide not to share my internet research findings with Sharma; he wouldn’t like the odds.
I get back into bed – my side is still warm – and I listen to David gently snoring and stare at the ceiling for a few minutes, like a patient, before curling myself around his sleeping back.
I pull into the hospital car park an hour before my shift starts. The sun rises lazily this morning. Kate’s sits on the horizon like a grey arachnid, absorbing any colour from the surrounding fields, smudging the dull January surroundings. I always think she’d fit in nicely in Soviet Russia. Kate’s once featured in an ‘Ugly buildings of Britain’ book – one of those books full of pictures people like to keep in the toilet. We have one in ours, with the top corner turned down on Kate’s page. Even if she’s a bit rough round the edges, for me, the hospital is like the ultimate mother, beckoning most of us into the world, patching us up when we’re scuffed and bruised, and when the outside has tripped us up too many times, she’ll see us on our way for the last time. The big, real-life stuff happens inside her sterile walls.
I feel buoyant, too buoyant, as I get out of my car, so I give myself a talking to, as if I were a relative. I cross the car park, reminding myself of the hundreds of possible complications, of the delicacy of Cassie’s pregnancy. The automatic hospital doors open with a sound like the breaking of a seal on a vacuum.
The receptionist looks up briefly from his newspaper as I call, ‘Good morning’, but he just turns back to his paper as I start walking down the long corridor, where the walls are decorated with watercolours of wheat fields, towards 9B.
Cassie lies just as before, impassive to night or day. Unlike the peacefully sleeping coma patients in films, her face is twisted, as if she’s absorbed by a difficult problem, and she thinks no one can see her. I place my hand back on her abdomen, picture the scan images again, suffocate a quick, familiar twist of envy, followed by an inevitable thump of shame, and before anyone notices anything strange, I pull my hand away and walk back towards the nurses’ room.
‘So how are you doing, Jack? Did you manage to get any sleep last night?’ I lean towards Jack who sits opposite me in Sharma’s office, catch myself biting my lip and force myself to stop. I don’t want him to know I’m nervous.
He shrugs; he doesn’t care about his sleep. He’s in jeans and a navy knitted jumper today. The jumper suits him. I wonder if Cassie bought it for him. He looks as though he’s already lost weight with stress, his skin dulled by exhaustion and worry. He’s broad but lean, dark and handsome in an obvious kind of way, like nature’s blueprint for ‘a handsome man’.
‘Thanks for agreeing to meet us a bit later. Mr Sharma will join us in a moment; his meeting is running over a few minutes, but I thought it would be good for us to have a chat. How are you doing?’
He shrugs again and rubs the side of his temples. In hospitals people let their guard down quicker than in normal life; I doubt Jack would ever normally be so crumpled in front of someone he doesn’t know.
‘I think I’m still in shock,’ he admits.
‘That’s totally normal. Let me know if at any time you feel you need more support. We can put you in touch with a therapist if you’d like to talk about how you’re feeling …’
‘No, look, my wife’s in a bloody coma. I can’t think straight, why would I want to talk to a stranger, a therapist about it?’ He looks directly at me. ‘Sorry.’ His voice crackles. ‘It’s just that, no, I haven’t slept, and frankly I …’ He clears his throat.
In the pause I say, ‘I don’t blame you. If I was in your position I wouldn’t want to talk to a stranger either. I just want you to know the offer’s there in case you change your mind.’ He reads between the lines beautifully, possibly too tired to realise what he’s saying.
‘It’s been over forty-eight hours now and I still don’t believe it. Maisie’s run off before, I kept thinking Cas would come home any minute, take the piss out of me for freaking out over nothing.’ He leans forward, his elbows on his knees and rubs his hands over his face like a flannel before clasping them together in his lap.
He closes his eyes,
‘Every time I shut my eyes I picture her in that stream, how cold she must have been.’ He shakes his head, his voice cracking like ice. ‘She must have been so scared to be hit and just left, left like that.’ He impatiently wipes away a tear with the back of his hand before it reaches his cheek. I thought he would be the kind of person to be ashamed to cry; I’m pleased I was wrong. We should have met in the family room where it would be all right to squeeze his arm. Here, there’s a desk between us.
I lean forward towards him. ‘It would have happened so quickly, Jack, a split second.’
With a sharp breath, he pulls himself together and raises his head again; he wants to talk.
‘You know, I keep finding myself thinking all these stupid clichés like, “this is a living nightmare”, and wondering why this is happening. It’s the sort of stuff you hear about on the grapevine, and think, “Thank God that’s not me, not happening to us” and then wham!’ He claps his hands together, ‘Here we are. Here we fucking are.’ His hands rub either side of his face as if trying to hold his head together. His eyes stare down at Sharma’s desk. He doesn’t look up as he says, ‘You know the police have arrested our neighbour, Jonny?’
I shake my head, and keep my eyes on Jack as he keeps talking.