The call from radiography comes in sooner than they thought as there’s been a cancellation. I don’t dwell on why someone’s appointment was cancelled; no time to think, no chance of clinging to my bed covers.
They use a hoist to get me out of bed, and like a grotesque sculpture, I’m craned onto a portable bed. Alice guides my tracheotomy trunk and Mary is on the IV and heart monitor, a complicated tangle of tubes.
I haven’t left the ward in months; a perky-looking elderly woman twists in her wheelchair to look at me as we pass each other in the corridor. Her mouth hangs open when she sees me, a mixture of curiosity and horror filling her face, clear as if the very words were tattooed on her wrinkly skin. I decide I don’t want to see any more and shut my eyes.
An hour or so later, and I’m back in bed, my eyelids slide open a little way, I haven’t blinked since before my scan, Alice told me Lucy was on her way so I’ve been saving my energy for her.
I hear my girl approach and I think, this is it! This is when Luce will believe in me again.
My curtain rattles back and Lucy comes into view, her hair is pulled back from her face, and her cheeks are flushed. She says, ‘Dad!’, and I blink and immediately she starts crying.
Oh, Luce, don’t cry! This is good! Look, watch!
I blink again and I start doing a little jig inside because she’s laughing more than crying now. She clutches my hand and kisses it and I wish I could laugh and cry with her but I can only blink, which makes her hang her head over me. She leans forward, her face towards mine, and a couple of her tears fall onto my cheek, as though she knew what I was thinking and she’s crying for me.
Alice appears behind Lucy and puts her hand on Lucy’s shoulder.
‘Remember what I told you, Lucy. Only time will tell and we still need to get the scans back.’
Lucy sits up and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. All the crying has made her irises an even richer brown.
‘Blink if you can hear me, Dad,’ she whispers close to my ear.
I blink. It’s a good one – purposeful and complete – and Lucy splutters a wet, teary laugh, and Lucy turns to check Alice is still there, that she’s seeing it as well.
‘You’ve been here all along, haven’t you, Dad?’, and I blink again, for yes.
Lucy’s bubbling over with questions now. We strike a deal: one blink for ‘yes’, and two for ‘no’. I can’t tell her I haven’t tried a two-blink blink yet.
‘Are you in pain, Dad?’ Lucy asks, and I’m about to blink once for yes, even though I’m not, because it might encourage Alice to get the morphine out, but my eyelids have turned to stone. I strain, quivering inside with the effort, but it’s no good. Show’s over for the day; my eyes clamp shut. I’m glad I don’t have to see the disappointment on Lucy’s face.
‘He’s probably exhausted,’ Alice says gently. ‘It’s been a huge day. He’ll just need to rest until tomorrow.’
After a pause, Lucy asks, ‘Can I sit with him for a bit?’
‘Of course, take as long as you like.’
Alice walks away and Lucy’s soft hand spoons the back of my rigid claw.
Lucy moves close to my ear, her voice warm little puffs on my cheek. When she was small, she used to wake me up like this. She’d come over to my side of the bed and whisper so as not to disturb Ange. Her breath would tickle my ear as she told me she had a surprise for me in the kitchen, and I absolutely had to get up straight away so as not to miss it.
‘I’m here, Dad,’ she says now. ‘I’m not going to leave you for so long again. I promise. You’re going to get better, Dad, I know you are. One day, you’re going to walk out of this place and I’m going to be right by your side cheering you along and we’re going to go home, Dad. We’re going to go home.’
I’ll try, Luce, I’ll try to make you proud of me.
For the first time I see it; I can see us, hand in hand, walking out of here. I can feel the rush of fresh air on my face as the hospital doors finally slide open to spit me out. Still closed, I feel my eyes start to burn as something crests, breaches from my right eye, spilling fatly onto my cheek. It traces a wet line down my face. I haven’t cried in years, but, hey, from today, I’m a whole new me.
18
Cassie
She opens her eyes; she must have fallen asleep with the bedside light still on. Her mum’s diary from Mexico – full of adventures involving peyote and hitch-hiking in a goat truck to the Yucatan – lies splayed open on the top of the bed. Through the half-closed curtains Cassie can tell it’s very early; the day’s still inky with newness, and Cassie’s eyelids feel too big, swollen in their sockets. The pain wasn’t what Cassie expected. She thought she’d be livid with it, but the betrayal turned out to be more subtle, a gummy tumour of disappointment she still carries around everywhere.
She pulls herself up to sit, and Maisie stirs in her basket and lifts her little grey head towards Cassie, her coarse beard stroking the basket the rescue centre said she’d slept in all her life.
Her eyebrows see-saw at Cassie. ‘Do what you like, but don’t think I’m getting up yet,’ she seems to say, and with a little sigh she falls back on her side.
Cassie had thought about telling Jonny about Nicky and Jack last week when he’d driven her to the dog rescue centre to collect Maisie. Jonny had asked about Jack’s change of heart in getting a dog, Cassie had thought about telling Jonny the truth, that Maisie is a symbol of Jack’s guilt, his olive branch, but instead she’d shrugged his question away. It hadn’t felt the right time to tell him about Jack and Nicky when Jonny had been away for the last month in London trying to appease Lorna for a final time. Lorna had been back to her delusional tricks, turning up at Jonny’s old office again, demanding to know what happened between Jonny and his poor colleague. Apparently the colleague had tendered her resignation as a result, which Lorna had taken to be proof of her guilt. Jonny had started divorce proceedings the next day in the hope it might shock Lorna into getting some proper help.
Awful as it is to admit, it was a relief for Cassie to hear someone else’s problems, to pause momentarily the video in her mind of the two of them on the sofa.
Without warning, the spare room door opens and Cassie listens as the hallway floorboards creak under Jack’s weight as he goes to the bathroom. He always wakes at 6 a.m., even on Sundays. He’s been home, sleeping in the spare room for two weeks now. He said he couldn’t justify work paying for a hotel room for any longer than three days. There’s a brief silence as he pees before the toilet flushes and the floorboards creak again as he goes back to bed.