I nod.
'OK. I'm just going to pop downstairs and go round to the neighbours. Can you watch Aurora for five minutes while I do that?'
hold out my arms for the crying baby.
'Jennah, speak to me first – can you watch Aurora while I run next door?'
I force my mouth into motion. 'Yes,' I mumble. 'Yes, I'll look after Aurora. She'll be fine with me.'
Sophie looks at me doubtfully, then lowers Aurora down onto my lap. 'Five minutes,' she says.
She gives my shoulder a squeeze and leaves the room. Moments later I hear the sound of raised voices in the street, slamming car doors and the sound of the engine starting up. I jiggle Aurora against my shoulder as she continues to whimper, and bury my face against her soft, warm body. 'Oh baby, baby, baby,' I chant softly. 'Baby, baby, don't cry. Baby, baby, baby, baby. He's going to be all right, he's going to be all right.'
After a few moments Aurora stops crying and starts pulling my hair, demanding to be played with. I force myself up onto my feet, my knees still shaking, and take her downstairs to the toys in the living room. I can't stop trembling. She chews on the ear of her talking teddy, slavering away happily, jiggling her arms and legs up and down, babbling to herself, unperturbed by the silence of her carer.
Sophie returns, pale and breathless.
I look up at her from the carpet. 'He's going to be OK, isn't he?' My voice sounds strange.
Sophie gives me a dazed look. 'I don't know,' she says.
Aurora starts to whine and the sound sets my teeth on edge. I get up off the floor. 'I'm going upstairs to call my mum,' I say.
The bed is still warm. I pull the duvet over my knees and open my mobile. When I blurt out what has happened, there is a moment of shocked silence. 'You mean he tried to kill himself?' Her voice is shrill with horror. She wants to drive down from Manchester to fetch me. I tell her I'm not going anywhere until I know what's happening to Flynn. She sounds angry although I can't figure out why. I try and explain the situation to her but she doesn't seem to want to understand. 'Who are these people?' she keeps on asking. 'What's wrong with Flynn?' I know it's only out of concern for me, but she makes me want to scream.
Later, Sophie comes upstairs to tell me that Rami called. There is no news. Flynn is still unconscious. He is in intensive care. She asks me if I want some company, whether I want to come downstairs and have something to eat. I decline and she leaves.
The hours pass. I lose track of time. Eventually I wander downstairs and play listlessly with Aurora while Sophie prepares a meal in the kitchen. I try to keep my mind a blank. Sometime in the afternoon, as dusk creeps across the windows, the phone suddenly starts to ring. Sophie has the blender on and cannot hear from the kitchen. I am playing roll-the-ball with Aurora, and for a moment I sit paralysed, unable to move.
'Hello?'
'Jennah, it's Rami. Flynn's OK. He's in intensive care but he's OK. He's breathing on his own and his heart is strong but they're not expecting him to come round for quite a while. I'm going to bring my parents home now and then I'll take you back to the hospital to see him.'
When they come in, Matias is leaning on Rami's arm. Their faces look ashen. Maria's eyes are glazed. Sophie relieves me of Aurora and puts the kettle on, baby on hip. Rami helps his father into a chair and looks across at me. 'Shall I take you over?'
'Wait.' Sophie puts her hand on his arm. 'Sit down and have a sandwich and a cup of tea before you go anywhere.' She pushes him into a chair and puts the baby on his lap. Then she takes the turkey leftovers out of the fridge and starts carving. 'Everyone must eat,' she says firmly.
I force myself upright and join her at the counter to help. We make a sandwich for each person and then sit round the table, trying to consume them. The silence is deafening. Nobody seems to have the strength to talk.
'Right,' Rami says finally, draining his cup. 'Jennah?'
I get up, grab my bag and follow him to the door. 'Drive carefully,' Sophie calls after us.
We drive to the hospital in silence. Rami's thumbs drum against the steering wheel whenever we stop at a red light. We enter the hospital through the car park and take a lift to the very top floor. As the doors ping closed behind us, Rami looks at me and says, 'There are a lot of wires and monitors, Jen.'
'OK. But he's breathing on his own, right?'
Rami nods.
We follow a long, brightly lit corridor till we reach some double doors at the end. Rami presses a buzzer and a nurse in surgical clothes comes to greet us. We leave our coats and bags in a small room and wash our hands with antiseptic soap before being led down a ward filled with a strong medicinal smell. It is very warm. I try not to look to my left or right. From the edge of my vision I am aware of rows of beds, each surrounded by a plethora of bleeping, sucking, humming machines. And at the centre of each, a human being, hovering on the brink of life.
The nurse breaks away from us and veers off towards a bed on the right. 'Here we are,' Rami says softly. I am vaguely aware of his hand reaching for mine, holding it tight. We approach a bed. The first thing I notice is a shock of blond hair. Flynn's skin is completely white. His lips are stretched out to accommodate a large plastic contraption in his mouth. There are tubes up his nose. Both arms are attached to drips, a crisscrossing of surgical tape securing the plastic tubes in the crook of each elbow. A white sheet is pulled up to his middle. His bare chest is covered with red and blue stickers with wires coming out of them, leading to more bleeping machines.
'You can sit down on the side of the bed,' Rami says to me. 'You can talk to him if you want. He might be able to hear you.'
I perch myself gingerly, muscles clenched, terrified of hurting Flynn or somehow dislodging one of the tubes. Rami moves away to talk to the nurse. I stare at Flynn's lifeless face. His eyelids look as if they have been stuck down. There are purple bruises beneath them. The plastic tube in his mouth makes him look like he is pulling a face. For one crazy moment I expect him to open his eyes and say, 'Ha ha, got you!'
His chest rises and falls steadily. The machines pip and bleep. I reach out slowly and touch his hand. I am relieved to find it warm. I uncurl his fingers gently and close my hand round his. His fingers curl back and for an instant I think he is squeezing my hand. Then I realize it is just the natural position of his fingers. I lean forwards. 'Flynn,' I whisper.
Not a flicker.
'Please wake up,' I say softly. 'We all need you. We're all so worried. We all love you. I love you, Flynn. I don't want—' My eyes fill up. 'I don't want to live without you.'
I don't see how he can possibly hear me. His face is like a waxwork, and I realize suddenly with startling clarity that the body and the person are two different things. Two different entities, somehow fused. The body is the one I am looking at now, attached to all these machines, the heart still struggling to pump, the lungs still struggling to breathe, valiantly fighting to stay alive. The person is another being entirely, the perpetrator of this crime, the one who ruthlessly swallowed forty tablets sometime in the middle of the night, then lay down beside his girlfriend to die. The person tried to kill itself, tried to kill its own body. I understand for the first time why attempted suicide used to be an imprisonable offence. It is, after all, attempted murder. The person against the body. Look what you've done to yourself! I want to shout. How could you be so cruel? Your body didn't deserve to be harmed like this – flooded with poison then stuck with needles and fed with tubes! The words 'mental illness' suddenly take on a whole new dimension. What kind of illness makes life want to bring about its end? It goes against every natural instinct!
I get up unsteadily and look around for Rami. He is by my side in an instant, his arm round my shoulders. 'It's been a long day,' he says. 'Let's go home and get some rest. We'll come back and see him in the morning.'
'Shouldn't someone stay with him?' I blurt out. 'What if he comes round in the night?'
'We need to get some sleep,' Rami says. 'There's no point in us going
under too. The doctor says he'll be out for twenty-four hours at least. All they can do now is monitor him carefully until the drugs work their way through his body.'
Rami goes over to speak to one of the nurses. I hear him ask her to call him on his mobile if there is any change in the night. We leave.
'Why?' I say in the car. 'Why would anyone want to do that to themselves?'
'Mum was asking the same thing,' Rami says, starting the engine. 'Depression is a strange thing. It's dehumanizing, somehow.'
'Is he definitely going to come round?' I ask. 'Are the doctors absolutely sure about that?'
'Once the drugs work their way through his body, they think he'll probably just wake up,' Rami says.
'Probably?' I say.
'Well, there are three possibilities. One is that he'll just wake up feeling groggy but fine,' he explains. 'The other possibility is that he'll need a liver transplant, although so far tests show that his liver is labouring, but coping.'
'And the third possibility?' I ask, my heart in my mouth.
Rami exhales slowly. 'With any prolonged state of unconsciousness, there is always the risk of braindamage,' he says. 'But there's no way of knowing until he wakes up.'
I stare straight ahead. A fine rain begins to fall. The lights of passing cars are refracted through the pattern of raindrops across the windscreen. Rami switches on the wipers. It is Boxing Day and the streets are still empty.
I sleep in fits and starts in the squeaky, empty bed, haunted by fragments of dreams. Finally I emerge hot and sweaty from the duvet and sit cross-legged in the middle of the bed, the window open, a mini-gale buffeting around me, my body aching from the cold. I watch a weak dawn rise above the rooftops and I wonder whether Flynn is still breathing. I imagine the doctor coming down the long hospital corridor towards us to tell us that Flynn has died in the night. I imagine Maria collapsing. I try to think of what to say – of what to say to Rami, to Matias, to Maria. I fail.
Rami takes Maria and Matias to the hospital after breakfast. I stay with Sophie and the baby since there is no point in us all being there at once. I have hardly seen Matias and Maria since all this happened. They look broken, like ghosts of their previous selves. I feel like running into the hospital and shaking Flynn awake – Look what you have done to your parents! I want to shout. Look what you have done to us all!
I feed Aurora while Sophie makes the coffee. As I am scooping up dribbles of food from Aurora's chin, Sophie passes behind me and rubs my arm. I say nothing and continue to feed the baby, breathing deeply against the threat of tears.
Rami brings Matias and Maria back late morning. They look totally spent. I help Sophie make lunch. In the afternoon, Sophie insists Rami stays at home with Aurora while she drives me to the hospital. Again I sit on the edge of Flynn's hospital bed and reach for his inert hand. His face is still sealed shut. There is a different nurse hovering nearby, and bright winter sunlight streams through the windows. 'It's a beautiful day,' I tell him. 'The sun is really strong and the sky is bright blue.' I tentatively squeeze his hand. His eyelashes do not move.
That evening, Rami goes back to the hospital with his parents. We seem to have fallen into some kind of a routine. Harry calls me on my mobile. He wants to know where Flynn is – they were supposed to meet this evening to practise their composition piece, but he hasn't shown up. I tell him what has happened.
'God, no!' Harry breathes. 'Do you want me to come down, Jen? Is – is he allowed visitors?'
I tell him there is no point, that Flynn is unconscious. Harry sounds deeply shocked. I promise to call him as soon as there is more news. Sophie and I spend the afternoon watching re-runs of Friends. Neither of us smile, but the sound of canned laughter reminds me that life somehow goes on.
The following day, a similar routine unfolds. Rami takes his parents to the hospital first thing, while Sophie, Aurora and I go to the supermarket. It is a relief to be doing something useful. After picking at our lunch, Sophie and I drive over to the hospital. Flynn still looks exactly the same. Sophie leans over him and strokes his cheek and says some words in his ear. I just want to leave.
In the car on the way home, I am jolted out of my stupor by Sophie lifting her hand off the steering wheel to wipe her eyes. I turn to her in panic. 'Soph—'
Her cheeks flush slightly and she sniffs hard and shakes her head with a smile. 'I'm just being silly. I know he's going to be fine,' she says quickly.
I gaze at her silently, wondering why she is the one crying and not me.
'Oh, Jennah, I'm sorry. I'm just going to pull over for a minute so I don't get back to the house looking a complete mess . . .' She slows the car to a halt at the top of the lane and rummages around in the glove box for a tissue. She finds a crumpled one and presses it quickly to her eyes. 'This is what broken nights with an eightmonth- old reduce one to!' She laughs through the tears.
'You're really fond of him, aren't you,' I say. My heart hurts.
'Well, he's the only brother-in-law I've got, so I'd rather hang onto him if at all possible!' Sophie replies.
'Do you think he's going to die?' I ask. The tone of my voice makes it sound like I'm asking her whether it's going to rain.
Sophie looks at me quickly. 'Oh no, Jen, I don't. I think he's going to be fine.'
The next day is Friday. I can't believe that Christmas Day was only four days ago. It seems like a lifetime. We have entered some kind of twilight zone, our waking hours divided between the cottage and the hospital. Mum calls to ask for news. She sounds worried and begs me to come home. I struggle not to raise my voice. Later Harry calls, then Kate. It seems like a terrible effort to talk, just to tell them there is no change.
On Friday night I am pulled from a splintered sleep by a gentle but persistent knocking on the bedroom door. Rami is on the landing, buttoning his shirt, his hair dishevelled. My heart leaps into my throat and I let out a strangled cry.
'It's all right!' His hands grip my arms, pushing me back into the room. 'Shh, shh, I don't want to wake the others. One of the nurses called. They say he's coming round. Do you want to come with me to the hospital?'
'Yes! Of course!'
'Get dressed then.'
I grab my jeans from the chair and stumble into them, pull on a jumper and shove on my shoes. Rami is waiting by the front door, jangling the keys in his hand. It is freezing in the car. I shiver all the way to the hospital. The luminous digits on the radio read 3:04 a.m. We hurry through the empty, brightly lit corridors, now all too familiar. A nurse I recognize lets us into the intensive care ward with a big smile. After going through the prerequisite hand-washing, we are led over to Flynn's bed. I can feel my heart.
'He's groggy,' the nurse tells us, 'but he knows where he is.'
I freeze at the sight of him, sitting propped up against the pillows. Rami keeps going and I watch him approach Flynn's bedside and mime a slow-motion punch to his brother's head. He sits down on the edge of the bed and leans forwards. I can't hear what he is saying. I seem to be unable to move. I cannot believe that Flynn is back. The inert, sealed, waxwork body is gone. Now, his eyes are open and he is sitting up, talking, moving. The tube in his mouth has been removed, and his hair is all on end. Someone touches my arm. It's the nurse. 'Come and sit down,' she says.
She leads me to a chair against the wall. I can't see Flynn's bed from here. I rest my elbows on my knees and try to slow my breathing. The nurse smiles down at me kindly. 'Would you like a drink of water?'
I shake my head. Wipe my wet palms against my jeans.
'Stay sitting for a little while,' the nurse says. 'I'll bring you some water in case you change your mind.'
She moves off and I sit up, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. I clench my teeth and stare at the humming machinery surrounding another patient's bed in front of me. The strong artificial lights seem to be throbbing all around. I feel like I'm losing my mind.
The nurse brings me a paper cup of water and I take it from her, my
hand shaking. I sip it and stare hard at the tips of my shoes, trying to focus my mind. Sometime later Rami comes up to me, looking concerned. 'The nurse said you weren't feeling too well,' he says, his hand on my arm. 'Do you need to get some fresh air?'
I dig my nails painfully into the palm of my hand. 'I'm fine,' I say thickly.
'Do you want to go and see him?' Rami asks.
I nod.
'I'm going to grab myself a coffee, then. I'll meet you at the car.'
I nod again. Stand up slowly. Rami gives me a pat on the back, then turns to wave at Flynn before setting off down the ward. I want to scream at him to come back.
As I approach Flynn's bed, he looks up and gives me a tired smile.
'Hi.' I kiss him quickly on the cheek and sit down on the edge of the bed. He smells of medicine and sweat. There are sticky marks on his chest where the red and blue stickers were. He is down to just one drip. The crook of his other arm is bruised purple and yellow. His lips are raw and cracked. His hair looks in bad need of a wash. His eyes seem to take a long time to focus. I bite my lip, hard.
He lifts one hand off the sheet. Touches my cheek clumsily. 'Hello,' he says hoarsely.
I swallow what feels like a golf ball in my throat. 'You gave us quite a scare,' I say with difficulty.
He blinks. Nods slowly. 'Yeah, Rami was saying . . .' My fists are clenched so tight, my fingers feel like they are going to break. 'Your – your mum and dad will be delighted to see you finally awake.'
He nods again. 'Yeah.'
I take a desperate breath and look around. 'Looks like they've taken you off most of the machines,' I say stupidly.
He raises the arm still attached to the drip. 'This, apparently, is saline. I don't really see why I can't just drink a couple of glasses of water instead.' He shifts his leg under the sheet. 'And I've got a tube in here so I don't even have to get up to pee.' He smiles again slowly.
I feel like I'm falling, yet I'm still sitting on the side of the bed. 'How – how are you feeling?'
'Sleepy and thirsty. My mouth feels like sandpaper, but they won't let me drink.'