I don’t remember much about the drive to the hospital, but every time I managed to drift off, his hand was on my knee, shaking me out of sleep, and he kept talking all the time, asking me stupid questions and prodding me when I didn’t answer.
Then I was on my own in the car, and it was like this battle between the tiredness and the pain, and finally I was on a trolley, the strip lights on the ceiling whizzing past as I was wheeled down a corridor. Someone jostled my arm and I cried out thinly, shutting my eyes because the brightness stung.
When I opened them again it was because there was a light shining in my eyes with a doctor attached to it.
“Ah, you’re back with us, that’s good. Now, I need to know exactly what you’ve been up to?”
I might be a congenital liar but the doctor at the Royal Brighton Hospital almost had me beat. He wouldn’t buy any of my bullshit. Not the falling off my bike story I conjured up on the spur of the moment or my legal status as an eighteen-year-old or, well, any of it really.
He just held up a syringe full of yummy painkilling liquid and refused to stick it in me until he got parental consent.
“What part of ‘I’m eighteen’ don’t you understand?” I demanded, and he and the nurse exchanged exasperated looks.
“I’m not giving you any of this until you start telling me the truth.”
I bit my lip and was just about to try out a different story about being a homeless street urchin when Smith pulled back the curtain. “I’m her brother,” he said tonelessly. “Our parents are overseas—do you want me to ruin their twenty-fifth anniversary cruise and call them?”
I didn’t even care that I’d brought Smith over to the dark side, because whatever was in that needle made everything stop hurting, except my heart.
Yeah, my heart ached and broke into millions of little pieces all the way down to the X-ray department and then all the way to the treatment room, where two doctors popped my elbow back, emphasis on the pop. They wrapped my arm in gauze and started plastering—and Smith hadn’t left my side, but he looked like he wished he were at the bottom of the ocean. Like the distance between us was too great to be overcome.
All that was left was to apply butterfly plasters to the cut on my head and to hand Smith a prescription and a leaflet about plaster-cast care.
“If I told you that I wanted you to stay in overnight for observation, would that register with you?” the doctor asked me as one of the nurses went to find me a jacket out of the lost property.
I shook my head decisively.
“She doesn’t listen to anyone,” Smith said quietly from the chair he was slumped in. “You get used to it after a while.”
“I just want to go home,” I said, wriggling down off the trolley. “Thank you for looking after me,” I added politely.
“Oh, don’t mention it,” he said dryly. “I hope your parents enjoy that cruise.” He had the nerve to do air quotes, but I didn’t call him on it, because Smith was standing up and wrapping his arm around me because I needed him.
Let'sGetLost
Let's Get Lost
26
I knew it was 2:27 A.M. because the clock on the wall of the hospital canteen said so, but it felt much later. I was that kind of wired that you get when you’re dog-weary but feel like you’ll never be able to sleep again.
There was a mirror on the wall opposite me, taunting me with its shiny surface, so all I could do was rubberneck my own reflection. I looked exactly like I’d been in a car crash. My hair was clumped in these blood-soaked rattails, my skin was a strange shade of putty, and my eyes were sunken. Then there were the millions of little cuts all over my face, the angry gash marching across my forehead, and that nasty little scab on my cheek.
I forced myself to look away and watched Smith walk toward me with a tray positively laden with calorific goodies, which was a far more pleasing treat for the eyes.
Smith shunted a mug toward me and then gestured at the pile of goodies on the tray. “What do you want? Biscuits? Crisps? The muffins look good . . .”
“Tea’s fine,” I said, taking a sip, then pulling a face. “Gross! I know I like my sugar, but how many spoonfuls did you put in this?”
He gave me a pale imitation of a smile. “Stopped counting after six. Meant to be good for shock, isn’t it? Sweet tea.”
“I’m not really in shock anymore. Reality’s settling back in.” I paused for a second. “It sucks.”
“Does your arm hurt?” He was so good at that note of concern that I could almost believe that he meant it. “And that thing on your cheek . . .” Smith pointed to my hockey wound, which was scabbing over nicely. “That didn’t happen tonight, did it?”
“Sports injury,” I said shortly. “So, I was meaning to ask you . . .”
“And Molly said that she saw you this afternoon.”
The afternoon seemed like it had happened years ago. “Oh . . . She caught me at a bad moment,” I said delicately, experiencing an entirely different twinge of agony. She must have rushed home to give Smith a blow-by-blow account.
If she had, he didn’t show it, just blew slightly on his tea. “She’s sorry about ripping your coat, by the way.”
“A rip is the least of that coat’s worries.” I thought of my poor, puke-stained coat in the back of the totaled car and shuddered.
“So is this how it’s going to be?” Smith asked me suddenly, his expression resolute.
“Is this how what’s going to be?” I snatched up a packet of biscuits and ripped open the plastic with my teeth. I still felt nauseous, but I needed something to do with my mouth that didn’t involve talking.
“Same old Isabel, even now . . . Getting good and evasive about the truth? Answering a question with another question?”
“I’m afraid so,” I told him sadly because it was so good, so unbelievably good, to be sitting across from him, watching the curve of his bottom lip and the flutter of his eyelashes as he blinked, to have his undivided attention. “Why did you lie for me?”
He looked up from his contemplation of a bag of fluorescent orange cheese crackers. “Because you were in pain and you needed a shot and he wasn’t going to give you one.”
So he still cared about me? Or else he knew that the sooner they shot me up, the sooner he’d have me out of what was left of his hair.
“Well, thanks. Sorry you got dragged into all of this, but I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Don’t mention it,” Smith said shortly, and I had the good sense to go back to nibbling along the edge of my biscuit, which tasted like cardboard.
I knew that I was putting off the inevitable. He was going to leave me again. Maybe he’d give me a lift first, but he didn’t want to be with me. Couldn’t bear to be in the same room with me, because it made his brow wrinkle up and his fingers twitch nervously as he sorted through the cup of condiment sachets.
“Excuse me, darling?”
I looked up into a vaguely familiar face, but it was the faint Irish lilt that made my stomach lurch and beads of sweat blossom along my forehead.
“Oh, hi,” I muttered unwillingly.
“You’ve broken your arm? That’s a pity. And how’s your Dad and that little brother of yours?”
“They’re fine, y’know. Everyone’s good.” I could tell that Smith was watching this exchange with great interest, like it was another piece in the puzzle. And God, she was pulling out the chair next to me.
“I’ve got five minutes before my break’s over,” she said, and I wanted to punch her stupid kindly face in. “You and I can have a nice little chat. Is this your boyfriend?”
“No!” Smith and I snapped in unison and he didn’t have to sound quite so emphatic about it. “He’s just a friend who happens to be a boy. Allegedly.”
Smith raised his cup in a mocking salute and the nurse, what was her name (Mary? Margie? Maggie?) shot me a conspiratorial look, like we were just having a lover’s tiff.
“I’m Marie,” she said to Smith. ?
??I looked after this young lady’s mum this summer, didn’t I, poppet?”
“I’m Smith.” They solemnly shook hands. “I looked after Isabel this autumn, didn’t I?”
Then he winked at me like he knew that I needed to be mad at him, just a little, to be able to deal with Marie sitting across from me.
“I thought about you,” she was saying, her hand creeping out to pat my cheek, until I shifted back. “You got yourself into such a state. Never seen anything like it.”
“Yeah,” I muttered indistinctly, inching my chair sideways so I wouldn’t have to look at her pity head on.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Marie said, folding her arms over her buttresslike chest. “But we all felt sorry for you, losing your mum like that—and your wee brother, poor little thing, we just couldn’t get him to stop crying.”
“He cried for, like, weeks,” I said, remembering Felix shuddering with sobs that sounded as if they were being wrenched out of him.
“And you didn’t cry at all, poppet. We were all worried about that.”
It was time for this horrific scenic trip down memory lane to end. Didn’t the hospital provide their staff with tact training?
“Yeah, well, aren’t you going to be late?” I asked her rudely.
She didn’t look that pissed off because she was so big with the understanding. Just gave me another one of those “I get you” looks, which were starting to make me want to gag, and got up. “You take care of yourself, darling—keep that arm elevated.”
“Well, it was nice to meet you,” Smith piped up when I made it plain that I wasn’t going to say anything.
I waited until she waddled to the door, then shoved away my half-empty cup and stood up. “I hate this place, I’ve got to get out of here,” I spat. “I can hardly breathe.”
He caught up with me by the exit, ’cause I could move pretty fast for a banged-up girl in a plaster cast.
“Is! Just hold on!” he pleaded, seizing my wrist and pulling me toward a deserted row of chairs.
Whacking someone with your plaster cast hurts you a lot more than it hurts them. I really wouldn’t recommend it.
“I mean it!” I shouted, struggling in his arms and making no effort to lower my voice, despite the goggle-eyed looks from a couple of cleaners desultorily mopping the floor. “I can’t bear it! This place . . . the smell. The walls are closing in on me.”
“Stop it!” Smith said, giving me the tiniest of shakes. “Just stop it and come here.”
He pulled me down onto a seat and held me tight so I couldn’t wriggle free. I stilled instantly; it had been so long since he touched me like that. But his words weren’t as soft as his hands, which gently turned my head so I had no option but to stare deeply into his pretty blue eyes.
“You tell me everything right now. Or I’m going to leave you here and I’m never going to see you again.” His voice crackled with ice, ready to break under the slightest pressure.
So I started to talk. It was hard at first—the truth. I was rusty. But I found that it got easier and easier. I started on the small stuff. School. From bullied to bully and back again. That led on nicely to the Guantánamo regime at home, the school brochures, my study-trashing exploits and why I could never go home again.
It was as if Smith had sneakily arranged for that doctor to inject me with a truth serum, so I even told him about Rob, and his hand tightened painfully on my shoulder, but he didn’t say anything; just let me carry on with the whole digging-my-own-grave soliloquy.
“. . . and I threatened her until she agreed to call you, and then you were there and now you’re here and that’s everything,” I finished miserably, my throat aching from it all.
“It’s not everything,” he reminded me, shifting me in his arms again so he could get another look at my face; so I couldn’t hide. “Haven’t told me about your mum, have you?”
“Please, don’t . . .” I begged, shutting my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at him.
“Tell me.”
So I did.
What I remembered more than anything was the beep of the monitors and the blinking numbers that measured her heart rate and her blood pressure. The plastic drips arranged next to the bed. One for drugs, one for fluid, and one containing this sickly-looking brown liquid feed that was connected by a tube to her stomach.
She couldn’t feed herself because she wouldn’t wake up. But she wasn’t asleep. Sleep was peaceful and she wasn’t. Her mouth was stretched wide open for the tubes, her eyes open and unseeing, although we told Felix that she was looking at him.
We told Felix a lot of stuff. That she could hear him when he said that he loved her. And we told him that when she had one of the periodic fits, she was squeezing his hand tight because she knew he was there.
I don’t think she knew anything. I think she’d already gone and all that was left was a body that had become a battlefield, that was fighting itself for each minute, each second that she stayed.
And Felix and Dad . . . it was like that bit in Peter Pan, “Clap your hands if you believe in fairies,” because they were so sure that she was going to get better. Even as her kidneys weakened and her liver packed up so her pretty face became a gruesome shade of yellow that clashed with the purple bruises dotting her skin.
They wanted him to sign a DNR—Do Not Resuscitate. Do not recover. Do not return. He said, very calmly, that they wanted him to sign her life away and he wouldn’t. Not even when those numbers on the monitors kept dropping, and the fits became more frequent, and she didn’t open her eyes anymore.
I couldn’t even sit in the Intensive Care ward. Couldn’t watch her try to die. So I hung out in the relatives’ room with its stale gray carpet, nicotine-colored walls, and the faint smell of rotten food from the fridge. Marie gave me a pile of magazines and I waded through them, filling in every cross-word and puzzle I could find with a leaky felt-tip that Felix lent me. There was this lame picture of a sunset on the wall, with a verse from the Bible scrolling over it in a cursive script: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
He sat there with his head in his hands after another showdown with the doctors and I read it out to him. “It’s pointless and cruel, what you’re doing,” I said. “She doesn’t want to be here anymore and you have to let her go.”
I was right, but it didn’t give me any satisfaction. Not even when he borrowed the leaky felt-tip because he’d left his fountain pen at home and signed the forms with an angry flourish and a bleak look.
But still she lingered on, and my whole world narrowed down to hurried meals from whatever takeaway was open when we left the hospital. Snatches of sleep. Grabbing clothes out of the laundry basket. Sneaking outside the main exit for sly cigarettes and nicking packets of gum from the hospital shop. The phone ringing and ringing: her blood pressure was up, her clotting rates were down . . . “We just called to see how Faith is, any news?”
He almost didn’t make it. He had to go into the University to see the dean when the numbers on the monitors went into freefall. They made me go and sit with her and hold her hand because they were still pretending that she could hear my voice. That she could feel my hand clutching at her fingers as her body shook with involuntary tremors. I had to keep asking Marie to give her another injection to make it stop.
Felix was clinging to my arm, hiding his face in my shoulder and crying, when he stumbled through the big swinging doors, tie undone, jacket half on, half off.
“Is she . . . ?”
“No, she’s still here,” I said, and he darted off to find a chair because there were never enough chairs.
We sat there, three wise monkeys, with the curtains drawn around us, the monitor beeping and occasionally stuttering, which didn’t mean anything because a nurse would always come and reset it.
The numbers kept dropping, and the doctor came and told us that the kidneys and the liver “were no longer viable” and her heart simply couldn’t take the
strain. She didn’t even look like her anymore—she was exanimate, which means without animation. It means dead. Almost.
I could hear two people talking outside our cubicle, laughing about their plans for the weekend. I turned my head away from the monitor, started to rise so I could tell them to shut the fuck up because there was someone dying and we didn’t want to know about their ten-pin bowling tournament, when the beeping became one long, continuous punctuation of noise.
It was a terrible sound. Not the worst, though, because he moaned, this gut-wrenching exhalation, and gathered up her broken, no longer viable body and started to cry. “My darling girl, my love, my love, don’t leave me.”
I think Felix was huddled under the bed, because I could hear him sobbing, and then there were doctors, nurses swooping down, but it was too late and I couldn’t stand it for another second.