Alex
It is Gulnaz rather than Prentice who meets Daniel at reception. He’s glad of that, if a little disquieted by the sight of her. Her outfit puts her in role, and yet not entirely so, like having a mum as the lollypop lady; neither side quite knowing the rules of engagement. Almost immediately she stops and leads him into a small room, another nurse’s den: it has the same smell as the one in which the DNA test had been performed. “Please sit down, Daniel,” she says. “We need to talk.”
She’s never sounded more serious, not on that Christmas night when sifting through the photo album, not when refusing his dinner invitations, not even when screaming at him to sort out his drinking.
“I tried to tell you on the phone. Alex has begun to come round from his coma, but something seems to have happened to him.”
Daniel lowers his backside onto the hard, steel-framed chair.
“All night long they’ve been running tests. The MRI scan shows no brain damage – no tumour, no dead tissue, no blood clots. His heart, liver, kidneys, lungs are all clear and now working fine.”
“But?”
“Now please stay calm, Daniel. But he’s showing signs of paralysis. And he seems unable to speak.”
“Oh shit.”
The crushing reality throws him forward into his hands. Alex’s games are not yet over.
“But it’s probably just a temporary effect of the coma, or whatever’s caused the coma. Even overnight there have been some improvements. He’s remaining conscious for longer periods, and they’re getting more response from his reflexes. He’s started moving his head, even his arms a little. And he can utter sounds, but not words. Of course he can’t yet walk.”
She then does something that perhaps nurses should do more often after breaking devastating news to a relative. She pushes gently at Daniel’s shoulders and places herself on his lap, takes him in her arms and simply holds him.
“When do I get to see him?” he asks into the thickness of her hair.
“He’s conscious at the moment. I’ve just been in. We can go straight away. As soon as you feel ready. He’s certainly alert enough to know what’s going on. He responded to me at once. I’ve explained who you are and that you’re on your way. The doctors were a little worried that seeing you might be too much of a shock, but I’ve talked them round. Just go easy. Don’t overload him.”
It’s his worst fears realised. Alex as an invalid. Thirteen years the reluctant carer, now perhaps fifty more. With each step along the corridor a piece of his dream drops away. There goes his A-Level. At the corner falls his degree. The next set of doors and his doctorate is gone. A left turn – goodbye to his star-spangled career. From the great heights of fame and admiration he is hurtling at speed towards an abyss of servitude and invisibility.
Again they pass from corridors of echoing tile to plush carpeting, through the double doors and into the ICU. Having sat with his brother so many times in the past fortnight, Daniel isn’t ready for the shock. Until now he’s experienced Alex as a split presence: in his head an embodiment of childhood memory, while in the flesh little more than dead meat – sanitised and dehumanised by skull cap and tubing, and with skin as unyielding as wax. But to see Alex like this, propped up in bed and with opened eyes staring straight into his own, sears him like a branding iron. His head pounds to cries of ‘Oh God, Alex. It’s me. Alex, it’s Daniel’. The words themselves emerge only as a whimper, strangled by the tightness in his throat.
Alex’s reaction is infinitesimal; anyone but a twin would miss it. Twenty-four years it may have been since Alex had laid eyes on him, but recognition is clearly instant and unquestionable. None of the usual searching that comes with encountering a childhood friend as an adult: learning to see behind the wrinkles, beyond the grey, dismissing the added kilos and surplus skin to find the familiar features in a stranger’s face. Alex will have no need to update his mental picture of Daniel, for Alex himself will have lived through every change. And Daniel can see at last just how alike they both are. True that he remains gaunt-faced, and the paralysis has left it asymmetrical; on his left side the eye drooping, the mouth turned down at its corner, but the bone structure beneath is all but identical, and the look – the piercing eye-to-eye gaze, even across the ward that still separates them – is no less than the look into the mirror Daniel gives each morning.
Introductions may be redundant, but still he approaches the bedside hesitantly, mindful of Gulnaz’s request to go easy. There is no movement to Alex’s head, only to his eyes, which pursue his twin every step of the way. For a second time Daniel touches his hand. It remains taut-skinned and leathery, but he now detects something else – signals hammering at the tendons, willing the fingers to respond to his touch. A thumb curls around his own.
“Alex. Oh man, oh man,” he croaks. “Up to your old tricks again. Such a bloody long time, eh? You had us all so worried, you total bastard.”
The words of course are facile, euphemistic to the point of absurdity; words carefully selected from a text that could potentially express unrestrained joy and deepest pain. His voice is met by a guttural sound, the emotional envelope of which is unclear – somewhere between a child’s hum of pleasure on being handed a favourite sweet and the warble of someone trapped at the climax of a nightmare. But for Daniel it’s a bond with his brother greater than any moment in their childhood he could remember. The touch twins them soul to soul. And he holds fast.
“Hey, don’t get upset. They say you’re going to be okay. Just a few more days.”
He’s about to say more when a voice interjects from behind.
“Ah, good. I see you two are getting to know each other again.” Prentice is back, uninvited, complete with dazzling smile and spotless coat. “Our patient here is making excellent progress, aren’t you, Mr George? But I’m sure he is feeling a little tired and would like to rest now.”
At this, Alex gives out another gagged wail – wilder this time, clearly one of protest. Daniel squeezes his hand.
“Never fear, mate. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll see you again tomorrow, okay?”
With that obsequious hand of his, Prentice gently steers Daniel by the shoulder and escorts him from Intensive Care. Gulnaz trails awkwardly behind, her identity caught between that of duty nurse and fellow visitor.
“If I might have a word with you, Mr George, in private?”
“I want Gulnaz to be with me. Me and her…”
“Of course. As you wish. That’s fine.”
They reach a small office. No beds or smells or needles this time. Not like a hospital room at all, more like a holding area for breaking morbid news. Prentice is determined to make them comfortable, sits them down on cushioned chairs, offers coffee from a machine in the corner and, when it’s declined, resorts instead to the water dispenser.
They are all sipping when he begins. “It’s a most unusual case. We are of course delighted with his progress, but…”
“Progress!? My brother’s a bloody cripple!”
Gulnaz shifts uncomfortably.
“That’s true, for the moment, Mr George,” Prentice acknowledges with a slight nod and reassuring glance at his nurse. “But your brother is making a steady recovery.”
Daniel glares at him with disdain.
“When I asked you on the first day if he was dying, you assured me he was going to be fine.”
Prentice shrugs.
“I don’t have a crystal ball, I only wish I did. All I can ever do is reach a prognosis based on the evidence. But I think we can safely say that your brother isn’t dying. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. According to all our tests, he’s apparently as fit as a fiddle – perfectly capable of walking out of here and getting on with normal life. Mild concussion might just about have explained the coma, but we have nothing to account for the loss of speech and movement. The signs and symptoms might indicate a stroke, a bleed to the brain or a spinal injury, but our tests have all come back negative.”
“Don’
t tell me you think he’s faking!”
“Heavens, no. But the problem is, in all honesty, there’s little more we can do.”
Ah, it’s clear now what all this is about. This is handover time. The washing of hands of the matter. Very handy.
“We plan to move him from Intensive Care to an open ward tomorrow. We shall of course continue to monitor his progress for the next week whilst you make suitable arrangements, but if he continues to improve, whilst remaining unresponsive to our tests and treatments, then I think it in his best interest to be transferred somewhere more comfortable.”
“You mean you need the beds,” Daniel growls beneath his breath. Prentice is unapologetic.
“And yes, we do indeed always need the beds. Our remit is quite clear: we are a hospital, not a rest home.”
Daniel only now looks at Gulnaz. “Come on,” he hisses. He scrunches his plastic cup and leaves it on the arm of the chair.
Prentice shows them to the door but hangs behind. Gulnaz thanks him on her way out. In the corridor, she and Daniel stare at each other. She whispers his name, hugs him, kisses his hair, and takes his hand as they break apart.
“Trust me, Daniel. There are care centres we can contact: physiatrists, occupational therapists. The hospital will provide a wheelchair. And there are grants – round the clock nursing care.”
“Sod that. He’s my brother, for Christ’s sake. I’ve already lost him once. No way I’m letting that lot loose on him. I’ve seen it all before. How they treated my mother. What it did to her being taken away from home. I’m perfectly capable. Experienced.”
It’s again the brick wall he’d built between them on day one. Defences up. Hard as a nut. Eye contact broken. He heads towards the exit just a little too fast for her to keep up.
“Where are you going now? When shall I see you?”
“Home. Home to rearrange things.”
Finally he stops, one hand on the swing door, feet firmly set. There are no more dreams left for him to shed.
“Alex is coming to live with me.”
He catches a look of foreboding in her eyes. It follows him out as he threads his way through the car park until his view of her is screened by a parked van.