Afterwards, Page 3

  Your voice was proud. “She does.”

  “And that already puts her ahead of the game, as it were, because that fight in her is going to make all the difference now.”

  I looked away from him to you. The smile lines around your eyes were still there, too deeply etched by past happiness to be rubbed out by what was happening now.

  “I need to be frank with you about her condition. You won’t be able to take in all the medical speak now, so I’ll just tell you simply. We can talk again—we most definitely will talk again.”

  I saw a shake in your leg, as if you were fighting the instinct to pace the room, flee from it. But we had to listen.

  “Jennifer has sustained significant burns to her body and face. Because of the burns, stress is being placed on her internal organs. She has also suffered inhalation injuries. This means that inside her body her airways, including part of her lungs, are burnt and not functioning.”

  She was hurt inside as well.

  As well.

  “At the moment I’m afraid I have to tell you she has a less than fifty percent chance of surviving.”

  I screamed at Dr. Sandhu: “No!”

  My scream didn’t even ruffle the air.

  I put my arms around you, needing to hold on to you. For a moment you half turned towards me as if you felt me.

  “We are keeping her heavily sedated so that she won’t feel any pain,” Dr. Sandhu continued. “And we are breathing for her with a ventilator. We have a highly skilled specialist team here who will be doing everything possible for her.”

  “I want to see her now,” you said in a voice I didn’t recognize.

  I stood close against you as we looked at her.

  We used to do that when she was small, after coming in from a party. We’d go to her room and stand and watch her as she slept—soft pink feet sticking out of her cotton nightie, silky hair across her stretched-out arms, which were yet to reach beyond her head. We made her, we’d think. Together we somehow created this amazing child. Chocolate moments, you called them, to make up for broken nights and exhaustion and battles over broccoli. Then we’d each separately give her a hug or a kiss, and feeling—I admit it—smugly proud, we’d go into our own room.

  I was glad, for your sake, that her face was covered in dressings now. Just her swollen eyelids and damaged mouth visible. Her burnt limbs were encased in some kind of plastic.

  As we looked at her, Dr. Sandhu’s sentence coiled inside us like a viper. “She has a less than fifty percent chance of surviving.”

  Then you made yourself stand tall, and your voice was strong.

  “Everything is going to be all right, Jen. I promise. You’re going to get better.”

  A pledge. Because as her father your job is to protect her; and when that’s failed, you make everything better.

  Then Dr. Sandhu explained about the intravenous lines and the monitors and the dressings and, although he didn’t intend this, it quickly became clear that if she got better it would be because of him, not you.

  But you don’t take that lying down. You don’t just hand over power over your daughter. So you asked questions. What did this tube do exactly? That one? Why use this? You were learning the lingo, the techniques. This was your daughter’s world now, so it was yours and you would learn its rules, master it. The man who stripped down a car engine at sixteen and then rebuilt it following a manual—a man who likes to know exactly what he’s putting his trust in.

  At sixteen I would have been reading George Eliot, as equally useless now as a car engine manual.

  “How badly will she be scarred?” you asked.

  And your optimism was glorious! Your courage in the face of it all was marvelous. I knew you didn’t give a monkey’s arse about how she looked compared to whether she lived. Your question was to show your belief that she will live, that the issue of scarring is a real one because one day she will—will—face the outside world again.

  You’ve always been the optimist, me the pessimist (pragmatist, I’d correct). But now your optimism was a life buoy and I was clinging to it.

  Dr. Sandhu, a kind man, didn’t mention your question’s hopefulness when he replied.

  “She has suffered second-degree partial-thickness burns. This type of burn can be either superficial, which means the blood supply is intact and the skin will heal, or deep, which inevitably means scarring. Unfortunately it takes several days before the burns reveal which type they are.”

  A nurse came up. “We’re arranging a family room for you to stay in tonight. Your wife has been brought back to the acute neurology ward, which is just across the corridor.”

  “Can I see my wife now?”

  “I’ll take you there.”

  Jenny was waiting for me in the corridor. “Well …?”

  “You’re going to be fine. A long haul ahead, but you’re going to be fine.”

  Still holding tightly to your optimism. I couldn’t bear to have told her what Dr. Sandhu said.

  “They don’t yet know about scarring,” I continued. “If they’re the kind of burns that leave a scar.”

  “But they might not?” she asked, her voice hopeful.

  “No.”

  “I thought I was going to look like that permanently.” She sounded almost euphoric. “Well, maybe not quite as bad as that, like a Halloween mask, but something like that. But I really might not at all?”

  “That’s what the consultant said.”

  Relief shone out of her face; made her luminous.

  Looking at me, she didn’t see you come out of the burns unit. You turned your face to the wall and then your hands slammed on to it, as if you could expel what you’d seen and heard. And I knew then how hard-won your hopefulness was, the bravery and effort it took. Jenny hadn’t seen.

  We heard footsteps pounding down the corridor.

  Your sister was hurtling towards you, her police officer’s radio hissing at her side.

  I instantly felt inadequate. If Pavlov’s dog had had a sister-in-law like Sarah, it would be a recognized emotional reflex. I know. Unfair. But spiky emotion makes me feel a little more resilient. Besides, it’s not that surprising, is it? The most important woman in your life from the age of ten till you met me, a sister-in-law/mother-in-law rolled into one—little wonder I feel intimidated by her.

  Her voice was breathless.

  “I was in Barnes, doing a joint thing with their drugs—Oh, for God’s sake, it doesn’t matter where I was, does it? I’m so sorry, Mikey.”

  That old childish name that she uses for you. But when was the last time? She put her arm around you, held you tightly.

  For a little while she didn’t say anything. I saw her face stiffen, hardening herself to tell you.

  “It was arson.”

  5

  Each of Sarah’s words a razor blade to be swallowed.

  Someone had deliberately done this. My God. Deliberately.

  “But why?” Jenny asked.

  At four years old we’d nicknamed her the “Why-Why Bird.”

  “But why doesn’t the moon fall on top of us? But why am I a girl not a boy? But why does Mowgli eat ants? But why can’t Grandpa get better?” (Answers: “Gravity”; “Genes”; “They are tangy and nutritious.” By the end of the day, worn out: “It’s just the way it is, sweetie.” A tired kind of answer, but an answer.)

  There was no answer to the why in this.

  “Do you remember anything, Jen?” I asked.

  “No. I remember Ivo texting at half past two. But that’s it. I can’t remember anything after that. Nothing.”

  Sarah touched you lightly on the arm and you flinched towards her.

  “Whoever did this, I’ll kill them.”

  I’d never seen you angry like that before, as if you were fighting for survival. But I was glad of your rage, an emotion that met this information head-on and fought back.

  “I need to see Grace now. And then I want you to tell me everything you know. After I’ve see
n her. Everything.”

  I hurried ahead to my ward, wanting to know before you did what state I was in, as if I could prepare you in some way.

  There were tubes and monitors attached to my body now, but I was breathing without any equipment, and I thought that must be a good thing. I was unconscious, yes, but I really looked hardly injured apart from the neatly dressed wound on my head. Maybe it wasn’t so bad.

  “I’ll be outside,” Jenny said.

  She’s never given us privacy before, never seemed to even consider we might need it. It’s Adam who dashes out of the kitchen when we have a hug and a kiss. “Being mushy! Yuck!” But Jenny’s radar hasn’t detected any embarrassing parental passion. Maybe like most teenagers, she thinks that’s long gone, while they discover it and keep it all for themselves. So I was touched by her.

  I waited for you, listening to the sound of trolleys and bleeping machines and the soft footfall of nurses in sneakers, wanting to hear your footsteps, your voice.

  The seconds ticked past and I had to be with you. Right now! Please.

  And then you were running over the slippery linoleum towards my bed, a nurse pushing a trolley out of your way.

  You put your strong arms around my body, holding me tightly against you, the softness of your linen important-meetings-shirt against my creased stiff hospital gown. And for a moment the room smelt of Tide and you, not the hospital.

  You kissed me: one kiss on my mouth and then one on each closed eyelid. For a moment, I thought that like a princess in one of Jenny’s old storybooks your three kisses would break the spell and I’d wake up and I’d feel your kiss—your stubble scratchy on my skin by that time of day.

  But thirty-nine’s probably a little old to be a sleeping princess.

  And maybe a bash on the head isn’t as easy to reverse as a witch’s curse.

  Then I remembered—how could I have forgotten, even for three kisses—Jenny outside, waiting for me.

  I knew that I mustn’t wake up, mustn’t even try, not yet, because I couldn’t leave her on her own.

  You understand that, don’t you? Because if your job as a father is to protect your child, and mend her when she’s broken, my job as a mother is to be there with her.

  “My brave wife,” you said.

  You called me that when I’d just given birth to Jenny. I’d felt so proud then—as if I’d stopped being the usual me and had instead rappelled down from the moon.

  But I didn’t deserve it.

  “I didn’t get to her in time,” I said to you, my voice loud with guilt. “I should have realized something was wrong before; I should have got to her before.”

  But you couldn’t hear me.

  We were silent—when have we ever been silent together?

  “What happened?” you asked me, and your voice cracked a little, as if you were winding back the years to your teenage self. “What the hell happened?”

  As if understanding could make it better.

  I started with the strong, warm breeze at sports day.

  Your eyes are closed now, as if you can join me if your eyes are shut too. And I’ve told you everything I know.

  But of course you couldn’t hear me.

  “So why do it?” that bossy nanny voice says to me. “Waste of time! Waste of breath!” A cognitive therapist would send her packing, but I’ve become used to her; and, besides, I think it’s good for a mother to have someone bossing her around, so she knows what it’s like.

  And she has a point, doesn’t she?

  Why talk to you now when you can’t hear me?

  Because words are the spoken oxygen between us, the air a marriage breathes. Because we have been talking to each other for nineteen years. Because I would be so lonely if I didn’t talk to you. So no therapist in the world, with whatever logic they brought to bear, could get me to stop.

  A woman doctor is coming purposefully towards us. I’m reassured by her being in her fifties, by her air of tired professionalism. Beneath her sensible navy blue skirt she’s wearing high, spiky red shoes. I know, a silly thing to notice. You’re looking at her name badge and rank, the important things. “Dr. Anna-Maria Bailstrom. Neurologist. Consultant.”

  Is it the Anna-Maria in her that wears the red shoes?

  “I thought she would look worse,” you say to Dr. Bailstrom. Neurologist. Consultant. “But she’s hardly hurt, is she? And she’s breathing for herself, isn’t she?”

  The relief in your voice strings your words together.

  “I’m afraid that her head injury is severe. A firefighter told us that a part of the ceiling had fallen on her.”

  There’s tension stringing Dr. Bailstrom’s words together.

  “She has unequal pupil reflexes and isn’t responding to stimuli,” she continues, her voice tight as wire. “The MRI, which we will repeat, indicates significant brain damage.”

  “She’ll be all right.” Your voice is fierce. Your fingers tense around mine. “You’re going to be fine, my darling.”

  Of course I am! I can quote medieval poetry and tell you about Fra Angelico or Obama’s health reforms and the characters in The Hobbit—and how many people can do all that? Even my bossy nanny is still in place, in her element actually. The thinking me isn’t in the body me, but I’m right here, my darling, my mind undamaged.

  “We have to warn you that there’s a likelihood she may never regain consciousness.”

  You turn away from her, your body language saying, “Bollocks!”

  And I think you’re right. I’m pretty sure that if I tried, I’d be able to get back into my body. And then—maybe not right away but soon—I’d wake up again. Regain consciousness, to put it into Dr. Bailstrom’s language.

  Dr. Bailstrom is now leaving, precipitous on her red spiky heels on the slippery linoleum. She’s probably letting you have some time for it to sink in. Dad, with his GP hat on, was a firm believer in sinking-in time.

  I’m talking too much. The problem with being “out of body” is that you don’t need to take a breath for new sentences and so there are no natural physical pauses.

  And you’re so quiet. I think you have stopped talking to me altogether. And I am so afraid that I scream at you.

  “Jenny’s been badly hurt, darling,” you say. And my fear is swept away in compassion for you. You tell me that she’ll get better. You tell me that I’ll get better too. We’ll be “right as rain” again.

  As you talk I look at your arms: strong arms that years ago carried three boxes of my books at a time from the bottom of the student house to my room at the top; that on Tuesday carried Jenny’s new chest of drawers upstairs to her bedroom.

  Is your character that strong too? Is it really possible to be as brave as you are now—this resiliently hopeful?

  You talk about the holiday we’re going to take when this is “all over.”

  “Skye. And we’ll camp. Adam’ll love that. Making a fire and fishing for our supper. Jenny and I can climb the Cuillins. Addie can manage the smallest one now. You can take a whole stack of books and read by a loch. What do you think?”

  I think it sounds like a paradise on earth that I never knew was there.

  I think that while I have my head in the clouds, you climb a mountain to do it.

  As I did earlier at Jenny’s bedside, I cling on to your hope; let myself be carried by it.

  I see that Sarah has arrived on the far side of the ward, on her phone. Busy, efficient Sarah. The first time you introduced us I felt I was being interviewed for something I’d inadvertently done wrong. But what? The crime of loving you and plotting to take you away from her? Or, worse, of being fraudulent in my affections and not loving you enough? Or maybe—the one I picked—not being worthy of you, not being as interesting and beautiful and downright remarkable as I should be if I was going to claim her brother and become a part of your clan.

  Even before this, I saw myself paddling around a duck pond in a rubber dinghy while she steered her life on a fast, direct course
to a clearly mapped destination. And now here I am, unable to speak or see or move, let alone help you or Jenny or Adam, head partially shaved, in a hideous hospital nightgown—and she’s sailed in, competent and capable, at the helm.

  My nanny voice would be a lot happier if I were more like her. You reassured me, touchingly, that you wouldn’t be.

  A nurse is with her and I see they’re debating the phone, with Sarah flashing her badge, but the nurse is clearly adamant and Sarah leaves again. You spot her as she leaves, but stay with me.

  We return to that camping trip to Skye—to arching blue-gray skies and still blue-gray water and huge blue-gray mountains, their soft colors so alike that they are almost indistinguishable from one another; to Jenny and Adam and you and me, softly colored, not separated from each other. A family.

  We leave my ward and Skye, and I see Jenny waiting for me in the corridor.

  “So, what’s happening to you?” she asks me, her voice anxious.

  “They’re doing scans and whatnot,” I say.

  She hasn’t been giving us romantic privacy, I realize, but medical privacy, like me staying out of the room now when I take her to the GP’s.

  “And that’s it?” she asks.

  “So far, yes. Pretty much.”

  She doesn’t question me more closely—afraid, I think, to know any more.

  “Aunt Sarah’s in the family room,” she says. “She’s been talking to someone at the police station. It’s funny, but I think she knows I’m here. I mean, she kept kind of glancing around at me. Like she’d caught a glimpse.”

  It’ll be Murphy’s law if the only person who has any real inkling of Jenny and me turns out to be your sister.

  It must be late evening now, and in the family room, someone—who?—has brought a toothbrush and pajamas for you and put them neatly at one end of the single bed.

  Sarah closes the phone as she sees you.

  “Adam’s at a school friend’s house,” Sarah says. “Georgina’s on her way from Oxfordshire and will pick him up. I thought it would be best if he was in his own bed tonight, and he’s particularly close to Grace’s mum, isn’t he?”