‘Your father’s health was already poor. The chances of him recovering are reduced because of that.’
Sandy steps between the doctor and me. ‘I don’t understand. He will recover?’
The doctor sighs, in the way medics sigh in movies for dramatic effect right before they tell the relatives that their loved one is dead. ‘If he does wake up, he will have irreparable brain damage. How bad that will be is a guess at this stage.’
Sandy sobs hysterically into her tissue.
I don’t know whether I thank the doctor but he leaves the room. I slip my fingers into my dad’s cold, lifeless palm.
He would hate to live like this. Even if he wakes up and goes back to his old life, the life he had just hours ago, I know he hates living that way. But he still has good days. They might be few and far between but they exist. For so long as he has coherent days, days when he looks at me like my dad and I can see and feel how much he loves me, I’m not ready to let him go.
There’s an unbearable, mounting pressure in my brow and behind my eyes but I don’t cry.
He’ll recover. He’s my dad.
Dad is moved to a side room on a ward and registered as an inpatient. I wonder if he’ll ever become an outpatient. Sandy and I watch him in his vegetative state whilst auxiliary nurses bring us endless cups of tea – the good old English cure for anything – and give us each a plate with four cheddar triangle sandwiches and half a bag of ready salted crisps.
‘The only other spare meals we have are dysphagic but you’re welcome to try if you like?’ Valarie, the evening nurse, asks.
‘Thanks all the same but cheese sandwiches are great,’ I say.
Valarie chuckles. ‘I thought you might say that.’
The food reminds me where I’m supposed to be.
The completion dinner.
I slip out of the room and I’m grateful for the fresh, crisp air in the hospital car park. I find Gregory’s number on my phone and dial, staring up to the dark sky, trying to keep it together.
‘Scarlett.’
It’s crazy but something in his voice, the sound of my name, brings everything that’s happened crashing down on me.
‘Scarlett? Are you there? Is everything okay?’
I sniff back the first sign of tears and pinch the bridge of my nose between my finger and thumb. ‘Gregory, I’m sorry but I can’t make it to dinner.’
‘Scarlett, what’s wrong?’ His tone shifts to rigid concern.
‘I, ah, it’s my dad. He…’ I breathe out slowly and wipe a tear from my cheek. ‘My dad has Alzheimer’s. He, ah, he fell down the stairs and…’ A sob unwittingly breaks from my throat. ‘I don’t think… He’s, he’s brain damaged. I don’t know if he’s going to wake up. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be crying to you. I’ve got to go. I’m sorry about dinner.’
I send Sandy to the café on the ground floor of the hospital for a break. It’s getting late and we’re both exhausted but as long as the nurses keep turning a blind eye to us being here, we won’t leave him.
I sit with my dad, having a one-way conversation for almost an hour. There’s no change. Once or twice, I imagine him responding to my voice, answering my questions, but if it weren’t for his chest subtly rising and falling, he’d be still. The machines that keep him alive beep and whisper in rhythm. A score of death. That’s the brutal reality. Dad, the man he was, has been slowly dying. But this can’t be the end.
My body goes stiff with both realisation and disgust. Part of me, tiny though it is, is relieved that his suffering might be drawing to an end.
His skin is increasingly pale, almost translucent under the fluorescent lights when we eventually leave. Sandy and I walk out of the main entrance linked together. She carries a plastic bag containing my dad’s torn clothes in one hand and holds the lapels of her coat closed at her chest with the other.
‘Scarlett, I’m sorry.’
She stares at her shoes as tears drip to the ground at her feet. She looks young and vulnerable. Her coat hangs loose at her waist; the toll of the last few months has led to her weight gradually decreasing. I wish there was an upper limit of tears that one person could shed in a day.
‘I left him,’ she cries. ‘He couldn’t feed himself so I tried to help him. He got angry and?—’
Throwing my arms around her, pulling her head onto my shoulder, I rest my chin on her soft, black curls. ‘It’s okay.’
‘He spat his soup at me then started screaming that he was hungry. I just – I needed a break. I went out for a walk around the block. I shouldn’t have left him for so long.’
