“She was moved this morning. Next of kin will have been notified.”
“I’m her next of kin.”
“That’s strange. Let me check.” She stabbed at her keyboard and squinted at the monitor. “Jessica, did you say?”
“Yes.”
“We have a number here, but... no, that doesn’t look right.”
“It’s a UK mobile,” Jess explained.
“Ah, that’s the problem, then. Our system can’t make international calls. Is there a local number I can add to her file?”
Jess gave the number at Darling House and made a mental note to check that the answering machine was still plugged in and working. “Why was she moved? Did something happen?”
“I’ll ask Dr. Martin to come and have a talk with you when he’s finished his rounds. It shouldn’t be long. He tries to see family during visiting hours.”
“Is Nora okay?”
“She’s stable now. And if anything should happen, she’s in the best place she could be.” The nurse smiled apologetically at the flowers in Jess’s arms. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave those here. They’re not allowed in the ICU.”
Jess handed over the bunch of red-blossomed Christmas bush from Nora’s garden and started down the corridor, keeping a note of the room numbers. Catching glimpses through the open doorways of small, lonely scenes she thought, redundantly and with unforgivable obviousness, how much she hated hospitals. The balancing thought presented itself instantly: how fortunate it was that there were people, incredible people, who chose to work among and care for the very ill. Jess felt a wave of gratitude that made her unexpectedly tearful. She blamed jet lag—it always brought emotions closer to the surface. And coming home. And Nora being unwell.
As she neared room nineteen, Jess stopped to collect herself. She wanted to appear bright. Nora hated sympathy and would be aghast to see concern writ large on Jess’s face. When she turned the corner and entered the room, though, the thoughts of an instant ago seemed trivial.
The person in the bed was lying completely still beneath a white hospital sheet, her eyes closed. She was dwarfed by an alien machine—the heart monitor the woman at reception had mentioned, Jess realized—and any sense of tranquility was shattered by the electronic noises it emitted.
Jess’s first reaction was embarrassment at having entered the wrong room. This frail old woman with skin so thin it was transparent couldnot be Nora. Nora was full of life: when she entered a room, people turned to see what had just happened. This person, this imposter, took up no space at all; her body was so tiny, her face in repose so old. Jess wanted to bundle up her grandmother and take her home, back to Darling House, where she would sleep and mend and wake up and be herself again.
Nora’s bedroom, with its Pimpernel wallpaper and wrought-iron bed beneath the window, was a sanctuary of carefully curated textiles, paintings, and patterns. Although it was one of the smaller rooms at Darling House, Nora was adamant that she preferred it over the larger options, even the master bedroom on the other side of the hall, with its views across the harbor. “That’s always felt like my parents’ room,” she said once, with a shiver of distaste. “I’m happy enough here, thank you very much.” Mrs. Robinson said Nora had moved into the room after Polly was born—“It adjoined the little nursery, you see”—and had just never got around to moving back into her old, more spacious room.
Jess dragged the vinyl visitor’s chair closer to the bed. She was mindful not to knock the heart monitor as she arranged herself, glancing at the moving graph on its screen and drawing hope from the fact that the line seemed to be displaying a pattern of repetitive, evenly spaced squiggles. The metronomic beeping was regular, too, which she also took as a positive sign. She reached out and clasped her grandmother’s hand. It was colder than she’d expected, the knuckles hard and smooth beneath Nora’s tissue-paper skin.
“Ms. Turner-Bridges?”
Jess looked up to see a neat man with short brown hair and thin-rimmed glasses at the door, holding a file in one arm.
“I’m Dr. Martin. I’m looking after your grandmother while she’s in the ICU.”
Jess experienced a rush of pent-up tension. “Why is she in intensive care? What’s happened?”
“She had an episode of atrial fibrillation—rapid heartbeat—earlierthis morning. Of itself that’s not necessarily a concern, and we can medicate to bring it back into rhythm, but considering her age, and the CT and MRIs we took, she needs to be monitored closely.”
The doctor’s tone was measured, and it made Jess wary. “What do you mean about the scans? What did they show?”
“A colleague of mine spoke to you on the phone a couple of days ago, I believe. There was some swelling. Not unexpected after the impact she suffered when she fell.”
“He said she was confused—is that why?”
“The swelling could certainly account for some of it. But we’ve been giving her morphine for pain, and she’s almost ninety years old; a lack of clarity isn’t surprising.”
“Is it too early to ask when she’ll be coming home?”
Dr. Martin smiled patiently. “Ms. Turner-Bridges—”
“Nora will want to be at home as soon as possible.”
“I appreciate that, and I’m sure most people would share the sentiment. But it’s premature to be talking about moving her.” His voice softened. “I understand that you are your grandmother’s next of kin? While we’re doing everything we can to help her, and she clearly has a strong constitution, if there’s an advance care directive, now would be a good time for you to consult it.”
