Jess felt light-headed as she tried to absorb this information.
The doctor consulted his file and then, pushing his glasses back to the top of his nose, reminded Jess that she should let the nurses know if there was anything she or her grandmother needed.
His words and their grim connotation hung around in the room after he left, and Jess sat very still, holding Nora’s hand as she slept and the machine beeped, waiting to see if they would sink in.
... if there’s an advance care directive, now would be a good time for you to consult it...
They did not. They stayed where they were, an ugly dark cloud near the ceiling. It was one man’s view, Jess told herself; the opinionof a doctor who might have been used to reading scans and was no doubt accustomed to treading carefully where the elderly were concerned, but who did not know Nora.
Jess leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. She could hear the regular pulsing of the monitor, the efficient tick of the clock above the door. Her own breathing fell into line with the rhythms of the room. Her eyelids were heavy. Her thoughts were being pulled into a funnel, down, down, down, falling fast through black spaces and folds of time and electrical storms of memory until, at last, she found herself on a beach...
She was three years old and wearing a new swimsuit, down on her hands and knees digging. She was conscious of the sun on her shoulders and the small of her back, the white lines of drying salt on her arms, the collapse of wet sand beneath her fingers. Waves crashed in the distance, right out there beyond the calm inner lagoon that had formed within a sandbar closer to the shore. She was very busy, concentrating on the castle she was building, and everything else was a blur of summery holiday bustle.
Time stretched and bent around her until, suddenly, something caught her attention. Someone laughed loudly, a siren began to sound, a bird flew overhead with a shrill call—Jess looked up and was shocked to see that the tide had crept away from her. The patch of sand she’d waded to when it was just a little island in the middle of the warm pool had been exposed and expanded on all sides as the water withdrew.
She stood up, her fingertips grainy, and looked back toward the shoreline, but it was so far away now she could barely see it.
She was all alone.
The hazy, warm swirl of seaside noise and motion was gone. Everything was in sharp focus and Jess was aware that the ground was moving all around her. Only, it wasn’t the ground pulsating; it was hundreds of crabs, appearing at once from small holes in the sand,round bodies bobbing, legs click-clacking along the hard surface of the wet sand, all skittering toward her at once.
The raw scratch of pure terror spread across her skin, and she opened her lungs to cry out—
Jess woke with a start.
The room was light, the air was warm and still, the ceiling above her was a low grid of white panels.
It took three long seconds to remember where she was and what she was doing here.
Sydney.
Hospital.
Nora.
She straightened in the chair. Her head swirled and her lower back ached. The hands of the clock were almost at four.
The dream was a familiar one; she’d been having it on and off for most of her life. More than just a dream, it was a memory. Only in real life, as the crabs made their approach, Nora had stepped in and scooped her up, wrapping her in the comfort of an embrace that had felt enormous.
Jess blinked and her vision sharpened.
Nora was awake. Her expression was perplexed, almost fearful, searching Jess’s face as if trying to remember who she was.
Jess leaned forward. “Hello, Nora,” she said, taking her grandmother’s hand.
“You.” Little more than a whisper, yet heavy with relief.
Her grandmother’s gratitude made Jess feel wonderful and ashamed at the same time. “Here”—she took up the plastic cup on the side table—“let’s get you some water.”
Nora’s eyes were pale and clouded, the skin around them red. She continued to study Jess’s face as she took a small sip from the straw. Her voice, when she spoke again, was barely there. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too, but please don’t talk now. We can catch up properly later, when you’re on the mend.”
“I’ve been waiting.”
“I came as quickly as I could. England is a long way away.”
There were tears on her grandmother’s face that seemed to have sprung from nowhere. The thought came to Jess that they were old tears, though she couldn’t have explained exactly what that meant. “You came from England.”
