‘Has he tried flying yet? Had lessons?’ Maya adjusted the bag on her arm, glad of a delay to visit Conrad. He was always on at her to stay longer as it was and being there for the whole of visiting time was exhausting.
‘He’s seven.’
‘Then tell him to keep on aiming high; he’ll get there if he really wants it.’
Persistence was what it took; she should know. She’d known ever since she was a little girl that she wanted to fly helicopters. She’d saved her birthday and Christmas money every year in the gold pot of dreams moneybox her mother gave her. It was nowhere near enough but she added to it over the years with cash from weekend jobs, from part-time positions she grabbed hold of whenever they came her way. And once she finished school, she worked as a temp in offices around Dorset, she waited tables, she worked behind a bar, each job part of her pursuit to get the funds to one day fulfil her dream. It wasn’talways easy to find work and for a while she hadn’t had any, but she’d taken what she could when she could.
Maya was married by the time she had enough money to put herself through the rigorous training required to become a helicopter pilot. At first, Conrad had supported her, ever the husband wanting his wife to be happy, but it hadn’t taken long for his distaste to show through. He’d thought she’d give up on the preposterous idea when she got pregnant, but she studied all the more, especially in the final few weeks of her pregnancy, when she wasn’t able to work. Whenever she got the chance, she had those books open, her brain engaged. And after Isaac arrived, she slowed right down to take care of their son, but the career choice never went away, much to Conrad’s chagrin.
Maya continued with her study and her training once Isaac was at nursery and then school and by the time he moved on to secondary education, Maya landed her first job as a helicopter pilot. Yet Conrad still talked about it like it was her hobby rather than a proper career. With his disapproval and her dad’s disinterest, it had made Maya all the more determined to carry on flying helicopters but her end goal shifted because she didn’t just want to be a helicopter pilot; she wanted to be a HEMS pilot for the air ambulance.
And she’d done it, in spite of them all. Isaac and Julie were endlessly proud and told her all the time but a tiny part of her would always be sad that Conrad hadn’t and her dad would rather talk about anything other than his daughter and her job with the Whistlestop River Air Ambulance.
When Maya reached Conrad’s bedside at the hospital, she sat down in relief. He was asleep.
But the relief was short-lived when she heard him murmur, ‘What, no kiss?’
So only resting his eyes then. She put a smile on her face and ignored the question. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘I wasn’t sleeping, too bloody noisy in here.’ Another complaint.
‘That’s hospitals for you.’ He was sulking like a kid, not something she’d ever been able to coax him out of.How about being grateful for the doctors and nurses who’ve been caring for you?she wanted to yell at him, but instead she asked, ‘Are you in any pain?’
‘It’s not so bad,’ he harrumphed. ‘They’ve said I can probably go home tomorrow.’
‘That’s great news.’ And it would cut out her having to come to the hospital, having to abide by visiting hours. His place was much closer to hers than here was. But it wasn’t so great in that it would still require her to give him a lot of attention, make sure he was all right at home recovering.
A change of subject now was the only way to mask how she was feeling. ‘The cat flap is in so I’ve taken Whizzy to mine.’ She would add that the cat missed him, was devastated at moving house, but she’d be lying.
‘Thanks.’ He said it as if she was doing him a favour, which she probably was. He’d likely grown bored of using the cat as a pawn in his game and now he had her instead.
She pulled out his iPad from the bag. ‘I brought this in for you; it’s fully charged and should be a lot better than the other one.’ She set it onto the cabinet beside his bed.
Maya had spent time looking after the cat at Conrad’s before the cat flap was fitted at her place, which worked out well as she’d had to bring bits and pieces in to the hospital for him. During the time Maya had spent at the house that was once also her home, she’d realised how many reminders there were of her, as though she’d never really left. There were pictures of them together on his walls, on the mantelpiece, on the hallway table, a photo of both of them with Isaac on his first day at school, their wedding photograph – she’d put her own away in a box andshoved it into the storage cupboard, likely never to be looked at again.
She took out the carton of chocolate milk she’d picked up at the supermarket for him and poured it into the cup on his bedside table.
He picked up the drink. ‘When I’m home, I’ll enjoy this in a proper long glass. None of this plastic crap.’
She stayed for about an hour and when the aroma of dinner preceded the delivery of meals to the ward, she saw the chance to escape. ‘I’ll let you eat.’ She braced herself for his reaction to what she said next. ‘I can’t come back again tonight. I’m on shift tomorrow so I’ll have to go to bed early.’
‘You’re going back to work?’
‘You seem surprised.’
‘Well, yeah, you’ve been here, you’ve been good to me, but you must be tired.’
‘I am but I’ve got to get back to it at some point. I need the money. And I’d only go if I knew I was safe, remember.’ And it was a good reason not to come by again, give her a proper break from all of this.
‘I’ll miss the company later on.’ He kept his voice low. ‘I’m on the bloody geriatric ward, Maya.’
She sensed the other patients’ lack of willingness to chat with Conrad was probably more down to their own individual health concerns than anything else. That or he’d really pissed them off when his colleagues stopped by and made so much noise they’d had a couple of warnings from the nursing staff.
‘I’ll be in again tomorrow after shift, so in plenty of time before you’re discharged,’ she assured him and then because the look he gave her expected it, leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.
He turned at the last minute and caught the edge of her lips, his good hand ran up the back of her neck to pull her in for aproper kiss and when she went to pull away, he held her there gently.
‘I’m really sorry, Maya, about this, about everything. I wasn’t a good husband to you. You deserve better.’
