‘Oh that’s exciting.’ I sat up in bed and he came and sat next to me, giving me a long kiss. ‘Although,’ he said. ‘There’s no rush.’
I was dozing when he eventually left again. He kissed me and said he’d ring me later. I half heard him leave, and then I nodded off again. I only woke up when my “just in case” alarm went off – a night of very little sleep had obviously caught up with me.
Contentedly, I stretched out, smelling Finn’s aftershave on my pillow and then went off for a shower. And when I came out, my doorbell was ringing. I paused, my head on one side listening.Was it my doorbell? No one ever visited me. In fact, I hadn’t even known the flat had a doorbell.
Rubbing my wet hair with the towel, I tied my dressing gown around me more securely and went to answer. And there, on the doorstep were two police officers – a man and a woman. They were talking but when I opened the door they both stopped.
‘We’re looking for someone called Stevie?’ one of them said.
I dropped the towel, and stared at them, feeling my legs beginning to shake. Suddenly I was back in the gallery where I’d been when the police had arrived to tell me the news about Max.
‘That’s me,’ I whispered. ‘I’m Stevie.’
‘Do you know Mr Finn Russell?’ the policeman said.
‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’
The police officers exchanged a glance. The female officer spoke in a kind tone. ‘I’m afraid he’s been involved in an accident,’ she said.
Chapter 33
Elsie
1941
I had made my decision. I was going to do as Nelly asked. And it was the worst thing I could ever have imagined. In fact, it was far beyond anything I could ever have imagined – before the war at least. Before the nightly raids and the destruction of our normal lives. But somehow it also seemed less bad than watching Nelly die a slow and painful death. Seeing her limbs withering beneath the dressings, or watching her being submerged in baths of saline water, hearing her moan with pain, and knowing none of it would help.
Once I’d decided I would help her die, I felt lighter, as though a weight had been lifted from me. But that lightness didn’t last long. This was a huge thing I was doing. I knew it would be a decision that would stay with me for my whole life. And that was assuming no one ever found out what I had done. It was something I would have to learn to live with. But I knew in my heart that if the roles had been reversed, I would havewanted Nelly to do the same for me. And I knew she would have agreed.
Fortunately, I had two days off after Nelly had asked me to help her die, and I decided to spend them getting everything ready. I knew I had to act fast, because the awful truth was Nelly was suffering terribly and I wanted it to stop. I wanted her to be at peace.
‘A few of us are going to the pictures tomorrow,’ Petra said as we left the hospital. ‘Afternoon showing, then a couple of drinks afterwards and home before the siren goes. Fancy coming along?’
I smiled at her. ‘I’d love that,’ I said honestly, wishing I could go and do normal, fun things like Nelly and I used to. I wondered if I ever would again. ‘But I have to help a friend.’
At home I dug out some of my old books from my nursing training and pored over the sections on medicines. Nurses couldn’t prescribe of course, but we handed out the drugs that the doctors had allocated for patients. We had access to the medicines cupboards and with everyone so busy at the hospital, things weren’t as tightly controlled as they once had been, or indeed, as they should be.
I thought the best way to let Nelly slip away would be to give her more morphine than she needed. But because she was already on lots of painkillers, she would be used to the medicine and I needed to be sure that the dose I gave her would work.
I looked at the pages in my book and rubbed my head, thinking hard. Nelly was small and slight – even more so now – but she’d have a tolerance to the medicine. I scribbled down some sums on the back page of the textbook and then added a bit more to be sure. That would do it, I thought.
But how to get hold of it? I couldn’t go and take what I needed from the drugs cupboard in my own ward. Someone would notice it was missing. Instead, I thought, I would have to take little bits from all over. But the good news was, I had accessto every ward in the hospital thanks to my book. No one would pay any attention to me wandering around. No one would even notice what I was doing.
Morphine came in tiny glass bottles and lots of patients were given it, because we had so many badly injured people to care for who needed proper pain relief. I planned to take a walk round the wards just when I knew the nurses would be doing their rounds with the medicines trolley and swipe a bottle here and a bottle there.
So, the following day – when I was still on my break from the ward – I headed to work. Thankfully there was no sign of Jackson. He was on the same shift pattern as me more or less – nurses and porters’ shifts weren’t exactly the same – and though that usually made me uneasy, this time it made things easier.
I found the book quickly in one of the women’s surgical wards. I checked my watch – almost time for the drugs round – and decided to hang around for a while. So I chatted to a few of the patients about the book, staying out of the way of the nurses as they bustled round, checking charts and getting the medicines ready. And then, when the trolley was prepared, I said goodbye and walked casually towards the door. As the nurse with the medicines looked at the chart she was holding, I reached out a hand without breaking stride, picked up one of the little bottles of morphine and slipped it, unseen, into my pocket.
Then I did the same in the ward along the corridor, popping in and pretending I’d got the wrong ward, so I didn’t have to linger. And finally I did it on a ward upstairs, where I pinched two more bottles from their trolley too.
And then, with the book clutched in my arms and my pockets rattling with the bottles, I went to see Nelly.
‘She’s very low,’ the nurse on the ward said as I went in. ‘Hopefully seeing you might cheer her up.’
I doubted that, but I nodded and pushed open the door to Nelly’s room.
‘It’s me,’ I said quietly because her eye was closed but I knew she wasn’t asleep. Sure enough, she blinked a couple of times and then opened her eye and looked at me.
