A sound escaped me. I’m not sure what I’d been aiming for, but it came out halfway between a sob of despair and a humourless laugh.Of courseI was alright. It wasn’tmyheart that was failing. Mine was thumping against the walls of my chest, obscenely reminding me just how well it was able to pump the blood around my body. Unlike my poor sister’s.
I have no recollection of ending our call or propelling myself from the lounge, but I must have done, for I found myself back in the bedroom, pulling on shoes and reaching for a jacket and my bag. I ran at reckless speed back down the stairs, lucky not to have slipped and ended up arriving at A & E in an ambulance alongside Amelia.
I tried reaching Nick as I hurried through the house, between letting the dog out into the garden and tipping an excessive amount of food into her bowl. She looked up at me curiously, in the way dogs do when their owners are acting weirdly out of character.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know when I’ll be back,’ I explained, crouching down beside her. I only realised I was crying when Mabel’s long pink tongue swept over my cheeks to dry my tears. I buried my face in the thick fur of her ruff and she leant her weight against me, somehow understanding how much I needed a hug right then.
Nick’s phone kept going to voicemail – which was no great surprise when he was in surgery – so I dialled the main practice number and left a message with a receptionist who was so new to the job I couldn’t even remember her name.
‘Who shall I say called?’
‘Tell him it’s Lexi. Ask him to meet me at the hospital as soon as he can,’ I said as I reached for my car keys and slammed the front door shut.
‘Which hospital is that? Do you want me to add anything else?’
‘No. He’ll know where and why,’ I said, my voice so unsteady it was practically tripping over itself. ‘Just… just ask him to hurry,’ I said, before severing the connection and throwing my car into gear.
*
It was the same as the first trip I’d made to the hospital, a little over fifteen months earlier. Although this time minus the transatlantic flight and the lengthy cross-country drive in a hire car. But the feelings of helplessness and terror were all horribly familiar.
I parked in the hospital multistorey, as I must surely have done a hundred times before, but even as I ran from the car towards the hospital, I knew something felt different.This is the last time you’ll do this.The voice in my head sounded so real I could practically hear it echoing in the stairwell, ricocheting off the concrete walls. I tried to outrun the words, but they followed me down every level until I reached the ground. I forced myself to take a moment to steady my breathing before barrelling through the hospital’s revolving doors.
Mum and Tom could only have beaten me there by a matter of minutes. They were still at the information desk, waiting to be told where Amelia had been taken. I fell into Mum’s arms, while Tom stood by wringing his weather-beaten hands in a way I’d never seen anyone do in real life.
‘Do we know how she is?’ I asked Mum, somehow managing to include the woman behind the desk in the question.
‘Only what Linda told me on the phone. Amelia was…poorly… when she got there this morning.’
Poorly. A bit of a turn.All the euphemisms were coming out today and I could blame no one for using them when the words they stood in place of were so bloody scary.
‘She’s been taken to Milton Ward. It’s on the—’
‘Seventh floor. Yes, we know,’ I told the young woman behind the desk. We were probably more familiar with the geography of the hospital than she was.
Mum and I turned towards the bank of lifts, failing to notice that Tom was now lagging several steps behind us. I jabbed at the lift call button.
‘Perhaps it’s best if I stay down here,’ Tom said, his voice gruff and hesitant and nothing like his usual brusque tone. ‘You don’t want the likes of me cluttering up the place. You’ll want to be alone with Mimi.’
It was the first time I’d heard him use the diminutive version of Amelia’s name, which only her family used. It sounded perfectly at home on his lips. Perhaps that’s what brought the tears to my eyes, or it could have been the lost and terrified expression in Tom’s.
‘I know she’ll want to see you too, Tom,’ I said, reaching out and clasping one of his restless hands in my grip. ‘You’re family, after all.’
Tears don’t come easily to men of Tom’s generation, and to see the gnarly old mariner crying unashamedly in the busy hospital foyer broke the tiny pieces of my heart that weren’t already quietly shattering.
*
I knew things were bad even before we stepped out of the lift. Dr Vaughan was walking down the corridor wearing a troubled look on his face, which only intensified when he saw us emerge from the carriage. Defeat is the one thing you never want to see on a physician who’s caring for someone you love, but as much as he tried to hide it, I saw it there in Dr Vaughan’s eyes as he walked towards us.
His gaze went from Mum to me, and suddenly it was really hard to swallow.
‘Is she in any pain?’ It was the only thing I could think to ask.
Dr Vaughan shook his head. ‘No. Not now. We’ve given her medication and we can up the dose later when…’
He bit his lip as though the truth had slipped away from him. His use of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ was not lost on me.
‘She’s in her old room,’ he continued. That was all it took. Without saying a word, Mum hurried down the corridor at a speed someone half her age would have struggled to match.
