‘No. They said she was very disorientated and distressed, so they gave her something to calm her down before I got here. She wasn’t really herself. She kept calling out for someone.’
I turned to Mum, my eyes bright with tears. ‘Me? Was it me?’
I don’t know what was more heartbreaking, the truth or the lie my mother quickly substituted it with. ‘I think it probably was.’
3
I opened the ward doors and slipped into the unit on a wedge of light from the corridor. Mum had already told me which bed Amelia was in and I hurriedly tiptoed towards it. My mother, never a rule breaker, had pointed to the sign beside the door that stated only one visitor to a bed was permitted.
‘I’ve been with her for hours,’ she said, and I thought I could see the strain of every last minute of that time in the droop of her shoulders. ‘You go and sit with her for a while. I’ll wait out here.’
Amelia was one of only four patients in the ICU. The main ward lights were turned off, but each bed was illuminated in the soft yellow glow of a night light. Every patient had their own dedicated nurse, standing like a guard beside each bed. The level of care couldn’t be faulted, but I hated that Amelia needed it.
‘I’m her sister,’ I whispered, swaying a little as I finally stood beside the bed, where Amelia looked lost and vulnerable beneath a tangle of medical paraphernalia. Mum had done her best to warn me and yet I still wasn’t prepared for this level of equipment.
‘How is she doing?’ I asked, tearing my eyes away from Amelia to face her nurse.
‘Oh.’ He sounded shocked as the light above the bed illuminated my face. His head whipped from me to his patient and then back again, as though he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. It was such a familiar reaction, I scarcely even noticed it anymore.
I reached for Amelia’s hand, careful to avoid the cannula embedded in her smooth white skin.
‘She’s comfortable,’ the nurse replied, having finally regained his composure.
My smile was watery as I looked down at my sister, who had intravenous tubes in both her arms and a bag hanging by the bed, which I assumed was fed by a catheter somewhere. I doubted ‘comfortable’ meant the same thing to him as it did to me.
‘Mimi,’ I said, my voice cracking. ‘It’s me. Lexi. I’m here now.’ I focused on her blue-veined eyelids, willing them to open, but they didn’t so much as flutter at the sound of my voice.
‘She’s heavily sedated right now,’ her nurse explained. ‘We needed to keep her calm and she was very distraught when they brought her in.’
I shook my head, trying and failing to process what he was telling me. Amelia was the epitome of calm. Look up the word tranquil in a dictionary and you’ll probably see my sister’s face beside it.
‘That’s not my sister.’
This time the nurse did a genuine double take, as though the evidence of his own eyes was irrefutable.
I reached down and gently brushed the hair off the same face I saw in the mirror every morning. ‘I mean, that behaviour isn’t my sister. She’s not like that.’
The nurse gave an understanding nod. ‘You have to remember she’s been through an enormous ordeal. Her body needs time to rest and recover.’
‘And what about her mind?’ I asked, lacing my fingers through Amelia’s the way we’d done a thousand times before. Our hands, like everything else about us, looked practically identical – if you ignored the huge needle embedded into the back of hers, that is.
‘The doctors will be able to tell you more about that tomorrow,’ the nurse replied diplomatically.
I stayed for only half an hour. I would happily have sat there for the rest of the night, and I really don’t think they’d have asked me to leave. But I was painfully aware that on the other side of the ward doors sat a seventy-three-year-old woman who’d lived through her own trauma today. I was fairly certain there was only one way to persuade her to leave the hospital, and that was to tell her I needed to get some rest.
*
It was odd having to be directed to Mum’s new house. As we drove past the entrance to our old road, I felt a sharp pang of longing for the family home I’d grown up in. I knew it had been far too big for her and the garden had become too much to cope with, but suddenly all I wanted was to pull into the familiar drive and climb the creaky stairs to my old box room tucked away beneath the eaves.
‘You can park in one of the visitor bays,’ Mum directed as we pulled up in front of the neat one-bedroom property. They were called starter homes, although in Mum’s case it was probably the last place she would ever call home. The thought was so sad it made me want to cry, so I spent longer than necessary hauling my suitcase out of the car’s boot, until I was certain my eyes were dry.
She’ll be happy there once she’s properly settled in, I could remember Amelia saying. When did we have that conversation? A month ago? Longer? Had I even spoken to her since Christmas, I wondered with a jolt of shame. She’d been vocal in encouraging me to focus more on my life in New York, and I’d stupidly let our weekly phone calls slide. How could I have prioritised anything over my sister? My own flesh and blood. Quiteliterallymy own flesh and blood. The thought weighed even more than the case I was struggling to lift over the threshold. How had Jeff made it look so light? I batted the thought away like an annoying wasp. The last time I’d checked, Jeff still hadn’t replied to my message. The fact that I never referred to him as ‘my boyfriend’ seemed suddenly to make an awful lot more sense from a distance of three thousand miles. But still, how long does it take to rattle off anI hope everything is okaytext?
‘You must be hungry,’ Mum said, steering me gently from the narrow hallway into the lounge.
My reply was a non-committal grunt because food was thelastthing I wanted, and looking after me was theonlything she wanted to do.
‘I am dying for a cup of tea,’ I said, realising too late that I couldn’t have picked a worse figure of speech if I’d spent all night looking for one. We both pretended not to have noticed my gaffe.
