Amelia would not be impressed, I thought with a sad smile. I’d sensed a decided coolness between her and Jeff when she’d last visited me. Not that we had ever had the same taste in men, and however much we looked alike, we certainly seemed to attract totally different types. Amelia had always gone for serious partners, with strongly held political views. She’d even dated an MP for about six months before realising he was far more invested in his career than he was in her. She went out with people only when it suited her and seemed perfectly happy with a series of impermanent relationships. And then, not long after her last birthday, she’d made a crazy statement about being too old for the nonsense of adapting her life to suit a man. She liked things the way they were and enjoyed the freedom of sleeping diagonally across her double bed, having sole control of the TV remote, or eating cold baked beans from a can for dinner if that was what she felt like doing. Being single suited her.
But that hadn’t stopped her from criticising my own love life. ‘You pick men who come with an expiry date,’ she said, with the lack of filter only a sibling can get away with. ‘It’s almost like you choose them deliberately because you know they’re not right for you.’
‘That’s not fair,’ I argued.
She’d stopped me in my tracks then by suddenly looking sad. ‘No, it’s not, Lexi.’
I remember the lump in my throat that had made it almost impossible to swallow when she’d gripped my hand to ask, ‘Don’t you want to share your life with someone?’
‘I’ve shared my entire life withyou,’ I replied, not sure why my voice was suddenly wobbly.
‘That’s not the same and you know it,’ she countered. ‘And besides, I live on the other side of the Atlantic, so I hardly qualify as a suitable companion.’
‘Miles don’t count with you and me. You know that,’ I said.
The memory of those words came back now, strong and potent. I reached out to her with my thoughts, hoping that somehow she’d feel them, hear them, and use them to find her way back to us.
*
Sleep hit me like a freight train I hadn’t seen coming. I came out of it about five hours later to the sound of drumming water from the shower. I slowly unfurled my stiff limbs, acknowledging that at five foot ten I was several inches too tall to have slept on the couch.
I reached for my phone and anxiously punched in the hospital’s number. I was still on hold, waiting for an update and imagining all kinds of medical complications, when I heard Mum’s footsteps on the stairs. She headed straight to the kitchen, where I joined her a few minutes later. She saw the phone in my hand and her eyes flickered nervously. I shook my head and smiled.
‘I just phoned the hospital and spoke to the senior staff nurse on the ward.’
Mum was holding a tea towel, twisting it in her hands as though wringing it dry. I reached over and took it from her.
‘They’re pleased with how she’s doing and much happier with her body temperature now. In fact, they hope to move her out of Intensive Care later this morning and start easing her off the sedation.’
And suddenly we were both crying again, the way I’d known we always would after receiving news – either good or bad. We hugged each other and silently thanked the doctors, fate, and maybe even my dad that the tears we were shedding were the happy kind.
4
Everything about the hospital felt different this time. It was crowded, for a start. There were other visitors riding the lifts to the wards, easy to identify by their flowers and grapes. I gave Mum a rueful smile across the width of the carriage. We’d come empty-handed, but hopefully Amelia wouldn’t mind.
We followed a different set of signs when we got to the eighth floor. HDU. A new acronym that was about to become part of our everyday vocabulary. High Dependency Unit. Hopefully Amelia wouldn’t be there for long. The signage was confusing, and I was about to ask a passing nurse for directions when a voice I knew rang out in a tone I really didn’t know at all. I threw a worried glance Mum’s way as unconsciously we both quickened our pace.
‘Well,someonemust know where they are.’
The voice was coming from a room at the end of the corridor but was loud enough to be heard some distance away. It didn’t sound like Amelia’s usual cadence at all; it jarred, like music played in the wrong key.
‘Has anyone even looked for them?’
There was no mistaking the anxiety in my sister’s voice, and I could only assume she was asking about us.
‘I’m not sure. I’ll ask again. Please don’t worry, Miss Edwards. We’ll find them.’
A junior nurse with brightly flushed cheeks was backing out of the room, looking decidedly uncomfortable and awkward.
‘Please stop calling me that. My name is—’
‘Amelia!’ I cried, squeezing past the embarrassed young nurse like a bomb disposal expert on their way to defuse something that was about to explode.
My sister looked simultaneously dreadful and wonderful. Her face was pasty, except for two bright-red splodges of colour on her cheeks, put there, I imagine, by the feisty exchange with the nurse who’d now disappeared into the corridor. There were panda-like circles beneath Amelia’s eyes and her lips were dry and cracked. I was so pleased to see her awake, I happily ignored her unhealthy pallor.
‘Lexi?’ she said, blinking at me as though I was a mirage. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
It was hard to formulate a reply above the alarm bells clanging in my head. Amelia never swore. She was aFudge itorOh sugarkind of person, which I used to tease her about mercilessly.
