One Long Weekend, page 13
There had been a pause, and Sophie had seen that Jasmine’s worried expression was back, so she had tried to distract her with, ‘So then what happened? Come on, this is a test to check if you were listening.’
Jasmine had chuckled, pressing her hand against her lower right stomach, as if trying to make sure it was protected. ‘So you told him to ask you again a year later, but then you dingied him…’
Sophie hadn’t understood. ‘Dingied him?’
‘It’s Glasgow-speak for stood him up. Ignored him. Swerved him. Dodged him.’
‘Yep, I guess I dingied him then,’ Sophie had agreed, voice full of regret.
‘Exactly,’ Jasmine had gone on. ‘So you dingied him, but then, last year, exactly a year after the poor bloke proposed the first time, he sent you a message with a picture of the ring, sitting on the ground in George Square. That might be the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. Apart from when my Travis asked me to marry him by putting a ring in my prawn chow mein. If I hadn’t seen it, I could have choked, but he said he wasn’t worried because he’s done First Aid.’
Sophie couldn’t help giggle. Jasmine had already told her a couple of stories about her boyfriend and he sounded hilarious. She’d kept the conversation on track though. ‘You’re right about the message. But I didn’t see it until about a month later. It was on WhatsApp, and I’d missed the notification altogether. When I eventually replied, I got a message saying it couldn’t be delivered.’
Jasmine had eased up on to one elbow. ‘So tomorrow night is the second anniversary of the date he proposed and you want to find him again to see if he’s the one for you. Jesus. It sounds like the kind of romcom I watch when I’ve got PMT and I’ve demolished all the Dairy Milk.’
‘That’s what my sister says too. She thinks I’ve lost the plot. She might be right.’
They’d both fallen asleep at that point, but now, with the sun streaming in and the hospital stirring, Jasmine rolled over on her side, so that she was facing Sophie. ‘I woke up during the night with a question.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Sophie joked, as Jasmine got straight to the point. ‘The whole lost boyfriend thing. I get that his phone is no longer connected and he’s not on Insta or Snapchat, but what I don’t understand is why didn’t you come up before now? You said you know where he lives and it’s not like you were a million miles away. Or in jail. Although, that happened to my pal, Britney, and she managed to get messages out on a dodgy phone.’
Sophie didn’t feel it was right to pry into Britney’s criminal history, so she let that go. She thought about the answer for a moment. There was no simple way to explain, other than the truth. ‘Because after my mum died, I just… fell apart, I suppose. I was sad for a long time and I kind of threw myself into my job and I guess other things just took over. I think I wasn’t ready to be happy again. But now, I’m much better, and this date was coming around and I just thought, stuff it. I’ve absolutely no idea what I’m hoping for, but I just couldn’t let it go without trying to find out if he still loves me.’
‘If you don’t text me and tell me what happens I’ll never forgive you. It’ll be one of the great unanswered questions of my life.’
That made Sophie giggle, as the nurse who’d checked on her throughout the night came around and took all her vitals again. She seemed satisfied with what she saw, but she had the weirdest request Sophie had ever heard.
‘Okay, go with me here because I just want to check your short-term memory. I’m going to give you three words to remember and I want you to repeat them back to me when I come back later. Trumpet. Balls. Custard.’
Sophie raised her eyebrows and said, deadpan, ‘This is the strangest place I’ve ever been.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ the nurse laughed. ‘I’ll ask you to repeat them to me when I come with the doctor on his rounds in half an hour or so.’
Trumpet. Balls. Custard. She was still saying that to herself when the cheery tea lady came in with breakfast. Sophie accepted gratefully, much to the disgust of Jasmine, who’d been informed that she was nil by mouth before her surgery today.
They chatted as Sophie tried to discreetly eat her food and she was grateful for the company. Although, right now the thing she’d be most grateful for was a shower and a change of clothes. Oh, and somewhere to charge her phone because it had died, and she wanted to send her sister another check-in text. She’d forgotten to bring a charger with her, and hadn’t wanted to ask the nurse for one the night before. Hopefully Erin would be so wiped out from her big night out last night that she’d be in bed with a hangover until noon, and it would totally escape her that anything was wrong. Sophie had two choices – tell her sister what had happened and swear her to secrecy, or tell her nothing about the accident until she got home. As always, she hated the thought of causing anyone worry, so she’d probably go with the second option.
Actually, the thing she was most thankful for right now, and probably until the end of time, was that someone had been looking out for her yesterday. She wasn’t sure if she believed in higher powers or spirits or guardian angels, but she was going to trust that it was her mum who’d had an eye on her and saved her yesterday. She’d even overheard one of the police officers saying that there weren’t many people who had a high-speed crash on the M8 and walked away from it practically unscathed.
The thought took her mind to the taxi driver. Hopefully he was fine. Although she definitely wasn’t nominating him for Scottish tourist ambassador of the month. She couldn’t quite remember all their conversations, but she had an overwhelming sense that he’d been a complete arse to her.
‘Good morning. I’m Doctor Choudry. Pleased to meet you… Sophie,’ she finished, as she checked the name on her iPad. ‘I’m just going to run a few tests with you while we speak, is that okay?’
‘Yes. Thank you,’ Sophie answered, appreciating again how nice everyone had been to her.
The doctor came right up to her side and used a small torch to check her pupils and Sophie couldn’t help notice how stunning she was. No make-up, no false lashes, just a beautiful face. ‘How are you feeling today?’
‘I actually feel okay. My shoulder is a bit sore and there’s a bruise, and my head hurts where I banged it, but nothing unbearable.’
The doctor raised her finger and told her to follow it with her eyes. Then ran through a load of other tests, squeezing her hands, pressing against her palms, sticking her tongue out, and so it went on for about five minutes.
‘Okay and your memory? What do you remember about yesterday?’
‘I can remember everything almost up to the crash, more or less. I’m a bit fuzzy about the conversation I was having right before it, but everything else is there. I remember being taken out of the car and brought here and everything after that.’
A few more questions, a few more tests, and Dr Choudry seemed happy with everything that she saw. ‘Finally, nurse gave you three words to remember before I came here. Can you tell me what they were?’
‘Trumpet. Balls. Custard.’
Smiling, Dr Choudry shook her head, turned to the nurse beside her. ‘You do that deliberately, don’t you?’
‘Can’t help myself,’ the nurse replied, with a shame-faced, but mischievous, shrug.
Dr Choudry returned her attention to Sophie. ‘The reason we do the three-word test is to make sure your short-term memory is functioning perfectly, not just to amuse Nurse Barker.’ She threw an amused purse of the lips in her colleague’s direction.
‘Okay, Sophie, the good news is that I’m happy to discharge you. I’ll write up a prescription for some painkillers to take if you need them. It goes without saying that anything out of the ordinary – acute pain, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, vision or hearing issues, numbness or tingling in your face – come straight back to us. Do you have any questions?’
‘No, but thank you. Everyone has been so kind.’
Dr Choudry smiled and Sophie thought again how gorgeous she was, so calm, together and clearly successful. This wasn’t a woman who went tearing up to the other side of the country to see if a man who once proposed to her was still kicking around and interested.
‘You’re very welcome. I hope that the rest of your weekend is much better than it’s been so far. It can only get better.’
As she swung her legs round, and climbed out of her hospital bed, Sophie sent up a silent prayer to her mum that the doctor was right.
15
ALICE
The irony didn’t escape Alice. Only yesterday morning, she was tucking away twenty-pound notes because it was all she had to show for her existence in this world. She’d spoken to no one. She’d been anonymous. Faceless. Invisible. Yet, now, she was being told that there were still press at the reception of the hospital, trying to speak to her, to get information on her life. Or, more accurately, trying to find out if she was here. If her husband was here. If he was alive. Or dead. And only to herself would she admit the option that she would prefer.
‘He made it through surgery,’ Richard Campbell had told her, when he’d found her sitting outside the prayer room. It went without saying that he probably thought she was beseeching some higher power to save her husband’s life and bring him back to her. She hadn’t told him otherwise.
‘But I’m just going to be honest with you, Alice, he’s not out of the woods yet and it’s going to be a waiting game for the next few hours. Tell me what you want to know, because I don’t want to overload you. Do you want the details, or shall I stop at that for now?’
‘Details. Tell me everything you know, please,’ she’d said.
He’d nodded thoughtfully, ‘We’re sure now that Larry had a heart attack in the car and that was what caused the accident. All signs pointed to that, and when they scanned him, they found a blockage in one of the main arteries feeding his heart. The surgical team performed a coronary angioplasty to clear the blockage and they’ve inserted a stent to keep the artery open, but it’s impossible to say what damage has already been done. We don’t know how long he was down before the team got to him at the scene, and we don’t know the scope of any resultant damage to his brain or his other organs. He’s out of recovery, but he hasn’t come round yet, so we’re bringing him down to intensive care. Unfortunately, I can’t let you stay with him, because ICU visiting is restricted to specific slots, but I can let you see him for a few minutes.’
‘Thank you.’ If he’d detected her reluctance, he’d had the good grace not to question it.
‘Normally, I’d tell you to go home at this point, or at least to go to the hospital café and take a break, give it some time to see how things develop in the next few hours, but I don’t think that’s wise. Reception and security have reported a couple of journalists have been in asking questions, so the options are that we can get you safely to your car…’ He obviously hadn’t known that she no longer possessed her own vehicle. ‘Or you can stay here for now.’
She’d pondered over those options. She could go home to the place that she hated, where every single thing reminded her of Larry: the ridiculously oversized furniture, the sag on the couch where he sat every night, the razors that he left lying around the bloody bathroom. Although, if she did that, maybe she could make a good cup of coffee, put her feet up, read a novel and escape into the kind of fictional world that allowed her to forget the reality of her day-to-day torment. Or she could stay here, protected, but around real people, who were kind and who spoke to her like a human being.
‘I’d like to stay please.’ She had felt like she should qualify that, explain it as if she was a normal, loving wife, so she’d lied. ‘I’d like to be here when he wakes up.’
Richard had nodded. ‘Okay.’ There was a slight pause and she’d thought he was done, until he’d carried on, his words caring and sympathetic. ‘But, Alice, I need you to know that might not be today. Or tomorrow. We have no way of predicting when his situation will change.’
‘I understand. I’d still like to stay for now. I’ll wait in the family room if that’s okay?’
She knew exactly where the family room was because she’d been there on the day that it had re-opened, after her fundraising committee had raised the finance for its renovation. She knew there were two sofas there, and a television and a coffee machine. It wasn’t lavish, but it was comfortable and that was all she’d needed.
‘But can you take me to see him first?’
Richard had led the way, down the mire of corridors that led to the ICU unit. When they’d got there, he’d taken her in, but two of the medical staff were by Larry’s bed, so she’d stopped at the nursing station, from where she could see her husband lying perfectly still a few metres away. It was a strange sight. It was Larry, but at the same time it wasn’t. That man was in a hospital gown and he was surrounded by machines and tubes. His skin was grey and his cheeks were sunken, like the sand pits on the kind of golf courses he used to swagger around in his heyday. But the most remarkable difference was that Larry’s huge presence, his hulking physicality was gone and that man, there, lying in that bed was… small. Unimposing. Non-threatening.
‘As I said, it’s a waiting game now, Alice,’ Richard had said, with a gentleness in his voice that had no doubt been developed over decades of doing this job. Alice had heard him speak to patients and their families like this before, but she’d never considered that one day it would be her.
‘Thank you, Richard. For everything. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go to the family room now. If there is any news, will you let me know, please?’
‘Of course. I’ll be leaving for the day shortly, but I’ll make sure that the consultant in charge knows where you are and notifies you if there’s any change. I’ll be back in first thing in the morning though, and I’ve asked the charge nurse tonight to call me at home if there’s any change and I’ll come straight back in.’
‘You don’t need to do that,’ she’d assured him, wondering why it irked her that even now, Larry was getting special treatment. Bastard deserved none of it. ‘I’m sure your team will take very good care of him.’
‘Alice, it’s not just for Larry, because you’re right – the team here is the best. I’ll come back in so that you have a familiar face if anything changes. I’d do the same for any friend.’
Tears had shot to Alice’s eyes and she’d had to blink them back. Over a lifetime with Larry, she’d trained herself to shut down her emotional responses, to stay strong, to hold her defences around her like a brick wall that protected her from feeling pain, or hurt, or heartbreak, but the kindness in Richard’s words had almost slayed her. It had been a long time since anyone had called her a friend.
As soon as she’d got to the family room, Alice had called the supervisors at both her cleaning jobs and let them know that she wouldn’t be in until further notice, because of an illness in the family. She didn’t give any more information than that, but no doubt her supervisors would soon hear news of Larry’s accident through the internet or the newspapers.
Calls made, Alice had laid down on the sofa, and a wave of exhaustion had hit her like a train, forcing her to close her eyes. The next thing she knew, Richard was knocking on the door and her watch was telling her that it was morning.
He’d arrived with two coffees, making her stomach growl as she’d realised she’d had nothing to eat since yesterday morning. Not that she ever had much of an appetite these days, but still. She could probably have gone out to one of the shops in the foyer last night, or even just found a vending machine with snacks or drinks, but she’d had this room to herself all night, and she hadn’t wanted to leave the cocoon of privacy and comfort. She’d stretched herself up from where she’d been lying on the couch, and pushed her hair back, embarrassed because she knew that she must look like an absolute riot. Same clothes as yesterday. Dishevelled after a night on a couch. Hair that hadn’t seen a brush for a whole day.
‘Is… Is he…?’ She’d stopped, rephrased, ‘Has there been any change?’ That sounded better.
Richard had shaken his head as he handed her one of the coffees, then produced a muffin from the pocket of his white coat. He’d sat down on the couch opposite her. ‘No, none, I’m afraid. It’s not unusual, Alice, and please don’t read anything into it. We’re still cautiously hopeful.’ She’d had a strong suspicion that they were hoping for different things.
The coffee had been hot and the warmth felt good against her lips as she took a sip.
‘Listen, it’s completely up to you, and you’re welcome to stay here, but I would suggest that you go home, even for a little while. Just take a break, sleep, eat. You have to take care of yourself too.’
He was right, but still, she’d felt no desire to face the outside world. ‘I will, but perhaps not yet. I’ll wait for a while longer, if that’s okay.’
‘Of course. I’ll pop back in later, but if you decide to leave in the meantime, just let reception know. Is there anything else you need?’
The answer to that question was way too long and way too complicated. She needed friends. Family. Happiness. Joy. Love. A new life. An escape from the bastard who was lying through in that bed.
‘No, I’m fine. And, Richard, thank you again for your kindness. It’s been such a comfort.’
‘You’re welcome. Just be aware, though, that there are still journalists hanging around outside. We’ve asked them to leave, but they’re pretty relentless and keep coming back. I think I know the answer, but do you want to give them any comment? I can get the hospital spokesperson to give them something short and vague, but that might just be enough to get them to go.’
‘No. No comment. I’ve got nothing to say to them.’
There was the irony. Yesterday, she was nobody. Today, the press were desperate to know about her life. These were the same people who had relentlessly pursued her, vilified her family, made unsubstantiated claims and sensationalised every single detail of the scandal. Larry had been the architect of their ruin, but the media had relished and exploited it.
