Page 34 of The Girlfriend

“F ROM HIS SCAN, WE BELIEVE HE SHOULD BE REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS ,” said Dr. Raina. She waited while this news sank in.

They were back in the consulting room. It was early morning and the sun was streaming through the window, making the dust spin in the light.

Dr. Raina was compassionate, but professional, passing on facts without embellishment; Laura and Howard were exhausted and frightened.

Laura had spent three days at Daniel’s bedside and then last night the doctors had stopped the sedation.

At some point over the following twelve hours, he should have come round.

Laura’s voice sounded small, shriveled. “So, why hasn’t he?”

“We don’t know yet. We’ll start investigating this morning. He’ll have another scan and we’ll also perform brain EEGs and other test activities.”

“How long will it all take . . . ?”

“We’ll have some results in later today, but I must warn you that they may not give us the answers we need,” Dr. Raina said gently.

“The brain is very complex and sometimes it takes a while until we find out exactly what’s stopping someone from coming out of a coma.

Sometimes they recover before we do find out. ”

“Can you tell . . . Can you tell how long he’s likely to stay like that?” Laura felt Howard put his hand gently on hers .

“I’m afraid not. We just don’t know. The good news is that he is breathing unassisted, so he’s off the ventilator.”

Laura nodded, but she couldn’t help feeling these were scraps of good news. Small things to cling to when the bigger problem loomed large and dark.

Dr. Raina’s beeper went off and she looked down at it. It was clear she was required elsewhere. They could have kept her, but there didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

“Will you keep us updated, Doctor?” said Howard.

“Of course, I will. As soon as we have any news, I’ll be in touch. Can I suggest that you take a rest for a couple of hours? Have a change of scene?”

He nodded just to close off the conversation, but neither Howard nor Laura knew where they might go. Their only reason for being there was Daniel.

* * *

“Daniel, it’s time to wake up now,” said Laura as she leaned over his bed, holding his hand and scanning his face for signs of life. “Open your eyes.”

He lay there, unmoving, the beeps still sounding in some torturous rhythm.

“Can you wiggle your fingers? Your toes?”

She stared, but still nothing.

“Just a flicker.”

“Come on, Daniel,” she said, growing increasingly desperate. She determinedly pulled up a chair, squeezed his fingers hard, too hard probably, but she just wanted to get through to him. Any movement, any sound, just something to tell her he was there, he was trying.

“Please?” she begged, her voice cracking; silent, frantic tears rolling down her face.

* * *

By the next day, nothing had changed. The tests had not thrown any more light on why Daniel wasn’t regaining consciousness and he lay there silently, eyes closed, palms down on the sheets.

It was the same the next day and the next.

Laura had already been making inquiries, calling friends of friends, researching on the Internet, and had found out that one of the best specialists in the country worked at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London.

After speaking to Dr. Raina, it became clear that they could request for Daniel to be transferred, something that was arranged quite swiftly.

Laura hoped that the move might produce some change in him, but was disappointed.

The new specialist said the same; it was impossible to predict when he might come out of his coma, and it began to sink in that it could continue for many weeks or even months, and this sent her spinning into a whirlpool of terror and anguish that threatened to get out of control.

She had to stay positive, she reminded herself, a word that was becoming rapidly overused, but it was all she had to cling on to.

Her son’s life had been reduced to a series of clichés: “Take each day as it comes.” “Just be there for him.” “Stay positive.”

After ten days, life came knocking. Howard had to get back to the office for some urgent meetings. Her PA had tentatively left a message saying she had a few things to pass on whenever Laura was ready. They had to be important or she wouldn’t have bothered her.

They fell into a routine. She would go to the office in the morning and work from home in the afternoons, visiting Daniel for at least two hours every day.

Howard would go in the evenings, on the way back from work.

Laura had decided to let Cherry see Daniel as well.

She was prepared to do anything that might help bring her son out of his coma.

If Cherry spoke to him, maybe her voice could trigger something inside his brain, something that would bring him back to her.

She was allowed to visit early evenings twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Laura gave strict instructions that this was the only time Cherry could visit and she had to be out by the time Howard arrived at eight.

Wondering if the nursing staff was sticking to the rules, she spoke to Howard once about it and he said he hadn’t seen her.

Laura had come back to some bad news. The decision makers at ITV were unwilling to commission a second series of her drama as the ratings had continued to fall, and, so regrettably, it wasn’t something they could continue with.

But they had “high hopes” for the new crime drama script and were looking forward to seeing it.

In the meantime, she was still able to pay staff salaries for now.

She’d been on the verge of calling Howard about the decision, wanting someone to talk to about it, but had stopped with the phone in her hand.

After a momentary closeness, brought on by their son’s accident, they had drifted apart again.

Each returned from the hospital with little to report, as neither really thought to talk about what they had said to Daniel.

They had been apart for so long, they had separate lives.

If Howard tried to discuss his life with Laura, he would have to start from the beginning, and it was the same with her.

Laura could never get used to the idea of Daniel lying there in the bed, and her heart tightened every time she saw him.

She talked brightly, incessantly, after researching comas in books, the Internet, cornering friends of friends who worked in neurology.

Reports were to be found where recovering patients could relay full sentences of what had been said to them when they were in their dark place.

It was just a matter of time. Or so she obstinately believed.

* * *

The year drew on, and Isabella had her usual Christmas party, carols around the piano and a lot of champagne and mulled wine.

She’d been such a good friend since the accident and had been there every single time Laura had wanted to talk, providing words of encouragement and tissues.

She knew Christmas would be a difficult time and told Laura she understood if she didn’t want to come, but Laura felt it was important to keep life as normal as possible, even though she started every day with a heavy pain in her chest.

Once she was there, though, she felt like an outsider.

She wasn’t interested in drinking, and the festive atmosphere never caught on for her.

She also felt that people were awkward around her, didn’t know how to talk about Daniel, and so most didn’t mention him, except maybe to say, “Give him our love,” which they would do with a pained, fatalistic expression.

This was something that she read to be so desolately pessimistic, it angered her.

He is still alive! She wanted to scream it out.

He is still there, a part of me. He hasn’t bloody gone yet, she whimpered to herself.

After a couple of drawn-out hours, she slipped away home.

Then Christmas itself came. She and Howard spent it with Daniel, in the long-term care provision, a special nursing home he’d been moved to. It gave her comfort to be with him, to make sure he wasn’t alone.

As the new year turned, it seemed joyless and bleak.

Every day, fear would attack her when she was doing the most ordinary things, putting on her tights, locking the front door.

When? When? She sometimes shouted it out loud when no one was listening, a word that evaporated like vapor as it left her mouth, leaving no trace and no answer.

When would he recover? The waiting was torturous.

She stared into the black chasm of an unknown distance, but remained agonizingly defiant. She would never give up.