Page 36 of The Girlfriend
T WO WEEKS LATER, LAURA GOT A PHONE CALL FROM THE NURSING home. Her heart was hammering, but the doctor’s message was not the one she’d been hoping for.
“Mrs. Cavendish, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
“What’s happened?”
“I’m afraid Daniel’s no longer able to breathe unaided. He’s been readmitted to the hospital and they’ve had to put him on the ventilator.”
Her world crashed yet again.
* * *
She was first to the hospital. The specialist, Dr. Murray, came to speak to her immediately and explained that at 9:20 a.m. Daniel had stopped breathing; as a consequence, he suffered a cardiac arrest. The team had successfully resuscitated him, but he was now back on a ventilator.
Howard arrived in the middle of it all and she listened to the report again, the words digging like knives in her heart.
It was as if Daniel, after all this time, was slipping away, but she couldn’t understand why.
“What caused it?” she asked Dr. Murray. Laura was desperate to make sense of the change .
“He’s contracted pneumonia. I’m afraid that patients who are in his condition are highly susceptible to it.”
Laura lashed out from distress and frustration. “He can’t be perfectly fine one day and the next get pneumonia and have a heart attack. It doesn’t make sense!”
Dr. Murray remained patient. “Mrs. Cavendish, he’s not perfectly fine. He’s in a coma. It’s often difficult, or impossible, to predict the outcome of such an injury.”
It didn’t satisfy her. She felt as if she’d taken her eye off the ball, just routinely visiting and waiting, hoping. She should have been doing something.
“We have to wait and see if he can regain the full use of his lungs,” he continued. “We’ll try taking him off the ventilator again later today, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll adjust it to encourage him to make more effort to breathe, but the machine will still support him.”
“What if he has another arrest?”
Dr. Murray paused. “He’s been in a coma for a long time. We have to think about what’s in his best interests.”
A growing horror took hold of Laura. “You mean, you might not . . . You might just let him die?” she said incredulously.
“Not necessarily. If it’s still your wish, we’ll do our best to resuscitate him.”
“Yes, it is my wish!” said Laura, tears springing.
* * *
When they were left alone, Howard and Laura sat in silence for a moment.
“They’re doing their best,” said Howard.
“Are they?”
He was slightly shocked. “Yes, of course.”
“Oh, Howard, I don’t mean to say they’re negligent or anything, and I know there are some amazing doctors here—Murray’s one of the best, after all—but I just feel we’ve been blindly letting this go on when we should have been keeping an eye on things.
” She went to sit beside him and held her hands together in her lap.
“We’ve been here before, remember. What if we’d .
. . if I’d taken Rose to a hospital the minute she didn’t take her first feeding? ”
“Now hold on—”
“I know what you’re going to say, what everyone has always told me, that I did what I could, I wasn’t to blame.
But those ‘what-if’ questions don’t just go away.
And I promised, Howard, I promised that I’d always look after him, I’d watch out for him, I’d ask the questions that he wasn’t able to. I’d step up. He was my second chance.”
He rested a hand on hers. “So, what do you suggest?”
“There’s another guy . . . He’s American.
I didn’t do anything because I thought we were in safe hands, we are in safe hands, but I want to increase our options.
He’s a new appointment at a private hospital in town, one that specializes in neurological conditions.
Oh, I can’t bear it, Howard—what if we’re missing something?
What if we’ve allowed ourselves to become complacent?
I just think we should see him, get him to see Daniel. ”
“Won’t that mean moving him?”
“Yes, but there’s everything in that hospital that there is here, and this specialist too. Dr. Bell, his name is. I can make a call and I bet it’s just a question of authorizing Chelsea and Westminster to move him and they’ll take care of the rest.”
“Is it safe to move him? When he’s so ill?”
“We can ask.”
Howard considered what his wife was saying and Laura mistook his silence for reluctance. Her voice cracked.
“If he . . . doesn’t make it, Howard, I don’t think I’ll be able to live with myself knowing I didn’t try everything, to do the absolute best for him. This Dr. Bell might say the same thing, but let’s, at least, get another opinion.”
Howard looked at her. They were two people lost, looking for any sort of rescue. As much of a long shot as it was, it was better than staying marooned on the island. “Let’s go and speak to Dr. Murray.”
They could tell he didn’t think it would make much difference, but he didn’t prevent it, and Daniel was moved to the Wellington Hospital by ambulance two days later.
* * *
Laura was on her way to see Daniel, when she remembered that Cherry was due to visit later that evening, as it was Thursday.
She would be wondering what was going on, as it had been a couple of days now since Daniel had left the nursing home.
She made a call and spoke to one of the nurses she knew well, but was surprised to hear that Cherry hadn’t been in touch for a while.
“She’s gone away,” said the nurse. “Cancun for two weeks. Did she not say?”
Laura remembered their conversation. “Oh yes, yes, of course. When did she leave?”
“Last Monday, I think.”
Laura was hopeful at her first appointment with Dr. Bell, but his assessment, unfortunately, was much the same.
Daniel wasn’t responding to being weaned off the ventilator.
Three days after being admitted, he had another cardiac arrest. Laura and Howard were called to the hospital and Dr. Bell gently warned that the situation did not look good.
“I’m afraid it’s extremely possible that he may have another arrest very soon, and when they continue like this, it’s very difficult to keep the patient alive.”
“How long?” asked Laura.
“It’s hard to say for sure, but it could be as soon as twenty-four or forty-eight hours.”
Laura returned to Daniel’s spacious, sunny private room and sat quietly by his bed.
She’d tried, she’d really done all she could, but it seemed it wasn’t enough.
She took his hand and her heart broke. Brittle for so long, it shattered into a thousand tiny pieces that splintered and tore at her insides.
That was it. That was all she had left of him.
After twenty-four years, she had perhaps one or two days of him, just lying there, pale, unresponsive, helpless.
She suddenly had an overwhelming sense that she didn’t want to share him.
It was the same when he was first born, she couldn’t stand people holding him for too long.
It felt unnatural being parted from him, even though he was just across the room.
She wasn’t able to sit still, she would flex her arms agitatedly, fight the impulse to just pluck him back from Howard’s cooing mother, who always left Daniel reeking of her perfume so that she had to bathe him.
She wanted him back in her arms. She wanted to cherish every second of these last days, eke them out, even though she knew the sand would be running through the hourglass.
But Cherry was back tomorrow, and when she heard the news, she would want to see him.
Laura couldn’t stand the idea of her being near her beloved son.
She didn’t even want to hear her ask to visit him, or have her come to the hospital and beg the staff.
Cherry had taken so much of Daniel away from her, the thought of her encroaching on these last few hours filled her with a desperate raging fury.
But she knew Cherry would. Deep down, Laura knew that even if she asked Cherry to stay away, even if she explained how she felt about needing to be alone with him, Cherry would still want to come.
The finality of it suddenly hit Laura; clutching his hand, she wept on his bed like she’d never wept before.
* * *
It was late when she got back home and Moses, unaware of all that was going on in her wretched life, rubbed himself around her legs.
He was hungry. Laura had come back to feed him, but also to pack a few essentials.
The cab was waiting outside for her, ready to take her back to the hospital.
Howard was there now, but he would take a break when she arrived, and she planned on spending the night by her son’s bedside.
She opened a tin of cat food and had barely put it on the floor when Moses was wolfing it down, purring as he did so. Next she went upstairs to grab what she’d need for the night. She packed some pajamas, a toothbrush, and wash things. Also a change of clothes.
It came to her in a breathtaking moment.
She stood bolt upright in front of the wardrobe, clutching a fresh shirt as a cold shiver raced through her body.
This was it. It was bleak, hideous, but it was a way out.
The only way out. She paced up and down, shaking, wondering if she could do it.
But now, the thought was in her mind, her feet had been uprooted, and she was carried along in a current she couldn’t fight.
She would do it tomorrow.