After You (32 page)

He laughed, then grimaced, as if laughing were painful.

I fussed around a little while the nurses were seeing to him, doing the things that people do at patients’ bedsides when they’re simply looking for an excuse to hang around; I put out some fruit, disposed of a tissue, organized some magazines that I knew he wouldn’t read. And then it was time to go. I had made it as far as the door when he spoke. ‘I heard you.’

My hand was outstretched, ready to open it. I turned.

‘Last night. When I was bleeding out. I heard you.’

Our eyes locked. And in that moment everything shifted. I saw what I had really done. I saw that I could be somebody’s centre, their reason for staying. I saw that I could be enough. I walked back, took Sam’s face in my hands and kissed him fiercely, feeling hot tears fall unchecked onto his face, his arm pulling me in tightly as he kissed me back. I pressed my cheek against his, half laughing, half weeping, oblivious to the nurses, to anything except the man before me. Then, finally, I turned and walked downstairs, wiping my face, laughing at my tears, ignoring the curious faces of the people who passed.

The day was beautiful, even under strip-lights. Outside birds sang, a new morning dawned, people lived and grew and got better and looked forward to getting older. I bought a coffee and ate an over-sweet muffin and they tasted like the most delicious things I had ever had. I sent messages to my parents, to Treena, to Richard, telling him I would be in shortly. I texted Lily:
Thought you might want to know Sam is in hospital. He got shot but he’s okay. I know he’d love it if you dropped him a card. Or even just a text if you’re busy.

The answer pinged back within seconds. I smiled. How did girls of that age type so quickly when they did everything else so slowly?

OMG. I just told the other girls and I’m basically now the coolest person they know. Seriously though give him my love. If you text me his details I’ll get him a card after school. Oh and I’m sorry for showing off to him in my pants that time. I didn’t mean it. Like not in a pervy way. Hope you guys are really happy. Xxx

I didn’t wait to respond. I looked at the hospital cafeteria and the shuffling patients and the bright blue day through the skylight and my fingers hit the keys before I knew what I was saying.

I am.

Jake was waiting under the porch when I arrived at the Moving On Circle. It was raining heavily, dense clouds the colour of heather abruptly unleashing a thunderstorm that overwhelmed gutters and soaked me in the ten seconds it took to run across the car park.

‘Aren’t you going in? It’s filthy out –’

He stepped forward, and his lanky arms enfolded me in a swift, awkward hug as I reached the door.

‘Oh!’ I lifted my hands, not wanting to drip all over him.

He released me and took a step back. ‘Donna told us what you did. I just – you know – wanted to say thanks.’

His eyes were strained, and shadowed, and I realized what these last days must have been like for him, so close to having lost his mother. ‘He’s tough,’ I said.

‘He’s bloody Teflon,’ he said, and we laughed awkwardly, in the way British people do when they’re experiencing great emotion.

In the meeting, Jake spoke unusually volubly, about the fact that his girlfriend didn’t understand what grief was like for him. ‘She doesn’t get why some mornings I just want to stay in bed with the covers over my head. Or why I get a bit panicky about things happening to people I love. Literally nothing bad has happened to her. Ever. Even her pet rabbit is still alive and it’s, like, nine years old.’

‘I think people get bored of grief,’ said Natasha. ‘It’s like you’re allowed some unspoken allotted time – six months, maybe – and then they get faintly irritated that you’re not
“better”. It’s like you’re being self-indulgent hanging on to your unhappiness.’

‘Yes!’ There was a murmur of agreement from around the circle.

‘I sometimes think it would be easier if we still had to wear widows’ weeds,’ said Daphne. ‘Then everyone could know you were still grieving.’

‘Maybe like learner plates, so, you know, you got a different set of colours after a year. Maybe move from black to a deep purple,’ said Leanne.

‘Coming up all the way to yellow when you were really happy again,’ Natasha grinned.

‘Oh, no. Yellow is awful with my complexion.’ Daphne smiled cautiously. ‘I’ll have to stay a bit miserable.’

I listened to their stories in the dank church hall – the tentative steps forward over tiny, emotional obstacles. Fred had joined a bowling league, and was enjoying having another reason to go out on Tuesdays, one that didn’t involve talking about his late wife. Sunil had agreed to let his mother introduce him to a distant cousin from Eltham. ‘I’m not really into the whole arranged-marriage thing but, to be honest, I’m having no luck with other methods. I keep telling myself she’s my mother. She’s hardly going to set me up with someone horrible.’

‘I think it’s a lovely idea,’ said Daphne. ‘My mother would probably have spotted which tree my Alan barked up long before I did. She was ever such a good judge.’

I viewed them as if I were on the outside of something looking in. I laughed at their jokes, winced internally at their tales of inappropriate tears or misjudged comments. But what became clear as I sat on my plastic chair and drank my instant coffee was that I had somehow found myself on the other side. I had crossed a bridge. Their struggle was no
longer my struggle. It wasn’t that I would ever stop grieving for Will, or loving him, or missing him, but that my life seemed to have somehow landed back in the present. And it was with a growing satisfaction that I found, even as I sat there with people I now knew and trusted, I wanted to be somewhere else: beside a large man in a hospital bed who I knew, to my utter gratitude, would even now be glancing up at the clock in the corner, wondering how long it was going to take me to get to him.

‘Nothing from you tonight, Louisa?’

Marc was looking at me, one eyebrow raised.

I shook my head. ‘I’m good.’

He smiled, perhaps recognizing something in my tone. ‘Good.’

‘Yes. Actually, I think I don’t need to be here any more. I’m … okay.’

‘I knew there was something different about you,’ said Natasha, leaning forwards and eyeing me almost suspiciously.

‘It’s the shagging,’ said Fred. ‘I’m sure that’s the cure. I bet I’d have got over Jilly much faster with all the shagging.’

Natasha and William exchanged a strange look.

‘I’d like to come until the end of the term, if it’s okay,’ I said to Marc. ‘It’s just … I’ve come to think of you all as my friends. I might not need it, but I would still like to come for a bit longer. Just to make sure. And, you know, to see everyone.’

Jake gave a small smile.

‘We should probably go dancing,’ said Natasha.

‘You can come for as long as you want,’ said Marc. ‘That’s what we’re here for.’

My friends. A motley group, but then most friends are.

Orecchiette cooked
al dente
, pine-nuts, basil, home-grown tomatoes, olives, tuna and Parmesan cheese. I had made the
pasta salad to the recipe Lily gave me over the phone as she was fed instructions by her grandmother.

‘Good invalid food,’ Camilla shouted, from some distant kitchen. ‘Easy to digest if he’s spending a lot of time lying down.’

‘I’d just buy him a takeaway,’ muttered Lily. ‘Poor man’s suffered enough.’ She cackled quietly. ‘Anyway, I thought you preferred him lying down.’

I walked along the hospital corridor later that evening feeling quietly proud of my little Tupperware box of domesticity. I had made this supper the night before and now carried it in front of me like a badge of honour, half hoping someone would stop me and ask what it was.
Yes, my boyfriend is recuperating. I bring him food every day. Just little things he might fancy. You know I grew these tomatoes myself?

Sam’s wounds were beginning to heal, the internal damage clearing. He tried to get up too often, and was grumpy about being stuck in bed and worried about his animals, even though Donna, Jake and I had set up a reasonably good animal husbandry schedule.

Two to three weeks, the consultants reckoned. If he did what he was told. Given the extent of his injuries he had been lucky. More than one conversation had taken place in my presence where medical professionals had murmured, ‘A centimetre the other way and …’ I sang la-la-la-la-la-la in my head during those conversations.

I reached his corridor and buzzed myself in, cleaning my hands with the antibacterial foam, as I pushed at the door with my hip.

‘Evening,’ said the nurse with glasses. ‘You’re late!’

‘Had to go to a meeting.’

‘You just missed his mum. She brought him the most delicious homemade steak and ale pie. You could smell it all the way down the ward. We’re still salivating.’

‘Oh.’ I lowered my box. ‘That’s nice.’

‘Good to see him tuck in. The consultant will be round in about half an hour.’

I was just about to put the Tupperware into my bag when my phone rang. I pressed answer, still wrestling with the zip.

‘Louisa?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Leonard Gopnik.’

It took me two seconds to register his name. I made to speak, then stood very still, glancing around me stupidly as if he could be somewhere nearby.

‘Mr Gopnik.’

‘I got your email.’

‘Right.’ I put the food container on the chair.

‘It was an interesting read. I was pretty surprised when you turned down my job offer. As was Nathan. You seemed suited to it.’

‘It’s like I said in my email. I did want it, Mr Gopnik, but I … well … things came up.’

‘So is this girl doing okay now?’

‘Lily. Yes. She’s in school. She’s happy. She’s with her family. Her new family. It was just a period of … adjustment.’

‘You took that very seriously.’

‘I’m not the kind of person who can just leave someone behind.’

There was a long silence. I turned away from Sam’s room and gazed out of the window at the car park, watching as an oversized 4x4 tried and failed to negotiate its way into a too-small parking space. Forwards and backwards. I could see it wasn’t going to fit.

‘So here’s the thing, Louisa. It’s not working out with our new employee. She’s not happy. For whatever reason she and my wife are not really comfortable with each other. By mutual
agreement she’s leaving at the end of the month. Which leaves me with a problem.’

I listened.

‘I would like to offer you the job. But I don’t like upheaval, especially when it involves people close to me. So I guess I’m calling because I’m trying to get a clear picture of what it is you actually want.’

‘Oh, I did really want it. But I –’

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I spun around, and there was Sam, leaning against the wall. ‘I – er –’

‘You got another position?’

‘I got a promotion.’

‘Is it a position you want to stay in?’

Sam was watching my face.

‘N-not necessarily. But –’

‘But obviously you have to weigh it all up. Okay. Well, I imagine that I’ve probably caught you by surprise with this call. But on the back of what you wrote me, if you’re genuinely still interested I’d like to offer you the job. Same terms, to start as soon as possible. That’s as long as you’re sure that it’s something you really want. Do you think you can let me know within forty-eight hours?’

‘Yes. Yes, Mr Gopnik. Thank you. Thank you for calling.’

I heard him click off. I looked up at Sam. He was wearing a hospital dressing gown over his too-short hospital nightshirt. Neither of us spoke for a moment.

‘You’re up. You should be in bed.’

‘I saw you through the window.’

‘One ill-timed breeze and those nurses are going to be talking about you till Christmas.’

‘Was that the New York guy?’

I felt, oddly, busted. I put my phone in my pocket and reached for the Tupperware container. ‘The position came
up again.’ I watched his gaze slide briefly away from me. ‘But it’s … I’ve only just got you back. So I’m going to say no. Look, do you think you can manage some pasta after your epic pie? I know you’re probably full, but it’s so rare that I manage to cook something that’s actually edible.’

‘No.’

‘It’s not that bad. You could at least try –’

‘Not the pasta. The job.’

We stared at each other. He ran his hand through his hair, glancing down the corridor. ‘You need to do this, Lou. You know it and I know it. You have to take it.’

‘I tried to leave home before, and I just got even more messed up.’

‘Because it was too soon. You were running away. This is different.’

I gazed up at him. I hated myself for realizing what I wanted to do. And I hated him for knowing it. We stood in the hospital corridor in silence. And then I saw he was rapidly losing colour from his face. ‘You need to lie down.’

He didn’t fight me. I took his arm and we made our way back to his bed. He winced as he lay back carefully on the pillows. I waited until I saw colour return to his face, then lay down beside him and took his hand.

‘I feel like we just sorted it all out. You and me.’ I laid my head against his shoulder, feeling my throat constrict.

‘We did.’

‘I don’t want to be with anyone else, Sam.’

‘Pfft. Like that was ever in doubt.’

‘But long-distance relationships rarely survive.’

‘So we are in a relationship?’

I started to protest and he smiled. ‘I’m kidding. Some.
Some
don’t survive. I’m guessing some do, though. I guess it depends how much both sides want to try.’

His big arm looped around my neck and pulled me to him. I realised I was crying. He wiped at my tears gently with his thumb. ‘Lou, I don’t know what will happen. Nobody ever does. You can set out one morning and step in front of a motorbike and your whole life can change. You can go to work on a routine job and get shot by a teenager who thinks that’s what it takes to be a man.’

‘You can fall off a tall building.’

‘You can. Or you can go to visit a bloke wearing a nightie in a hospital bed and get the best job offer you can imagine. That’s life. We don’t know what will happen. Which is why we have to take our chances while we can. And … I think this might be yours.’

I screwed my eyes shut, not wanting to hear him, not wanting to acknowledge the truth in what he was saying. I wiped at my eyes with the heels of my hands. He handed me a tissue and waited while I wiped the black smears from my face.

‘Panda-eyes suit you.’

‘I think I might be a bit in love with you.’

‘I bet you say that to all the men in intensive care.’

I turned over and kissed him. When I opened my eyes again he was watching me.

‘I’ll give it a go, if you will,’ he said.

It took a moment for the lump in my throat to subside enough for me to be able to speak. ‘I don’t know, Sam.’

‘You don’t know what?’

‘Life is short, right? We both know that. Well, what if you’re my chance? What if you are the thing that’s actually going to make me happiest?’