My Favourite Wife (25 page)

‘Think of an unhealthy heart like an inefficient worker,’ said the cardiologist. ‘The inefficient worker works twice as hard as the
efficient worker, but he doesn’t get half as much done. The healthy heart –’

Becca’s telephone began to ring inside her bag. The fat nurse looked at Becca as if she wanted to kill her. Becca released the hands of her father and sister and quickly pulled out her phone. She saw that the screen said UNKNOWN CALLER just as she switched it off.

‘Sorry,’ she said to everyone, but mostly to the fat nurse who wanted to kill her.

Then Becca felt the hands of her father and sister reclaim her own hands, their fingers digging into her palms, holding her for comfort and reassurance and as if to stop her getting away.

‘You can pull your pants and trousers up,’ Dr Khan told Shane. While Shane was getting dressed, Khan went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. He looked exhausted. He was only hours off the flight from Heathrow and in the grip of the dazed, spaced-out dislocation of full-blown jet-lag. When he went back to his office, they were waiting for him.

Shane’s wife sat beside him, but Shane felt completely alone. Somehow Rosalita’s presence in the doctor’s surgery made him feel more isolated than if he had been there without her.

They were here because the pain had not stopped. The pain down there in his trusty old meat and two veg, his faithful servants for so long and on so many adventures. They had betrayed him at last, for the pain down there had sometimes gone away but it had never gone very far. For a while now he had believed that there was something very wrong with him. Today he would find out.

It was a time when he wanted a friend, an ally, and a wife. Someone to tell him that it would be all right – whatever happened, he would get through it. They would get through it together. But instead he felt like the loneliest man in the world.

‘It’s not cancer and it’s not a scrotal hernia,’ Dr Khan said, but something about his tone prevented Shane from releasing a sigh of relief.

At least the examination had been mercifully swift. Shane on the couch, his pants and trousers pulled down but not pulled off. The fingers in the plastic gloves had located the source of the pain, dug expertly into him, and now Dr Khan was confidently announcing that it was not the thing that Shane had feared most. It was not cancer. The plastic gloves had moved away from the testicles, heading north, pressing against the top of the groin, and his abdomen, and then back down south of the border to the source of the pain. But it wasn’t a hernia either. And the way that Dr Khan pronounced on these things, Shane knew that he had no doubt.

But there was something else.

‘Unfortunately it could be torsion,’ Dr Khan said, and Shane thought – torsion? It was a word, a fate, that he had never encountered, never dreamed of. Shane had spent weeks with medical encyclopaedias running through the things that could be wrong with him if it wasn’t just the after-effects of a kick in the balls.

Cancer? Maybe. A scrotal hernia? Possibly, and although it would be nasty it would be infinitely preferable to the Big C. But torsion? He had never heard of torsion. Was torsion even listed in the
Concise Medical Dictionary?
Oh, definitely. But he had not looked it up. This is what will kill you, Shane thought.

Something you can’t even name.

‘Torsion is an abnormal twisting of a testicle,’ Khan said. ‘Imagine a ball being spun round.’ Shane crossed his legs and then uncrossed them, opening them wider apart, imagining only too well.

Shane tried a brave smile, but there was too much that he didn’t know, and too much he was scared of.

‘Worse-case scenario?’ he said, as lightly as he could.

Dr Khan stared at them. ‘Well, if it’s torsion, and if you’ve lost viability in that testicle – if there’s no blood getting to it, if it is
essentially dead – then it will have to be surgically removed as soon as possible.’

Then Shane was too numb to be afraid.

He was conscious of his breathing, and his heart in his chest, and he could see his life veering off in an insane, unexpected direction. Torsion! Now I’ve heard of it! Then his wife spoke, her voice cold and flat and hard.

‘Will he still be able to have children?’ she said, as though she had just suffered a gross personal insult.

Dr Khan chose to swerve around the question.

‘We need to get you a scan immediately,’ he said. ‘There’s a consultant radiologist who is the best in the city and I want you to go and sit outside his office until he can fit you in. I’m going to call him now, but as you don’t have an appointment I’m afraid you will have to sit there until he can see you.’

Shane nodded, still in shock. Where else did he have to be? What else was there outside of this room? His wife was silent by his side. She didn’t touch him, and he almost forgot that she was there.

The phone on Dr Khan’s desk rang and he angrily snatched it up. ‘No calls when I’m with a patient, you know that.’

His secretary was apologetic. ‘It’s emergency, Dr Khan,’ she said, her English faltering under pressure. ‘About Mr William Holden from JinJin Li. She say you know.’

Khan almost had to laugh. God, he was tired. ‘JinJin Li?’ he said. ‘That narrows it down. There must be fifty million JinJin Lis in China.’

But he took the call, making an apologetic face at Shane and Rosalita. There was a click and then her voice came on the line. ‘Dr Khan?’ she said. ‘You don’t know me.’

In the big strange bed Bill drifted in and out of dreams. He shook and shivered under the sweat-stained sheets, listening to her moving around the flat, his exhausted mind racing.

What if the problem was not trying to meet someone great but that you would meet a lot of great people? What if the problem was not finding someone worthy of love, but meeting an endless number of people who were worthy of love? What then? Was that a blueprint for a happy life? Or a recipe for disaster?

‘You’re a very lucky man,’ said Dr Khan, leaning over Bill’s bed.

He was in the International Family Hospital and Clinic with an IV drip inserted into his arm. It flowed through his veins like molten ice and he flinched with the pain. JinJin stood awkwardly in a corner of the hospital room, uncertain if she should stay or go.

‘I don’t know what you’ve been eating,’ said Khan. ‘But this is some kind of viral infection of the stomach and intestines. Looks like amoebic dysentery. We’re going to keep you in for tests. And of course you are seriously dehydrated. That’s what could have killed you.’

‘Did someone call my wife?’ Bill croaked.

‘Someone from your office came by while you were sleeping. Miss Deng, is it?’ Against the wall JinJin nodded but Khan did not see her. Bill realised the doctor was doing his best to not even acknowledge her presence. ‘Your office is aware of the situation,’ he said. ‘Miss Deng said she would personally call Becca. Call your wife. You can call her yourself when you’re up to it.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Bill said, and Dr Khan nodded shortly, and looked away. When he had gone, nodding curtly at JinJin, she pulled a chair to the side of Bill’s bed, watching his face. She placed the back of a hand on his forehead as if taking his temperature then gently pulled it across his temple, and down one cheek, and across his lips, and up the other cheek, removing a thin film of sweat.

‘Thanks for saving my life,’ Bill said, and she smiled her priceless smile, and it is possible that she may have replied, but by then he was sleeping.

* * *

He awoke not knowing where he was, disorientated by the dreamlike sounds of a hospital at night.

Someone crying out in their sleep. Wheels rolling by his room. Nurses conferring in the corridor. A telephone ringing, and left unanswered.

The IV drip was by his side, but the little bag had been sucked half-dry, and he groaned as he felt that icy pain crawling up his arm.

Now he remembered.

Khan was gone. JinJin was gone. But in the shaft of light that seeped through the top of the door he could see Shane’s familiar bulk sitting in the chair by the bed.

‘You all right, mate?’

Bill closed his eyes and nodded and smiled, comforted by the rough Aussie burr.

‘Touch of the running squirts, eh?’ Shane said. ‘Happens to the best of us.’

‘I don’t know what I ate,’ Bill groaned. The last meal he remembered was some late-night Dan Dan noodles with Shane and the Germans on the Bund. But Shane had clearly survived the noodles. Bill closed his eyes. He had never felt so tired.

‘Amoebic dysentery,’ Shane shrugged. ‘It’s just as likely to be in the water as in the food. You probably got a bad ice cube. Stay away from the water, mate. Don’t you Poms know anything?’ He patted Bill’s arm. ‘Anyway – everyone sends their love. Take as long as you like, Devlin says.’ Shane shifted awkwardly. ‘Had a bit of a bastard day myself. Had warm jelly rubbed all over my crown jewels.’ Bill opened his eyes and stared at his friend. Shane sighed at the memory, and couldn’t quite manage a smile. ‘Lot of people would pay good money for that, mate. When the doc said a scan, I thought that he meant one of those scans where they stick you inside that big machine – you know, the big machine like a coffin. What do you call that machine, mate?’

‘MRI scan,’ Bill said. ‘It’s called an MRI scan.’

‘Yeah, MRI scan. But this scan was the kind that a woman has when she’s got a bun in the oven. Where they rub jelly on her belly so you can see the little nipper inside her.’

Bill thought of the long-ago scans holding Becca’s hand as they stared with wonder at their unborn daughter. That was the best time. No, when their daughter was born was the best time. No, when she was bigger, and she was walking and you could see the little girl she would be, that was the best time. No, he thought, maybe later, when we could talk to each other. That was the best time.

Shane was still talking about scans. ‘The kind of scan when the woman’s up the duff and there are lots of oohs and aahs,’ he said. He moved uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Well, there were plenty of oohs and aahs when they started rubbing this jelly on my Elgin marbles.’

Bill closed his eyes and laughed. He didn’t want to laugh because it hurt too much, but he couldn’t stop himself. The ice crawled up his veins and made him gasp with pain. ‘Are you all right, Shane?’

The big Australian shifted in the darkness. He had not talked about any of this. He had kept it all locked up. ‘The doc thought I might have to have a bollock lopped off. From our big night out in Pudong, remember?’

Bill looked at him, not laughing now. ‘Jesus, Shane.’ The secrets that we keep, he thought. ‘I’m so sorry.’ And he did feel sorry, and he felt responsible, and he knew that if he had never gone near JinJin Li then his friend would not have had to live through today.

‘It was okay,’ Shane said lightly. ‘The radiologist said there was no torsion. Great guy. Lovely man. Just the effects of getting a good kicking, he reckoned. But your mind plays tricks, doesn’t it? Your mind plays all sorts of tricks.’

‘Then that’s good, Shane,’ Bill said, his voice a croak. Their voices
were soft in the hospital night, as though there was some third party asleep in the room who they were trying not to disturb. ‘Then that’s great.’

‘I remember when my grandmother died of breast cancer,’ Shane said. ‘Great old girl. And she did the most generous and bravest thing that I ever saw anyone do in my life. She took my mother’s hand and made her feel the lump – made her know the thing that was killing her. And my grandmother said, “That’s what you are always looking for, love, that is what you must guard against, sweetheart, and if you find it, you beat it. You spot it early and you get it cut out of you and you live.” And when I thought it might be testicular cancer, I thought – fuck me, as much as I love him, there’s no way I’m letting Bill Holden stick his hand down my trousers.’

Bill laughed again, harder now, as though some weight had been lifted from both of them, and he didn’t care about the way that any kind of movement made the ice ache in his arm. ‘It turned out all right,’ he smiled. ‘It turned out all right in the end.’

Shane nodded. ‘But something like this – it shines a light on your life.’ He rubbed his fingers across his eyes. ‘It shines a light on your marriage. It really does. When something like this happens – when it looks like they are going to start cutting bits off you -well, you find out what you’ve got, and what you haven’t got.’ He turned his face away, although Bill couldn’t see it in the darkness. ‘She had her bags packed, Bill. I saw it. Not literally, but I would have been in this thing alone. If it had been anything bad, Rosalita would have been off.’

Bill thought of his friend looking at the woman who became his wife before she was even his girlfriend. He thought of how quickly it could all come apart. ‘You don’t know that,’ Bill said, reaching for some reassuring cliché, and unable to believe in any of them. ‘It might have brought out the best in her. It might have brought you closer.’

Shane snorted.

‘Radical way to patch up your marriage, mate. Have a bit of surgery on the family heirlooms.’ He shook his head. ‘Sad fact is, she’s not there for me the way a wife should be there. She’s not my best friend.’

Bill closed his eyes. He wanted to help his friend. He wanted to comfort him. But he was so tired now. The only thing keeping him awake was the ice that crept through his blood, and made him wince from the pain.

‘It’s not like you and Becca,’ Shane said. ‘Me and Rosalita – it’s just not like that. We’re not partners. We’re – I don’t know what we are. Fuck buddies with wedding rings. That’s all. And lately, since that night in Pudong, not even that.’ Shane covered his face with his hands, and Bill could hear his friend breathing in the darkness. ‘You’ve got the kind of marriage that every man dreams about,’ Shane said, and Bill knew it was true.

But your mind plays tricks, he thought.

Your mind plays all sorts of tricks.

‘I feel terrible,’ Becca said. ‘I feel awful. Really rotten.’

On the other side of the world, Bill laughed weakly. ‘Snap,’ he said, and in one word she could tell how bad it had been. Her husband sounded as though he had had the stuffing knocked out of him.