The Night That Changed Everything (34 page)

Thank God
.

The door opens and though I recognize the couple that walk in, it's not until Ben speaks that I place them.

‘Hi, Mr and Mrs Hawley,' says Ben.

‘Ben,' says Jamie's dad with a nod, while his wife offers a small smile. They don't tell Ben to call them by their first names, even though they've known him for ever. Nor do they acknowledge Danielle and me, though I'm sure they know exactly who we are.

Danielle looks my way and rolls her eyes and I shake my head in return. Have she and I really not spoken for months?

Ben starts to tell the Hawleys what Dr Stevens said but Jamie's mum cuts him short, telling him they've already spoken to the doctor. She seems affronted at the suggestion they're not up to speed.

I'm suddenly swept up by an anger on a scale I've never experienced before.

Where were you when he was on the operating table?
I want to shout.
And when Jamie opened his bar? And at the reception after graduation? Did you really need to jump on the first train up to Manchester after the ceremony?

I need to get out of here before I give in to my instincts, because the last thing Jamie needs to hear when he wakes up is that I roundhoused his mum in the face.

‘Just going to grab a coffee,' I tell the room.

I punch the buttons on the dispenser, wishing I'd paid more attention to Michael's calming technique earlier. It must have looked rude that I didn't offer to get anyone else a drink, but I've no intention of going back in yet. With my cup in my hand, I walk in the opposite direction to the waiting room.

On the wall at the end of the corridor there's a huge sign with arrows signalling the various wards, and on impulse I follow maternity. It feels like my best chance of finding a happy place.

Five minutes later I find myself standing in front of a glass wall, where six babies in tiny cots are spread out in two neat rows. Amazingly, five are sound asleep, but the one closest to the window must have missed the memo that it's the middle of the night, and lies on its back, blinking at the ceiling with the uncertainty of someone who's just learning how to use their eyelids.

I strain my eyes to read the name on the white tag on the bar of the cot.
Mimi
. It's a girl.

I'm suddenly overcome with a desire to go into the room and lift her up, but even if that was allowed, I know I'd be terrified. I've never held a newborn before. She looks so fragile. Her fingers twitch; she's just learning how to use them too. Look how tiny her hands are!

I can't believe I was ever that small. Actually, I don't think I was – Dad says I was
born
with long fingers and big feet.

An image of Dad sitting in a hospital waiting room pops into my mind and I can't breathe – it's like the wind has been sucked out of me.

The pain I felt waiting to hear if Jamie was going to be OK was unbearable. It doesn't feel like there could be a worse feeling. But for Dad, that was his wife. It was the mother of his young son, and his newborn daughter. And the worst happened. She didn't make it.

A salty tear reaches my lips. How did Dad ever get through something like that? And still manage to be a loving and devoted father to the person who took away the person he thought he would spend the rest of his life with?

I've never spoken to Dad about this. I've never asked how he felt, or how he got through it. I don't know if he's come to terms with it, or if he falls asleep every night feeling the emptiness of the space beside him.

Emotionally stunted
, Ben called me. Does he truly believe that? Or was he trying to hurt me in the heat of the argument? I was trying to hurt him with the things I said about his lack of ambition, but I meant them too. It did always get to me.

Maybe it is odd that I waited so long to tell him about my mum. Maybe I should have let him in more – even if it made me feel exposed. Maybe that's what love is – giving your whole self, even if it sometimes hurts.

I press my forehead against the glass and gaze at Mimi, her eyes closed now.
What do babies dream about?
I wonder.

‘Sweet dreams, Mimi,' I whisper. Have a good life.

I hope you have a dad like my dad.

And a friend like Jamie.

Monday, 2 March

I feel nervous as I walk into the hospital, like there's a shit load of winged insects buzzing around my stomach, but they're more like moths than butterflies, because there's nothing pretty about your mate having brain surgery.

Dr Stevens said the surgery was successful, but I haven't got a clue what I'm walking into. I don't even know if he'll be awake, or able to talk. I guess I'm expecting the worst, but when I spot him in the fifth bed on the left, I almost have to double-take. He looks . . .

. . . fine.

There is a small bandage to the side of his crown, and the top of his bed is raised to elevate his head, but apart from that . . .

‘They haven't even shaved all your hair off?' I say, with fake annoyance.

Jamie cranes his left arm towards the bandage. ‘A little bit around where they cut,' he says, as if that was the thing he found most distressing about the whole ordeal.

I realize I've pretty much been holding my breath for the last two days, and now that I can finally let go, I can't seem to summon the words to describe the relief, and so I stand there, not saying much at all.

‘You really fucking scared us there, Hawley,' I finally manage, looking him in the eye for the first time.

He holds eye contact. ‘It's really good to see you, Nicholls.'

It is only when I hear the slightest quiver in his voice that I see how shaken up he is.

He shuffles across ever so slightly so I can sit on the edge of his bed, and we both sit there, looking around the ward, because somehow that seems easier than confronting what almost just happened.

‘Obviously I had to keep it together for the sake of Rebecca and Danielle,' I finally say.

This amuses him greatly.

‘My mum and dad send their love,' I say. ‘And Frank.'

‘Mate, I'd kill for one of his fry-ups right now. The food in here is worse than the bar before you came along.'

‘First day you're out of here, that's where we're going.'

He smiles weakly. I'm about to tell him I called the bank and explained everything, and how they said we could rearrange our appointment when Jamie is up to it, but we're interrupted by the girls. They take turns to lean down for a kiss, then pull out the stacked chairs that I hadn't seen.

‘I knew I'd get us all back in the room together one day,' Jamie says. ‘I mean, I didn't think I'd have to go to these lengths, but . . .'

I look at Rebecca, and she looks at Danielle, and none of us quite knows what to say until Jamie starts laughing, and it's like the first clap in a round of applause, it sets everyone off.

Our shared laughter is full of relief, and afterwards Rebecca is suddenly able to look me in the eye and Danielle no longer folds her arms like she's forgotten her coat in winter.

‘I didn't know how bad you were going to look,' says Danielle. ‘I've been practising my Ugly Baby Face all morning in case you were a horror show.'

Jamie looks confused.

‘It's the face you do when someone's baby is ugly and you have to pretend it's the most beautiful and precious thing you ever saw in your whole life,' says Danielle.

‘Show us your Ugly Baby Face,' says Rebecca.

Danielle widens her eyes and sets her mouth into a gormless smile.

‘You actually look like an ugly baby,' says Jamie, taking a grape from the carton next to his leg, tossing it in the air and missing his mouth completely.

‘Shame you're not going to have a visible scar when your hair grows back,' says Danielle. ‘That would have got you loads of sympathy sex.'

I remember what Rebecca said while Jamie was having surgery, about him being indestructible because he was hit by a van as a kid. I didn't want to break her illusion at the time, but maybe he is indestructible after all.

‘He's always got the scar from when he was six,' I say. ‘What kind of van was it again, mate?'

Rebecca clocks my smirk.

‘What?' she says to both of us.

I shrug in Jamie's direction, so that everyone looks to him for the answer.

‘It was a toy van, OK?'

Jamie explains about Pigtail Parris, and stresses that it was still a traumatic experience, but I'm not sure the girls hear him through their laughter.

We're distracted by a brunette nurse in a cobalt-blue uniform who smiles at Jamie as she walks past with a trolley full of drip bags.

‘Oh,
please
,' says Rebecca under her breath, before turning to Jamie. ‘You've only been out of Critical Care two minutes and you've already got the nurses wrapped around your little finger.'

I look at Jamie, expecting him to reveal that he's already got her number or something, but he's spaced out, his forehead all taut. I follow his eyes to the window at one end of the ward. It is lunchtime, but it's one of those miserable days that never gets going, the night sky unwilling to submit completely to day.

Dr Stevens appears. ‘Mind if I interrupt?'

Danielle stands up so he can get past and shine a light into each of Jamie's eyes. Satisfied, he dispatches the light into his breast pocket.

‘What's your name?' he asks Jamie.

‘Aeronaut Charles Hodges,' comes the reply. ‘But you can call me Chas.'

‘What's the date?'

‘December 30, 1975.'

‘Where are you?'

‘On board the
Discovery II
mission to introduce authentic cockney music to the inhabitants of earth.'

Dr Stevens watches him intently for a moment and then says
Good
as if these were exactly the answers he was after.

‘Remember the last time we were all in hospital together?' I say once the doctor has gone.

‘Remember it?' Danielle squeals. ‘I still have scars on my arse!'

Rebecca and I had been going out for six months and we'd all gone up to the Lake District for a long weekend. We hired a boat, but Danielle dropped one of the oars, and we learnt that if you try to row with one oar you just go round in circles, so we tried to anchor the other oar into the bed of the lake and drag ourselves towards the shore. And that was when we – Jamie – dropped the other oar. So we were literally up the creek without a paddle.

Somehow we managed to jig the boat near enough to a tree so that we could swing on to the bank using a branch. Perfect. But after levering three of us to safety, the branch snapped. With Danielle attached.

‘The look on your face when you realized you'd landed in nettles,' I remind her.

‘This was about as sympathetic as you were at the time, if I remember correctly,' says Rebecca.

‘That's not fair,' I counter. ‘We only laughed for a few seconds.'

‘Yes, by which time Becs was already pulling me to safety.'

Rebecca always was good in a crisis. She was the one who thought to ring the hotel to find out the nearest Accident and Emergency, and the one who navigated us there even when the satnav lost its signal. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised she didn't lose her way when
we
had a crisis.

It is only once we're done reminiscing that I realize Jamie hasn't been saying anything. He looks tired, and I'm wondering if he wants us to leave so he can rest, but then he asks about the bar.

‘Everything's under control,' I say. ‘Erica's been a star.'

A few minutes later Jamie's parents arrive and stand back as though waiting for us to say our goodbyes.

‘Take care of yourself, OK?' says Rebecca, reaching down for another kiss. She takes his hand loosely. ‘Love you.'

Jamie brightens. ‘Aw, you never use the L word. I'm touched.'

Rebecca hooks her arms into her coat while Danielle leans in to say her own goodbye to Jamie, and they exchange a smile. She steps back and I'm up, but I'm not sure I could hold it together if I told him how I really feel about him, so instead I instigate a sideways handshake, but he can barely grip my palm.

He holds up a hand woozily as we retreat, then Danielle rushes off to catch the Tube back to her office.

‘How're you getting home?' I say, stopping with Rebecca in the corridor.

‘Bike,' says Rebecca. ‘You?'

‘I might walk if the rain has let up,' I say. ‘Make sure you're careful on the roads.'

‘You never know when a van might come flying.'

We both smile.

‘He's been a good mate to us, hasn't he?' I say. The brunette nurse passes us on her way into the ward. ‘He's been the one in the middle of everything.'

‘It's good that we can be in the same room together,' she says. ‘For Jamie's sake.'

I open my arms to hug her, and I'm relieved when she moves into them, just for a second. I haven't had a chance to process everything that was said the other night, but one thing I'm sure of is I'm glad Rebecca is back in my life.

‘Hopefully this will be a wake-up call to his parents, too,' I say.

I cannot tell if that is the moment the shouting starts, or just when I become aware of it.

A woman's voice, the brunette maybe, shouts the word
Nurse
repeatedly, the volume increasing but the tone remaining calm, level.

Rebecca and I lock eyes.

A second nurse runs towards the opening. I see his white trainers first, and then I understand it's not a nurse at all but Dr Stevens, and I should have twigged sooner because his overalls are puce, not blue.

The nurse is still shouting but I can't make out what she's saying, and there is something about her calls, their calmness, that I find disturbing, something that makes me feel like there's a lead weight in my stomach.