Monogamy Book One. Lover: This is one love for life and beyond time

by Victoria Sobolev

  ‘How is Alex feeling?’

  ‘Not great. He struggled to come round from the anaesthetic and he’s very weak, so the doctors are keeping him sedated. He’s asleep all the time.’

  ‘Is he allowed visitors?’

  Maria sighs into the telephone and, after a short pause, she lets me know where I stand.

  ‘Valeria, we’re really grateful to you for your help and we’ll obviously pay for your flight and hotel and everything, but we wouldn’t dare keep you.’

  ‘I’d like to see Alex, talk to him...’ I say, not giving up.

  ‘That’s really not necessary. Thanks again, but you can go back to your family. We’ll take care of him now.’

  And so, politely but insistently, I was sent away. But I am stubborn and don’t leave with good reason: I feel with all my heart that there is something extremely important I haven’t done yet, that this is just the beginning.

  CHAPTER 17. ON THE EDGE

  *** ‘Take Me To Church’ by Sofia Karlberg (Hozier cover) ***

  Alex calls me two days later.

  ‘I’m fine, Lera. You need to go home to your children... you’ve already been here for far too long.’

  ‘I will. I’ll go soon, but...’

  ‘Do you need something?’

  ‘Can I come and see you? I don’t want to say goodbye over the phone.’

  After a moment’s silence, he agrees.

  Three days later, I go to the house on the coast, and what I see there rips me apart: Alex is even thinner than before. With all his colour drained away, he barely moves, with each movement taking an incredible amount of effort. I never thought, could never even have imagined, that I would ever see him so weak.

  The most terrifying thought gnaws away at my heart: the surgery clearly hasn’t helped him; he is wasting away.

  Tears fall unbidden from my eyes; I no longer have any control over them.

  ‘Now do you get why I asked you to leave?’ he asks softly. ‘You’re hurting, but there’s nothing I can do about it. And this is how you’ll always remember me.’

  ‘What the hell difference does that make?!’ I say, my tears now choking sobs.

  ‘It makes a difference to me!’

  ‘So how would you like me to remember you?’

  ‘As I used to be – healthy, strong.’

  ‘That’s how you still are – and not just in my memory, but in real life! This cannot be happening; it just can’t! I forbid you! I forbid you, do you hear me?! I will not allow it! I am not letting you go!’ I shout at him between sobs. ‘You belong here!’

  But Alex can’t hear me and isn’t listening. He is having difficulty breathing and, every now and again, is beset by a suffocating coughing fit. I hate the whole world at this moment, but my knowledge and experience of my son’s illness start the analytical whirlwind in my brain spinning: his symptoms in no way fit with the little I know about leukaemia.

  I beg Alex to call his doctor but he refuses, saying it’s too late in the evening. And although it is outrageously late, I grab his telephone and find the number I’m looking for. A male voice answers, its owner around forty years of age, and the thought crosses my mind that he is probably not the most experienced of doctors. He speaks clearly and correctly and I find his English easy to understand, but describing Alex’s condition is more difficult. The doctor tells me rather nervously that he examined Alex when he was discharged, that he was a difficult patient and insisted on going home, but there is nevertheless nothing to worry about. We should follow the recommended treatment, remain calm, and not bother him unless there’s a reason.

  ‘I had hoped he would be feeling stronger and find it strange that he responded so badly to the surgery. His condition is normal for the majority of such patients, however. Make sure he gets some rest and bring him in tomorrow for a dressing change. We’ll do a blood test.’ And he hangs up.

  I’m worried. Alex tries to make a joke about my English, but it falls flat and I freak out even more. Finally, he weakly asks me to leave, saying it’s already very late and he wants to sleep, but, at this precise moment, I don’t give a damn what he wants. My brain is running at full capacity: something is not right with him. I urgently need to find out what it is, but I’m not a doctor, unfortunately.

  About three hours pass and Alex spends the whole time sleeping, his breathing heavy. It’s this that troubles me the most. Worried, I decide to lie down next to him. Embracing him, I immediately realise that he is much hotter than he should be. I wake him up.

  ‘Do you have a thermometer? I need to check your temperature.’

  Alex struggles to understand what I’m asking for, and I realise that he is losing consciousness.

  I hurriedly search through countless cupboards and drawers full of all sorts of things, but nowhere in this enormous house is there something as simple as a thermometer!

  I rush back to Alex and press my whole body against his. He is even hotter and I no longer need a thermometer. As a mother of two, I know that his temperature is around thirty-nine degrees Celsius or higher. Thankfully, I have watched a lot of American films, so I know how to call for an ambulance. I dial the number and hear my voice giving the address, listing the symptoms, telling them that Alex is struggling for breath. I disconnect the call and listen to his cough, which is getting more frequent and more intense. I’ve been fighting with my son’s asthma for years, so wheezy, laboured breathing like this is painfully familiar to me. I know how to stave off an attack until help arrives, but nowhere in this luxury palace are there the kinds of drugs I have at home. Oh, if only I was at home!

  I drag Alex out onto the terrace. He tries to resist, but I tell him he’ll find it easier to breathe out there while we wait for the ambulance. He’s angry with me for calling one, flatly refuses to go anywhere and is overcome by another bout of paroxysmal coughing. I soothe him, stroking his head, because I know that he won’t be able to breathe at all soon, it’s just a matter of time. It’s all about timing now. The most important thing is that the ambulance arrives quickly.

  And it does. Just in time, in fact, because Alex is almost unconscious. I’m not a doctor, but I know that he has pneumonia and pulmonary edema. I know because I’m a mother. There are doctors who save lives, but there are also doctors who rob us of those we love through their incompetence, carelessness, and recklessness. I never trust them completely, always double-checking my children’s prescriptions and consulting with several specialists.

  Alex has another choking fit in the ambulance. The doctors are professionals; they are trying to save him. I know that his life is now in their hands and I believe in them, I want to trust them. I watch them working and pray, pray, pray.

  CHAPTER 18. STAY

  Alex is in an induced coma. An oxygen mask covers his face and there are tubes and wires everywhere. He is far away, but his heart is still beating. More than a litre of liquid was drained from his lungs, his arms are covered with puncture marks.

  The doctor I spoke with on the phone coldly tells me that Alex will be brought out of the coma as soon as his lungs are clean and able to work again. If that happens, of course. Chances are slim but it’s not completely out of the question, he adds compassionately. Idiot. He has no idea who he’s dealing with and I kick up a fuss – it’s not the first time for me. The head physician comes to see me that night and tries to pacify me, but I make it clear to him that there has been a gross medical error: they sent a cancer patient home with severe pneumonia that they all failed to notice when he was discharged. They try to convince me that everything was done in strict accordance with the hospital’s protocol. Of course! It’s all about their procedure: they checked everything to do with the operation according to protocol, but nobody thought to listen to his lungs. His temperature was slightly raised, yes, but that’s normal for a patient post surgery. I’m having trouble grasping the idiocy of the situation, but the main thing is that the doctor ignored my call and the information I gave him, but it was his jo
b to take action if the patient’s condition deteriorated. If I hadn’t been there and known what was happening, Alex would already be dead. There is fear in their eyes, because they’re not just facing a lawsuit. I promise them I’ll do everything I can to make sure it ends in prison time if Alex dies.

  Another doctor arrives called Tony, the one who gives additional instructions to the medical staff. He asks what my relationship is to the patient and I reply: ‘I’m the only one who cares about him. Is that good enough for you?’ But he forgives me my rudeness. Given the circumstances, I have a moral right to it.

  They won’t let me into the intensive care unit, but I know that hospital policy allows in relatives. I remind the new doctor that if it wasn’t for me, Alex would be lying in the morgue right now, and what bloody difference does it make how clearly the hospital follows the rules if he dies? He gives in.

  Three days. For three days, Alex is in a coma. For three days, I live in the chair by his bed, counting each breath, listening to the rhythm of his heartbeat. This is my life right now. This is my world. My God, I love this man... The pain is unbearable, intolerable...

  Memories flash before my eyes of meetings, looks, time spent together. They are like stills from a film etched into my heart: my initial shock at the depth of his gaze, the first touch of his thoughts, hands, lips. The magical days spent in Barcelona and Paris, the melting tenderness of his caress. The pain of separation.

  I was not waiting for him. I did not ask or search for him. He came on his own, found me among millions and called me to go with him.

  He was unusual, unlike anyone I have ever met: everything good in humanity was gathered in him alone and elevated to perfection.

  He was perfect, too perfect for me, and nothing like my usual hero, but he tore open my heart, shattered my armour of pragmatism and got into my bloodstream.

  Five years have passed. Five.

  Five long, silent years in which my emotions and feelings have been numb, as if under a powerful anaesthetic.

  And now he is sick. Dying because he didn’t find what he was looking for in life. Disenchanted with the world, he is turning his back on it, letting his life fade into oblivion, dispassionately watching it leave.

  I want to reach out, touch his shoulder, see him turn his head and look at me with his wise brown eyes. He always knew how to hear my thoughts, how to feel me, so I want him to hear me now and know how much it hurts that I deceived us both. I lied to him. I lied to myself.

  *** ‘Stay’ by Demi Lovato (Rihanna Cover) ***

  It is morning, a new day just beginning.

  I hear my voice quietly singing the same song we sang together seven years ago, and only now do I fully understand its meaning. My numb plea for him to show me love, passion, sensuality, and his invitation for me to dare move closer.

  So I dared. I allowed myself to step out of the shell of all my duties and responsibilities and he showed me everything: what life can be, what love can mean, how a heart can beat.

  It’s a special song. Our entire story, our whole life is in it, every line is about us. He knew, he felt that this is how it would be.

  I sing the words he once chose for us and beg him to stay. He was right about everything. I’m not living the life I should, waking up every morning and convincing myself that the man next to me is my one true love. I have been telling myself that I’m happy, that life is providing me with everything I need, but it’s not true! I don’t have what matters most!

  And now Alex is the one who is ill, who is broken, but I’m the one who needs saving. Saving from the production being staged in the theatre of my life, the play that has presented me with an illusion of what’s most important – love. Love is the only thing that ultimately fills our lives with meaning, that makes them whole. Love for our parents, children, friends, and for a man... so distant yet so close. It seems to me at this moment that the blood flowing in our veins is the same, that our cells and our DNA are identical, that we are two parts of one soul, mistakenly torn apart and placed into different bodies. I feel as if part of me is battling death in this hospital bed, and I’m ordering this part of myself to fight harder. I implore it to win.

  I sing, putting every ounce of strength that I have into the words, and my voice, much louder now, surges through the room like a powerful wave.

  Staaaaaay…

  The song is my prayer. My voice has never sounded so strong, so beautiful, despite the tears running down my face. It flows out of me in a gentle stream, captivating me with its magic. I see people on the other side of the glass window, doctors and patients who have risen earlier than usual this morning. Some are crying, some quietly applauding. My song has touched them to the core and it makes me feel better. They came to support me, these people I don’t know, and I really need that right now because I have absolutely no strength left. I have used it all up on fear and prayer.

  Alex regains consciousness forty minutes later. All by himself. He comes to and looks into my eyes more knowingly than ever before, so intensely that the nape of my neck breaks out in a flurry of goose bumps that spill down my spine. The realisation of what exactly happened in this intensive care unit is suddenly frighteningly clear: Alex did not come out of a coma; he came back from a different place. I can see it in his eyes – he was there. He knows more than me, he wished for death and didn’t resist, but I dragged him back. I hung onto him for dear life and wouldn’t let go. My weakness didn’t stop me from being the strongest person on the planet over the last few days. I didn’t let go of him and now he is here: he is breathing himself, he’s alive. His brown eyes are staring into mine and I would sell my soul to the devil for them if I had to.

  ‘I told you they were going to kill me,’ he tries to joke with a smile, but he is barely audible.

  ‘Don’t speak, save your strength!’ I say, choking back tears and trying desperately to stop them falling, to hide them.

  How? How did it happen that we found each other? How could I have been so wrong? How could I have not realised before what he means to me and I to him? I spent such a long time cruelly pushing him away. He fell and got back up, but I kept doing it again and again. I pushed and I pushed until I pushed him away for good. Forever.

  Forever?

  Maria arrives and we decide to get a coffee in the hospital cafeteria. I ask her: ‘Why is he here on his own? Where is his mother? His father? Where are all his friends and relatives?’

  ‘He hasn’t told you?!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can’t believe you were so close for all that time and you don’t know!’

  She grabs a cigarette.

  ‘Let’s go outside, I need a smoke. I quit ages ago, but, at times like these, I just have to have one.’

  *** ‘Since Your Love’ ft. Brandon Hampton ***

  She relishes the cigarette like a true ex-smoker.

  ‘Besides me, he doesn’t have anyone else. His whole family – his parents, his two sisters – died in a car accident. Alex was the youngest of the three children and was in the car with them, sitting on his mother’s knee, her arms around him. The police think that she must have realised what was about to happen just in time and somehow managed to push him out of an open window. He was five... The car fell into a ravine, exploded, and he saw them all burn alive. He didn’t speak for two years afterwards and we never talk about it now. The funeral was just awful. One of our cousins had a stroke during the actual service. My mother raised the two of us and she had a hard time of it. Not financially, of course – our family has always been well off – but she and my father had only just got divorced. It was a trying time for us all, that’s why Alex is so much more than a brother to me. He is a tortured soul and I’m responsible for him.’

  Frozen in horror, it feels like I have gone deaf and blind at the same time. I am in complete shock at what I have just heard. I can’t speak, can’t think. It doesn’t just answer one of my questions, it answers many of them. It is now clear what makes him so profo
und and wise, and why he was always so insistent about having a family. Alex knows its true value more than anyone, and the value of things that happen to us in life; he knows how foolish and pointless it is to miss out on life’s precious moments for the sake of convention, how short-sighted it is to limit oneself, to set oneself boundaries.

  ‘So you’re not his real sister...’ I remark, simply for something to say and to hide my shock.

  ‘No. We’re cousins by birth, but our relationship is so much more than that. I’m the closest person he has in the world. Well, besides you, of course!’ She smiles and looks at me meaningfully.

  ‘I didn’t think you were that keen on me,’ I say, sensing a change in her attitude. We seem to have grown closer.

  And Maria explains with a smile, ‘The nurses in this hospital can’t stop talking about the romantic love song that pulled Alex from the jaws of death. I think it will be the talk of this hospital forever!’ Her face breaks into a warm smile and her eyes shine with love... for me!

  I glance around and, sure enough, there are quite a few people not just looking in my direction, but whispering and pointing. Kindness and admiration fill their eyes, and gratitude for my miracle, which has now become their hope...

  CHAPTER 19. THROUGH HARDSHIPS TO THE STARS

  *** ‘Give You What You Like’ by Avril Lavigne ***

  The operation helped Alex, but he needed further treatment. Tony – an imposing Italian with beautiful salt-and-paper hair at his temples – prescribes chemotherapy and radiotherapy, both standard treatment methods in such cases.

  Tony warns me that Alex’s recovery will be slow going, so my task is to help him get stronger faster in order for the doctors to start therapy as soon as possible. Tony assures us that Alex can make a full recovery – his cancer is not aggressive and he just needs to see the treatment through to the end – but the situation is made more difficult by the pneumonia, which has seriously weakened his body.