Little Wishes

by Michelle Adams

  “Tom, can you hear me?” A mumbled response came, but nothing discernible. “Okay, lad. I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt.”

  Summoning all his courage, James jabbed the knife into the side of Tom’s chest, making a small puncture wound along the top surface of one of his ribs. Tom barely flinched. Mr. Menhenick had opened out the coat hanger as requested, and James guided it through the rubber tubing before inserting it through the incision, praying that he didn’t end up puncturing the heart. Seconds later, he heard the rush of air coming from Tom’s chest, and with it, Tom began to rouse.

  “Sweet mother of Jesus,” said Mr. Menhenick, sweaty hands pulling at sea-drenched hair. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Tom groaned, squirmed on the table.

  “Neither have I,” James admitted, a verifiable truth to which he would not have cared to admit given a moment for reason. His sleeve came away wet as he mopped his brow, removing the hanger from within the tube. Bubbles formed in the water with each exhalation as James inserted the other end of the tube into the bowl, the once trapped air escaping the space between Tom’s lung and chest wall.

  “What’s going on?” Tom asked, his voice croaky and weak. “Where am I?”

  “You’re going to be all right,” James said, as much for himself as Tom. He turned to Mr. Menhenick, who was still shaking his head in disbelief. “We’re going to need to get him transferred to a hospital as soon as possible. The Priors have got the closest telephone, I think.”

  Still trying to process the turn of luck following what had appeared little more than butchery, Mr. Menhenick nodded his agreement. “I’ll go and call for an ambulance, then,” he said, before stopping to dress in his coat and change into his Wellingtons as if he had all the time in the world. As he was leaving he turned back, the door half-open. “You didn’t really mean that you had never seen anything like that before, did you?”

  James swallowed hard as he glanced at Tom, whose color was slowly returning. Even his fingers looked better, no longer the cool blue of hypoxia they were before. “Of course not. Saw the same thing a thousand times when I was in London.” The door slammed shut behind Mr. Menhenick, and James took what felt like the first breath in minutes. “Damn you, Porthsennen,” he muttered to himself. “You have made a liar out of an honest man.”

  And as he looked at Tom, he realized that it wouldn’t be the last lie he would tell that day.

  Now

  They managed, over the course of the next few weeks, when early frost blanketed the ground and where mist froze solid in their hair, to realize a few more of their unfulfilled wishes. It required a degree of imagination, but the urgency of the situation stirred reserves Elizabeth didn’t know she had. Alice purchased a portable DVD player, and they dedicated a whole day to the Godfather trilogy, throughout which Tom mostly slept, managing, it seemed, to wake up only for the shootings and murders. They even passed a whole evening out in the common bay with the other patients, where Elizabeth had organized a pianist. Because he was feeling particularly weak that evening, the nurses wheeled him out in his bed, and they spent almost two hours listening to a beautiful performance of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Nurses huddled in doors, visitors overstayed their welcome, and even the lone man in the corner lacking visitors and concentration paid attention. Elizabeth was sure she saw a tear in his eye, although it could just have been the heat. Afterward, Tom turned to her and smiled.

  “It was perfect,” he said, and that night, just as they planned, Elizabeth stayed in the room with him, squeezed up into the bed. It was breaking all the rules, but nobody seemed to mind, and if they did, they turned a blind eye. As the ward quieted and the lights dimmed, she looked at the slips of blue paper that remained and realized that those last few were going to be the hardest wishes to fulfill. But they were, at least, now Kate was talking to her again, possible.

  It would be easier to tell Tom the truth before Kate got there, but that knowledge didn’t get her any closer to understanding how one might go about explaining to a dying man, whom she had loved her whole life, that they shared a child. Possibilities charged through her mind, but eventually it was taken out of her hands. Because one minute he was chatting about Formula One with the changing faces of the ward staff, and the next all was quiet. It was as if night descended and dawn never broke.

  * * *

  It was later that evening when two women stood at the end of the bed, mumbling to each other, talking about things she didn’t understand. The senior of the two doctors introduced herself to Elizabeth as Dr. Helen Sanderson, a small epicene woman who, despite her skittish movements, spoke with an authority that made Elizabeth nervous as she explained the diagnosis. The time Elizabeth had spent at the hospital so far had prepared her well, and even before the doctor spoke, she knew it wasn’t going to be good news.

  “It’s not causing him any discomfort,” Dr. Sanderson reassured her. “But I have him written up for morphine in case he experiences any pain later. We have asked the neurologists to come and take a look, but I’m fairly sure about what I think is happening.”

  Dr. Sanderson’s diagnosis was an insult to a bad situation, and Elizabeth had little strength left to indurate herself for yet more bad news. “Just pain relief? Is that all you can do for a stroke?”

  Dr. Sanderson whispered, as if they might wake him up if they spoke too loudly. “I think in Tom’s case the most likely explanation is that there is some compression from the tumors in the tissues of the brain. As you know, the findings on the CT scan showed that the tumors were extensive and inoperable.” Elizabeth glanced at Tom. He was oblivious to it all, with his head tilted back, one eye disconcertingly half-open. His snoring was deep, tremulous, and otherworldly. Somebody had removed his dentures, and it gave him a pained, hollow look, as if part of him was already missing. “I’m really very sorry that there is nothing more in the way of treatment that I can offer you. But if there’s any family you’d like to call, we can help you sort that out.”

  Moments later, the two doctors left the room, and Elizabeth found herself alone with Tom, wondering what she was supposed to do next.

  Minutes ticked by, and in the still immovability of the night, stretching endlessly before her, she did the only thing she could and remained at his side. Comfort came in the simplest forms, stroking his hands, the fingers curled in on themselves, rearranging the sheets when she couldn’t bear the stasis. “Alice will be here soon,” she told him, even though she had no proof he could hear. “It won’t be long now,” she whispered, and as the words left her lips, she realized just how true that statement really was.

  * * *

  Tom didn’t flinch when Alice burst through the door before first light. No words were exchanged, explanations already given over the phone. Together they sat, Brian bringing tea and breakfast pastries that remained untouched by the time Dr. Jones arrived, along with the neurosurgeon, whose hair struck Elizabeth as too dark to be natural at his age. Funny, she thought, the observations we make when we don’t want to acknowledge the most important things right in front of our eyes.

  “And the facilities?” Alice was asking when Elizabeth snapped out of her daydream. “He doesn’t like those air mattresses.” The conversation had moved in a direction Elizabeth hadn’t followed. Yet she got the gist of it; he was being discharged. “You know him here. Why can’t he just stay?”

  “The thing is, Alice, there is very little more we can offer you,” Dr. Jones was saying. “Our hope was always to get him home, but despite early improvements he hasn’t responded to the medication as well as we would have liked, and the most recent changes, I’m afraid, alter the picture a little. We have to consider whether there is perhaps a more suitable environment for your father to live in.”

  To die in, Elizabeth thought as she listened to the discussion. She rested her head on Tom’s chest then, feeling the rasp of his breathing, hoping that nobody saw her cry.

  * * *

  Later that day, du
ring one of Brian’s trips to the cafeteria, Elizabeth knew she had to raise the idea of Kate with Alice. There was no time left to leave it any longer. “Love,” she said, “there’s something I have to tell you.” Alice rested her chin on a slender hand, her elbow propped up on the bed. “There is somebody I’d like to bring to see your father.”

  “Kate,” Alice said, her face unflinching. “Your daughter.”

  Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat. “Yes. She would like to come and meet him. I’ve told her a lot about him, you see.” The tears came. It was overwhelming, all those secrets trying to find a way out. She hadn’t realized just how deep within herself she would have to dig. “I must tell you something beforehand, though. I wanted to tell your father, but now,” she said, gazing at his face, lost in a place she couldn’t reach, “I’ve left it too late.”

  “You don’t need to say anything, Elizabeth,” Alice said. “He knew, he told me all about it.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “You couldn’t possibly know . . .”

  “That Kate is his daughter too?” Elizabeth’s skin contracted from head to toe. How, when she had never told a soul, could Alice know? Only James had ever known the truth. “He always knew.” Elizabeth couldn’t believe it. How was it possible? “Dad told me that she looks just like me.”

  Elizabeth nodded, picked up her phone, unable to speak for shock. She scrolled to the pictures and handed it over. Alice took it, staring so hard it must have been like looking in a mirror.

  “He wasn’t wrong. She should be here,” Alice said, handing back the phone.

  Elizabeth sobbed. Questions of how and when ran rampant through her mind, yet all she seemed to be able to grasp from those myriad ideas was a fateful cry of hopelessness. “But I left it too late.”

  Alice stood up and placed her arm across Elizabeth’s shoulders, comforted by a person in such pain herself. “It’s never too late, Elizabeth. You and Dad taught me that.”

  Then

  Elizabeth returned to the house with Francine, cold without a lit fire and everywhere dark. Through the dim light she could see a letter on the dining room table, her name written on the front in a classic elegant scrawl. There was something ominous about the way it had been left there, ascetic against a vase of decaying flowers, foreshadowing the irrecoverable truths written inside.

  “What’s that?” Francine asked as she closed the door behind them. The sea quieted as they stood still for a moment, then Francine’s footsteps echoed as she walked forward, picking it up. “It’s your father’s handwriting.”

  Elizabeth took the envelope and slid her finger into the small opening to pull out the paper inside. The letters were elegant and calligraphic, the way her father wrote when he thought about it, when he took his time, when he wanted to create an impression. In that case, a lasting impression.

  “Well?” said Francine, eager when it appeared that Elizabeth had read the letter. “What does it say?”

  “Nothing,” Elizabeth said. Her voice broke, her throat sore from trying not to cry. “I’m all right now, Francine. You’d better get back. James probably needs you.”

  Francine left under protest, bound by a promise to return. Elizabeth found herself hoping that she stuck to her word, because she was going to need familiar faces around her now if the contents of the letter spoke the truth. In the still house she read it again, her father’s words describing how sorry he was that he didn’t have the strength to tell her in person that he was leaving. He confessed that he had indeed taken her mother out on that boat, just as Tom’s father accounted, and just as her mother had wished in the face of her mounting confusion. Unable to accept her fate, he had at her request provided her with enough medication so that it was painless as she let herself drop half-conscious into the water somewhere between Longships and Wolf Rock. As he signed off, he apologized again for leaving Elizabeth when she still needed him, and she realized with her father’s confession that he never intended to be found.

  The letter also detailed James’s knowledge of events after he had raised concerns over missing morphine. Knowing only two people had access to the opiates and that he himself hadn’t taken it, James’s suspicions were raised. When he discussed it with Elizabeth’s father, Dr. Davenport had begged for James’s compassion, and promised to make his silence as easy as possible with a swift and complete departure. On one condition. It was a condition that James was more than willing to fulfill.

  * * *

  For his part in it all, James really did wish that he could undo the letter he had written in Tom’s name after seeing him leave for Truro Hospital, never having expected Elizabeth’s father to have left on the same day. Guilt gripped him as he watched her read the words he himself had written, claiming as Tom that he no longer loved her, and that he would never be returning to Porthsennen, for her or their child. And James knew that he wouldn’t, not now that he had told Tom that he and Elizabeth were already married.

  For two days afterward she didn’t eat or dress, and he nearly caved more than once. But on the third day, when he returned to the house, he found a different picture awaiting him. Finding her dressed in a fine skirt and blouse, something quite beautiful that clung to her hips and skipped out just below the knee, he knew something was changed. Her blouse was tight around the bust, and it stirred a sense of desire in him that he had tried to pacify for a long time. They were her mother’s clothes, he realized as she stood in the hallway to greet him. Taking his coat, she led him through to the dining room, where there was a dinner table set with two plates and two wineglasses.

  “We need to talk,” she said. “My father always said that alcohol was a lubricant for the larynx.” After handing him a glass that contained a healthy measure of brandy, she picked up a second for herself. With one swift movement she drank it back, and he did the same. “I don’t suppose he meant it favorably, but seeing as he’s not here we don’t need to concern ourselves with what he might think. And besides, I don’t believe anything we have to say to each other is going to be all that easy.”

  “No?”

  “No. I know you know what my father did. You understand the implications of that knowledge without the need for my explanation.”

  “I do.”

  “The police will no doubt question his departure, but we will tell them he is traveling. I have burned the letter, and we will speak of its contents no more after this night. His actions might have been an act of mercy, but they are no less criminal for it.”

  “You have my word,” James promised, and took her hand in his. “I’m so sorry for what he did.”

  “It was what she wanted,” she said through gritted teeth. “If a person doesn’t want to be around anymore, there is nothing you or I can do about it, is there?”

  He knew there was more than one meaning hidden within her words, and it was a struggle not to confess to everything he himself had done that had forced Tom from her life.

  “I’ll be here for you,” he promised instead, hoping that was enough. “And the child.”

  Her fingers stiffened in his. “How do you . . .”

  “I’m a doctor, Elizabeth. It’s my job to know. But I promise that I’ll raise this child as my own if you stay with me. It’ll never want for anything, and it’ll never doubt my love.” He took the ring that had never once left his pocket since the day of their picnic and held it out for her. Tom was gone and she was having a child; what other choice did she have? This time she placed it on her finger.

  * * *

  They were married within the month. James wanted to order her a dress from France, and when she refused he insisted on a trip to London at the very least, but Elizabeth said she didn’t want to waste time waiting, which helped settle any lingering concerns. Mrs. Clements stitched a fine example of an elegant tea dress and underneath fashioned net curtains to give the skirt volume to cover up the burgeoning bump. Elizabeth had insisted on no invitations or reception, but word had gotten out and still a fair number of peo
ple turned up from the village. Elizabeth suspected that it had all been planned.

  That night, when they found themselves alone, they retired to their separate bedrooms. But once James was asleep, Elizabeth left the house and walked to the lookout, cut down to the rocks, carrying her simple posy of white roses and cream ribbons in a tightly clenched fist. Spray brushed her face as she stood on the edge of the rock from which she had fallen only three months before, listening to the power of the sea. It had claimed her mother, in many ways her father, and now Tom. She wouldn’t let it claim her too. The posy broke apart as she tossed it into the water, sent it crashing against the rocks. It was the only way she could tell Tom, and herself, that it was done.

  * * *

  James knew that she had married him out of a sense of duty, to both her father and her unborn child. But he told himself he didn’t care and tried his best to maintain the visage of a contented newlywed. As for Elizabeth, she had found the juxtaposition of her feelings and her outward persona a difficult beast to tame. The idea of consummating the marriage loomed over her, because as kind and generous as James was with his patience, that, just like her time with Tom, would eventually expire. And so, one night in the second month of marriage, she ventured to his room and slipped under the sheets. He started to speak, but she placed a cold finger against his lips, followed by a kiss. She knew roughly what to expect, and James was a gentleman, but that was also half the problem. Making love to Tom had felt natural, with no hesitations or shaky, diffident touches. He hadn’t questioned himself or what Elizabeth had wanted. Poor James knew her mind was elsewhere, and he spent most of the time trying not to make the experience any more unpleasant than he felt it must have been for her, especially what with her growing bump. Afterward they slept beside each other, but that was the extent of their connection, tangled roots but still not part of the same tree.