by Jill Mansell
Matt had been taken to the intensive care unit, the receptionist informed her, and gave her directions that Camilla struggled to understand. The wide, gray corridors, hung with colorful artwork, echoed with the sound of footsteps. Shiny painted lines in different colors led to different destinations. Camilla eventually reached the intensive care unit and pressed the buzzer set into the wall beside the double doors.
A tall nurse wearing a high, intricate white cap opened one of the doors a few inches and slid through it sideways so that it closed again before Camilla could even glimpse inside.
“Yes?”
“My husband has just been brought in,” said Camilla, trembling and breathless. “Matt Lewis. A doctor phoned me.”
“Of course,” said the nurse kindly. Taking Camilla’s arm, she edged her away from the doors. “If you’d take a seat in our waiting room for a minute or two I’ll send someone out to speak to you. They’ll explain everything.”
Camilla stared at her in horror. “But can’t I see him now? He’s in there, isn’t he? I want to see him.”
“And you will, Mrs. Lewis,” the nurse told her, her expression sympathetic but professional. “But I’m afraid the doctor must see you first. He really won’t be a minute.”
For a muddled moment, Camilla wondered if they thought she was ill. Why on earth did the doctor want to see her? But the nurse was leading her toward a small, empty waiting room and onto a beige plastic chair.
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
This time, Camilla was sure the nurse had gone mad.
“No,” she said slowly, aware that her heart was pounding like a hammer against her ribs. “I just want to see Matt. Now.”
* * *
Five minutes later, the young Scottish doctor led her into the all-white unit, humming and ticking with machinery. Her legs like jelly, her fingernails digging into her palms, Camilla followed him to the third bed along.
Matt was there.
One of the nurses, who had been checking an IV running into his arm, brought a chair for her and pushed it to the side of the bed. Weakly, Camilla collapsed onto it as the doctor began to explain the functions of the machines surrounding them. The tube in his mouth was attached to a ventilator that was doing Matt’s breathing for him. The shoebox-sized monitor was recording his heartbeat, respiration, and blood pressure. The IVs were there to maintain the balance of body fluids.
Camilla, dazed by the network of tubes and wires and electrodes, ignored them and concentrated instead on Matt’s face.
It was ridiculous, she thought unsteadily, that he could be so desperately ill yet still look so healthy. Ill people didn’t have deep tans and clearly defined muscles.
Matt looked as if he were fast asleep, his dark lashes shading the lines beneath his closed eyes, his tousled dark hair curling onto his forehead as it always did. Yet, according to the doctor, his car, when it had swerved to avoid another that had gone out of control, had hit a low wall and overturned, and in the process, Matt had sustained a severe head injury. It was a closed injury, which meant that there were no visible wounds apart from a small amount of purplish bruising to the left side of his neck where his seat belt had prevented him from crashing through the windshield.
But it was still a very severe injury, the doctor had explained in a deliberately neutral voice, and Matt was deeply unconscious, his condition critical. The medical team was doing everything they could to stabilize him, but as his wife, she had to understand how serious the implications might be.
Cautiously, taking care to avoid the lines of tubing attached by strips of medical tape to his wrist, she cradled Matt’s warm hand in her own icy ones and watched the mechanical rise and fall of his chest as the ventilator pumped air into his lungs. He was so brown against the glaring hospital whiteness of the starched sheets. His dark hair was so glossy… How could they know whether he was in pain? Could he feel anything? Did he know what had happened to him?
“I’ll be here on the unit all evening,” said the young doctor eventually, reaching up to adjust a dial on one of the monitors, “if there’s anything else you’d like to ask me. And Nurse Simpson is looking after your husband,” he added, nodding at the plump, auburn-haired woman who had brought her a chair. “So he’s in very good hands.”
Pulling his stethoscope from the pocket of his white coat, he disappeared to the far end of the ward, and the nurse gave Camilla a reassuring smile. “It must all be such an awful shock for you at the moment. Everything in here looks so strange as well, which doesn’t help.”
Camilla nodded slowly, tears sliding down her cheeks. She watched them splash down onto her hand, entwined with Matt’s, and felt a great chasm of grief and pain open up inside her. How could this be happening? And how could it have happened to Matt of all people?
He had planned tonight’s celebrations with such care, and she had been going to break the news to him that she was pregnant. It was all so unfair, so desperately unfair that she couldn’t bear it…
“Can he hear me,” she asked in a low, unsteady voice, “if I speak to him?”
“We don’t honestly know,” said the nurse, coming around to stand behind her and placing a comforting hand on Camilla’s trembling shoulder. “But he might. Talk to him as much as you want—it certainly won’t do any harm. Just don’t be disappointed if there isn’t any outward reaction.”
An hour later, she brought Camilla a cup of hot, strong tea. “Look, does anyone else know you’re here? Are there friends or relatives you’d like to contact?”
Unable to think clearly, Camilla shook her head. “No one else knows. Matt’s family lives in the States. I’ve got their number at home. I can’t go get it,” she blurted out, her eyes wide with panic. “I can’t leave him.”
“Of course not,” said the nurse soothingly. “I wasn’t going to suggest you did. Why don’t you call a friend and ask them to come here and pick up your house keys, then they can go to your home and bring you whatever you need. Address book, a change of clothes, that sort of thing.”
“Of course,” said Camilla, glancing down at the amethyst silk dress with its glittering belt and matching high-heeled shoes. “Different clothes. We were going out tonight,” she added, needing to offer some kind of explanation, her pale, tearstained face dreadfully at odds with the bright glamour of her outfit. “To celebrate being married for six months…”
* * *
Loulou arrived at ten o’clock, equally pale and shocked. Camilla’s words had barely been discernible over the phone, but as soon as she was able to understand what had happened, she had left Lili with Simon at the flat, jumped into his car, and come straight to the hospital.
“Oh, you poor thing, you poor, poor thing,” she murmured, holding Camilla tightly in her slender arms as her friend gave way to her first real tears and collapsed in a storm of heaving, grief-stricken sobs. They were in the waiting room since Loulou couldn’t enter the intensive care unit, which only permitted visits from relatives. Camilla, persuaded outside for a few minutes while a team of doctors carried out some tests, was frantic to get back to Matt.
“It’s so awful; he’s just lying there and he looks OK, but he’s unconscious,” she sobbed, her tears soaking Loulou’s shirt. “Oh, Lou, I just don’t know what to do… I feel so helpless but I can’t bear to leave him and the doctor told me to be prepared for the worst. If Matt dies…if he dies…”
Loulou, tears streaming down her own cheeks, clasped Camilla’s hands tightly between her own. “He won’t die,” she said fiercely. “He’s got so much to live for. Matt can’t die; he’ll get better. Now tell me what you want me to bring from the house. I’ll phone Jack and tell him what’s happened so he can keep the kids with him for a few more days.”
“Phone numbers. In the book by the telephone. I’ve got to call Matt’s family.”
“I’ll phone them if you like,�
� said Loulou, her mind racing. The awful task was clearly quite beyond Camilla’s capabilities at present. “And you need an overnight bag. I’ll find everything. You go back in there and stay with Matt. I’ll be back in about an hour and a half.”
* * *
The nightmare worsened.
By the time Loulou returned, the doctors were carrying out more tests, this time designed to assess brain function. When she was shown into the tiny office where Camilla was sitting in an attitude of total shock and despair, she didn’t know what she could possibly do except stay with her.
“I got through to Matt’s parents,” she said, inwardly reliving the terrible minutes when she had had to break the news to them. “They’re flying out tonight.”
“They might be too late,” said Camilla quietly, too far gone now even for tears. “Lou, it’s all happening so fast. I can’t keep up. I can’t understand what they’re telling me half the time. Reporters keep phoning up wanting to know how Matt is and the nurses just say critical. But one of the doctors brought me in here and asked me if I knew how Matt felt about kidney transplants. He wants me to consider it and I simply can’t concentrate…”
Her voice trailed away as she turned to gaze out of the window. Below them, the city glittered with lights beneath an indigo sky. Loulou sat down beside her and tried to take her hand, but Camilla was twisting her wedding ring jerkily around and around.
“I don’t know how Matt feels about kidney transplants,” she went on despairingly, “and I can’t ask him because he’s unconscious. Oh, Lou, how can I live without him if he dies?”
Loulou swallowed hard and this time could not reassure Camilla that Matt wasn’t going to die. But praying—and at the same time sure that she was doing the right thing—she said slowly, “You’re his wife; you know him best. But if you really can’t think about it at the moment, I’ll tell you. I know Matt well enough to be able to say that if he did have to die he would want his organs to be donated to someone else who needs them. Of course he would, Cami. He wouldn’t hesitate for a single second. He’d be happy to think that he could help other people.”
Camilla nodded and pushed her hair wearily away from her face. “You’re right. I’ll tell the doctor when he comes back that they can have whatever they want.” Glancing at the overnight bag that Loulou had dropped onto the table, she added, “It looks as if I might not need that after all. When they’ve finished doing the tests, they’ll come tell me. They’ve said that I can stay with him for a little while afterward to say goodbye…if I have to… It hasn’t happened yet. Maybe there’ll be a miracle…”
But the consultant’s grave expression when he entered the room told Camilla at once that there had been no miracle. Slowly, and with great compassion, he explained to Camilla that Matt’s injury had been so devastating that there was no possible hope that he could ever recover. The brain function tests, which had been carried out by two separate teams of doctors, proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that all brain function had ceased. He was terribly sorry to have to break such tragic news to her…
Camilla held up her hand, the one wearing her wedding ring. “Thank you for being so kind. I know that Matt would want…” She hesitated, swallowing hard, then said, “Would have wanted his organs donated for transplant purposes. Do I have to sign any form for that?”
“I have a form here. I’m sure you’ll gain some comfort in the months ahead from the knowledge that your husband’s tragic death hasn’t been completely in vain. Thanks to him, and to you, Mrs. Lewis, others will live.”
Silently, Camilla took the fountain pen from his fingers and signed the form. Then she rose unsteadily to her feet and looked at Loulou. “Will you wait here for me?”
Beyond words, the solid ache in her throat almost unbearable, Loulou nodded.
“Are you sure you want to go back in there, Mrs. Lewis?” asked the consultant with evident concern. Camilla stared at him in astonishment.
“Oh, I’m quite sure. I didn’t tell him earlier…I was saving it as a surprise for him when he woke up…but I have to let him know now. He would have been so proud. You see, I’m pregnant. I’m going to have Matt’s baby.”
Chapter Forty-One
Small, icy waves lapped against the rocky shoreline with lazy irregularity. When the tide eventually receded, a crescent of silver sand would arc across the bay, glistening in the late-afternoon sunlight, and Camilla would take Rocky for a walk across to the little town of Drumlachan.
But for now, while the tide was still in and most of the sand hidden, she was content to sit in the old wooden rocking chair, in the warm shelter of the glass conservatory that fronted the cottage, and allow her mind to wander.
It had to be a step forward, she realized, to be able to allow such thoughts. Now, almost a year after Matt’s death, she could cope with them, but for many months, it had been a physical impossibility. Fighting the memories, willing herself not to remember those so very happy times, she had backed away as much as possible, withdrawing like a snail into its shell from the pain they so acutely evoked.
But at last, it seemed, that pain was beginning to recede. She could remember Matt without being engulfed by grief. Having told herself over and over again that she was lucky to have had him and to have been that happy for a short time was better than never having known him at all, she was managing to overcome the bitterness she felt at such tragic unfairness, and such terrible, terrible waste.
The guilt, too, had been overwhelming at first. In the days following the funeral, now mercifully hazy in her mind, she had become convinced that the accident had been her fault. If Matt hadn’t been driving back along that particular road and at that particular moment, to be with her, there would have been no accident. If she hadn’t told him not to stay with his friends in the clubhouse, he would still be alive.
And nothing anyone could say to her had been able to persuade her otherwise.
Losing the baby a few days later, miscarrying in the same hospital where Matt had died, had convinced her still further. That her last link with Matt had been broken, wrenched from her grief-stricken body with vicious clawing spasms of pain, had proved to her beyond all doubt that she had been to blame. The miscarriage was her punishment. She didn’t deserve to give birth to his child.
Calmly now, she rocked in her chair and gazed out over the blue-green water bordering the west coast of Scotland. Rocky, dozing in the shade, stirred slightly as Camilla reached for the iced spritzer on the table beside her.
It had taken a long time before she had believed what everyone had told her, had realized that guilt was a natural extension of grief and that the accident had not, after all, been her fault. Until recently, every time someone had said “Time heals all wounds,” she had wanted to hit them. It had seemed like a conspiracy to keep her alive, and she had known that they were lying, trying to make her feel better. Haunted by grief and guilt and the most appalling loneliness, she had refused to listen to them, hating everyone for lying to her. Nothing could make her feel better. Matt was dead. He was no longer with her. How could she ever feel better, knowing that?
But somehow, like a very slowly unfolding miracle, she understood now that some degree of recovery was possible.
And Squirrel’s Gate, the tiny cottage perched on the edge of the sea three miles from the small Scottish town of Drumlachan, had played its part in the healing process. Remote, backed by purple mountains and fronted by water, it had been offered to her by a friend of Matt’s whose main home was in California and who only rarely vacationed there. Initially planning to stay for just a couple of weeks—the solitude and silence had been what Camilla had craved following the ghastly crowding of her life in the first weeks after Matt’s death—she had closeted herself there for almost two months.
Toby and Charlotte had come to stay throughout August, with Marty joining them for the second fortnight. When it had been time for them t
o return to school for the autumn term, Camilla had gone back with them, but the house in Belgravia brought back such vivid memories of Matt that it had been an effort to remain there. Toby and Charlotte understood what had happened, but when Marty, who had no comprehension of death, ran from room to room in the house shouting “Where Matt?” Camilla had been consumed each time with fresh, unbearable grief.
So she had stayed in London with the children on alternate weeks. On those Friday afternoons, as soon as she had kissed them goodbye at Jack’s house, she would drive up to Scotland and retreat into silence.
As autumn passed and winter drew closer, the cottage became more demanding and she welcomed the diversions. The plumbing was erratic, the central heating system downright temperamental, and the electricity supply extremely susceptible to the vagaries of the weather. In December, when the bad weather came, snow obliterated the tiny lane leading to the cottage and banked around it like an eiderdown. Kept busy from morning until night digging the snow away from the door, cooking by candlelight over a tiny paraffin stove, and battling to keep warm, Camilla had no time to think of anything else. When the children were there, she was equally diverted, but maintaining a pretense of cheerfulness for a week at a time was an appalling strain, and as much as she loved them, it was a relief to be able to return to her own thoughts and weep as much as she wanted without interruption when they weren’t there.
The bleak, harsh winter months had matched her mood. When spring arrived and the snows melted, however, she was appalled at first to realize that the tender green new buds on the trees and the glittering sunlight on the water lifted her spirits. This had sparked off a fresh round of guilt, since she was by now so accustomed to grief that it seemed disloyal to Matt to feel even an inkling of happiness. She was betraying his memory…he was beginning to fade from her thoughts… Terrified that she would forget him and castigating herself for such treachery, she returned to London and watched, for hours and hours, recordings of the TV programs in which he had appeared, reassuring herself that she hadn’t forgotten the timbre of his voice, his exuberant gestures, his wickedly beguiling smile.
