The Life We Almost Had

by Amelia Henley

  Was okay.

  The family room was small and airless, the walls a dirty orange, the floor an expanse of shining white tiles knitted together with darker grout. In the corner, a red bucket speared by a mop. Here, it smelled like lemons. I sank onto a too-soft, too-low chair. My knees almost level with my chin. There was a stack of magazines on the table I couldn’t read, and then a tourist’s guide to Alircia, which I could but didn’t. It was painful to see the photos of all the places Adam and I had visited on our previous visit: the volcano, the lava tunnel, the underground lake. There were so many things I had yet to do with Adam. So many places we hadn’t been. I refused to believe he wouldn’t wake up, and yet worry throbbed relentlessly at my temples.

  I was longing to talk to someone. That’s what they always did on TV dramas, wasn’t it? Low mutters and desperation pouring down a phone line. But who? Adam hadn’t been close to his parents for years. If I called my mum it would bring back memories of Dad being rushed to hospital and she would feel helpless being so far away. She couldn’t fly out because she had to look after Nan. I would tell Mum soon, but not until I could hold it together without crying. She wouldn’t know how to cope.

  I didn’t know how to cope.

  It crossed my mind that I could call Nell, but there was a part of me that wanted to believe this wasn’t happening. That saying it out loud would make it so. Besides, I hadn’t any facts to share, speculation was all I had at that point. I veered wildly between thinking that Adam was fine, sitting up in bed and joking, to convincing myself he hadn’t made it and no one wanted to be the one to tell me.

  No news is good news.

  It was a ridiculous saying – one that had never made sense to me – but it was all I had to cling on to. If I hadn’t been told Adam had died, he had to be alive.

  Didn’t he?

  The slam of a door roused me. Shock had beckoned sleep. I was slouched on my seat, my head resting uncomfortably against the wall. My neck was cricked, spittle crusting around my mouth.

  It was a different nurse to the one who had carried out my tests. She crouched down and sandwiched my hand between hers.

  ‘Anna.’ She nodded as she spoke my name.

  I held my breath, waiting for her to speak.

  ‘I can take you to see Adam now.’ Her English heavy with accent.

  ‘Is he… Is he…’

  ‘He’s comfortable.’

  I was afraid to ask what that meant. Instead I let her help me to my feet, which tingled with pins and needles, wishing I could transfer the same numb feeling to my heart.

  The hospital was a maze. We twisted and turned through winding corridors. Curious glances followed me; the visibly upset girl in the ill-fitting scrubs.

  Comfortable.

  That’s what they had said about my dad after he had had his heart attack and then they had sent Mum home to rest. He had died four hours later, alone.

  The nurse slowed, stopped outside of a door.

  ‘This is our intensive care unit. Anna, don’t be frightened when you see him.’

  If I had been scared before, now I was terrified.

  She gestured for me to go in first. Tentatively I stepped inside. Greeted with the sight of Adam, I stumbled backwards, treading on her toes.

  ‘It’s okay.’ She rubbed my arm. My hands were clasped over my mouth.

  But it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Anna

  There he was – Adam – unrecognizable and yet familiar. Under a startling amount of wires and tubes he was still. Silent.

  ‘I know it looks scary, but everything in here is for Adam’s good.’ The nurse kept one hand on my arm. ‘That’s the ventilator.’ She pointed to a machine. ‘It’s keeping oxygen circulating through Adam’s bloodstream.’

  ‘It’s breathing for him? Can’t… can’t he…’

  ‘The doctor will talk to you as soon as he can. That’s the vital signs monitor.’

  ‘Why isn’t it beeping?’ I had watched my fair share of medical dramas. It was so quiet.

  ‘Adam won’t be left alone so the monitors are silenced. An alarm will sound if the readings fall outside of the set parameters.’

  If.

  ‘Adam also has a catheter, and that,’ she pointed to a tube, ‘is a CVP – a Central Venous Pressure line…’ I couldn’t focus on what she was saying. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Adam, willing him to move. Open his eyes.

  He didn’t.

  The door opened and a man with dark bushy eyebrows and a solemn face stepped inside. A man who could make or break my future.

  ‘Mrs Curtis.’ He held out a hand. ‘I’m Dr Acevedo.’ His English was perfect. ‘We’ve carried out some tests on your husband—’

  ‘What sort of tests?’

  ‘A CT scan of Adam’s head, chest x-rays and bloods. The CT scan indicates some internal bleeding in the brain. If someone has bleeding in the brain this can lead to increased pressure, so the main priority is to reduce the pressure from rising anymore. We’ve sedated and ventilated Adam because this can help to prevent the pressure rising, but it isn’t guaranteed.’

  ‘But what do you think? He will be okay?’

  ‘Mrs Curtis, it’s impossible to say at this stage. What we know is Adam sustained a head injury and was underwater for more time than we’d like. The brain was starved of oxygen for several minutes. It’s unclear whether Adam will have suffered any permanent damage. We’re doing all we can.’

  ‘So…’

  Permanent damage.

  I had never felt so overwhelmed.

  ‘But even if he… he will be okay?’ I was asking the impossible. ‘He’s young, and he’s fit and—’ Words fell from my mouth in a jumble. If I could just convince the doctor that Adam shouldn’t be here, then he wouldn’t have to be. I laid my trump card, ‘He’s going to be a dad,’ hoping it was the thing that would make the difference. Make the doctor say, ‘Oh, okay then, I’ll bring him round.’ But he didn’t. ‘It’s impossible to predict at this stage.’ He caught sight of my face. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s not the news you wanted to hear. It’s probably best that you go back to your hotel and get some rest. Someone will be with your husband at all times.’

  ‘I think… I think I’ll just sit here a while if that’s okay?’

  ‘Of course.’ He nodded.

  ‘Can I… Can I touch him?’ I glanced towards the bed, and the tubes and wires coming out of Adam’s hand, his mouth, his stomach. Everywhere.

  ‘Yes.’ His voice was softer now. ‘You won’t dislodge anything if you’re careful. Please try and rest though. It’s understandable that you want to be here but you have to look after yourself. Think about your unborn child.’

  And just like that, he tore me in two.

  ‘I’ll speak to you again tomorrow.’ He hesitated at the door. ‘Mrs Curtis, I hate to ask but if you could give the details of your travel insurance to reception, someone can get onto them first thing. It sounds clinical, I know, but it is necessary.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ I said. I didn’t have the policy but I remembered Adam saying he was booking it through the travel agent.

  Somebody else to ring.

  Something else to do, when all I wanted to do was cry.

  Outside, a fist of darkness snatched the last of the daylight away. Adam’s room was gloomy, lit only by the light from the corridor spilling through the window, but I preferred it this way. After Dr Acevedo left, I’d cautiously approached Adam’s bed, almost scared of this man I had been married to for the past five years. He was vulnerable in a way I hadn’t seen him before. I had sat, watching intently, for a flicker of eyelids, for the movement of a finger, a toe, however tiny. My head had throbbed with shock and sadness and fear.

  ‘Wake up. Adam, please wake up.’ My whispers had been urgent, the way they sometimes were in the middle of the night when I had thought I’d heard something. Adam would instantly spring awake and pad downstairs b
arefoot, in his boxers. There was never anybody there and Adam, in our first few years together, had never complained about being woken. In more recent times, he had huffed and sighed his way back to bed and I’d tetchily asked if he’d rather stay asleep and be murdered. He had dramatically rolled over, pulling the covers to his chin, telling me I was being ridiculous.

  ‘Adam,’ I whispered again. I wouldn’t have cared if he’d called me all the names under the sun if I’d managed to rouse him. I didn’t care about any of the small things anymore, because the big thing, the most important thing, was that he woke up so we could go home. ‘Wake up,’ I whispered again, ignoring the pitiful expression on the nurse’s face who remained in the corner of the room, like a statue.

  But he hadn’t.

  I talked incessantly, reminding him that he had a life worth coming back to. When I’d exhausted our memories, when I’d been exhausted by our memories, I plucked random countries from my mind and talked about his plans to visit them. ‘France. You remember that’s where you were going to start your trip, Adam? You were going to eat frogs’ legs and croissants and visit the Notre-Dame.’ We had talked about it sometimes, the two of us completing Adam’s dream trip before we started a family, but I hadn’t wanted to leave my home. My family and friends. It wasn’t only the thought of Mum living alone, without Dad, coping with Nan; I found the thought of months living out of a rucksack daunting rather than exciting. I wondered whether Adam ever regretted not going. Whether he ever regretted meeting me. ‘We could go now,’ I offered. ‘You, me and the baby. The adventure of a lifetime. That’s what Nell toasted on the plane when we first flew out here. Did I ever tell you that? It has been, hasn’t it? The adventure of a lifetime, you and me?’ We may not have travelled or done anything notable but we had made a life together, we had created this new life that bloomed inside of me.

  Hours later I was quiet; I had been dozing on and off but was awake once more. Through the greying light I could barely make out his features. I held his hand, careful where I placed my fingers and closed my eyes, stroking his thumb with mine. It could be just he and I as dawn broke. Throughout the night I had adjusted to the noises in the corridor outside, the squeak of a trolley being wheeled in the corridor, the chatter of nurses, the odd peal of laughter, relegating them to the background. It was nothing but white noise. Oddly comforting.

  ‘Okay, mister. Hint taken. I’ll shut up and let you sleep for now. You must be exhausted after all your hero antics yesterday. I can’t believe you’ve saved me from almost drowning twice. But soon it will be time to get up. We can’t all laze about in bed. Some of us are growing a life, remember? And if you don’t wake up, you’re going to end up with a child named Charlotte or Harry. Neither of which you liked.’

  I cast my mind back to five years ago. The way we thought it would effortlessly happen for us. Knitting another square in our patchwork blanket of the family we wanted to create had almost caused us to unravel. I tried to remember how it was when we were happy. But I couldn’t. It was impossible to focus on anything except the here and now. The fear that I was losing him. The nagging, gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach telling me I had caused this. Divine intervention. Wasn’t that what I believed I had wanted, last week, last month, last year? To be without him? And now that I was faced with that prospect, I found myself clinging on too hard.

  Too tightly.

  The following day Adam was still under sedation. Still just lying there, and although I knew it was safer this way so the pressure in his brain didn’t increase, I longed for them to wake him up. The nurse urged me to go back to the hotel to shower and rest, but I convinced myself that we’d only be here for one more night. That tomorrow Adam would wake and we’d both be leaving together. For the second night, I settled down at the side of his bed and tried to snatch some sleep.

  My heart pounded. At first I wasn’t sure what had pulled me from my fitful dreams. It wasn’t the nurse carrying out her regular checks. Adam’s machines were still illuminated, still silent. No alarm had sounded. Then I felt it. A cramping in my stomach. Not a niggling, time-of-the-month cramp. Or cramps from not eating properly for two days. Steel fists twisting my insides. Sweat slick on my skin. The scrubs I was still wearing sticking to me. My breath came hard and fast. I doubled over on the chair, waiting for the pain to stop. When it finally did, I cautiously raised my head. Where was the nurse? There was supposed to be somebody in the room with Adam at all times. I willed my pain-weak body to stand so I could fetch her, but the pain hit again. Winded, I crossed my arms over my stomach and dropped forward, my head almost in my lap. The spasms were intense. The way I imagined contractions would feel. My body fighting to push something out.

  No.

  There was a dampness between my legs. I was crying now. The pain unbearable, both physical and emotional.

  No.

  Waves of nausea battered me. I vomited all over the floor. Shaking, my hand reached for the emergency buzzer. I wrapped my arms around myself tightly as though I could hold myself together.

  As though I could keep my baby inside.

  ‘Please,’ I gasped as the nurse rushed into the room, flicking on the light. ‘Please. There’s something wrong with me.’

  I stood to move towards her but the floor shifted beneath my feet. The last thing I could remember before the blackness swallowed me was trying to make a deal with God to keep my baby safe. Trading my life for my child’s. Trading Adam’s life.

  The second I had thought that, I hated myself and I tried to take it back. I wanted them both. I needed them both.

  Adam, don’t die.

  He was the last thing I saw as my vision tunnelled.

  My last conscious thought.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Anna

  Curtains swished around the bed next to mine. It was visiting time on the ward and, as if they believed the flimsy piece of pale green fabric could drown out their voices, the family chattered loudly in a language I couldn’t understand. Even if they were speaking in English, I didn’t think I’d be able to process what they were saying. My mind was full of one thing.

  I had lost our baby.

  I had cried, begged, offered the doctor money to save the life that had been ebbing away, but it was too late. After examination, I had been given the option to wait and see if all the pregnancy tissue – and hearing my baby referred to as this brought a fresh bout of tears – expelled naturally, which could take weeks, or to take medicine to speed the process up to a few hours. Reluctantly, I had chosen the latter. The sooner the ‘process’, as the doctor called it, was over, the sooner I could recover my strength and I needed to be strong for Adam. But I hadn’t been able to force the tablet down. I had sobbed, retched, shook my head over and over, but eventually the tablet had dissolved under my tongue and today… today I felt anything but strong.

  I was waiting for the nurse to bring me some lunch. If I ate, she had promised me that the doctor would discharge me. That I could go straight to see Adam. She had checked on him twice for me, relaying that his sedation had been withdrawn. He was breathing on his own, which I thought must be a good sign, so why wasn’t he waking up?

  I rolled onto my side, turning away from the clock that taunted me with its slow, slow hands. On the other side of the window was a blue cloudless sky. Holidaymakers would be counting their blessings, another day on the beach. It was hard to believe that was Adam and I just forty-eight hours ago.

  A breeze caressed my face but nothing could cool my eyes, hot and swollen from crying. Somehow, I slept.

  ‘Anna.’

  Hearing my name, I scrambled to sit up, my heart thudding in my chest. Immediately thinking the worst. ‘Is Adam—’

  ‘No change. I’ve brought your lunch.’

  I propped myself up on pillows as the nurse slid a tray on wheels across my bed. The plate placed in front of me was stacked with mozzarella, lettuce, thick slices of juicy tomatoes, all sprinkled with basil.

 
; ‘Thanks. And when I’ve eaten this, I can go?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll fetch some painkillers you can take when you leave, and some more sanitary pads for you.’

  ‘I don’t have any clothes.’ My words came out a choke.

  ‘I’ll find you something.’ She patted my hand before she left.

  I felt sick from the medication, sick from exhaustion, sick from everything that had happened, but I cut off a small piece of mozzarella and chewed and chewed until there was virtually nothing left to slide down my throat. I repeated until my plate was empty. When I’d finished I swung my legs out of bed, and unsteadily made my way to the bathroom, touching the wall with my fingertips to keep my balance. There, I dropped to my knees and vomited up everything I had eaten, bile stinging my throat. Afterwards, I went back to my bed and pretended I was fine and before long, they let me leave.

  Rather than rushing straight into the intensive care unit, I found myself standing in the corridor outside, drawing lungfuls of air to steady my wobbly legs.

  Please.

  Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

  Please let him have woken up.

  I placed my palm on the door and forced my mouth into something resembling a smile so he did not see how worried I had been.

  ‘The ventilator has gone.’ Adam was breathing on his own. I grinned at the nurse but her sombre expression pushed the smile from my face.

  ‘Mrs Curtis—’

  ‘Call me Anna, please. Is he…’

  Still Adam?

  ‘I’ll go and fetch Dr Acevedo. He wants to talk to you.’

  The second she had gone I sank into her still-warm chair.

  ‘Adam…’ I faltered. Unsure what to say. Could he hear me? I didn’t want to tell him I had lost the baby, not like this but…