False Hope

by Lynne Lee

  By Aidan Kennedy.

  I spent the morning in theatre, working through my usual Monday list with Siddhant, during which time, after an apparently uneventful night in recovery, Aidan Kennedy had been transferred to a general trauma ward. By the time I got up there, he was already the subject of much nurse-station gossip, as patients who are attended by police officers tend to be, even ones not as famously charismatic as my late sister’s errant ex.

  Siddhant, who’d arrived on the ward before me to meet the juniors, updated me. Aidan had been interviewed by two of the officers, and had made a formal statement, and it seemed no one else was involved in the collision. Just him, and the ice, and an unyielding parked lorry, and the fourth component – the one that would impact all the others: the cocktail of intoxicants in his blood.

  So despite the wife, and the two little ones, it seemed nothing much had changed. Aidan, who, like Hope, had come of age during the latter part of the nineties’ rave culture, had always done drugs, and unashamedly so. To get him high, to bring him down, and, when he wasn’t hefting pots and pans in whatever kitchen he was cheffing in, to enhance his ability to heft weights in the local gym. She’d confided in me once (they were both still in their teens then) that his then-blooming acne was almost certainly due to his steroid obsession; she had told me, strangely proudly, that she’d looked it up on Wikipedia. And then again, a few years later, I’d confided in her that perhaps his explosive temper was, too. That, and perhaps cannabis-induced psychosis. But if there was any telling her, which by that time I’d accepted there wasn’t, it wouldn’t, perhaps couldn’t come from me. Anything I advised her was too freighted with the baggage that came with being her big sister, our mother’s henchwoman, and a know-all.

  Water under the bridge now. Just a ripple of disturbed memory. Though last night’s calls and text now felt like a finger taken out of a dam. Particularly the text, which had shaken me. I had never wanted the Kennedys in my life in the first place. I certainly didn’t want them back in it now. Not in any shape or form. Ever.

  Yet in a city of almost a quarter of a million people, here he was anyway. And it seemed he was already making waves. ‘Poor man,’ remarked the ward sister. ‘He was telling me earlier, he’s a chef at one of those country-house hotels over Lewes way.’ So, I thought grimly, not just visiting. He lived here. ‘Which means on top of everything else,’ she continued, ‘he’s likely to lose his job too. Not exactly the sort of thing you can do one-handed, is it?’ She looked fondly across at him. He was in a corner bay, his eyes closed, his hair a sooty halo. He would be the darling of the ward, I knew, in no time. ‘Still, he’s left-handed. So at least he can hang on to that positive, bless him. Anyway, you want a quick brew, Mrs Hamilton?’

  Normally I would, because I was keen to get to know my colleagues better, but today I was more anxious to put the past back in its box, so, after asking Siddhant to take the others and make a start with the first patient, I headed over to the far end of the ward.

  There was always an atmosphere around Aidan. Hope professed not to see it, but his moods used to leach from him like the artificial fragrance in a cheap fabric conditioner. He was either on a charm offensive, or spoiling for a row, never neutral. He could hold a room rapt, or poison an atmosphere in moments. In the latter years, those two states bent almost everything out of shape, as those around him – Hope, particularly, his mother, even my own mother – toiled, seemingly tirelessly, at the complicated, stressful business of trying desperately not to invoke the latter.

  I wondered if he’d changed, or if his wife did the same. I wondered if he hit her as well. Wondered if he called her a bitch.

  The atmosphere around him now was thick with poignancy and sadness, his bandaged stump front and centre, always drawing the eye in – like the grisly focal point in a painting by Caravaggio. There was also, I noted, a mobile phone on his bedside cupboard, complete with a charging lead, which snaked around to one of the sockets behind the bed. So the phone must have been retrieved when they found him, and brought in with him, and perhaps the charger was brought in by his wife yesterday.

  He cut a tragic figure, as any new amputee cannot fail to, and I tried my hardest to see him only as a patient. But just looking at him again made the past come rushing in. I was taken straight back to the last time I ever spoke to him, three weeks before he finally walked out on my dying sister.

  I hadn’t meant to. By that time, I was timing my visits carefully. But Hope had called in such a state – after a row about yet another discovery of his serial infidelity – that I’d had no choice but to drive down to Brighton. I was dog-tired from having just finished a night shift in A and E and, having driven down in the rush hour and dropped a fractious Daniel round at a reliably disgruntled Mum’s, I was anxious not to even see Aidan, let alone have to speak to him, because I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t lose it altogether. Because by that time, reality was staring me in the face. Because by that time, I already knew too much.

  He knew it too. That much was obvious from the way he scowled at me – me, heading up the path, counting to ten, trying to rearrange my expression to something neutral, him heading down it, in a too-tight muscle T-shirt, his chef’s whites bundled up in one meaty fist.

  Butt out, he’d growled, as we sidestepped one another on the path. Just butt the fuck out. This is none of your business, okay?

  Which struck me now, as it did then, as a bitter pill to swallow. As if my sister had given me any bloody choice.

  I had a choice now, however, to take control. And I aimed to.

  There were already three cards arranged on Aidan’s bedside cabinet – two of them hand-drawn in felt tips, presumably by his daughters – but we were alone, so to address him as Mr Kennedy felt nonsensical.

  ‘Aidan?’ I said. His eyes flickered open. He blinked to clear them. ‘Did you phone me last night?’

  His gaze darted behind me then, as if in a silent plea for help. And, once again, strangely at odds with his overnight antics, I had the sense that he was afraid of me.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, right?’ he said, shifting his leg beneath the blanket. ‘I just . . . I just thought I ought to—’ He exhaled heavily. ‘Thought I ought to speak to you. I really don’t need any more shit in my life right now, okay?’

  So it had been him. Of course it had been him. And now he’d obligingly confirmed it. ‘So you thought a good way to achieve that would be to then send a text calling me a bitch?’

  His eyes pinged wide open, then he squeezed them tight shut. Then he groaned, put his hand to his forehead. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Fuck. Shit, I actually sent that?’

  I nodded. In other circumstances I wouldn’t have left it at that – far from it – but we were on a ward, people milling about, so this was no place for a confrontation.

  ‘Oh, Christ . . . Look, I’m sorry. I mean, I’m really, really sorry. I must have – God . . .’ He groaned a second time. Screwed his palm into his eye sockets, first his left, then, more awkwardly, his right. ‘I’m sorry, right? Look, I really don’t want trouble, okay . . . I can’t – shit—’ He glanced behind me again, looking anxious. ‘You know. Mum.’ I noted that, miserably. So she was still of this earth. ‘And like, with Jess and that . . .’

  ‘Jess, as in your wife?’

  He nodded. ‘Look, seriously.’ His voice was low now. ‘I genuinely didn’t realise. I never meant . . . It was probably just, you know, all the morphine I’d been given. I was—’

  ‘Upset,’ I supplied, keeping my voice calm and level. ‘Not quite thinking straight. I understand that.’ I understood that all too well. With Aidan, this was familiar territory.

  He grabbed at that as if I’d thrown him a life raft. ‘Exactly. Exactly. Look, I know how it looks, and I’m not making excuses, but I genuinely did not realise I’d sent that.’

  ‘Just thought it.’

  ‘No. Okay, yes. I mean no!’ He exhaled heavily. ‘Oh, Christ. I don’t know. What can I say? I’m just a fuck-u
p, okay?’ He rolled his eyes theatrically. ‘You, of all people, should know that.’

  The corners of his mouth twitched as he spoke, as if ghosts rising to a familiar challenge. Old habits, I thought. Turn the charm on. The winning smile. But it wasn’t quite a smile. Just an echo of an expression. I didn’t respond – I doubted Christ would either – and it was immediately replaced by a grimace. His eyes were growing filmy and I guessed that he was trying not to cry. I suspected he’d cried a lot in the last twenty-four hours.

  He’s like a child, G. A man-child. A baby. You know, when I found out about that waitress and confronted him, he cried like one. Like, for hours.

  Like, ‘M’lud, I now present the case for the defence.’ Which was how it always went with Hope. Had done since the beginning. No matter what he did to her, she always had his back. Made excuses for him. No matter how hard I tried, there was no getting through to her.

  At least, till there was. Which had happened far, far too late. When the stakes had become far, far too high. I knew exactly how Hope would react to this if she were standing here now: extremely coldly. Well, the bastard’s certainly got something to cry about now.

  ‘It doesn’t matter either way,’ I pointed out. ‘I want exactly the same as you do. For the past to remain in the past, where it belongs. So I’m going to have you transferred into the care of another doctor. Then you won’t need to see me.’ More importantly, I wouldn’t need to see him. Or his mother. ‘So you don’t need to worry. Not on my account, anyway. Just, please, Aidan, no more calls. No more texts. No more contact.’

  I watched a single tear form at the corner of his right eye, and then track down his cheek to his earlobe. Though he didn’t acknowledge it – did he hope I hadn’t noticed? – his right shoulder shifted very slightly, as if he was trying to move the hand that wasn’t there. ‘No more phone calls,’ he said finally. ‘No more texts. I promise. Look, I was just in a state, okay?’ He lifted his left hand instead. Nodded again, towards the cannula. ‘High . . . I just—’ He cleared his throat, as if genuinely struggling to speak now. ‘I’m sorry. It just . . . Look, I’m in enough shit as it is, okay? I just don’t want any more trouble.’

  As if he seriously thought I might be looking to make some. Was he insane? No, I decided, just the same Aidan he always was. I don’t need this. Okay? I’m in enough shit. Okay? I was in a state. Okay? Ever on the defensive. Ever redirecting blame. I didn’t mean to hit her. She just really, really wound me up. She made me do it. Okay?

  ‘I know,’ I said briskly. ‘I understand your situation. I’m very sorry about your arm. Try to get some rest.’

  I left him then, there being nothing else to add. Such conversations as needed to take place about his recovery and rehabilitation could and should be had by whoever took him on. As far as I was concerned, our professional relationship ended as of now too.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said again, to my back, as I walked away. I didn’t turn around. I headed straight to the cluster of medics at the other end of the ward and when I got there, motioned to Siddhant that I needed a quick word.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, when he’d stepped outside the huddle. ‘Is Mr Porter around, d’you know? I need to have a quick word with him about Mr Kennedy.’

  ‘Down in outpatients, as far as I know,’ he said. ‘Shall I call him?’

  ‘No, no, don’t worry,’ I said, checking the time. With any luck, his afternoon clinic wouldn’t have started yet. ‘I’ll pop down there. Just give me ten minutes.’

  Neil Porter was one of the senior T and O consultants. One of the first I met – he was on the panel when I came for my interview – and, since he was an upper-limb specialist, the obvious colleague to ask to take Aidan on for me. Plus we had a connection – a med school in common – so I was hopeful.

  I ran down to surgical outpatients and caught him just as he was returning to his consulting room with a mug of tea and a lurid green cake, presumably from the bake sale that seemed to happen every week at every hospital, in this case part of the push to get their hands on a new MRI scanner. ‘Can I ask a favour?’ I asked him.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. And since he was also carrying a bunch of patient notes under his arm, and I was so wired about Aidan, it took a second before I realised he was joking.

  ‘It’s one of my new patients,’ I explained. ‘Emergency admission and amputation on Sunday morning. I have a personal connection with him.’ Neil raised one eyebrow. ‘He’s my late sister’s ex-partner – sorry, bit of a mouthful – and, well, things ended badly between them. It’s been years since I’ve seen him – she died in 2011 – but, well, it’s likely to be awkward for him. And for me, of course,’ I added, ‘so it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to continue to treat him.’

  ‘Of course, Grace,’ he said, raising the cake as an affirmative. ‘No problem. These things happen. Just let my secretary know. I’ll pop up and introduce myself soon as I’ve finished clinic. You okay?’ he added, and I realised I must look as flustered as I felt. He grinned then. ‘Hey, he’s not likely to be problematic, is he?’

  I returned the smile. Shook my head. Said, ‘For you? No, not at all.’

  For me though? I wasn’t so sure about that. Because wherever Aidan was, so too surely would be his mother; a woman for whom the loss of his arm would be a tragedy of seismic proportions, in a life already rocked to its foundations. As night followed day, if she could be, she would be there. And, as night followed day, once she found out who his surgeon was, she would blame me. Again.

  And I did not want to be on the wrong side of Norma Kennedy.

  Chapter 4

  Almost every life, at some point, is destabilised by seismic shifts. We’re all on the same road – the one signposted ‘death, eventually’ – but for some of us it arrives as an unanticipated wrecking ball, giving us no time to belt up and brace for it.

  My sister’s wrecking ball, her tumour, became my own seismic shift via the medium, as was Hope’s way, of a text. Which wasn’t unusual; I’d had a string of them over the previous week – short, excited missives, charting the progress, and emergence, of Dillon’s second tooth. It was our main form of communication back then.

  This was not that. OMG!!! it had read, on that random Wednesday morning. OMG! OMG, sis! You won’t believe this! I’ve had a FIT!!

  I read it twice. Not least because of the number of exclamation marks – a lot, even by her standards. It had come in while I was standing in my scrubs, slurping coffee. I was a specialist A and E registrar at that time, three years into a six-year/six-hospital rotation, and trying to juggle work, and all the studying, and, by that time, a toddler. Basically trying to be Superwoman, poisoning myself with caffeine instead of kryptonite. It sometimes felt as if coffee was more my life blood than my actual blood.

  I read the text a third time. (A fit? What, as in a hissy fit? As in a fit for a job? A flower show? A new client? A life-changing commission? Because when your twenty-nine-year-old little sister sends a text about ‘fits’, your brain tends not to respond with the immediate thought ‘brain’.) Then the next tranche of words came pinging in.

  I’m in hospital. Waiting to be seen by a doctor. F***ing STUNNED. Was just soooo lucky Daisy was with me. Why the hell would I have a fit? Any ideas???????

  All of a sudden, I had a lot of ideas. Way too many. All of them jockeying for supremacy. On the one hand . . . On the other hand . . . Maybe this . . . Maybe that . . . Highly unlikely, but . . . Perhaps . . . No, not that . . . No, but surely . . . Just possibly . . . But . . .

  I texted back, needing details. Is it okay to call you?

  Ten seconds went by. Twenty. Twenty-five. Forty. I called anyway. It went straight to voicemail. Perhaps the doctor had arrived. Was already working through all the differential diagnoses. Why, indeed. Why would Hope have a fit? She was a mother too by then; Dillon was seven months old. Could it in some way be related to that? Not for the first time, I thought dark thoughts about Aidan. About drin
k. About drugs. About how relatively little, as far as I could tell, parenthood seemed to have clipped Hope’s or his (especially his) wings. Unsettled now, and anxious, I went to see the next patient. A seven-year-old boy with a foreign body up his nose, the extraction of which – it turned out to be a BB gun pellet – would go on to stay with me forever. Part of a cluster of satellite memories that would always orbit around that heartbreaking central black hole.

  Then, too soon after – the speed of investigation being its own worrying clinical sign – came a definitive diagnosis. Which shook the ground beneath my feet after just three dreadful days. Days in which, after an examination, then another, then a scan, then another scan, Hope metamorphosed from a young mother who’d had an unexplained seizure to a person who had a tumour inside her head.

  A little knowledge, so goes the saying, can be a dangerous thing. Too much knowledge, on the other hand, is often an oxymoron. And being blessed with it, in this situation, was a kind of blessing. It blessed me with time to adapt to the reality Hope was facing, when the time came for it to be spelled out to her, in no uncertain terms, three months later. And there really were no uncertain terms. Her prognosis, I already knew, was ‘death, soon’.

  And I needed that time, because by a short process of elimination (my father was by now dead, plus Hope hated him anyway, my mother was in pieces, Aidan stupefied with shock) it was me who went along with her for her reckoning of all reckonings.

  I drove there in a state of distress and disquiet, realising that this appointment to discuss her coming death constituted only the fourth or fifth time I’d seen my little sister since Dillon was born. Yes, to be expected – geography, work, family commitments, our very different lifestyles – but it was a number that now took on a shocking significance.

  As they’d suspected even before they did the biopsy, Hope’s cancer was inoperable, both because of where it was and what it was. She had a grade-four astrocytoma, the consultant told her, or glioblastoma – a tumour that had been growing undetected in her glial cells, probably for many months, even years.