From Christmas to Eternity

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘Ring him.’

  She rang, and eventually he picked up. She didn’t even let him speak, just pitched in, distraught.

  ‘Andy, where are you? Are you at the hospital still? Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?’

  She heard a quiet sigh. ‘I tried, Lucy,’ he pointed out, and she felt the guilt spiral. ‘I’m at home, but not for long. I’ve got to go to London.’

  ‘Not without me. Whatever it is, you’re not going without me. I’m coming home now. Don’t you dare leave without me.’

  She scrambled to her feet, gathering up her things, her heart racing. ‘Daisy, we have to go to London—’

  ‘Go home. I’ll take Thomas home and come round in the car to pick Lottie up. I’ll look after her, and the dog, and I’ll get the girls after school. You don’t have to worry about a thing. Go—shoo.’

  She went, hurrying along the pavements with the buggy, dodging pedestrians and feeling choked with fear, and then he was opening the door and she fell into his arms.

  ‘I’m so sorry—’

  ‘Shh. Don’t upset Lottie. Just help me pack.’

  ‘Can I come? I know I’ve been a complete bitch to you, but please let me come, whatever it is.’

  ‘Of course you can come. And you haven’t been any worse than me, but I can’t do this now, Lucy. I know things are a mess. I just—not now, OK?’

  The doorbell rang, and she snatched it open and let Daisy in. ‘Daisy’s going to have the children.’

  ‘Bless you,’ Andy said, and hugged her. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ll get some stuff.’ She ran upstairs on legs of rubber, threw things for all the girls into a bag and handed it to Daisy, then kissed Lottie goodbye and put her into the car seat that Andy must have moved. ‘I’ll call my parents—they’ll come and get them from you. Here, give them my keys. Thank you so, so much.’

  ‘No problem. Come on, Stanley. In the car.’

  She loaded the dog into the boot with the bag of clothes, and as she pulled off the drive Andy headed for the stairs.

  ‘I need to pack,’ he said, and went up, leaving her to follow. There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much he needed to say, but there was a gulf between them that not even this could bridge adequately.

  ‘Talk to me,’ she pleaded. Her eyes were wide with fear and shock, and he could feel her shaking all over. ‘Andy? What’s going on?’

  ‘I’ve got a brain tumour,’ he said, curiously detached.

  ‘A brain tumour?’

  He nodded. ‘David Cardew thinks it’s a meningioma,’ he said, and she went chalk white and sat down suddenly on the bed, her fingers threaded through his and locked on tight. He gripped back, curiously relieved that she’d come home to him. Not that it changed anything, but—

  ‘How did you find out? What made you think there was anything wrong?’

  ‘Raj spotted it yesterday. He came to the ED, and he noticed I was stumbling over my words, and he did a CT—’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything? Last night—you came home, and you didn’t say anything! Why ever not?’

  ‘I just—I wanted it to be normal,’ he said, and she could see his jaw working. ‘I wanted—’

  He couldn’t go on, so she finished the sentence for him, her heart breaking.

  ‘You wanted to read to the girls,’ she whispered, and he nodded.

  ‘Raj fast-tracked me to David Cardew, and he says after the op I might lose my speech for a while.’

  She closed her eyes, the implications only just sinking in. ‘Where is it?’ she asked, dreading the answer. ‘This tumour?’

  ‘On the side of my left frontal lobe. Over

  Broca’s.’

  She flinched, the significance not lost on her. ‘Does he think he can get it out?’

  ‘I think so. He’s going to operate tomorrow morning. That’s part of the hurry. It’s causing the aphasia.’

  The aphasia she hadn’t even noticed, but come to think of it, he’d been less communicative, less talkative and certainly not himself. ‘Expressive aphasia.’

  ‘Yeah. I can understand everything—well, not everything. I read a research paper the other day and couldn’t understand it, but that could have been because it was pretentious crap. It’s finding words. It’s driving me nuts. I can’t—I know exactly what I’m trying to say, it’s all there, I just can’t find the exact words. Most of the time it’s fine, I can wing it, but difficult stuff—it’s just not there, and some of the easy stuff is getting harder. And it’s getting rapidly worse.’ He hesitated, then went on, ‘I thought I was just tired, but my hand’s been funny, as well. Shaking. Weaker. I’ve been ignoring it—in denial, I suppose, but it’s because the tumour’s over the motor control area for my right side, as well as Broca’s, so it’s having a motor effect, as well.’

  Which was why his handwriting was untidy. So many clues, and she’d missed them all. Lucy felt sick. Sick with fear, sick with guilt, sick with worry.

  ‘I’m so sorry—’

  ‘No. Not now, Luce. I can’t do this now. I know our marriage is a mess, and this doesn’t change it, and it’ll probably be worse afterwards, but I can’t deal with that now. I just need to get through this.’

  She nodded numbly. ‘OK. Can I stay with you? I know I kicked you out, but it wasn’t because I don’t care. I do care. I care a lot—so much. Please let me stay with you.’

  His fingers tightened, and he nodded. ‘Course you can,’ he said gruffly.

  He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, and she clung to him, her body shaking all over with reaction. He could feel her crying, feel the sobs breaking free, and he lifted her face and kissed away the tears.

  ‘Don’t cry.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ she said brokenly. ‘I can’t lose you.’

  ‘Don’t—you won’t lose me. I’m here.’

  She touched his cheek, her fingers trembling. ‘I love you.’

  He gave a ragged groan and gave up. He needed her, as he’d never needed her, and he bent his head and took her mouth in a long, frenzied kiss, his fingers tunnelling through her hair, his hands all over her, searching for her skin, dragging the soft sweater out of the way and sliding his hands around her ribcage.

  So soft. So sweet. God, he’d missed her. And if the operation went wrong...

  She was tugging at his shirt, but there wasn’t time for that and he hauled up her skirt, unzipped his trousers and pushed her back onto the bed, driving into her with a desperate groan.

  It wasn’t subtle. It was frantic and messy and fraught with emotion, and the end when it came left him reeling.

  He dropped his head on her shoulder and sucked in a breath, and her hands gentled, stroking his shoulders, sliding down his back and soothing him tenderly.

  ‘I love you,’ she murmured, and he lifted his head and stared down into her tear-filled eyes, and felt his own flood.

  ‘Lucy, this doesn’t change things. I don’t want you feeling you’re stuck with me because of this. If the surgery doesn’t work out—’

  ‘Shh.’ She pressed her finger to his lips and eased away from him. ‘Come on, we have to pack. We’ve got a train to catch.’

  * * *

  ‘Mr Gallagher? Mr Cardew will see you now.’

  He stood up. ‘Coming?’

  She nodded and got to her feet, and went in with him, her legs like jelly.

  David greeted them warmly, but then dispensed with the pleasantries and got straight to the point.

  ‘I’m sorry about the unseemly rush, but you probably don’t mind. Right, this is what we’re dealing with.’

  She looked at the images on the screen in front of them, and she felt Andy’s fingers thread through hers again and tighten. She squeezed back, and kept his hand firm
ly in hers while David talked to them.

  He told them exactly what he planned to do, and she was shocked by the extent of the pale shape sprawled across the left side of his frontal lobe.

  All the way there she’d convinced herself it could only be tiny, just a trivial little blip pressing on his brain, but there was nothing slight or trivial about it, she realised in dread, and the fallout from the surgery could be huge. And that was assuming that it was benign.

  The significance of it wasn’t lost on Andy, either, she realised, because as David started explaining in detail what he intended to do, his fingers tightened on hers again and she could feel the tension vibrating through him.

  She felt overwhelmed, staring at the extensive mass that David was planning on slowly and painstakingly dissecting out. It followed every line and contour of his speech area, snuggling down into every nook and cranny. Getting it out will be a nightmare, she thought. What if he loses his speech completely? What if he can’t ever talk to me again? Or the children?

  She thought of his dry wit, the hilarious stories he told at dinner parties, his effortless eloquence. He had an opinion on just about everything, and expressed himself so fluently, so clearly, so lucidly. If he couldn’t do that, couldn’t even manage the normal everyday communication of essentials, the frustration would kill him, even if the tumour didn’t.

  ‘I want to operate first thing tomorrow morning,’ David was saying. ‘We’ve discussed this briefly, but I’ll go over it again. We’ll give you all kinds of lovely happy drugs, take you into Theatre and give you a brief anaesthetic while we remove the area of skull over the tumour, and then we wake you up. If you can tolerate it, and it should be pain free, we’ll take a biopsy of the tumour and get it sent off, and then we’ll ask you to talk to us and read out loud until we’ve established what part of the affected area is controlling what, and then we’ll know what we can and can’t achieve. If you get speech arrest at any point in the procedure, we’ll have to assess where to go from there.’

  He’d be in Theatre for ages, she thought numbly. Awake, and lying there trying to concentrate while they carefully nibbled away at this insidious thing inside the head of the man she loved.

  ‘How long will it take?’ she asked, knowing it could only be a guess but struggling for any kind of common sense from this.

  ‘A few hours. Four, maybe, at the most? We’ll keep you in overnight tonight, Andy, and run some more tests before the morning. I’ve got a speech and language therapist coming to do a pre-op assessment, and she’ll repeat that tomorrow after the procedure and then she’ll be working with your local SLT as necessary in the next few weeks or months. You’re welcome to stay here, Lucy; there’s a reclining chair and some blankets in the room, and we’ll keep updating you with progress tomorrow as we go.’

  ‘How long will I be in?’ Andy asked, his voice sounding rusty and unused.

  ‘It depends how you are. Probably one night post-op. Maybe not even that. Once you’re stable and I’m satisfied there are no post-op complications, you can go home. I’ll get them to show you to your room now and they can start to clerk you.’

  It was a lovely room, a single room off the quiet ward overlooking a tree-lined courtyard, and Lucy perched on the edge of the reclining chair while Andy paced restlessly.

  ‘What about the children?’ he asked, worrying about them, about the fact that he hadn’t been able to see them and explain—might never be able to explain. ‘Will your parents be all right to have them that long?’

  ‘They’ll be fine. They’re going to stay at ours. Daisy’s got my keys. I’ll call them later, and we’ll update them again tomorrow. After the op. When I know—’ She broke off. When she knew he was alive? When she knew he wouldn’t die? When she knew that he’d never talk again?

  Damn, she was crying, and while she mopped herself up Andy just stood there staring numbly out of the window.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, sniffing. ‘It’s just such a shock.’

  He nodded. ‘I know.’

  He looked as if he was going to say more, but then there was a knock on the door and a smiling woman came in armed with a folder.

  ‘Hi, are you Andrew Gallagher?’

  ‘Yes. Andy. And this is my wife, Lucy.’

  ‘Hi, there. I’m Kate North, I’m the speech and language therapist. Is it OK if I call you Andy and Lucy?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Right, I don’t know how much you know about this. A fair amount, I imagine? I gather you’re both doctors?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Lucy said, warming to her. ‘So—what happens now?’

  ‘I’d like to do a test to establish where you are at the moment with your speech, Andy. Is that OK?’

  ‘That’s fine. Go ahead.’

  ‘Do you want me to leave?’ Lucy asked him, wondering he’d want her there or if he’d feel less uncomfortable without her.

  He shrugged, but Kate gave her an encouraging smile. ‘I’m fine with you staying. You’re the person he talks to most, so it’s actually quite useful for you to know what we do and how we establish speech loss, and you can give me an idea of what you would have expected him to be capable of.’

  She nodded. ‘I would be interested,’ she admitted. ‘I’m a GP, so I have lots of stroke patients I refer for SLT. It would be very useful to see it in action.’

  ‘Sure. Right, let’s start.’

  It was simple. Dead easy, he thought, having no trouble at all with any of the exercises. Then they shifted up a gear, and he had the odd hesitation, but Kate didn’t seem fazed by it and moved on.

  And he began to struggle. Really struggle, with things he knew. And it shook him.

  As if she realised that, she shut her folder and smiled. ‘OK, I think we’ve done enough now. I’ll be able to tell after the op just how much of an effect, if any, it’s had on you, and I’ll pass that onto the SLT you’ll be working with at home in Suffolk so she knows where to start.’

  He nodded, and with a reassuring smile and a handshake, she left them again.

  ‘Wow. That was quite intensive,’ Lucy said, but he didn’t reply. He was still busy taking in the shocking extent of the holes in his expressive language ability that her tests had revealed, an extent he’d been blissfully unaware of except for the odd moment of frustration.

  No. More than that, if he was honest, but nothing that couldn’t have been put down to distraction or tiredness. But the tests she’d just done proved to him beyond any doubt that this was serious and significant.

  And in that moment, it went from theory to reality.

  * * *

  There were other tests.

  Swabs for MRSA, even though they’d been done in Yoxburgh on Sunday. Bloods, ditto. A full physical examination from the anaesthetist, and another talk-through of the procedure, as if he wasn’t well enough aware of what they were going to do to him.

  In a gap in the middle he spoke to the children, assured them that he was all right, told them he loved them and then handed the phone to Lucy because his throat closed up so he couldn’t speak.

  ‘Are they OK?’ he asked when she hung up, and she nodded.

  ‘I think so. They’ve had supper and they’re about to get ready for bed. My parents send their love, and Daisy and Ben said break a leg, apparently. Oh, and Stanley’s dug a hole in the lawn.’

  He gave a tiny, twisted smile, and then another nurse came in for another set of obs and the merry-go-round started all over again.

  And then finally, at seven o’clock, they were left alone.

  ‘So what happens now?’ he asked a nurse who popped in to check his notes.

  ‘Supper. You have a choice—there’s a menu here, or if you’d rather you can go out for dinner. There’s a nice Italian place round the corner.’

  ‘Can we do t
hat?’ he asked, sounding stunned.

  ‘Yes, sure. Just don’t have anything too heavy, and don’t drink too much.’

  ‘One glass of wine?’

  She smiled. ‘One glass of wine is fine. Go out of the door, turn right and right again, and it’s in the mews, about half way down on the left. Be back by nine, if you can.’

  She walked out, and Andy let out a tiny, amazed huff of laughter and looked at Lucy. ‘Well, are you coming?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  She stood up and pulled on her jacket, and Andy shrugged into his coat and opened the door for her, looking as if he’d been reprieved.

  He held out his arm, and she tucked her hand into the crook of it and they walked out together into the chilly November night, arm in arm, for all the world like any other married couple.

  If only...

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THEY found the restaurant easily, and because it was Monday night and quite early, there was a table free.

  ‘So, what do you fancy?’ he asked, scanning the menu.

  ‘Nothing, really. It’s just nice to get out of the hospital.’

  He put the menu down and smiled at her, his slate blue eyes curiously intense. ‘Forget it, Lucy. Let’s forget everything for the next couple of hours. Just you and me, a nice meal, a glass of wine.’

  Because it might be the last conversation they ever had.

  She held his eyes for an age, spellbound by that strange intensity, and then nodded and looked down at her menu. ‘OK. I’ll have the crayfish arrabiatta, and then probably tiramisu. And a glass of prosecco, I think.’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’

  He hailed the waiter, placed the order and then took her hand, his eyes gentle now, warm and tender. ‘Thanks for coming with me.’

  She swallowed. ‘I wouldn’t have let you come on your own. I’ve missed you. It’s felt—wrong.’

  He ignored that. ‘Tell me about work. How did it feel going back?’

  ‘OK, I suppose. I was a bit worried about Lottie at nursery, but she was fine.’ And you, only you weren’t fine, were you, she thought, but didn’t say it. ‘Actually, I’d better let them know I won’t be in for a while.’