Heart to Heart

by Meline Nadeau

  “Well, very little, really. They mentioned that she was very feverish, and that she fainted. Her friend, Joanna, rang me, but of course I hope the doctor will have more details. I’ve told Lydia she must eat something. Silly girl. Oh, Jane, I am so worried.”

  “So am I.”

  They said little else on the drive to the hospital. Jane swung the groaning old van into the car park and came to an abrupt stop in the space closest to the door.

  Without a word, Eleanor opened the door and slowly sank her feet onto the slushy tarmac. Jane ran around the back of the van, to offer her a steady arm.

  “Thanks, love.”

  “Did Joanna say what room?”

  “Yes. 410. Isn’t that odd?”

  Lydia’s birthday. “Let’s see it as good luck, shall we?” She smiled but Eleanor didn’t see. Her thoughts made her unseeing, and Jane’s voice only seemed to be reaching Eleanor at random intervals.

  They walked through the automatic doors, passing the desk where Lydia worked as a clerk, across the broad hospital hall, and straight to the lift. Jane pressed the button, and the doors swung open immediately, revealing a somber elderly gentleman inside. He shuffled slowly out of the lift, while Jane kept her hand against the door. His neck bowed like a cane, his eyes cast down. The elevator’s mechanism began to beep loudly, in objection to having the doors open for too long.

  “The poor dear,” Eleanor said absently as they stepped into the lift. “I don’t know how he’ll get on in this weather.” Jane selected the button labeled “4th Floor.”

  The doors drew together in a shush and the air became still. Their eyes moved with the small round lights as they passed each floor. Jane didn’t cope well with medical situations, hospitals, doctors, and the like. She took deep breathes, determined that she would be cheerful when she saw Lydia, and not chide her for eating poorly.

  “How is it that you want to be a nurse, and work in one of those horrid places?” Jane had asked Lydia, months ago. She remembered Lydia’s sour expression, her breath escaping with a little hum. That was how she bought time, when she was thinking of what to say.

  “Jane, you know I’ll never lack for job security. I could work most anywhere, in all sorts of different situations. With the aged, or with young mothers, or anyone. Never surgery, but I should want to do something helpful. I’ve always just sort of watched everyone, and, I don’t know, I’ve always would rather be at home. But surely I need to stop wasting my life.”

  Jane tried to feel supportive. “It is an important career, I’ll grant you that. Are you sure you’ll be happy though?”

  Lydia’s eyes betrayed her bewilderment. “I don’t know how I shall get on. I’d rather just take up with you at the shop. Get a string of greenhouses, and supply you flowers. But that doesn’t seem to be doing much, or something.”

  “Oh, thanks a lot!” Jane was angry. “I suppose that means that I contribute nothing to society? Gardenias for Mother’s Day, bouquets for lovers, flowers for caskets … who needs them?”

  “Jane, you know that wasn’t what I meant.”

  It was a terrible row. One of the worst they’d ever had. It wasn’t that Jane really thought Lydia was running down the floral industry. Well, maybe that was part of it. But Jane was angry because Lydia never really followed her heart. She wanted her friend to feel passionate about her work, like Jane felt about the shop. Lydia shouldn’t be a nurse, any more than Jane ought to be Prime Minister.

  Eleanor and Jane quietly peeked into room 410. It was empty. Eleanor was undone. “Where could she be?”

  “Don’t worry. She could be at a test. Let me check with the nurse. I’ll be right back.”

  • • •

  Waiting, Eleanor leaned against the wall for support. A tear slipped down one cheek, but she didn’t notice. It was at this hospital that her sweet Georgie died. She missed him with a pang in her heart, as though he passed away just a moment ago. Time was meant to heal, but Eleanor thought that was rubbish, because the past caught you up in a moment.

  Jane returned, and Eleanor’s full attention was upon her troubled face.

  “They’ve moved her, Eleanor. That’s all.”

  “Where?”

  “Down to the second floor.”

  “Oh, my God, not the High Dependency Unit?”

  Jane was silent. Now it was she who felt as though she’d left reality to act out some strange drama. They studied each other, looking for courage, and finding none.

  Both turned back towards the lift, not feeling the floor beneath their feet.

  Lydia was in 203. Jane followed Lydia’s mother into the room, passing a glass observation window that faced the south side of the nurse’s station.

  And there she was, looking too pale, too lifeless, and dressed in a blue and white patterned hospital gown. Eleanor looked at her baby girl, now a mother herself. Where had the years gone? She walked to Lydia, and took her hand, expecting her daughter to open her eyes. But she didn’t.

  • • •

  Jane had learned from the nurse that Lydia was in an unconscious state, but when Jane asked for more information, the nurse asked Jane if she was a family member. Jane almost said, “Yes, of course.” But, of course, she was not. It seemed strange that she had no right to Lydia’s medical information. She knew Lydia better than anyone else in the world.

  And her best friend looked simply dreadful. Lydia’s eyes were ever so slightly parted. Despite the oxygen-rich cannula that rested in her nostrils, Lydia’s lips had a slightly blue cast. Jane felt her stomach start to squirm about, causing a wringing sensation to move through her bowels.

  With a voice she didn’t quite recognize, Jane said, “Eleanor, perhaps we ought to let the doctor know you’re here? Maybe he could tell us what he plans to do for Lydia next?”

  Eleanor never took her eyes from Lydia’s beautiful, pallid face. She ignored Jane’s suggestion with a slight shake of her chin.

  A few minutes later, Eleanor turned and murmured to Jane. “Ring Nigel.”

  Jane had known that it would be up to her to do so, somehow. She began to hurry from the room, and plowed into the doctor. The doctor hesitated for a moment.

  “She’s very badly off, isn’t she?” Jane croaked.

  “Yes, quite,” the doctor began. Eleanor greeted him, but her eyes never left Lydia’s face. The doctor’s voice picked up strength and speed. “Miss Membry has contracted influenza, complicated by viral pneumonia; a very bad case of it. She also has infection of the blood. Do you understand?”

  Jane nodded her head in the affirmative. She smiled, as though being compliant would somehow relieve Lydia’s suffering. Jane was grasping for hope, but didn’t want the doctor to say anything further that she would be doomed to remember for the rest of her life.

  “Um, she’s been on a lot of antibiotics, you see,” Jane began.

  “Yes, right. Well, they’ll do little good in this case,” the doctor said. He laid a hand on Jane’s arm. “The pair of you will be all right, then?”

  “I, yes, I suppose …” the doctor was already gone as the words sputtered from her lips.

  She stepped into the corridor, fumbled with her mobile, and pressed the auto-dial for Brambleberry Lane.

  “Hullo?” Clarice’s voice was as tight as piano wire.

  “Clarice, Jane here. We’ve seen Lydia. She’s resting. Could you be a love and give me Nigel’s telephone number?” A nurse hastily walked by, into Lydia’s room, followed by a different doctor, who was blocking Jane’s view.

  “Jane, what’s happened? … . Are you there?”

  “Yes, sorry, Clair. Lots happening here. Medical people going into Lydia’s room it seems. Uh, well. I wouldn’t say I’ve any good news at the moment. I, I certainly don’t know…”

  “Listen, duck,” Clarice
said quietly. “Let me ring Nigel for you, will that do?”

  Jane emitted a watery sob in reply, and then an involuntary high-pitched whine. Clarice waited until Jane could speak. “I … think … Oh, Clarice!”

  “Jane, darling, listen to me,” she said. “I am going to ring Nigel, drop Jackson at Toby’s, and then I shall be there in a tick. You just try to put on a brave face, love. Eleanor needs you.” She rang off.

  Jane slid down the wall, and was sitting with her knees to her chest. Her head pounded the way one’s always does after crying. With another deep breath for courage, she made her return to Lydia’s room.

  She rounded the corner, listening to Lydia’s voice in her head. A remembered conversation about hair products. One mousse left too much build-up, and Lydia wasn’t pleased with it. “It feels as though I’ve put floor wax on my head.” Jane had laughed at Lydia. The two bent over in giggles, and the hair product slipped from Lydia’s fingers and crashed to the floor.

  When Jane entered the hospital room, it smelled of something odd. Sort of like the paper whites. Her eyes skipped to Lydia. Her friend looked incapable of laughter, and her usually thick, lustrous hair was stringy. It never looked that way, and it was terribly upsetting. Lydia could’ve done hair commercials, she had that sort of hair, full of body. Full of life. The nurse and doctor were staring at her, as she stared at Lydia.

  Jane wanted to speak to Eleanor, whose fingers were pressed hard to her lips, but Jane could not. There wasn’t anything to say. Lydia was dead.

  Chapter 5

  Jane looked at her accounts with dismay. It was rather sickening that her shop profitted from Lydia’s death. She had nearly wiped out her whole inventory at the flower shop last month, with everyone sending large bouquets to the Membry’s. She needed to restock ribbons, cards, baskets, and arrangement stands. The whole village had turned out for Lydia’s memorial service, and Eleanor’s house had been full of visitors bringing dishes of food that the other visitors would eat.

  Jane shed fresh tears daily. The rather stupid thing was, she had the urge to ring up Lydia and to tell her how depressed she was feeling. It didn’t seem right that she should have to go through something so hard as losing her best friend, without Lydia’s support. How perfectly ludicrous. But Lydia had been there almost her entire life, helping her through the rough spots, and so this coping on her own was new business. It didn’t seem quite real that she was gone, yet Jane couldn’t stop crying for missing her. Lydia had passed on, and Jane wondered when she would pass through; to get to that part of the grieving process when she was no longer in a miserable flux, but seeing an end to it all.

  Jane’s heart broke all over again when she looked at Jackson, Lydia’s dear child. Little boys cry like banshees and then they stop and want to do something else. His resiliency was somehow sadder than if he’d lapsed into depression. Sort of like a cheerful dog who doesn’t know he’s going to the vet for the last time, but you can’t possibly tell him what it means. Jane couldn’t have possibly told him what a future without his mother would be like, because she was beyond imagining it herself.

  Eleanor had been doing poorly since Lydia’s passing. She managed getting through the first seven days, then had a stroke. She was home from hospital now, and Jane popped in every evening to check on Eleanor and to relieve Clarice, who was really struggling too much herself to be Eleanor’s nursemaid and run the house. Jackson was often to be found with Jane or at a mate’s house.

  Clarice, usually one to go into an energetic overdrive during a crisis, was completely put under by Lydia’s death. In many ways, she mourned as deeply as Lydia’s own mother, and with every reason, given her long, intimate acquaintance with the family. Several times, Jane arrived at the house to find Clarice weeping at the kitchen table. The only thing to be done was to feed her, dose her with a sleeping pill, and put her to bed, with hope that tomorrow would be better.

  Nigel was a different kettle of fish altogether. Surprisingly, he stayed after Lydia’s funeral. To help. Jane was shocked to discover his handiness in the kitchen, and marveled at his nurturing way with Jackson. He discreetly carried on his business dealings in his father’s old study, but was very accessible. He was the height of compassion to Jane, holding her when she broke down at the hospital, as it was she who discovered Eleanor after her stroke, lying on the bathroom floor. Efficiently, he handled bills, phone calls from the university bursar, issues with various hospital staff, and necessary documents regarding Eleanor’s medical care.

  The Membry family seemed an odd one now, Jane thought: Eleanor, an elderly half-paralyzed woman; Nigel, her son and an international business tycoon; and Jackson, a little boy of five. And then there was she and Clarice, constantly in and out, their roles changing as needed.

  Jane finished her accounts and put her ledger aside. She drew her cold hands across her forehead, felt comforted by stretching the skin up to her scalp, and dreaded the tears that were making their way from her grieving soul to her saltworn eyes. Lydia’s laugh echoed in her mind as a few large tears puddled on the green ledger cover, smearing a bit of potting soil and making mud on the worn surface. Jane was so weary of these quiet moments, when everything about her memories of Lydia seemed loud and overwhelming, turning Jane’s reality into a pale, seemingly unreal state.

  The phone rang, and Jane sniffed violently. “Petal Pushers. This is Jane, how can I help?”

  “Jane, you’re still there.”

  “Hullo, Nigel. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. We’re doing well here. I would like to meet you for dinner if you’re able. Away from the house.”

  “Certainly, Nigel, I can meet you.”

  “Chinese Palace?”

  “I’ll see you there.”

  They rang off. Jane was puzzled as to what Nigel needed to speak with her about. Surely she could’ve just nipped into his father’s old study when she came round in the evening? Perhaps he was getting ready to make one of his abrupt escapes and wanted to forewarn her. He’d been wonderful. How would she manage helping Eleanor, Clarice, and Jackson on her own?

  Whatever Nigel’s conundrum, she was thankful for the distraction that had spared her from weeping again.

  The evening was unseasonably warm. The shop was busy, and Jane had nearly sold out of forced blooms of sweet-smelling hyacinth, lipstick-red tulips and a new variety of purple bleeding heart. The cold would return and remind them it was a false spring, but that would be tomorrow, and no one could bear thinking of it.

  Jane’s spirits lifted as she walked the village streets to the restaurant. Quite suddenly, it was the best she’d felt since Lydia passed away, and she selfishly hoped that Nigel wouldn’t say anything too upsetting. She liked feeling normal for two seconds put together.

  A bell tinkled as she pulled open the door to the Chinese Palace, and she spied Nigel at a booth in the corner, reading a newspaper. She knew that he would be more than punctual, and that he would be making use of his valuable time by having some occupation while he waited on her to change her clothes and walk to the restaurant.

  “The weather is glorious, isn’t it?” she said, hanging her light coat on the peg before sliding in.

  “Indeed it is. And you’re always a bit of sunshine, Jane,” Nigel said, with a smile.

  Jane felt a flutter across her tummy at his compliment. She suddenly felt like a woman meeting her lover. She had grown accustomed to seeing Nigel as the other nursemaid of the Membry household. Here in a public place, he was the dashing 007. She quickly glanced around, but no one was looking at them. She drifted back to earth by pretending to study the menu. She felt a pang when she saw Lydia’s favorite dish offered as the special.

  “Jane, you’ve gone black,” Nigel said gently. “You came here often with my sister, didn’t you?”

  “Why, yes, as a matter of fact I did,” Jane replied, igno
ring his attempt to care for her feelings. She fought to keep the good feeling she’d had walking through the village.

  The waitress, Imogen, came by and took their orders, and Jane busied herself with arranging the dragon-red cloth and utensils. She knew Nigel was staring at her. Instead of feeling thrilled to be sharing a meal with a gorgeous man, she suddenly felt as though she were about to be put through an inquest. She felt a flash of inexplicable anger.

  “I’ll come straight to the point, Jane,” Nigel said. Jane repented, realizing that she would have done better to respond to his gentleness. She had never been comfortable when Nigel assumed his business airs, and she listened to him intently, so that if he said something complicated she wouldn’t be caught out with nothing intelligent to say. And yet, he wore a slightly pained expression, not at all like corporate indifference. Whatever could be the matter, now?

  But he didn’t come to the point, and began fussing with folding the newspaper. He laid it aside and gazed at her. She looked into his eyes, and tried to think of herself as being a glamorous person who would be his equal.

  “You realize that we can’t carry on this way.”

  Jane started giggling. She couldn’t help it, what with the things that had just been playing in her mind. The clandestine meeting between lovers, as it were. Carried away on the novel feeling of mirth, she gave way to hearty laughter.

  “Jane! Whatever are you laughing about?” Nigel was stern. Jane’s frivolity deflated like a balloon.

  “Sorry, Nigel. Do go on, please. I shan’t let it happen again.”

  “As I was saying, you and I have our lives, don’t we? I don’t think either of us are prepared to continue on with our current responsibilities.”

  Oh. No wonder he wanted to speak with her away from Brambleberry Lane. It was time for a family counsel, and, well, she was more or less family.

  “You’re quite right, Nigel. Only I haven’t figured out what should happen. I didn’t realize that Lydia was the glue holding us all together.”