Our Song

by Dani Atkins

  ‘There’s been no change, I’m afraid. He’s not woken up yet.’

  Kaye made a small moaning sound, and my concerned eyes flew to Frank’s, wondering whether I should have played down the severity of Joe’s condition. I saw the grim-set determination in my father-in-law’s jaw, which was in sharp contrast to the sparkling over-bright sheen in his eyes. I felt a moment of pure panic. They were old, and both of them had been unwell recently. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if either of them was strong enough to cope with any of this.

  ‘I want to see him,’ said Kaye. ‘Will they let us see him, do you think?’

  ‘Yes, of course they will,’ I assured her, putting an arm around her shoulders and drawing her closer to my side. Kaye had always been slight, petite even, but when had she become so frail? It felt like I was holding on to a bundle of bones wrapped up and held together only by the thick wool of her winter coat.

  I began to steer them both towards Joe’s room. ‘I should warn you that they’ve got him hooked up to an awful lot of machinery.’ Kaye’s eyes widened in fear. I kissed her cheek and smelled the same Lily-of-the-Valley perfume that she’d worn for as long as I’d known her. ‘I have to keep telling myself that every scary piece of equipment is there to help him,’ I whispered into her short grey curls. ‘They’re doing all they can for him. He really is getting the best of care.’

  Kaye nodded fiercely, not trusting her voice, while beside her Frank responded in an unusually gruff tone. ‘That’s good. That’s how it should be. That’s what we need to hear.’

  Although I’d tried to prepare them, I don’t think my words had even pricked through the miasma of panic that had engulfed them since they’d received my call all those hours earlier. Were they able to deal with what was waiting for them on the other side of the door? Was any parent? The only thing I could imagine that could possibly be worse than having Joe in this situation, was if it were Jake lying in that hospital bed instead.

  As the door to Joe’s room swung open, I saw their reaction. I felt it shimmer through the air like a shock wave from an explosion. They reeled backwards, and instinctively clutched at each other, their faces wearing identical looks of fear and despair.

  Surprisingly, it was Kaye who gained control first. ‘Oh Joe,’ she breathed, the folds of her face softening. She appeared to hesitate for a moment, so I took her arm and together we went to his bedside; the woman who’d loved him from the moment he had entered this world, and the woman who’d loved him from the moment he had entered hers.

  Kaye reached for his hand, the way she must have done a thousand times when he was a boy, when he’d been afraid, or in trouble, or lost. He was all of those things once more on this terrible night, and I saw a strength and determination glitter in her eyes as she looked down on her only child. There was an inner core of strength, a seam of iron, running deep within the woman who had raised the man I loved, and I don’t think I’d ever really appreciated that before. With her free hand she began to straighten the perfect un-rumpled bed covers, pulling and twitching them and flattening out an imperceptible crease from Joe’s pillow. She paused with her hand by his head, before gently stoking the thick, sandy hair, and it felt as though three decades had rolled away and I was witnessing a long-remembered nightly ritual. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to touch my own son’s hair in just that way. Joe and Jake were both my touchstones, and without them I was lost, alone and adrift.

  From the foot of the metal-framed hospital bed, I heard Frank clearing his throat several times, before quietly blowing his nose. ‘Do you know . . . do you know yet what happened, Ally? How he ended up in the water?’

  I nodded sadly. ‘A child was in danger on the ice. Joe rescued him, and then went back for their dog.’

  Frank shook his head, his face a mixture of pride and despair. He reached out and awkwardly patted Joe’s leg through the woven hospital blanket. ‘Oh, son.’ When he looked back at me he was crying quietly. ‘I thought it would be something like that. That he was being brave and unselfish. That he was helping someone in trouble.’

  ‘He doesn’t know how to be any other way,’ I said with quiet pride. ‘You taught him well, Frank. You both did.’

  Joe’s parents shared a look, and suddenly I felt like I was intruding on something that belonged to just the three of them. ‘Look, there’s only supposed to be two visitors at a time by the bed, so why don’t you both spend some time with Joe and I’ll wait in the Relatives’ Room; it’s just down the corridor.’

  I don’t think either of them heard me leave, and when I looked back Frank was standing beside his wife, his arm around her shoulders as they stared down at the man who meant everything in the world to them, willing him to come back to us.

  Charlotte

  I saw Ally disappearing in the direction of her husband’s room with an elderly couple, who I assumed must be Joe’s parents, because I’d seen photographs of her own family years ago, and it didn’t look like them. For a moment I envied her, this time for the close family network and the support that gave her. The knowledge that Veronica would probably be here within the next twenty-four hours, no doubt intending to oversee every decision about David’s care, was no consolation and certainly no comfort. Even the indomitable Mrs Williams wouldn’t be able to improve her son’s condition. Whether David recovered – or not – was now in hands far more powerful than my mother-in-law, although I very much doubted she’d accept that.

  I hadn’t been expecting Ally to return to the Relatives’ Room, and from the look on her face as she opened the door, she clearly hadn’t been expecting to see me there either. ‘I . . . I thought you were with the cardiologist?’ Ally looked tired, and drained. The night had been long and gruelling, and I’m sure I looked no better. I glanced at my watch. In a few hours it would be dawn. The hospital would soon be switching seamlessly into daytime mode. Cleaners would be pushing mop-laden trolleys, ancillary workers would be bringing the patients their breakfasts. Staff would be coming in to work, chatting mindlessly about last night’s TV, the forthcoming holiday season and the latest celebrity gossip. Yet Ally and I were stuck inside an entirely different world from them. A world where normality was now crash carts, oxygen masks and life-support machines. A world where husbands, who were meant to grow old and grey beside you, could suddenly be gone for ever. A world where the lines between friend and enemy had become strangely blurred.

  ‘I was. Then I was with David.’

  Ally paused for just a beat, her eyes frightened before asking quietly, ‘How is he?’

  She had every right to ask, and it wasn’t just because of the connection that would now link her to my husband for the rest of our lives. ‘He’s going to need an operation,’ I said. It was as much as I was prepared to share with her for now. She already had far too much of what was mine within her hands.

  ‘Oh. Will that be today?’

  ‘Not unless we’re extremely lucky,’ I replied bitterly, shocking myself with my reply. I looked away to hide my guilt, as I realised how quickly everything you think you know about yourself can be stripped away. How the sudden death of a stranger can fill you with hope, instead of with sadness.

  There was a long moment of silence, and I wondered how much longer we would both continue to dance around the subject that hung suspended in the air between us.

  ‘You told him, didn’t you?’ Ally’s words were more a statement of resignation than a question. I wanted to be angry, I felt I had the right to be angry, I just didn’t have enough energy left to carry it through.

  ‘About your little boy? About Jake? No, I didn’t.’

  Ally’s face looked as though all her Christmases had come at once. ‘You’re not going to tell him?’

  I sighed deeply and shook my head. ‘No, I’m not.’ I paused and met her eyes. ‘You are.’ What little colour that the night hadn’t bleached from her face, drained away. ‘But you’re not going to tell him yet. He’s not strong enough. I don’t want him to know a
nything about his child until after the operation.’

  I saw the challenge in her eyes at the words ‘his child’; it was there right along with her obvious relief at the temporary reprieve.

  ‘So you didn’t tell him that we’d both been here all night?’ Ally questioned cautiously. There was hope in her eyes. It didn’t stay there long.

  ‘Oh no. I told him. He knows that you’re here.’

  I closed my eyes for a long second, remembering the expression on David’s face when I’d told him that impossibly, and unbelievably, his former girlfriend was here in this very hospital on this night. And it was only when I stepped cautiously back into our past, that I fully understood that the bonds that kept him tied to her were still there. For they’d risen up from the earth, and felled me like a trip wire.

  Ally

  Nervous didn’t even begin to cover it. Terrified even fell short of what I was feeling, as I stood outside David’s room, my hand fisted, preparing to knock on the door and walk right back into my past. Of course I could simply have said ‘No’. I could have told Charlotte that I had absolutely no desire to see David again, much less talk to him, but then I’d have been lying not just to her, but also to myself.

  I’m still not sure I completely understood her reasoning. ‘Unless they move Joe to another ward, it’s inevitable that sooner or later David is going to see you here. I just want to make sure that nothing about that encounter is likely to shock or upset him.’

  ‘So what you really mean is, you want to manage the situation?’ I’d said.

  Charlotte had looked surprised that I would find this strange. But then I found the whole situation strange. Would I have wanted one of Joe’s old girlfriends at his bedside? No, of course I wouldn’t. Unless I thought that might help him in some way. If that were an option, I’d have happily invited the devil himself to sit beside him.

  ‘The cardiologist said it was important to keep David stable. So all I’m trying to do here is avoid him having any . . . unexpected . . . surprises, until he’s strong enough to deal with them.’ Her substitution of the word ‘unexpected’ for ‘unpleasant’ was practically seamless. I let it pass. ‘But remember, there mustn’t be any mention at all about Jake. Not yet,’ she had warned. That one I had absolutely no trouble in agreeing with.

  ‘Come in.’ The response came from a nurse and that threw me for a moment. My hand was damp with perspiration and slipped a little on the doorknob as I twisted it open and entered the room. The most positive thing I could think, was that David looked marginally better than he’d done the last time I’d seen him that night. But given that a nurse had been performing CPR on him at the time, that wasn’t saying a great deal.

  My steps faltered, halting me just close enough to the door that I could turn and bolt if necessary. I suppose that was why my hand remained upon it, holding it open.

  ‘Ally.’ One word, just one, and the years fell away. The door slipped from my hand and I walked towards his bed.

  ‘I’ve imagined this moment many times over the years . . . I thought I’d covered every possible scenario . . . but I never pictured it would be like this.’ Unexpectedly my eyes filled with tears at his words, because they were mine too. ‘You look the same,’ he said in a weak parody of the voice I remembered so well.

  I smiled faintly, but didn’t say what I was thinking, which was ‘And you look like Jake, the little boy you know nothing about’.

  ‘How are you feeling, David?’

  ‘I’ve got to say, I’ve had better days.’ He inclined his head towards the vacant chair beside his bed. ‘Will you sit down?’ he asked, sounding so exhausted it made the nurse leave whatever task she was occupied with and return to her patient, eyeing the readings on each of the various pieces of equipment David was connected to.

  ‘You must remember not to exert yourself, Mr Williams,’ she cautioned.

  I slid quickly into the chair, feeling the rebuff had been directed at me. I wanted no responsibility for making him worse.

  ‘Just for a moment then,’ I qualified. ‘I can’t stay long because I have to get back—’

  ‘To your husband,’ David completed. ‘Joe? That’s his name, isn’t it?’

  It was beyond weird to hear his name on David’s lips. ‘Yes, Joe,’ I replied, aware that my face and voice changed, softened and mellowed, whenever I spoke of him. That wasn’t just because of the current situation. It had always been like that, for as long as I could remember.

  I saw something surprising flash across David’s face as he recognised the expression on mine, and it took me a moment or two before I realised it was probably the same look I had once worn whenever I spoke of him.

  ‘I understand he’s been quite a hero. The nurses have been talking about him all night.’ Hearing him speak about Joe, even admiringly, made me feel strangely flustered and defensive. There was a merging and overlapping of the past and the present; there was a paradox here that I didn’t know how to deal with. There’s probably a very good reason why people lose contact with their first loves, because if the tumultuous and contradictory feelings battling within me were anything to go by, it was far too dangerous a game to become involved with.

  ‘Is he making good progress?’ David enquired, and I saw the genuine concern in his eyes. I looked away quickly, the way you do when staring at the sun. His eyes were the only thing unchanged and vibrant in his face. They were, as yet, untouched by his illness, and instinctively I could see nothing but danger in allowing myself to look deeply into them once more.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied sadly. ‘Not yet. Everyone just seems to be waiting for . . . something. No one has really told us that much.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. And it sounded as though he meant it.

  David paused for a moment, waiting until the nurse had left the room, after assuring him someone would return shortly. ‘Is he good to you? Is he a good husband?’

  About that, at least, I could sound positive. ‘He is. The best. He’s wonderful.’ David’s eyes closed for a long moment, so long that I actually wondered if he’d fallen asleep in mid-conversation. When he opened them again, there was a gentleness within them. ‘Good. I’m glad. I’m glad that you’re happy. You deserve that.’

  I fiddled awkwardly with my hands, realising that I had unconsciously been turning my wedding band around on my finger as we spoke, as though it somehow brought Joe into the room with us as an actual physical presence. However ill he was, David’s powers of observation were still acute. He smiled gently at my hands, which I forced to be still.

  ‘Any children?’ he asked conversationally, and it was just as well I wasn’t the one hooked up to a cardiac monitor, because the reading would have gone clear off the scale.

  ‘Just the one. A little boy.’ David nodded absently, and I knew then, without a doubt, that Charlotte had told him nothing. I hoped Jake, who considered himself far too mature to be called a ‘little boy’ any more, would forgive me for the term, which I knew had made him sound much younger than his actual years.

  We fell silent, each in our own way trying to find a footpath through the minefield of topics that neither of us was talking about. David took the first tentative step.

  ‘It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, not since . . .’

  ‘The night of the ball,’ I completed.

  He nodded. ‘You and Charlotte . . . has it been alright tonight, meeting up like this?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t slugged her again, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  He looked shocked for a moment at my reply and then began to laugh. The readings on his monitors changed from gentle zigzags to something which resembled a range of mountain peaks. I glanced at the closed door, expecting at any moment a worried team of medics to barge through it.

  Unthinkingly I grabbed for his hand. ‘Are you alright?’ I asked, my eyes flickering to the monitors, which I couldn’t read properly, before returning to his face. He had laughed so hard that a single
tear had escaped from the corner of one eye, and the urge to reach over and wipe it away was irresistible and unnerving.

  I felt his fingers fold around mine, and it was so different from Joe’s hand, and yet so achingly familiar that I could feel a schism slowly begin to rip within me. The past and present had no business being here, in the same place. And yet they were.

  ‘I love her, you know. I love her very much.’ It wasn’t an apology. David didn’t owe me that.

  ‘I know you do. I can see that. I think, perhaps, I saw it before you did.’

  His smile was slightly twisted. ‘She’s scared of you, you know. She puts on this big tough front, but beneath it, she’s scared that I’ve still got feelings for you.’

  And there it was. The moment when the question And have you? was just lying there, waiting to be picked up and asked. But I wasn’t going to go there. I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t.

  ‘Would it be very weird if I asked you to look out for her, if . . . if anything happens to me?’

  ‘Yeah, it would be,’ I said, shocked on more than one level that he would ask me that. ‘Surely you both have family and friends for that? I’m probably the last person in the world Charlotte would choose to turn to.’

  ‘Her family are about as warm and welcoming as mine,’ David said by way of explanation. ‘My brother’s the only one she gets on with, and he lives in Australia these days. And as for friends, well . . . let’s put it this way, we’ve got an awful lot of acquaintances.’

  I wasn’t used to feeling sympathy for Charlotte, and I didn’t know how to deal with the emotion. Her situation was so vastly different from my own. Instead, I switched the subject. ‘Besides, you’re going to be out of here in no time, aren’t you? Charlotte said you were having an operation?’

  There was something in David’s eyes that troubled me. It took me a moment before I could name it. It looked a little like defeat. ‘Maybe. Who knows. Nothing is certain; it’s just a waiting game.’ His eyes went to mine, and this time I didn’t look away. ‘It’s funny, I always thought you were the one who broke my heart, but it turns out I’ve done a pretty good job of doing that all by myself.’