by Jane Casey
‘I’ll be fine.’ I chose to ignore the stress she’d placed on the final word; I had guessed that she didn’t believe me. She was a better friend than I deserved. But what mattered at that moment was finding out how Geoff was, and finding out what had happened. I grabbed my bag and opened the door. ‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘I don’t know what all this is about, Sarah,’ Jules replied, staring straight ahead of her, ‘but I’m not impressed. Whatever it is, get it out of your system before we get back to work, OK?’
I didn’t answer her, but I paused on my way in to the hospital to watch her as she drove away, hoping that she’d wave, hoping that she’d be willing to forgive me. And Jules being Jules, she gave me a smile as she went.
Inside, I queued behind would-be patients who were besieging the receptionist with a bewildering assortment of problems, all of which seemed to require sitting down on an orange plastic chair to await attention. Through double doors lay the promised land where medical treatment was dispensed, but although hospital staff were coming and going like worker bees on a sunny day, none of the people in the waiting room ever seemed to be taken through. The chairs were filling up. I felt an overwhelming lack of enthusiasm for sitting there and hoped I wouldn’t be made to wait. It was a bigger casualty department than the one at the small-scale medical centre where I usually ended up with Mum, but no more efficient, by the looks of things.
The receptionist brightened behind her protective glass when I finally made it to the desk. Unlike most of the others in the queue, I wasn’t covered in blood or raving incomprehensibly. I even had a straightforward request – I just wanted to see Geoff. Nonetheless, she was launching into her well-worn spiel about taking a seat on the plastic chairs to my left when a doctor in wrinkled blue scrubs dashed through the double doors and interrupted her.
‘Karen, did you manage to get hold of Geoff Turnbull’s next-of-kin?’
‘I haven’t had a chance,’ she said coolly, waving a hand at the queue. ‘I’m a little bit busy.’
The doctor ran his fingers through his very untidy hair and sighed. ‘We’re going to need to let them know if we have to operate.’
It was a gift. ‘I may be able to help.’
‘Who are you?’ The doctor stared down at me. He had a long, pointed nose. I felt like a beetle being inspected by a hungry bird.
‘I’m a colleague of Geoff’s. I mean – I’m a friend. I could get the number for his parents from the school where we work. If you wanted it.’
The doctor, who had very big bags under his eyes, waved his hand at Karen. ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s her job, if she’d only get around to doing it.’
He earned a venomous look from the receptionist for that but it didn’t seem to bother him. ‘Give her the number for the school, though,’ he said, grinning a little. ‘Make it easy for her.’
I scribbled it down on a bit of card the receptionist slid out from under her screen. ‘It will go straight through to the school secretary at home if you select that option,’ I explained. One of Janet’s grievances was that she had to take emergency calls at weekends. This certainly counted as an emergency in my view.
‘Thank you.’ Karen smiled sweetly when I pushed the paper back under the screen. Then her face snapped back to a scowl that was aimed at the doctor.
He turned back to me.
‘Are you here to see Mr Turnbull?’
‘Er, yes – if I can.’
The doctor nodded and strode to the double doors, holding one open without looking around, expecting me to follow him. I ran to join him.
‘Got to go to intensive care. I’m Dr Holford, by the way.’
‘Sarah Finch,’ I said, slightly out of breath. He was tall and lanky and moved fast; it was taking a lot of effort to keep up with him. Corridors led off corridors as we hurried through the accident and emergency department. Arrows on the ground pointed the way to radiology, then haematology. Dr Holford seemed to be taking his own special short cut to intensive care. I would never find my way out. I was starting to regret not bringing Jules. Or a ball of string.
‘He’s not in great shape. We’re keeping an eye on him for the next twenty-four hours. If the swelling in his brain doesn’t go down, we’ll have to operate.’ Dr Holford had an abrupt way of speaking, rattling out the words in short bursts, as if they built up inside him and then blasted out. ‘And you’re his girlfriend, did you say?’
I hesitated, afraid that if I didn’t have a close enough relationship with Geoff, I wouldn’t be allowed to see him. ‘Er – very close,’ I settled on eventually.
‘It’s iffy. I’m not going to lie to you. The next few hours are critical. He’s not going to be sitting up in bed, ready to talk to you.’
I tried to imagine how I would feel if I was emotionally involved with Geoff, if he was my boyfriend, if I was in love with him. Would Dr Holford’s brusque manner reassure me? Would I be irritated by it? Would I be in tears?
Dr Holford stopped at a door marked ICU. There was a graphic of a mobile phone with a line through it on the wall by the door and I dug in my bag for mine while the young doctor punched in the code to open the door. As we stepped through the doorway, the noise level seemed to drop immediately. The lights were muted here, unlike the harsh strip lighting that made the rest of the hospital so bleak. Six bays led off a central nurses’ station, where two nurses sat, writing on charts. At the sight of Dr Holford, both beamed.
‘How are you holding up?’ one asked him.
‘Not good.’ Then, to me, he explained, ‘Double shift. I’m nearly at the end of it. Twenty-five minutes’ sleep in the last twenty-two hours.’
That explained the red eyes and the end-of-tether manner. I nodded and smiled wanly as I lost interest in Dr Holford, because across the room I had seen a man I recognised, sitting on a chair outside one of the bays, reading a newspaper. The last time I’d seen him was at the church, at Jenny’s memorial service. He had been standing beside Blake. A big man with a heavy build and a boxer’s nose, he looked desperately uncomfortable, perched as he was on a small chair, with one leg flung out in front of him. Dr Holford stepped over it delicately, looking more and more like a stork.
‘This is your guy in here,’ he said, ushering me in. I sidled past the policeman without speaking to him, cringing for fear that he might stop me or ask me what I was doing. I didn’t make eye contact with him, though I was aware that his gaze followed me into the room. I walked up to the foot of the bed, still expecting to be told to stop and explain myself at any moment. Dr Holford was checking the machines that stood burping to themselves on either side of the bed, and I was free to look at Geoff unobserved. I was glad of a moment or two to compose myself, because what I saw was frightful.
If the doctor hadn’t told me it was Geoff lying there, I wouldn’t have known him. His face was swollen and shiny with bruising. His eyelids were black, suffused with blood. An oxygen tube ran into his nose, while another tube pulled at the corner of his mouth. His head was heavily bandaged, with just a tuft of matted hair sticking up at the top. It was a horrible contrast to how he looked from the neck down: owing to Geoff’s obsession with the body beautiful, he was as healthy and lean as an athlete. His arms lay on top of the covers, palms down, unmoving. He was bare-chested, the blankets covering him up to the armpits.
I must have made a small sound, because Dr Holford looked around at me.
‘I warned you. Not looking too good, is he?’
I cleared my throat. ‘How is he? Is he … improving?’
‘No change.’ The doctor looked at me, and I saw his face soften. There was kindness in there along with the fierce intelligence. ‘Listen, why don’t you sit down and spend some time with him. Talk to him if you like.’
‘Will that help?’
‘It might help you.’ He stalked out of the room, mumbling something to the nurses as he went.
The ICU was hot, stifling. I slid my jacket off and put it over my arm. Somehow, I
felt reluctant to sit down on the chair that was placed near the head of the bed. I was an impostor. That chair was there for those who fought the fight along with the doctors and nurses with prayers and whispered promises, bargaining to keep their loved ones from slipping away. This was the first time I had ever volunteered to spend time with Geoff. I couldn’t lie; it helped that he was comatose.
I stepped around carefully to the chair and put my bag and jacket down on the floor, watching to see if there was any reaction to the sound. Not a flicker.
I heard one of the nurses scolding the policeman outside. She had a strong West Indian accent. ‘No, darling. No mobiles in here. You know the rules.’
I sat down in the chair gingerly. From there I could see the policeman’s vast bulk draped over the edge of the nurses’ station, where he was leaning in to use the phone, one hand jammed to his ear. The leather of his jacket was puckered across the curve of his back, straining at the seams like a canvas sail in a high wind.
As I watched, the nurse padded into the bay, blocking my view. ‘You can hold his hand, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
Holding Geoff’s hand was approximately the last thing I wanted to do, but I couldn’t confess that to the nurse. She waited, smiling encouragement. I reached out tentatively and touched the back of the hand near me, covering it with my own. It was hot and dry, but tacky to the touch. Dirty. I turned his hand palm upwards, very gently, to see black dirt ingrained in the creases of his palm and his fingertips, highlighting the whorls and ridges of his fingerprints. There was dirt and there was dark dried blood. His nails were clotted with it. I shuddered and put his hand down again, feeling queasy.
This had happened outside my house. Perhaps this had happened because of me.
I sat back in the chair and folded my arms, squeezing the hand that had touched Geoff’s until my fingernails dug into my flesh, trying to erase the memory of his hot, slightly sticky skin against mine. I could still feel it, like an amputee with a phantom limb, a ghost irritant that was impossible to ignore. I stared at the wall opposite me and wished there was a window. I wondered who had chosen the precise shade of beige that most resembled baby poo to decorate the unit. I wondered why I was there. I wondered if Geoff would recover, if he would ever forgive me, if I would ever forgive myself.
I don’t know how long I had been sitting there when I heard Andy Blake’s voice – quite a while, but it was hard to keep track of time in the sensory deprivation of the ICU. He was talking to the policeman outside the door, speaking in a low voice so all I could catch was the tone, which was serious. I recognised his voice before I saw him, and when I leaned back to try to catch sight of him, I found the two policemen looking in at me. There was outright hostility on the battered face of the older man. Blake was frowning. Without acknowledging me, he nudged the other policeman and led the way out of the ICU. I felt nettled, childishly irritated, and wanted to run after them, shouting, ‘I wasn’t listening anyway! I don’t care what you have to say about me. I’m not interested.’
Beside me, Geoff slept on. Permission had come from his parents to operate, and Dr Holford had been in with the surgeon to assess him. I had removed myself, standing out in the corridor alone. All I could think was that Geoff wouldn’t have been lying there if I had handled things differently. If I was better at saying no. If I had let him come in and talk. If he had found someone else to pursue. If I had taught in a different school. If I had never even become a teacher in the first place. The guilt was a physical weight on me. Conversation was impossible. I had leaned against the wall while the nurses pattered about their business without fuss, without troubling me. In the next bay, there was a fall from high up on some unsafe scaffolding; he was hanging between life and death. A massive stroke that had happened at the dinner table was now safely under control on the other side of the unit. Visitors thronged both rooms, ashen with terror or pinkly grateful. There was no one there for Geoff apart from me. I didn’t know his friends. His parents were too frail to come to see him, the nurses had said. I didn’t know if he had brothers or sisters. I didn’t know anything about him at all, except that he had liked me, and wanted to make me like him, and we had both handled it badly. I was beginning to accept that I had overreacted. I played back all of the things he had said to me – all of the things he had done – and saw them in a new light. He had meant well, I thought. He had meant to do no harm.
A soft tap on the door behind me made me jump.
‘Sorry to interrupt – can I have a word?’ Blake, looking serious.
I stood up slowly, stretching out limbs stiff from sitting. His choice of words annoyed me straightaway. What did he think he was interrupting? And what did he want with me anyway? I could feel bad temper starting to build inside me like a thundercloud as I followed him through the unit to a door labelled ‘Relatives’ Room’. Someone had added the apostrophe in Tippex. The glass panel let into the door was carefully covered with a dull green curtain to allow for privacy. The room was small and overcrowded with furniture, but at least had a window, although the view was of the incinerator chimney, currently wheezing dark grey smoke into the clear blue day.
Blake waited by the door, shutting it firmly behind me. I stepped carefully through the chairs, around a coffee table, heading for the window so I could look out.
‘Bit of a surprise to see you here.’
I didn’t turn around. ‘Why are you surprised?’
‘I didn’t think you liked him,’ he said easily.
‘I don’t.’
‘Do you mind turning around, please?’
It might have been couched as a question, but it was definitely an order. I turned, leaning against the windowsill. Blake was sitting down on one side of the coffee table. I suddenly realised that the furniture had been rearranged to make an impromptu interview space. That was why the chairs were jostling for space and the layout in the room was so confused.
‘Come and sit down,’ Blake said, indicating the chair opposite him.
Mulishly, I resisted. ‘I’d rather stand. I’ve been sitting for a while.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ I said stiffly. ‘I wanted to come and see how Geoff was doing. He – he doesn’t have anyone else.’
Blake leaned back in the low chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘Oh, I see. He’s someone else you can take responsibility for now, isn’t he? No wonder you’re here doing the Florence Nightingale bit.’
‘What do you mean?’ I was glad my back was to the light; the blood had rushed to my face.
‘This is your pattern, isn’t it? Something bad happens to someone you know, and you have to make it better.’
I frowned at Blake. ‘Like what?’
‘Like the little business with your brother?’ He reached under the chair and pulled out the newspaper his colleague had been reading. It was a tabloid with thick black headlines. From where I was standing, I could read the banner that ran across a double-page spread: TRAGIC TEACHER: I FOUND JENNY BUT I COULDN’T FIND MY BROTHER. And a picture underneath, a close-up of me outside the school, looking away from the camera, my brow furrowed.
‘When were you going to tell us about that?’ Blake asked, holding it out to me.
I came away from the window and went across the room to pick up the paper without consciously ordering my limbs to move. Fucking Carol Shapley. She must have worked very fast indeed to go from our interview to the printed page so quickly. So much for a sympathetic story.
Sad Sarah Finch choked as she talked to me about finding her favourite student’s body. Touched by tragedy herself, she knows all about loss. ‘I know how Jenny’s family must feel,’ she wept. ‘But at least they have a body to bury.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ I muttered, mostly to myself, skimming through the paragraphs at top speed. It was all there: Charlie’s disappearance, Mum’s nervous breakdown, Dad’s death, Jenny’s death – but the story was almost unrecognisable, slickly told, broken in
to easily digestible chunks for a greedy readership. I read on to a third page where the story trailed off into speculation about what might have happened to Jenny, and what Carol alleged were my pious hopes for the future for Jenny’s parents. (‘I hope they stay together and support each other. They’ll get through it but they’ll never forget.’) After reading the last lines, I closed my eyes for a second. I didn’t need to read it again – I could probably have recited it line by line – but I flicked back to the start and looked at it without seeing the words. I was hugely reluctant to put the paper down and meet the steady gaze I knew was trained on me.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t say anything about my brother, but I didn’t think it was relevant,’ I said at last, sitting down and wrapping my hands around my knees for comfort.
His eyebrows shot up. ‘Really? I would have liked to know about it before the media. How did they find out about it, anyway?’
In a dull voice, I told him about Carol and her perseverance. I explained that I hadn’t felt I had any choice but to cooperate with her.
‘She lied to me,’ I said, flicking the open newspaper with my nail. ‘She told me they wouldn’t use my new surname, or anything that would enable anyone to recognise me. That’s why there isn’t a posed photograph. I don’t know when they took that one. Probably that day when they were all lined up outside the school – the day after Jenny was found.’
‘The day after you found her,’ Blake said pointedly.
I looked up. ‘So what?’
He didn’t answer me directly, just looked past me, an exasperated expression on his face.
‘Listen,’ I said, getting heated again, ‘don’t be fooled into thinking that there’s anything more than a coincidence at work here. I didn’t tell anyone about Charlie. I don’t speak about him, ever. It’s not the kind of thing that’s easy to work into a conversation, is it? And I can’t expect other people to care about the fact that my brother disappeared and I’ve never been able to get over it. It happened. I had to live with it growing up, I have to live with it now, but the difference is that most people don’t remember or care. So at least I can feel what I feel in private.’ And I was so used to keeping it suppressed that I didn’t even know how to start being open about it. Hiding things came naturally to me now.
