by Dani Atkins
No. Nothing about any of this was even remotely okay.
‘Yes, that’s fine,’ I replied.
I dived into the album before Ryan had pulled the door to a close behind him. For a moment I thought the first few pages held duplicates of the same photograph, until I looked a little closer. The setting was the same hospital room, although not the one I currently inhabited. The bed was close to the window, and I was the only person in the photo. I flipped backwards and forwards through the first half-dozen pages of the album, and it felt remarkably like doing a ‘spot-the-difference’ puzzle. In the first image the sun was still shining brightly through the window; the boughs of the tree beyond it were heavy with foliage, and both my legs were still in plaster. Ryan had written a caption beneath the photograph, with a date that confirmed it had been taken in the middle of August, eight weeks after the accident.
I flipped over to the next page, which held a photo taken some six weeks later, and saw fewer leaves on the trees and far more clouds in the sky. But the main difference wasn’t in the changes of the season, it was in me. In the first photo most of the terrible bruising from the accident had faded to a pale mustard yellow, making me look weirdly like an extra in an episode of The Simpsons. In the second photo my skin was back to its normal alabaster white; but I wasn’t looking at my skin. The August image showed the outline of a small mound beneath the sheet. Before the accident my baby bump had simply disappeared whenever I lay down, but in the photo before me it now looked like a rolling hillside. I ran my finger wonderingly over its arc and flipped rapidly to the next page, and then the next, and the next. It was strange fast-forwarding through my pregnancy, watching the view from the lower part of the window become increasingly lost behind my ever-growing stomach. What had started as something the size of a small cantaloupe melon had transformed to something more closely resembling a huge Halloween pumpkin.
A soft sigh escaped me. I’d been looking forward to experiencing all the changes my body was going to go through as I grew a tiny human being. I’d wanted to savour and relish every single one of them . . . and I had missed them all. For me there had been no sending Ryan out in the middle of the night for chocolate ice cream and pickles to satisfy my weird cravings; no fluttery first movements of the baby stirring inside me; no caressing the child growing steadily within my swollen belly. True, there had also been no heartburn, no backache, or varicose veins, but I’d have traded them all in a heartbeat not to have missed the milestones of my pregnancy.
There was one final photograph before Hope had been born, and in that one I was not alone. Ryan was standing beside the bed, holding one of my limp and unresponsive hands in his. It saddened me to see his hand lovingly rested on my abdomen, and knowing that I’d been unable to feel it. But what upset me even more were the changes the intervening months had wrought on Ryan. He’d lost weight – a lot of weight – and the lines that today radiated from the edges of his eyes had already begun their outward journey. But more than the physical changes, there was an aching melancholy on his face, hiding behind a brave smile. I was the one who’d been struck by the van; I was the one who’d been injured; but that photograph clearly showed that Ryan had been wounded just as badly.
The first photograph of Hope must have been taken when she was only minutes old. The setting was an operating theatre, although I knew from the lack of scars that I hadn’t had a Caesarean section. I’d always wanted to experience natural childbirth – and amazingly it would appear that I had, I just couldn’t remember doing it. Our baby was held in her father’s arms. Ryan was dressed in a green hospital gown, with a funny paper theatre cap on his head, but I scarcely noticed his outfit, for all I could see was the tiny bundle being held so securely in his arms. Not much was visible of her, except for a small wrinkled red face and the hint of an astonishing amount of dark hair. The only thing that eclipsed the sight of our newborn daughter was the expression on Ryan’s face. To say it was suffused with love would be an understatement. Lastly my eyes travelled to the third subject in the photograph. Me. My eyes were closed, my lips were slightly parted, and my expression was blank. I had just been part of something truly miraculous, and yet I clearly knew absolutely nothing about it.
The same, apparently, couldn’t be said for the readership of several local newspapers and magazines which had run features on Hope’s amazing story. It was disconcerting to read the press cuttings that covered the accident, my coma, and then my daughter’s arrival into the world. For someone who had been more than willing to share large sections of her life on Facebook and Twitter, I found the personal coverage to be oddly disturbing and intrusive. They say everyone has their fifteen minutes of fame, but I would much rather have earned mine in a far less dramatic way.
If I was doing a book review on the album Ryan had compiled for me, I would have to say that I infinitely preferred the final section. True the photographs of me showed no improvement over the passage of time, but I was almost incidental in those snaps, for the true star of them all was Hope. As a baby being held in the arms of my father or hers, she outshone every other person in the room.
I smiled at one photograph which showed her propped up beside my head, surrounded by pillows. Ryan had been right. Even as a small baby, her resemblance to me was remarkable. It was a small consolation prize given to us by Nature, and I took it gratefully.
Ryan had dutifully tried to capture important moments in our daughter’s progress for the memory book. I don’t suppose the picture of her crawling on my hospital bed beside my unmoving body was actually the first time she had discovered how to move from A to B, but it was still a joy to see. I’m not sure who was holding the camera for the photograph in which Ryan held Hope’s two pudgy hands in his, supporting her as she walked beside my bed. I told myself it was probably one of the nurses, because I really didn’t want to consider any other possibility. Hope would have been about fourteen months old by that time. Had Ryan already met Chloe by then?
The seasons and occasions I had missed were all catalogued. I saw Hope’s first three birthday cakes, I saw the miniature Christmas tree which someone – probably Ryan – had erected in the corner of my hospital room. He’d always known how much I loved Christmas, and decorating my room and hanging fairy lights on a tree for a woman whose eyes remained stubbornly closed, would be just the kind of thing he would do for me. ‘There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you.’ I could remember him saying those words to me as I lay safe and secure in the circle of his arms in his bed. Did he now say exactly the same thing to her?
There was a lump in my throat as I turned the page after that last photograph, but there was no laughing image of my little girl to dispel it, for the next page was blank. I frowned and flicked through the remaining leaves of the album. They were all empty. For some reason, around two years ago, Ryan had stopped capturing the moments that were passing me by.
I sat with the album closed on my lap for what seemed like a very long time as I waited for its creator to return from the hospital cafeteria. You learn to read people when you’re in a relationship. Perhaps his ability to read me had grown rusty after six years of disuse, but my own skills were still pretty sharp. I could tell by the caution in his gait and the smile on his face – which didn’t quite meet his eyes – that he was unsure of my reaction.
He glanced at my hands, which were resting on the leather-covered book on my lap, as though I was taking an oath in a court of law. I promise to tell the truth . . . the whole truth . . . But would he?
‘Why are there no recent photographs of our daughter in the album?’
Ryan shifted uncomfortably, and a small part of me felt almost sorry for putting him on the spot like this, but surely he must have known I would ask that question. ‘I’ve got loads of photos at home and quite a few videos too that I can bring in for you.’
It was a valiant effort to send me off down another road altogether, but I wasn’t going to be so easily distracted. ‘But what about the pho
tographs of her here at the hospital, with me? Where are they?’
He ran his tongue over his lower lip. It was a small gesture which I used to find incredibly sexy, in a way I still did, but I also recognised it as a sign that he was nervous. ‘There aren’t any.’
It was the answer I was expecting, and yet the words still cut me like tiny flying razors, because I knew what they meant. ‘You stopped bringing her to the hospital.’ It was an accusation, not a question, and we both knew it.
‘We had to.’
If I wasn’t already cut and bleeding, the pronoun would have finished me off. We.We.We. The word rang out like a shotgun in the room. Him and her. The new Mrs Ryan Turner. Except she wasn’t the new one, was she, because I had never managed to make it far enough to claim that title. Chloe was the first and only Mrs Turner; wife to my fiancé, and mother to my child.
‘Why? What possible reason could you have had for separating us?’
He winced at my words, but I wasn’t going to retract them, even if they weren’t entirely accurate. It was the coma that had separated me from my child, not Ryan. I lifted my head and dared him to contradict me. He said nothing.
‘Can’t you see how important it was that I remained in her life?’
‘It was causing her distress. She started having terrible nightmares. She couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t wake up for her.’
Now his were the words that scythed me down. My child had needed me, and I had let her down, not just once but every single day for the last six years.
‘We spoke to people, to child experts and to doctors, and the one thing they all said was that we had to do what was best for Hope.’
I suddenly felt very, very, cold, despite the habitually overheated hospital room. ‘And what was best for Hope? What did you tell her?’
Ryan’s eyes were bright with tears. I already knew what he was going to say, but I wasn’t going to let him off the hook. ‘I’m so sorry, Maddie. We thought what we were doing was for the best. We had no idea—’
‘What did you tell her?’
He didn’t meet my eyes. Was he really going to make me ask it a third time? He drew in a deep breath and then finally spoke the words that destroyed me: ‘We told her that you had passed away.’
Chapter 5
‘Have you got everything?’
I pulled up the zip on the large canvas bag, fastening it with a flourish as I ran my eye around the hospital room. My home. But only for the next ten minutes or so.
‘I think so, Dad.’
The bag sat on my neatly made hospital bed. There hadn’t been much to pack, despite the length of my stay. The contents of the holdall amounted to a couple of toiletry bags, a few paperbacks and a selection of gym outfits. ‘These I am happily going to burn,’ I had announced to Heidi after our final session, holding the unpleasantly sweat-drenched top away from my back.
‘I wouldn’t if I were you, unless exercising naked is your thing.’
I was drinking deeply from the bottle of water that I always drained at the end of Heidi’s torturous programmes, so my confused ‘Huh?’ was a little delayed.
‘You’re still going to need to attend outpatient sessions twice a week for the next few months, as well as your doctor appointments,’ she said, throwing an arm around my shoulders and almost knocking me off my decidedly shaky legs. ‘You didn’t think you were going to get rid of me that easily, did you?’ She’d grinned wickedly, and after a moment I realised that, as much as I might dislike her methods, I would have missed the time we spent together. And there was no denying that the credit for getting me back onto my – albeit wobbly – legs, was undoubtedly hers.
My dad’s reaction had been less than enthusiastic, when I’d explained I would need to remain close to the hospital when I was finally discharged. ‘We could see about getting you transferred to one nearer me? That way I’d be on hand to help and to . . .’ His words trailed away.
‘Keep an eye on me?’ I suggested, trying to temper the words with a smile.
He grinned sheepishly, knowing I’d seen through his admittedly flimsy ruse. ‘Something like that.’
I shook my head, knowing his offer was well intentioned, but also that it wasn’t what I wanted or needed right now. ‘If they think I’m well enough to be discharged, then I’m well enough to live on my own. And I don’t want to have to get to know a whole new team of doctors and therapists; I like the ones I have.’ Somewhere in the hospital I imagined Heidi falling clean off her chair if she heard that one. ‘And besides, Dad, we both know that’s only part of the reason why I don’t want to leave the area. Right now the most important thing is for me to stay here.’
My father bit his lip and looked guilty. The subject of Hope, the granddaughter I hadn’t even known I’d given him until recently, was still an extremely tricky one between us. His had been the casting vote in deciding to keep the truth about her birth from me, and as much as I loved him, it was going to take me some time to forgive him for that one.
‘You’re thinking about what’s best for your daughter,’ he’d said when I’d called him on the night Ryan had dropped his bombshell. ‘I totally understand that. But I hope you can see, Maddie, that’s exactly what I was doing too.’
I hadn’t wanted to argue with him then about what I still believed was a very bad decision. I still didn’t want to. In time I knew I would come to terms with why they’d delayed telling me about Hope’s existence. But to tell a three-year-old child that her mother had died, when she hadn’t? It didn’t matter how much time elapsed, I was never going to be all right with that one.
My father reached for my bag and lifted it easily off the bed. ‘Can I just say one last time that I really wish you were coming back to Lingford with me?’ He gave a plaintive sigh.
‘I know, Dad. But it’s time for me to start living the rest of my life. Besides, I’m twenty-eight years old and that’s a little too elderly to be moving back home to live with my parents.’ There was a lot left unsaid in my reply, but I knew he was perfectly capable of filling in the blanks. For a start, there was no family home any more; he lived in a small one-bedroom flat, and his time and energy were already devoted to caring for one woman from the Chambers family, he certainly didn’t need to be doubling that quota.
‘Thirty-four,’ he corrected quietly, almost under his breath.
‘Pardon?’
‘I was just saying that you’re thirty-four, not twenty-eight.’
Just when I thought I’d accepted those lost years, a simple mistake like that had the power to stop me in my tracks. I cleared my throat before answering him in an unnaturally chirpy voice. ‘Well, all the more reason why I should be standing on my own two legs. Heidi certainly worked hard enough to get me back on them.’
I took one long last look around the room which I’d lived in longer than anywhere else in my adult life, before following my father to the door. I knew I should probably be celebrating this moment. I should be rejoicing that after all this time I was about to rejoin the real world; except all I actually felt was scared. In here I knew the rules, I knew the routine. Out there the goalposts had all shifted and changed. I was like a refugee in my own life and it was going to take some time getting used to that.
The reception committee lying in wait at the door to the ward made the chances of leaving this place dry-eyed totally impossible. They were gathered in a small cluster waiting for me, and as I began walking towards them, Ellen raised her hands and slowly began to clap. It took only a second or two before the rest of them joined in, and by the time my father and I were close enough to fall into the many outstretched arms waiting to hug us, I was in tears. They thrust a huge ‘Sorry You’re Leaving’ card – the kind you usually get when you quit your job – into my hands.
‘Er . . . one or two of those comments might be a bit rude,’ warned Heidi, when she saw my father looking over my shoulder at the card, which held messages of good wishes in many different styles of handwriting. I smi
led at the faint blush on my therapist’s cheeks, knowing how much I’d particularly enjoy reading whatever it was she’d written.
Without doubt, the toughest goodbye of all was the one I had to say to Ellen.
‘It’s not goodbye,’ she said fiercely, pulling me against her for a long hard hug. ‘We’re going to meet for lunch next week, remember?’
I nodded into her bony shoulder, now damp with my tears. ‘I don’t think I want to go,’ I whispered in a terrified confession that only she could hear. ‘I’m not sure I’m ready.’
Ellen didn’t laugh off my worries, or gloss over them by telling me I’d be fine. That wasn’t her style. She leant back and held my upper arms firmly in her strong capable hands. ‘You will fall down,’ she predicted, nodding her head at her own words for emphasis. ‘Physically and emotionally. And not just once, but many times.’
I sniffed and tried to smile, but I think it came out a little crooked. ‘Not really making me feel much better here.’
Ellen’s smile was full of a confidence I was far from feeling. ‘But every time you fall you’re going to pick yourself back up and walk on. Do you want to know how I know this?’
‘Because Heidi is a great big bully?’
Ellen laughed and glanced over at the short blonde therapist, who was hugging my dad so tightly I feared we might need to stop at A and E on our way out, to get his ribs checked over. ‘You’ll get back up, Madeline Chambers, because you are the bravest, strongest, woman I have ever had the privilege of nursing back to health.’
It wasn’t the moment for a flip or sarcastic rejoinder, so I simply took her hands in mine and spoke from my heart. ‘Thank you. For everything.’
‘Pwah, you did it yourself. And you’re going to keep on doing it. There’s a whole new life out there, waiting for you to discover it.’
The confidence and buoyancy of Ellen’s words stayed with me as my dad tucked my hand in the crook of his arm and led me across the hospital car park. The cold November wind was a refreshing novelty after the heat of the ward, and I allowed myself a moment of pure thankfulness that I was here, alive, when so many people had clearly thought I would never live to see this day. I was finally leaving hospital, and even if it wasn’t with the man I had once loved, or the child we had created together, there was still a future ahead for me; there was still a life. It was just going to be different from the one I’d planned to live, that’s all.
