While I Was Sleeping

by Dani Atkins

  Hope looked up curiously from her position on the rug, a piece of Lego gripped in one hand. Her eyes went to the newcomer and I swear my heart stopped beating as I saw something that had no name arc across the space between them, like a bolt of electricity. Beside me I heard Maddie’s sudden indrawn breath. The air seemed to have left the room, perhaps that’s why none of us dared to breathe; why no one moved. And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, that weird invisible connection fizzled out, and Hope reverted to a perfectly ordinary little girl, in the presence of a complete stranger. She got to her feet, a confusion of small bony knees and elbows, and ran to my side, burrowing her face into the curve of my hip. Over the top of her head my eyes went to Ryan’s. This wasn’t like her. Hope was a bold and sociable child. She hadn’t hidden from a stranger like this since her first day at nursery school.

  ‘Hey, what’s all this?’ cajoled Ryan, his large hand resting gently on his daughter’s shoulder. In reaction she burrowed deeper into my side, like a mole caught in a spotlight.

  ‘Give her a minute,’ I mouthed silently. Give us all a minute, or better still, give us all a decade or so to get past this bizarre and unprecedented situation.

  ‘Maddie, please sit down,’ urged Ryan, his eyes concerned as he looked at her. How could someone that pale manage to lose even more colour? You wouldn’t have thought it possible, but somehow she had. I watched her sink gratefully onto the deep cushions of the settee, and suddenly a totally inappropriate flashback came to mind. I blinked rapidly, trying to dispel the image of Ryan and me, naked, our limbs glistening from the heat of our lovemaking, on that exact place. Maddie shifted uncomfortably on the settee, as though some residual trace of the passion we had shared lingered like a poltergeist to the spot.

  ‘You’re looking really well. Are you all settled in to your new place now?’ asked Ryan, still valiantly pretending that this wasn’t the weirdest and most uncomfortable experience any of us had ever been a part of.

  Maddie gave a smile so brief it was gone in a blink. ‘Yes. It’s a lovely flat.’ Her eyes were on the back of Hope’s head, and there was a longing on her face that you would have to be made of granite not to see. As scared as I was about how all of this might end, I wasn’t made of stone.

  My right hand stroked the top of the small head burrowed against me. ‘Hope, honey, come and say hello to Maddie. You can show her your Lego house.’ In answer the small head shook vigorously from side to side. I wondered if Maddie would think that this uncharacteristic rejection was something I’d deliberately orchestrated. I certainly hoped not.

  ‘Come on, Pumpkin. This is silly.’

  ‘Pumpkin?’ said Maddie, her deep red lips curling around the word. ‘That’s what my dad used to call me when I was a little girl.’

  My heart sank somewhere into the pit of my stomach. Had I blown this already? From far away I heard Ryan’s explanation. ‘Pumpkin is Bill’s nickname for Hope, and somehow it seems to have stuck.’ He looked across at me, and there was concern in his blue eyes. It was too soon to reveal the truth. This wasn’t the way it was meant to happen.

  Astonishingly it was Maddie who took hold of the dropped reins and steered us back onto solid ground. ‘Well, it’s a very common nickname. Lots of people get called Pumpkin in my family. And Bill is a relative of mine – not a close one, but still . . .’

  I looked with visible gratitude at the woman I had every reason not to trust. She had salvaged the situation, and had lied about her connection to Bill in order to perpetuate the pretence we had insisted upon. I smiled gratefully in acknowledgement, and she nodded briefly in return.

  I felt pressure against the palm of my hand as very slowly Hope levered her head away from my hip. She turned to look shyly at her natural mother. ‘Did you like being called Pumpkin?’

  Maddie’s nose wrinkled prettily, and her similarity to Hope intensified so sharply it was all I could do to stifle a gasp. ‘Nah. Not really. Who wants to be a big orange vegetable?’

  Hope giggled, and I felt the two small arms that had been imprisoning my thighs fall away. And just like that I could tell I was going to lose her.

  ‘We were about to have some tea; would you like a cup, Maddie?’

  Maddie tore her eyes away from her daughter with visible reluctance. She was completely entranced, instantly under Hope’s unique and magical spell, exactly as I had been from the very first moment Ryan had placed his baby in my arms.

  ‘Thank you, yes. That would be lovely,’ she said distractedly. I’d probably have elicited the exact same response if I’d offered her a cup of strychnine, which surely no jury in the land would ever have blamed me for.

  I smiled so broadly I could feel my cheeks straining against the impossibly wide beam as I walked from the lounge, leaving the three of them behind me. The smile faltered as I left the room, wobbled a little more as I crossed the hallway, and had completely evaporated by the time I entered the kitchen. What are you doing, leaving them all alone together? demanded a furious voice in my head. Why are you making it so easy for them?

  I turned on the cold tap to full power, splashing the silk of my grey shirt with scores of water droplets. But the thunder of water hitting the bottom of the kettle was nowhere near loud enough to drown out the dark voice that refused to be silent. Fight for her . . . fight for him. She has rights – of course she does – but so do you. Don’t just roll over and hand your life to her.

  My fingers drummed impatiently on the granite worktop as I waited for the kettle to boil. Did it always take this long? I threw teabags into the teapot we seldom used, and filled a sugar bowl and milk jug. I ignored the comfortable mismatched assortment of mugs we usually used, and reached instead for the set of best china I’d inherited from my mother. I pulled a sponge cake from its supermarket packaging, and cursed myself for not having made one from scratch. You didn’t need a degree in psychology to see what had prompted this sudden drive of domesticity. I was marking my territory, like a wolf in the forest. True, setting a tea tray that would rival one of Mary Berry’s finest wasn’t quite the same as peeing all around my encampment – but it was probably the suburban equivalent.

  I studied my reflection in the brushed aluminium of the kettle’s surface. I looked hazy and indistinct, a blurry-edged version of me, as though even this early in the proceedings, I was already beginning to lose my definition. The image of me shimmered slightly, as tears I hadn’t realised were gathering splashed silently down onto the granite worktop.

  2012

  The first time I saw Ryan he was crying quite openly and unashamedly about another woman. I doubt there are many women who can say that about their first meeting with their future husband. It was at the hospital, of course. It was the place where he’d spent practically every waking (and sleeping) hour since the day of Maddie’s accident.

  I knew all about her; it would have been impossible not to. Long after the local newspapers and radio stations had stopped reporting on the tragedy of the bride who’d been mown down by a speeding van just days before her wedding, the hospital was still buzzing with talk of her. The nursing staff would idly gossip about her, and once it was revealed that the poor comatose woman was pregnant with her heartbroken fiancé’s baby, the story flared into life all over again, like petrol on a dwindling fire. Who couldn’t help but feel moved by their tragic tale? I know I certainly was.

  ‘The odds must surely be a million-to-one against her keeping that baby full-term,’ I remember overhearing two nurses discuss a little indiscreetly in a lift as I travelled up to the geriatric ward one evening. I shifted the heavy bag of library books I was carrying from one shoulder to the other and listened with open fascination.

  ‘It’s a bloody miracle that she didn’t lose it straight away,’ whispered the second nurse with a degree of stark pragmatism I hoped she never used in front of her patients.

  ‘That’s what they’re calling her, you know: “The Miracle Girl”.’

  They got out on the floor befo
re mine, but their words lingered in the small aluminium carriage. There was something incredibly poignant and evocative about both the name and the story. And it stayed with me as the lift pinged to announce my arrival at the ward I visited three evenings a week. It was an intriguing story, and I felt strangely connected to it. It was almost as if in some way I already knew that the life of Madeline Chambers – the Miracle Girl – and mine were destined to be inextricably connected.

  Two hours later and my voice had grown hoarse from reading. Gladys Butler’s head had begun to nod during the last two chapters of the Agatha Christie book we were currently reading. Or rather, I was the one doing the reading; Gladys was merely listening. I patted her wrinkled, age-spotted hand gently, and got to my feet, trying to unobtrusively straighten out the kinks in my back that were an occupational hazard to my sessions at the hospital. The bright green volunteer badge pinned to my T-shirt glinted in the low lighting beside Gladys’s bed.

  ‘Thank you, Carole. That was a real treat. When are you coming back to finish it?’

  I smiled gently at the eager expression on the elderly woman’s face. I’d stopped correcting her some time ago whenever she got my name wrong. ‘I’ll be back on Wednesday – that’s the day after tomorrow. We can read a few more chapters then, if you like?’

  Gladys nodded enthusiastically and gave me a wide toothless smile. I was used to her broad gummy grin, although I have to admit the two dentures smiling independently from her in a glass on her bedside cabinet still freaked me out a little whenever I glanced their way.

  ‘I’ve no idea who’s dunnit,’ said Gladys, nodding at the book I was sliding back into my large tote bag.

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ I said, hiding the fact that, as it was the second time I’d read her this book, I knew perfectly well who was bumping off the guests at the luxury hotel in the south of France. In a way I almost envied Gladys her forgetfulness. She could hear a book and then happily hear it all over again two weeks later. She could receive the message that once again her family wouldn’t be making the two-hour drive to visit her in hospital, and still look forward excitedly to visiting time, waiting for them to arrive. It was patients like Gladys who made volunteering at the hospital so worthwhile.

  I walked down the length of the ward, giving the group of nurses sitting at their station a cheery wave as I went past. One of them glanced at the clock with an expression of surprise. ‘Leaving so soon, Chloe?’ There was still another hour left of visiting time, and I usually stayed until the bell was rung, like the last hardened drinker in a pub when the landlord calls out ‘time’.

  ‘Gladys was starting to nod off again, so I thought I’d grab a coffee and then see if anyone else wants me to read them the local paper, or just have a chat.’ Each of the three nurses behind the desk smiled at me, and I felt again the familiar warm glow of satisfaction that went hand-in-glove with the way I chose to spend three nights of my week.

  When I’d first started volunteering, two years ago, I hadn’t been sure how difficult it would be for me. Would thoughts of Mum and those awful last months be in my head every time I walked into the hospital? Surprisingly, they hadn’t been. And spending my evenings reading to elderly patients who could no longer read for themselves felt like a very natural and organic extension to my day job.

  ‘Aren’t you fed up with books after working here all day?’ asked Sally, one of my colleagues at the library, as together we restacked a shelf of biographies. I remember turning and looking at her with genuine bewilderment. Her question was so alien she might as well have asked me if I was fed up with breathing. I lived for books. I always had. One of the few memories of my dad that I knew was true and not an illusion was of his deep baritone voice reading me my nightly bedtime story. We’d been halfway through a book when he died. And as much as my mum had tried to fill the space he’d left behind, she’d never been able to bring herself to finish reading me that book.

  There was a copy of it in the library where I worked, and each week when I reached for a book to read for the Friday afternoon storytelling session, my hand would hover over its colourfully illustrated spine . . . and then move on. One day, perhaps, I might actually pick it up and read it to the expectant circle of under-fives waiting for me. But not yet.

  I’d inherited my love of literature from my mother, every bit as much as I had the blond of my hair or the grey of my eyes. There had been times over the years when it seemed books were the only thing we had in common. However difficult life became, as gradually she shut out the rest of the world, books were the one place where we could always find each other again. We would discuss the characters from the novels we’d read as though they were newly acquired friends. But in reality her circle of friends was dwindling. In reality there was no immediate family and very few friends left to knock down the walls her agoraphobia had so effectively constructed.

  After she died I realised many things – about both of us; some of them uncomfortable to face. We were alike enough for it to frighten me. We were alike enough for me to know that at twenty-seven, with an uninspiring social life and no boyfriend to speak of (Graham from the book club didn’t count – even though I suspected he’d like to take our friendship further), I needed to take action. I needed to push the boundaries of my world beyond the four-bedroom house I’d lived in my entire life, and my job at the library. Every time I entered the house and unthinkingly called out ‘I’m home’ to the empty rooms, I’d feel the aching stab of loneliness pierce me. And so I cauterised those wounds the only way I knew how. With books.

  I answered the postcard advertisement on the library noticeboard for volunteer readers at the local hospital. I suppose some people might say I wasn’t aiming very high or far away from my comfort zone, but I saw a door opening up, and I slipped through it, never knowing it would one day lead me to become part of a story more incredible than any I had ever read.

  Even as I approached the vending machine with my coinfilled purse in hand, I could see that it wasn’t working. I came to a stop before the defunct unit and sighed. Some equally exasperated user had scribbled the word Again!! beneath the handwritten ‘Out of Order’ sign. I glanced at my watch and frowned as I realised that the café in the hospital foyer had closed for the evening an hour ago.

  ‘There’s a machine down on two and another up on six,’ advised a passing orderly helpfully. I glanced over my shoulder and flashed him a grateful smile.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll try one of them.’

  I didn’t even bother waiting to summon the lift. I’d been volunteering at the hospital long enough to know that during visiting hours the stairs were always your best bet. The air felt cooler on my arms and bare legs as I pushed through the heavy swing doors and entered the stairwell. While the wards were usually kept warm enough to grow orchids, here at least the fresh summer evening air could be felt. I paused for a second as I unknowingly arrived at the place where my entire future would be decided. Much, much, later it occurred to me how strange it was to have made such a momentous decision without ever realising it.

  Two flights of stairs were before me: one up, one down. I paused for only a moment before running lightly up the stairs, hearing the echo of my summer sandals pick out a tinkling scale on the metal edges of each tread as I dashed up to the sixth floor.

  Most of the hospital floors were similar in layout, so I had no need to follow any of the overhead signs directing me to the various areas or wards. I knew where I was. I headed towards the relatives’ room, my tread automatically adjusting to the sobering hush this particular floor silently commanded. I hadn’t visited the sixth floor since my own mother had been an occupant of one of the intensive care beds, and I was surprised by the goosebumps that had erupted on my forearms as I retraced the steps I had once covered daily.

  I kept my head down as I walked swiftly towards the relatives’ room and the vending machine which was situated just outside its doors. I was used to places of silence – after all, I worked i
n a library – but there was something about this particular floor that unsettled me. It felt almost church-like, as though you were walking on hallowed ground, where voices should never be raised above a respectful whisper.

  Which made the sound all the more unexpected. It was coming from a man who stood before the vending machine. Even from half the length of the corridor away, I could see the tremor of his broad shoulders as he stood with his arms braced against the sides of the drinks dispenser. It was impossible to say whether he was using it for support, or was about to vandalise it for swallowing his money.

  He didn’t hear my approach and was unaware that he was no longer alone until my shadow fell across his on the linoleum floor, and he spun around. Immediately his hand came up, and he roughly swiped the back of it against his eyes. It was a largely ineffective manoeuvre, because as soon as he brushed them away, a fresh batch of tears found the tracks of those that had come before, and spilled down his cheeks.

  I took an instinctive step backwards, as though I’d carelessly run straight up to the edge of a cliff. The raw naked pain on his face was overwhelming. He was clearly destroyed by grief.

  ‘I . . . I’m sorry,’ I said, stumbling over the words as they fell out of my mouth. I’m not even sure what I was apologising for. For witnessing his distress? Or for not knowing how to react to it? I took another faltering step backwards, even as he was shaking his head, dismissing my apology. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ I mumbled, turning away to escape being witness to something he surely wanted no stranger to see.

  I’d only taken two steps when I heard the sound; half groan, half sob. It was the loneliest and most broken cry I’d ever heard in my entire life, and it tugged at my heart and turned my feet around before I knew what I was doing. I’d be surprised if he was aware of my return, for his hands were fisted angrily at his eyes, as though trying to beat the tears back into submission.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, my voice small and uncertain. ‘But are you all right?’ I heard the stupidity in my question. Of course he wasn’t all right. He was a man in his thirties, or thereabouts, sobbing unashamedly in a hospital corridor outside an Intensive Care Unit. It didn’t take rocket science to work out what was going on here. I wondered if his grief was for a parent on the ward, as mine had been only a few years before.