In a Moment

by Caroline Finnerty

  Peter had to use all his inner restraint to keep from shouting at her just to tell him what was happening.

  He went back to the others.

  “Bloody won’t tell me anything, she’s my daughter for Christ’s sake!” he bellowed at no one in particular. He sat down momentarily before getting up just as quick. “I’m going out for some air.”

  He left and the others sat waiting again.

  Eventually a man in a white coat came through the door to the A&E and approached them.

  “Are you the family of Emma Fitzpatrick?” He looked around at the grave faces. They all nodded their heads at him, each too afraid to speak, each feeling their hearts lurching in their chest. What was he going to say? What was he going to tell them? Please let her be okay, please!

  The doctor went to sit down.

  Dear God, no, this wasn’t a good sign. Adam thought he was going to be sick; he had broken out in a sweat and his mouth was watering.

  Emma’s father arrived back at that instant.

  “Well, can you tell us how she is?” he demanded.

  “I’m Dr Jacobs. The good news is Emma will be okay.”

  They each internally said prayers of gratitude, some to God, some to no one except in a dialogue with themselves.

  “She is still quite heavily sedated but we would expect her to come round later this evening,” the doctor went on. “We’ve given her flumazenil which is an antidote for the diazepams she overdosed on. She is on a ventilator to help with her breathing and appears to be responding well. Normally diazepams on their own don’t cause unconsciousness but in Emma’s case she combined the tablets with alcohol, which can prove fatal. There was quite a high level of alcohol in her bloodstream – she is very lucky. We’re hoping that she may be off the ventilator by this evening. We’ll try to move her to a ward as soon as possible but, in the meantime, you’re welcome to go and sit with her in A&E if you’d like. Only two people at a time though.”

  Adam went first, Emma’s parents deciding to wait and go in together. He followed the doctor through the swing doors with round portholes and down a corridor lined with patients on trolleys. Doctor Jacobs pulled back some curtains around a cubicle and ushered him in, then left.

  Emma was lying on a trolley hooked up to wires and machines. It was all too familiar. Adam sat down on the chair and took her hand in his and was surprised by the familiarity of her touch. Then the tears rolled down his face. They kept on coming, tears for Emma, tears for Fionn, tears for their marriage, tears for their loss, tears for the last few months of heartache and separation, tears for the fact that he had left Emma to handle her grief alone, tears because he wasn’t there for her, tears because she had needed someone to blame and unfortunately that person had been him. How did it come to this? How did he let this happen? The tears would not stop spilling down his face.

  “Emma, I’m so, so sorry,” he mumbled. “So sorry. I love you, so, so, much, I really do. I need you – just you work on getting better and when you’re ready to wake up I’m going to be here with you. Do you hear that? I’ll be right here by your side. I won’t leave you like that again. I know I’ve let you down but I’m going to make it up to you, just you wait and see. So I hope you’re listening to me and getting stronger, do you hear me? I’m so sorry for everything you’ve had to go through for the last few months, I truly am. Just you work on getting better.”

  He stared at her as she slept. She seemed so peaceful, so far removed from the horror of the last year.

  * * *

  Later that evening they took her off the ventilator and were relieved to see her breathing well on her own. They then moved her to a private room where Adam sat with her all night, with Emma’s parents relieving him for short spells.

  Eventually, the next morning, he saw her eyelashes flicker and her eyes widen. She looked around the room before closing her eyes again.

  “Emma, Emma, you’re awake!”

  She went to speak but couldn’t get the words out.

  “You’re okay, don’t worry,” he said, “it’s going to be okay. Do you hear me?”

  “Where am I?” she finally croaked.

  “You’re in the hospital but it’s okay, you’re going to be fine, just fine. I love you, Emma, and I’m sorry, I really am, for everything.”

  She lay there, looking around the unfamiliar room and tried to straighten out her thoughts to make sense of what was going on. Her head was pounding and the bright room made the pain behind her eyes worse.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve been better,” she whispered.

  She drifted back to sleep and Adam quietly slipped out to tell the nurses and phone the Fitzpatricks. Then he went back to her bedside, brushing back her curls behind her ear soothingly, wondering if the worst was over and his wife had truly come back to him again.

  56

  The next morning Emma was feeling brighter. Her head still felt fuzzy and she was exhausted but the awful weight of sadness that she had been carrying around for the last few months didn’t seem as heavy any more.

  She had overdosed because she wanted to forget; she was in so much pain and torment that she had wanted to feel numb and the alcohol allowed her to do that and the tablets helped her sleep and the next thing she knew she was forcing them down her throat. She hadn’t wanted to kill herself; she just wanted not to feel any more. She had hit rock bottom but it was as if a hole had been cut through the numbness that allowed a small chink of light to shine through. She felt embarrassed for all she had put Adam and her parents through; they had suffered so much without her adding to their woes. For the first time she noticed that her parents were starting to look old. Her mum seemed small and frail, she had let the colour grow out of her hair so it was now silvery grey and her dad looked smaller than she had remembered as a child. They had aged so much in the last year. God here she was at her age causing them all this trouble and worry, more than she had ever caused as a teenager.

  Adam was still at her bedside when she woke and she felt content just having him present again, knowing he was beside her. For the first time since the accident, it was as if she could see him as her husband again, the way she used to see him. She could finally see past the fog and she might just be able to get through it.

  * * *

  While Emma slept peacefully, Zoe came in to visit that evening.

  “Hi there,” she whispered to Adam “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s good, she’s sleeping a lot but the doctors said that’s to be expected – she’s sleeping off the excess tablets. It’ll be a few days before she’ll be back to full strength but they reckon she should be able to come home tomorrow.”

  “Oh thank God!”

  “I’m going to be there for her now – help her recover, be there for her properly this time. I’ve let her down. I’ll never forgive myself for just thinking about myself and how I was feeling –”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself – you’ve been through as much as she has, Adam! It was bound to take its toll on your relationship but at least you’re going to work through it together.”

  “I know this might sound weird but it’s as if she finally sees me again? Since the accident she just looked through me but now it’s different.”

  When Emma woke later, she was surprised to see Zoe sitting there with Adam.

  “How are you feeling, darling? Look who’s come to see you!” Adam said.

  “Hi, sweetheart. How are you feeling?” Zoe asked.

  “Zoe,” Emma said, smiling at her.

  “I’m going to grab a coffee in the canteen, okay?” Adam wanted to leave the two of them alone. He knew they had some talking to do.

  “Fine.” Zoe smiled at him as he left. She turned back to her friend. “Emma, thank God you’re okay – I – I got such a fright.” Zoe’s eyes welled up with tears just thinking about it.

  “I’m sorry, Zoe – for letting you find me like that, for putting you through that – seeing
me in that state. I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be embarrassed for God’s sake! Just promise me you will never, ever do anything like that again.”

  Emma shook her head. “I can promise you I will never touch the things again.”

  “So how are you feeling?”

  “A bit better today, thanks, but still so sleepy – I just keep drifting off but at least the pounding headache has gone. But it’s so strange – it’s like I’ve finally came back to reality, y’know? For months I’ve just felt numb but it’s like someone has shaken me by my shoulders now and said wake up. The last year has been a complete nightmare and it’s only now I’m coming out of it. I think I might be okay – it doesn’t seem so hopelessly bleak now.”

  “Oh Emma – thank God. And Adam, how are you finding things with Adam?”

  “We’re doing all right. We’ve talked – like, properly talked for the first time since it all happened. I think we’re going to be okay.”

  “That’s good. You and Adam need each other – you’re good together.”

  “I think you’re right.” Emma smiled sleepily at Zoe as she drifted off again.

  57

  Zoe finally felt ready to bring Steve to meet her mother. It was the first time she had ever brought a man to meet her family. She had met his family only weeks after they had first met because he couldn’t wait to introduce her to them. He was the second eldest of a family of seven children and his upbringing had been so different from hers. His family was very close – they were not just siblings, they were friends. It was a busy farmhouse full of energy and even though Steve said they argued constantly, you just knew at the same time that they all looked out for one another.

  She had been so nervous before she went but she needn’t have worried; they had welcomed her in with little fuss as she took a chair at the already full kitchen table while the TV blared some football match in the background. His mother had left pots of potatoes, bowls of carrots and peas, a roast chicken and a huge pile of knives and forks in the centre of the table and told them to “dig in and help themselves”. Everyone dived in and it was then that the noise level went up a gear as every voice struggled to be heard and they all talked over one another. It was so strange for Zoe – as an only child she had never seen anything like it. It was the type of family that she had always yearned for.

  She was surprised that she didn’t feel nervous about bringing Steve home but she knew that he accepted her for who she was, he didn’t judge, and if her mother was having a bad day he probably wouldn’t think anything of it.

  Zoe’s mother could be one of two ways; on a good day she could be on a high, gushing and welcoming, running around making tea and apologising because she had “no cake but she did have biscuits, chocolate-covered Rich Tea in fact”, but on a bad day she could literally let you in the door without any greeting and you would spend the next hour sitting in silent discomfort, which she seemed to be unaware of. You never knew what you were going to get when you knocked on the door and that was why Zoe didn’t visit as much as she ought to. The worst moodswing though was when she was on one of her rants against men. She still hadn’t moved on from Zoe’s father walking out the door on her. She was blindsided by anger and hatred and felt that all males on the planet were like that. She didn’t leave the house too often and had few visitors – mostly just the community nurse who checked on her daily, and her brother and sister-in-law who were good to her. She preferred it that way, she got angsty being around people for too long.

  Zoe had rung her mother first to tell her that she would be calling and that she would be bringing someone too. The news wasn’t greeted with a reaction either way.

  * * *

  Zoe opened back the rusty half-height gate with difficulty. The long grass obviously hadn’t been cut since the last time she had got a gardener to come out and tidy up her mother’s weedy overgrown front lawn. The lichen-covered concrete-slab footpath had weeds shooting up through the cracks. She made a mental note to give him a call again. The front garden wasn’t that big, certainly not how Zoe had thought of it as a child, but her mother didn’t bother with it.

  She stood with Steve by her side and rapped the brass salmon-shaped knocker on the teak door.

  Her small thin mother answered the door in a hairy bottle-green cardigan that Zoe could remember her wearing when she was a child. There was more grey in her hair now with just a bit of auburn left at the ends in the few months since she had last seen her. She had obviously decided to give up colouring it. From looking at old photos of her from her twenties and thirties Zoe knew her mother had once taken a pride in her appearance. Zoe felt guilty then. She knew she really should visit more often.

  “Hi, Mam, this is Steve.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Steve.

  “Steve.” She pondered the name abstractedly. “Well, come in, don’t stand outside in the cold.”

  She showed them into the ‘good’ room, although it was a long time since it was ‘good’. It was a dark room with net curtains hanging inside the bay window and gold-sheen wallpaper. They sat down on the blue floral-patterned settee that clashed wildly with the orange shagpile carpet.

  “So, Zoe – how have you been?”

  Her mother was being overly formal and polite but Zoe supposed it was better than shouting at Steve because he happened to be male.

  “Good thanks, Mam, busy in work.”

  “Oh.”

  “I brought you a few bits.” Zoe opened a bag full of groceries including a cake, biscuits and some essentials like milk, tea, butter, coffee and bread because it was hit-or-miss whether her mother would actually have these.

  “Thank you, Zoe.” She made no effort to take them from her daughter.

  Zoe took the initiative and packed away the milk and butter in the fridge, throwing out some out-of-date cartons and butter. She put the kettle on and called Steve to give her a hand to make the tea and slice the cake.

  The gold-plated clock on the mantelpiece chimed as they sat drinking their tea and eating an M&S sponge cake in silence.

  “Will I put on the TV for the two of you?” her mother asked her as if they were ten years of age.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  She turned on an old episode of Murder She Wrote and they watched Jessica Fletcher solving the puzzle again.

  “How’s Uncle Ed and Aunt Lydia?” asked Zoe.

  “Good.”

  “How is Ed enjoying retirement?”

  Her mother didn’t answer, her eyes fixed on the TV screen.

  Zoe checked her watch. She knew that after an hour they could go but there still was a good twenty minutes left.

  After some general chit-chat, mostly on Zoe’s part, and a few polite questions from Steve which didn’t elicit any response from her mother, Zoe stood up and excused herself with promises that she wouldn’t leave it so long the next time and she would call in again soon.

  “I think he’s very nice,” Zoe’s mother said out of the blue as they walked out into the hallway.

  Zoe was amazed to get this seal of approval from her mother. They kissed goodbye and Zoe hugged her mother tight before they went back out across the broken footpath and stiff gate and got into Steve’s car, her mother waving at them from behind the net curtain.

  “Well, go on, you can be honest. Was it awful?” Zoe asked as Steve pulled out onto the road.

  “Don’t be silly Zoe, she was fine.”

  “She’s bats, isn’t she?”

  “Not bats. Well, maybe a little . . . detached.”

  “Detached – mmmh, I like that description. I must remember that one. At least she liked you.”

  “How did you come to that conclusion considering she never even spoke to me?”

  “She does that to everyone. But she said you were nice – that’s a ringing endorsement if I ever heard one.”

  “Maybe we should go over again in a few weeks?”

  “Really? You wouldn’t mind?”


  “Of course not, I could even sort out her garden – I’d say the neighbours are going mad – she’s ruining the manicured gardens of suburbia.”

  And then Zoe knew it. He was ‘The One’. He accepted her for who she was, her baggage, her strange mother and all. He didn’t bat an eyelid.

  “Look, I don’t know if now is the right time but, well . . . I was wondering if . . . you want to move in with me and Dave?”

  Her face lit up. “Really?”

  “Well, yeah. You stay over every weekend anyway and I know it would be a bit of a commute from my house into the city every day, but I love being with you, Zoe, and I want to wake up beside you every day.”

  “And you won’t mind sharing your bed every night?” she teased him gently.

  “Who said anything about sharing a bed? You’ll be taking the spare room!” he mocked.

  For the first time in her life, Zoe felt safe and secure.

  58

  The day flew past in a whir of different family members visiting and chatting and it was only when they were finally on their own that Adam dared broach the subject that each of them knew had to be talked about sooner or later. They couldn’t avoid it forever.

  “Why did you do it, Emma? I couldn’t have coped if anything had happened to you.”

  “I was so tired, Adam. I couldn’t sleep, the pain was awful. It just all got too much, you know – I didn’t mean to, I just wanted to escape my own head. I was so low, I felt so alone, I had lost Fionn and then you, and I just felt so worthless and full of self-hatred. So I was taking my tablets but they weren’t helping at all so I drank the vodka and then I woke up here . . . I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too. I let you down – I just couldn’t take it any more.”

  “I know, Adam. I understand now. I locked you out and left you alone when you needed me. I didn’t see your suffering, only my own. I just want to say now that I love you, I always have. I know it may not have seemed like it, the way I’ve been treating you, but I just hope you will be able to find it within your heart to forgive me . . .” She trailed off.