A Sky Full of Stars

by Dani Atkins

  ‘Yes. Much better, thanks.’

  The doctor paused to scratch a tick against the form in front of him and moved on to his next question. You weren’t meant to lie to your physicians, but I did so instinctively. Perhaps I didn’t want a single negative to mar my progress. Because from the moment I’d woken up in the ICU ward, my recovery had read like a page from a medical textbook. ‘You’re like the poster girl for organ donation,’ my cardiologist had declared happily. And yet the biopsies, ECGs and blood test results that swelled my medical file only told half the story.

  It was hard to pinpoint exactly when the dreams had begun or why they continued to tug me from my sleep at least twice a week. They were unlike any I’d experienced before, but I couldn’t have said how or why, because the second I woke up, I couldn’t remember a thing about them. There were images, colours and sounds that danced enticingly just out of reach as my eyes snapped open, but they instantly disappeared behind a veil my waking mind couldn’t seem to penetrate.

  They’d been worse in the summer, so intense that they’d frequently dragged me from my bed, breathless and covered in a film of sweat. Quietly, so as not to disturb my mother, who’d invariably be snoring rhythmically in the spare room, I’d tiptoe like a burglar through the house and let myself out into the garden. It was only when the cool night air caressed my skin that the dream would slowly unshackle itself from my head. In all the heart-transplant accounts I’d read – and I’d read a lot – I couldn’t find a single patient who’d experienced such dreams.

  Even a small city garden like mine wore a different face at night from its daytime persona. It had felt exotic and oddly alien as I sat on the wooden bench, staring up at a star-strewn sky. It made me feel a connection with something – nature, maybe – that I’d never known before.

  My nocturnal forays had stopped when the weather got too cold for middle-of-the-night stargazing, but the dreams had persisted.

  *

  The sodium lamps that illuminated the hospital car park had not yet come on as I made my way back to the car, avoiding the potholes and puddles and pulling my coat a little tighter around me to keep out the damp chill. It had rained while I’d been in the hospital and a windfall of spiky seed pods from the horse chestnut were now scattered across the roof and bonnet of my car. I went to sweep them off but at the last moment changed my mind. There were loads of them, almost enough for every child in my class to have one, and they’d make a great display for the nature table.

  After a brief and fruitless rummage in my car for a carrier bag, I scooped up the hem of my dress to form a makeshift pouch and began lobbing in the husks. I was four short of my target, so I ducked into the shadows behind my car to make up the numbers. Disappointingly, there were none there, but there were at least half a dozen behind the car parked next to mine. I dropped to a crouch and was scooping them up when I was suddenly dazzled by the glare of brilliant white lights just inches from my nose. There was only a split second to register they were reversing lights. The heart so newly transplanted in my chest gave a leap as though struggling to get out. To have survived transplant surgery only to get run over in a car park while collecting conkers seemed beyond ludicrous.

  I jerked to my feet, scattering the seed pods in every direction as I thumped on the rear panel of the car with enough force to hurt my hands. The white lights immediately turned to red. I heard the screech of a handbrake being applied, moments before the driver’s door was flung open.

  ‘Jesus. Are you okay?’

  He was tall, but in the dimming light that was all I could make out.

  ‘I very nearly wasn’t,’ I said, stepping out from behind his car, my new heart still pounding at its very first encounter with danger. Well, its first encounter while it was in my care, that is.

  ‘What kind of person hides behind parked cars in a poorly lit car park?’

  His attitude was as spiky as the horse chestnut casings I’d just dropped.

  ‘What kind of person reverses without looking?’ I shot back.

  ‘I looked.’

  ‘Well, apparently not very carefully,’ I said, striding towards my own driver’s door just as the car park lights finally flickered on.

  The man had been impossible to age from his voice, but I could see now he was probably in his mid-thirties. Anything else was hard to discern as his eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. Who on earth wears dark glasses on a winter’s afternoon, I thought testily as I fumbled for my door handle.

  ‘What were you doing back there, anyway?’

  Perhaps it was the close call that had brought that edge into his voice. Or perhaps he was always like that. It was impossible to tell.

  ‘Conkers. I was collecting conkers.’

  He stared at me for a long moment as though I was genuinely crazy; at least that’s what I assumed he was doing. Then, when I’d decided he might very possibly be the most disagreeable person I’d ever met, he surprised me by asking once again, ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Perfectly, thank you.’

  Both of our voices had become more clipped, in a terribly British and unnatural way. We sounded like we’d walked straight off the set of a period drama.

  He nodded curtly and then slipped back into the driver’s seat, shaking his head as though bemused. He muttered a single word before shutting his door with a definitive clunk; I couldn’t tell for sure, but it sounded an awful lot more like ‘bonkers’ than ‘conkers’.

  I was still bristling as I pulled the seatbelt across my body and slotted it home. The fault here was largely mine, but, still, if he hadn’t been wearing those idiotic Ray-Bans when it was twilight… My thoughts trailed away as my headlamps caught the sign outside the nearest outpatient department, the one I must surely have seen a dozen times on my previous visits but had never really noticed. Ophthalmic Unit.

  The man’s tail lights had disappeared into the distance, so there was no opportunity to offer him an apology, but perhaps those glasses had been something more than just a fashion statement after all.

  10

  Alex

  It was the pronouns that always tripped him up. He still said us instead of me, and ours instead of mine. He’d done it again just now and couldn’t decide which was worse: to correct the mistake or let it go and hope no one had noticed.

  Todd was scrutinising the vegetables on the board in front of him before starting to chop them at a speed that made Alex fear for his fingertips. Dee, meanwhile, sprang to her feet and began topping up their practically full wine glasses. They’d noticed.

  The kitchen smelt fragrantly of the meat roasting in the oven. Alex already knew Dee would pile his plate up like a miniature Mount Everest in an effort to put back some of the ten pounds he’d lost over the last six months. He didn’t have the heart to tell her to stop, that there wasn’t enough food in the world to fill the aching void inside him.

  There were five stages of grief, or so Alex had read, but it felt as if he’d uncovered at least a hundred more. He carouselled between most of them on an almost daily basis. If it hadn’t been for Connor, who was the thread binding his life together, Alex had no doubt he’d have unravelled completely long ago.

  Thoughts of his son drew him off the shiny chrome breakfast bar stool, and he padded across his brother’s kitchen to the open doorway of the family room. The two young cousins were sitting cross-legged on the floor, amidst a sea of Lego bricks. They had their backs to the door, so Alex could watch unobserved as seven-year-old Maisie gamely attempted to entice Connor into her game.

  ‘If you like, we could make it a space station for Barbie instead of a house. She’s always wanted to live on the moon.’

  Maisie was like a playful puppy who never once stopped looking for the Connor she used to know in the quiet, withdrawn boy who’d taken his place. The smallest things could crack an already broken heart, and watching his son’s shoulders lift in a dispirited shrug did so for Alex. But maybe his young niece was onto s
omething, because without saying a word, Connor leant forward, grabbed a handful of colourful bricks and began snapping them together.

  Feeling a little relieved, Alex backed quietly away from the door and re-joined Todd and Dee in the kitchen. It took three mouthfuls of chilled Sauvignon Blanc before he found the courage to speak.

  ‘That thing I was talking about the other day…’ He glanced towards the family room door and lowered his voice a decibel or two. ‘I’ve decided to go ahead and do it. I’m going to invite them.’

  Todd’s eyes found Dee’s and Alex followed the look of concern that flashed between them like a distress flare. Todd cleared his throat as though to rid it of all the words of disapproval he knew he shouldn’t be using right now.

  ‘I see.’ As hard as Todd had tried, ‘politely interested’ had still come out as ‘seriously concerned’.

  ‘I know what you both think,’ Alex said, jumping in before further objections could be raised. ‘And I know you’re both worried about me and Connor – and I love you for that – but this is something I want to do. That I have to do,’ he quietly corrected.

  Todd nodded slowly, though Alex knew better than to mistake that for approval. ‘And when do you think you might… When were you thinking of asking—’

  ‘It’s already done. I posted the letters yesterday.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘To all of them.’

  *

  The subject wasn’t raised again until Alex and Connor were shrugging on their coats and getting ready to leave. Dee had bustled down the hallway from the kitchen and pressed a warm, foil-wrapped bundle into his hands.

  ‘It’s the rest of the beef. It should make another dinner for both of you.’

  ‘Dee, you don’t have to—’ Alex began, but he was silenced by her hand on his arm and the look in her eyes.

  ‘We’re here for you, Alex. Todd and me, and Maisie, we just want to help you through this.’

  They had, he wanted to say. They’d been walking invisibly beside him for the last six months; picking him up when he stumbled, taking his elbow to guide him when he was so lost in missing Lisa he didn’t know how to go on. He couldn’t have got through this without them.

  ‘Whatever you need from us, you only have to ask, remember that.’

  It didn’t take a genius to work out no one was talking about leftover Sunday roast any more. Alex was under no illusions; he knew Todd and Dee weren’t exactly on board with this plan, but he still hoped they’d support him.

  ‘You’ll still come, won’t you? Both of you?’

  Dee glanced towards Todd, who was just far enough away not to be able to hear what they were talking about.

  ‘It’s to celebrate Lisa’s birthday. Of course we’ll be there,’ she promised.

  *

  ‘You okay back there, champ? You were a bit quiet at Uncle Todd’s today.’ It was the understatement of the century, thought Alex as his hands tightened unconsciously on the steering wheel.

  He met Connor’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. Where once there’d been laughter and mischief in their blue depths, all he could see now was sadness and loss. It was the same expression Alex saw in his own bathroom mirror every morning.

  ‘It looked like you and Maisie were having fun building a moon station,’ he coaxed.

  Connor looked down, his fingers twiddling with the zipper tag on his jacket. ‘You can’t live on the moon. Mummy says it’s not possible.’

  Alex forced his mouth into a smile of agreement. If pronouns were his downfall, then with Connor the struggle was with tenses. He only spoke of Lisa in the present, never in the past. The bereavement counsellor Connor had been seeing for the last four months said this was perfectly normal. That in time he would adjust his language to his new reality.

  It was now six months since Alex had held his sobbing child in his arms after brokenly explaining through his own tears that Mummy wasn’t coming back home again. In truth, Alex couldn’t see that Connor was any closer to accepting what had happened. And how could he blame him for that when neither was he.

  *

  ‘That’s all for tonight. We’ll finish the story tomorrow,’ Alex promised, easing himself off the single bed and drawing the duvet up snugly beneath Connor’s chin. As he replaced the book on the brightly painted shelving unit (the one Lisa had stencilled with stars) and bent to retrieve a rogue sock that had missed the laundry basket, he could feel his son’s eyes following him. Locked behind their cerulean depths – the colour he’d inherited from his mum – were feelings Connor wouldn’t, or couldn’t, share with anyone. Not even his father. It didn’t matter that Alex was doing all the right things, keeping to the familiar routines and following Lisa’s blueprint of parenthood to the letter. Somehow he was still managing to screw it all up.

  He turned off the overhead light and flicked a switch by the plug, looking upwards as the ceiling became a revolving carousel of stars. It was an infant’s night light, one which Connor had outgrown several years earlier. But just days after the train crash his son had dragged it out from the back of the toy cupboard and refused to sleep without it. The image of Lisa lying beside Connor and pointing out each of the planets as they travelled from one ceiling cornice to the other burnt brightly in Alex’s memory every time he switched it on. In Connor’s too, he suspected.

  ‘We’re going to have the only kid in the nursery who’s better acquainted with Galileo than Peppa Pig,’ he’d teased, wrapping his arms around Lisa and feeling the weight of her relax against his body as they’d stood in Connor’s bedroom doorway, watching the planets spiral their little boy into sleep.

  ‘And that’s wrong, how?’ she’d asked, twisting in his arms and tilting up her face for his kiss. It was an invitation he’d never been able to refuse.

  The memory sliced like a stiletto through his ribs, and Alex fought to keep it from his face as he bent to kiss Connor’s forehead.

  ‘Goodnight, big man. Sleep tight. I love you.’

  Connor tore his gaze away from Ursa Major, or Minor – Alex never had been able to figure out which was which – and gave his dad a smile; it was all lips and no eyes. ‘Me too.’

  Alex had stopped waiting for more. Connor loved him, he knew that, but for now the words were locked away behind a wall of grief.

  He left the room, his bare feet soundless on the bedroom carpet, but out of sight in the hallway he stopped and waited for the wound to be ripped open all over again. Connor’s voice, which was barely more than a whisper in the darkened room, still travelled straight to Alex’s heart.

  ‘I love you, Mummy. To the moon and back.’

  It was their refrain, Lisa and Connor’s. She’d said it to him ever since he was a tiny baby. Those words had accompanied her goodnight kiss every single night. Only now it was Connor who said them, as softly as a prayer in the quiet of his room.

  The night sky was their secret place, Connor and Lisa’s, so of course his son would look for his mum there. How could he not? Alex felt the tug of a memory pulling at his heart, to a night seven years earlier when he and Lisa had stood beneath a sky full of stars…

  *

  ‘I want to walk.’

  ‘Well, that’s not happening right now,’ Alex said, reaching for another scoop of ice chips from the wine cooler bucket beside him. ‘Here, suck on this,’ he said, holding them out to her.

  Amazingly, Lisa laughed. ‘That’s the kind of offer that gets people into exactly this sort of situation.’

  Alex’s cheeks grew hot as the midwife crouched on the floor behind him tried very hard to suppress a laugh. ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised over his shoulder. ‘She’s not normally like that.’ To be fair, the woman didn’t seem the least bit fazed by his wife’s out-of-character remark.

  ‘That’s okay. You get to hear all kinds of things when they’re in transition.’

  Alex nodded, having absolutely no idea what she was talking about. In truth, he had no idea about anything that was happening that
night. He’d politely declined all suggestions he might want to read some of the many books Lisa had devoured during her pregnancy or watch the childbirth DVDs she’d come home with from her antenatal classes. It had stung a little that she’d chosen to take Dee with her to those sessions, rather than him. ‘They’d only freak you out even more than you already are,’ she’d told him, softening her words with a gentle kiss. ‘You know how you get about this kind of thing.’

  He did know, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be right there beside her for the birth of their first child. ‘It’ll be far better for you if you just wing it on the day,’ Lisa had assured him, letting him off the hook in a way he’d been grateful for back then but was now beginning to regret.

  ‘I really do want to walk somewhere,’ Lisa repeated, a little more firmly this time.

  ‘That’s a good idea, actually,’ chimed in the midwife before Alex had a chance to reply. ‘It often makes things happen much quicker.’

  Quicker was good, Alex thought, trying to disguise the fact that he was so far out of his depth now, he was starting to panic. The sooner this was over and Lisa’s body was no longer being racked by wave after wave of pain, the better.

  ‘Where do you want to walk?’ he asked, getting to his feet and offering her a helping hand up from the nest of blankets and cushions they’d created on the floor of their lounge.

  ‘The garden,’ she said on a gasp, as another contraction took hold of her.

  While he waited for it to pass, Alex turned to the midwife, who he still thought looked far too young to be in charge of the night’s events. She nodded her approval, and when Lisa was ready, he gave her his arm and took her weight as they headed outside.

  The newspaper headlines that had predicted an almost tropical heatwave hadn’t been wrong. It was well past midnight and yet the air was still muggy; the temperature had barely dropped from its barometer-rocking heights of the day. The French windows leading onto the patio were cracked open – enough for air but not enough for a moth to gain entry, which was the last thing Lisa needed right now. Alex flung them wide, and led his labouring wife into the quiet stillness of the garden.