“Will he be all right?”
The nurse looked at Jenna and then back at Luke. “It’ll take time. We’ll have to wait and see.”
Wait and see. Wait and see. This phrase was going to be spoken many times, like a chorus in a play.
Donald stood and put his hand on Cora’s shoulder. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said gently and kissed her on the gray cheek. New lines were chiselled on her face.
Jenna looked at her father, alarmed, as if it was somehow not right to leave the room. “Where are you going?”
He looked back from the doorway. “It’s Sunday. I’ll have to get someone to cover the services for me.”
It pulled Jenna back into reality. It was Sunday. There was a name for today. She pushed herself up from the black vinyl seat of the hospital stool. “I’ll do it, Dad. You stay here. Will I ring Ian?” Ian was the senior steward in the church.
Her father pulled out a pocket book and gave it to her. “Yes, please. His number’s in here.” He waved a hand vaguely. “Tell him… ah… tell him what’s happened and…”
“And you’ll be in touch. Yes, Dad.”
Jenna found a corner and felt herself becoming the minister’s daughter again. She slipped effortlessly into the role while she contacted not only the church steward but her mother’s closest friend in the women’s group as well. She heard herself calmly repeating the words: “Yes, a shock, yes. We’ll have to wait and see. Wait and see.”
It occurred to her that there were others who should know what had happened to Luke. His friend Beezer. What was his real name? She had never heard Luke call him anything else. She went back to the room where Luke was and the nurse looked in the bedside table and found his phone, the same one on which the nurses had found his home number earlier as they cut his blood-soaked clothes from his body. Jenna went out again and thumbed through to the phone book. Thank God, there was a number for Beezer.
The call was answered on the second ring. “Hiya, muppet!” said a young and lively voice. Jenna realised she had phoned him on Luke’s phone.
“No, it’s Jenna, Luke’s sister.” There was total silence at the other end while Jenna told him. She talked again about waiting and seeing, about promising to contact him as soon as he could come to see Luke. Beezer’s voice broke on curses and threats to disembowel the thugs who had done this. “You and me both, Beezer,” she said. In truth, they would probably never be caught. They would sleep off an alcoholic haze and have a laugh about it tomorrow. If they even remembered what they’d done.
Then she rang Max. “God, that’s terrible, Jen. I’m really sorry. Probably not see you this week then?”
“Probably not, no.” She wasn’t even angry.
She went back and sat on the black vinyl stool again, and watched her brother, her gawky, daft, adorable brother fighting for his life with every sigh of the machine by the bed. Her father was closer to her mother now, his hand on hers where it lay motionless on her lap. He glanced up and gave a quick smile of thanks to Jenna.
“All sorted,” she said. Her mother was too quiet. She was always talking, always organising, always knowing what to do and who should do it. Now she was in a shell, remote and frozen, rigid in her focus on her son.
A bleakness built in Jenna, layer on layer, as time lumbered on. This was a turning point for all of them; one of those hairpin bends of life. Everything was in the shadow of ‘wait and see’. Luke wasn’t moving. He lay, odd, Luke but not Luke. Curiously his brow was untouched, crossed only by a thin white bandage at one side above his right eye where there was a small but deep cut. She leaned forward. “Hey, LW. Hang in there. Outer Mongolia’s waiting.”
Suddenly she had to leave. She fled out the door and down the corridor. In the hospital foyer no one paid any attention to her. A man was asking where the lifts were. An orderly pushed an old wizened woman in a wheelchair in the direction of the X-Ray department. A cleaner in a pink apron pushed a floor-polisher, flicking the lead behind her. Two young women stood hugging clipboards with their crossed arms as they chatted and broke into laughter.
Jenna looked around. None of these people know. It’s just Sunday. It’s just another Sunday. Don’t they know this day has never happened before? Not in the history of the whole world. She went through the double doors and out into the open air. The car park was full and visitors were weaving across, carrying flowers and fruit and bottles of Lucozade. It was afternoon and it was raining gently. The cold had lifted and a damp warmth was edging into the day.
Jenna felt old. She thought of her mother, frozen in shock. Her father, torn between duty to others and love for his son. She didn’t think he had ever faced such a choice before. She sat on a low wall and looked back at the jumble of hospital buildings. Just a few bricks, just a few small spaces separate tragedy from normality, just as only moments separate now from then. From what seemed like long, long ago, she heard Paul’s voice. “The problem is often the key,” he had said.
She could not do this alone; not this. She would turn the key. She drew her phone from her pocket and dialled his number.
He wasn’t going to answer it – he really wasn’t going to answer it! In disbelief, she heard a polite female voice asking her to please leave a message. Reason circled just in time. Maybe he was in the middle of an important assignment. Her voice was calm as she described what had happened. Yet it was a strain, wanting to hear him and not hearing him; feeling the niggling wonder if he saw who was ringing and chose not to answer. Her voice rose. “Where did you leave him, Paul? Where did you leave him last night? Why could you not drop him off at my door? Is that too difficult? Can you not even drive down my street?” She choked, crying and shouting at the same time, careless of the startled faces turning towards her. “And now he might die! Luke might die! ”
She ended the call and doubled over, her arms crossed tight on her stomach and her eyes squeezed shut on a lake of tears.
26
HE CAME, SILENT, in the middle of the night.
Exhaustion had driven Jenna to the dim and empty patients’ day room. She had slumped into a low brown chair and lay back awkwardly, hunched between the wooden arms. She came out of a fitful doze and raised her head, grimacing at the pain in her neck. Then the physical pain from cramped muscles was sucked away by the crippling knowledge of where she was and why. She was rubbing the back of her neck when she saw him. He was seated opposite her, his black coat in the half-light defining his dark shape. His hands rested on the arms of the chair and his eyes were steady on her.
Slowly she lowered her feet to the ground. He didn’t move a muscle. Was it really him or was she still dreaming? The strain of fear and fatigue crackled through her body like forked lightening. As if calling to a chimera she reached out and poured all her fear into a cry. “I need you, Paul!”
He gripped the arms of the chair and pulled himself forwards. “That was always enough for me,” he whispered. He held out his arms. “Come here.”
She went to him like a child and he cradled her across his lap and into himself and she was sinking, falling, spiralling into a haven of consolation. Her arms round his neck, his hand holding her head cuddled firm against his shoulder told her he was no chimera; he had really come to her when she needed him. She was beyond tears and he seemed to know that, just letting her clamp onto him and be still. The outdoor misty scent of him was filling her nostrils; the feel of him, solid around her, was like a drink in the desert. Her voice was muffled against his coat.
“Were you in a forest somewhere?”
“Up a mountain. I’d left my phone in the car.” She did not know how long it was until he spoke again. “I left him at his girlfriend’s house, Jenna. About five o’clock. He asked me to.”
She didn’t want to move as she pondered this new information.
“There was a girl here earlier. Small girl. Dad spoke to her. She was upset that they wouldn’t let her see Luke. I think she was called Naomi.”
His jaw brushed her
hair as he nodded. “That’s the name.”
“Luke must have been walking back to my house when…”
Paul tensed and withdrew from her a little. “How is he now?”
Jenna detached herself and let reality flood back, but it came with less force, as if now there was a defence against its power. She felt calmer, more able to think clearly. Since the moment Paul had banished her with harsh words there had been desolation at her core. She had invited those words. But then she discovered that life was just a silly scramble of days without this man, a landscape without a map, a journey without a destination.
When she let go of him, he stood also, not touching her now, and that was all right. He was here and there was still much to deal with.
“The same. There was a scare earlier when they took him away for another brain scan.” Her voice was steady, communicating facts.
“Your parents?”
“What do you think? Distraught. Mum’s a bit of a worry.
She’s not saying much.”
“I want to see him.”
Only Paul would put it like that. Someone else would ask if it would be possible to see him.
“I think it’s very restricted…”
His hand flicked impatiently. “I want to see him.”
Jenna went into the room where Luke lay and bent to her parents in turn, planting a small kiss on each of their taut cheeks. Luke’s face was still, so still behind the tubes and the bandages and the bruises, a motionless shell, devoid of the light brightness that made him Luke, a body dependant on sighing and beeping machines and on the invisible will of those who loved him.
“Mum, Dad, you remember Paul? The photographer? The one who was teaching Luke? He was with him yesterday?” Her father nodded. Her mother looked round at her but said nothing. “He’s here and he’d like to see Luke.”
Her father frowned. “I’m not sure…”
Jenna looked up and saw Paul already in the doorway. What obstacles could he not find a way past? One hand gripped the edge of the door; his gaze was fixed on Luke. Then he walked into the room without hesitation, stopping at the opposite side of the bed. With the most gentle of touches, he reached out his hand and, with the back of his curled fingers, touched Luke’s forehead. He held his fingers there. Jenna saw his lips move and even in the extremity that was in the night, she thrilled to see him there.
Paul looked across at her parents and his eyes lingered on her mother. To Jenna’s surprise, he came round the end of the bed and put a hand on each of their shoulders.
“You’re giving him all you can,” he said.
Cora put a hand to her eyes and her shoulders jerked as a sob tore through her throat. Paul would never cease to surprise Jenna. He bent down and his voice was so gentle as he spoke in her mother’s ear. “Cora. It’s bad and it’s OK to cry.”
Not only did he call her by her name, but the touch of his hand on her arm brought her to her feet and then she was weeping on his shoulder in a storm of agony. He held her while her whole body shook with pain and wept out the last day of rigid fear until she was drained and empty. Over her head, Paul spoke to Jenna.
“Go and get her some tea.” He ducked his head to look at Cora’s face. “And some tissues,” he added.
Donald, watching, smiled weakly. “You’re a loss to the ministry, Paul. You have a sure touch.”
Alone in a corridor somewhere in the hospital, Paul stopped walking. His knees felt weak and he put his hands flat against the wall below two huge murals of red poppies. He dropped his head so that his brow rested against the wall between his hands.
“Me for him,” he whispered. Wishing didn’t cut it this time. His words were more desperate, deeper, hacked out from a childhood long gone when he believed in more than wishing. He pressed his head harder against the wall. “Me for Luke,” he whispered again. “Let him live and I’ll stop fighting.” He balled his hands into fists and brought them to his temples. “Let him live and let her forget me…” He hit the wall, his mind white hot. “… even if I can’t forget her.”
They were days lifted out of time after that. Early on Monday morning, thirty-six hours after the attack, Luke was out of immediate danger and Paul drove Donald and Cora home. It was a great relief to Jenna for she was worried about either of them driving when they were so tired. They left their car at the hospital. There were plenty of friends who could drive them back later.
Jenna waited at Luke’s side although she was almost incoherent with tiredness. Carefully she put her head down on the pillow beside his. His scalp was bruised and swollen, naked without its spikes of brown hair.
“Come on, LW,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m the one supposed to get the nose job, not you.” She touched his arm and the strangeness of his immobility frightened her. “I suppose you can choose what nose you’d like now. They could give you a Roman nose.” Her mouth wobbled into a weak smile. “How about that?”
She started to cry and in an extremity of fatigue, between one sob and the next, she fell asleep slumped on the side of the bed. Then she was being gathered up, and Paul was saying he was going to take her home. Something about the taxi service being free for its next passenger. Her tears began again as if she had not slept between them.
She was in his car, her nose stuffed, her eyes swollen, her head a globe of throbbing pain and her neck hardly capable of holding it. She must have given Paul her key because she was climbing into bed – how had she got there? And wasn’t it still daytime? – and Paul was pulling the clothes over her and she was drowning in sleep. On the edge of oblivion, she heard him say he would be back in the evening. She pulled her arm from under the clothes and held it out, pleading. “Don’t go.”
His answer didn’t come at once and then she felt his hand grip hers, firm and warm. “OK. I’ll go and say hi to your sofa again.” Her arm was tucked back under the cover. She thought she felt a hand on her head, and then she was dreaming, dreaming that lips touched her temple and lingered there.
Luke stayed with them. The week became a choreography of worry and hope. People came and went: the headmaster of his school, Naomi, Beezer. Beezer was pale and furious. His fists were clenched as he spoke to Luke above the ceaseless beeping of the monitor. “Listen muppet, you come round. Exams soon and you’ve a hell of a lot of catching up to do.” He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “We’ll find those guys. We’ll find them and they’ll be pouring them into buckets when we’ve finished with them.”
His voice broke and he gave Luke’s shoulder a little shake.
The nurse put her hand on his arm in warning. “Easy, easy! He’s a bit fragile, remember!”
Luke lids stayed shut above the bruise that was the centre of his face and his chest rose and fell to the rhythm of the ventilator.
After that first awful time, Paul did not stay at Jenna’s house again. Nevertheless, he was often with her. She never had to find her own way to the hospital for he called for her every day and every evening he left her at her door. They shared a great anxiety about Luke. Plainly Paul had grown fond of him, but his concern was quite different to Jenna’s in its manifestation. He rarely spoke of it whereas Jenna talked incessantly – about the treatment, the signs for good or bad, pulling apart every word the doctors said. Sometimes, Jenna would catch Paul looking away at something only he could see and his expression was drawn, his eyes pained.
Cora brought her embroidery to the bedside and her needle flew through the canvas stretched across its frame. It was a release for her energy. Paul asked to see it one day and she handed it to him. He ran his fingers over the bright colours of a bird of paradise. He handed it back. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you, Patrick. It’s a cushion cover,” she said. “Does your wife sew or anything?”
“No, she doesn’t.”
On Thursday afternoon, Jenna found herself in the hospital canteen with Paul’s mother. She was surprised to discover that Hazel had met Luke.
“Yes, once.
Paul had been giving him lessons in taking pictures of birds. I don’t know all the technicalities of it, but they talked about water reflections and panning and shutter speeds and focal length and things like that. So they were in the park near me and Paul popped in to see me before they left the town.” She smiled. “He’s good like that.”
They were sitting at a long table by a window that gave a view of more walls and windows and wards. The room was filled with noise and clatter, off duty staff and waiting relatives. Paul had dropped his mother at the door of the hospital and disappeared again. Jenna had no idea where he was. Maybe up another mountain. After Hazel saw Luke and spoke to Cora and Donald, Jenna brought her to find a cup of tea. It was difficult to know what to say for they had not met since Adam and she had parted. But Hazel was direct and guileless.
“Paul enjoyed Luke’s company. Odd because he’s such a loner usually.”
“Luke can be great company when he’s in the mood. He wants to be a photographer himself now.”
“Well, he could be. According to Paul, he has real talent. And Paul’s quite a perfectionist. He told me Luke had a natural flair for composition, for spotting the great shot.”
A glow of warmth spread in Jenna just to talk about Luke. “Luke never said much, but I know he loved it.”
“I think Paul thinks of Luke almost as a son, you know.” Surprised, Jenna’s eyebrows rose. “A son?”
“Almost. He doesn’t say very much, but it’s as if he wants to pass on his craft to Luke. He’s found an apprentice.” She laughed. “Imagine – Paul the patient teacher! How odd!”
Odd indeed. ‘Patient’ was not a word Jenna would have attached to Paul, not to that restless bundle of fizzing energy.
Hazel propped her elbows on the table and cradled her cup at her chin.
“You’ve changed your hair. It’s a pity it didn’t work out with Adam. Did you know he’s gone to England?”
“Yes, I did.”
Hazel put her cup down carefully. “Do you mind?”
“No. Although I’m sure you miss him.”
Maker of Footprints Page 26
