Page 119 of When We Are Old

I thought of the boys waiting for Hugo. Imagine the pain they would be facing if neither of them came home.

A low beep pulsed. “Why isn’t he breathing for himself?” Surely he should be bloody breathing for himself? The black dots danced in my line of sight again.

“That’s quite normal.” She waved me forward again. Younger than Sarah, who’d wanted me to drink tea, she also had a face that I think might have been hired purely for breaking bad news to people. “When we put people into a coma like this, it makes their body hard to remember how to breathe.”

“He can’t remember how to breathe?” Close to the bed, I stretched a hand for him, but then let it fall onto the sheet.

He looked nowhere near as big as usual. Where life and vitality would normally pulse from him like an electrical current, I couldn’t feel anything. Like he wasn’t there.

“It’s a technical thing. When we wake him up, his body will remember.” I knew she chose her language to make it simple for me.

“Why’s he in the coma?”

“It’s to stop the swelling.”

“Oh.” I nodded a small bob of my head.

“Take a seat, he’ll want to hear you.” Her gaze dropped to my finger where cotton threads wrapped half a story, half a dream. I shoved my hand under my thigh.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Just say anything.” She gave me a small smile. “I’ll leave you for a little while.”

I almost called her to come back. The room might be small, but alone in it I began to shudder, my shoulders shaking.

“Matthew,” I whispered his name and it stretched out of my soul in a slow lament. Holding my breath, I reached for his fingers and slipped mine around them. They were warm. Funny, I expected them to be cold. “I made a right scene. I passed out in the waiting room.”

Foolishly, I expected him to answer.

“It’s funny, because I’ve only ever passed out like that once or twice before.” Our time together seemed so short. It was only a few weeks since I’d found him on the train and told him I loved him.

Why hadn’t I said it before?

I’d wasted so much time.

“I love you.” Leaning over, I pressed a kiss onto the small stretch of his cheek I could reach. His smell tickled my nose, no longer the fresh air and fabric softener scent I loved, but instead disinfectant and the sharp tang of blood. “I can’t believe this is happening, Matthew. I’ve waited all my life for you, and then what, you want to leave?”

My words echoed in the small place, the rise and fall of the ventilator my only response.

“I really bloody need you to wake up, Matthew.” I squeezed his fingers like I could make him flinch. “Because I’m pregnant.”

Wake Up Calls

Ronnie

I sat and let the car idle as I looked through the windscreen of Angela’s crummy Scottish flat. Inside I burned on a pyre of devastation.

My memories raw and alive.

The past all too vivid now.

With painful clarity I thought back to the day Paul died. Angela flying in from Scotland. Her tears and the wine she’d drunk.

I shook my head trying to make sense of it all. It was only a couple of months ago that she’d been reminding me what a lucky escape I’d had from my 'bore of a marriage', as she’d called it, and not for the first time.

Too late I realise that the boring bit was the fact I was married. She wouldn’t have cared who too, she still would have had them.

Poor Matthew, lying in that bed. He’d always been so bloody honourable. The fact that he’d remained strong when my own husband hadn’t only reaffirmed what I’d always known. Matthew and I were simply meant to be. Even with him being in hospital, hooked up to that machine, I knew he’d come around. He had to, because it couldn’t end any other way. I knew it in my gut.