I couldn’t help shivering. Shattered. Was that the finest choice of words? Was that the diplomatic best a consultant could come up with? Shattered was a word most people used to describe a broken glass. On the upside, not that the consultant described it that way, Luke’s spinal injury was not as bad as they had first thought.
‘Oh, hello, Mrs Harte,’ a nurse said, coming in with a trolley. ‘I need to change Luke’s dressings. You can stay if you wish …?’
I shook my head. I hadn’t presumed myself squeamish, but when it came to Luke, I was. I’d rarely seen him bleeding before, a situation that had only come to my attention in the past day or so. Sure, Luke had cut himself when he was chopping vegetables or whatever, and he’d taken a tumble while running once – an amusing incident involving a fox and a badly lit alley way. That time, he’d come back with a cut knee, a grazed elbow and a slightly sheepish expression, full of anecdotal details about the ‘bastard fox’ that had felled him. But that was it. He’d gone from childish knee-scraping to full-on gore in the space of a day. I wasn’t used to seeing Luke’s body falling apart. He put people back together, or at least he started to. At the scene of an accident, Luke leapt out and started the process of re-assembling and healing.
‘I have to change his catheter now,’ the nurse said. She looked cheerful rather than embarrassed, but was giving me the heads up if I wanted to leave. ‘I can do this blindfolded; it’s you I’m thinking of.’
I left. Luke gave me enough backchat for barging into our ensuite bathroom at home. ‘Can’t a man pee in peace, Stripes?’ he’d yell as I apologetically giggled and backed out of the room with my hands over my eyes. The man had an absolute horror of being watched during seemingly innocuous toilet rituals.
God; even trivial memories of Luke made my heart feel as if it might explode. What was wrong with me?
I drifted into the waiting area. It was a dismal space; stark and unwelcoming, which was strange considering the amount of time friends and family of seriously hurt people spent in it. I realised the hospital budget didn’t run to accent cushions and brightly coloured wall prints, but the hard, plastic chairs were unforgiving and not for long-term use. I sat on one of them and brought my knees up to my chest. My stomach felt … vacant. It was still rather wobbly, but the skin was contracting quickly. I’d spent however many years of my life without a baby inside me but now, everything about not having one there felt wrong to me. I closed my eyes, pushing back hot tears that I knew would fall if I let them. In a final act of cruelty, every pregnancy symptom had disappeared, almost immediately, in fact. My breasts were no longer tender, the intense nausea had dissipated, and with it, the special glow I had felt inside at harbouring a new life. And that unique fluttering sensation … I fumbled over this. That incredible, joyous feeling of my baby moving and stretching inside me had gone and I could barely remember what it felt like. I even missed the hideous nausea because it had been such an inherent part of my pregnancy.
I gripped my knees. The sorrow I felt for our lost baby was overwhelming and, without Luke, I couldn’t make sense of it. Was it my ‘hostile environment’ that had caused this to happen? Or was there some other reason this last little IVF baby hadn’t been able to stick around? I had called my parents to let them know and they had been concerned, but predictably detached – or perhaps I felt detached from them and their well-intentioned, but somehow neutral, reaction to both bits of shocking news.
Did I want them to come down from Scotland, my mother had asked? I told them not to, that I would contact them if … when, Luke’s prognosis changed. I couldn’t see the point; my mother would be caring enough, but unable to offer me much in the way of emotional support, and my father would pat me woodenly and look uncomfortable. No, I was better off with Dee and Dan – with Nell. Patricia, even. Although things were still a little strained between us. That unspoken reproach of hers towards me over the baby stuff jabbed at me bitterly. Perhaps I was imagining it, but I had rather too much to worry about in terms of Luke’s future right now to stress about Patricia’s motives.
I felt bleak, but I couldn’t help thinking that Luke would be urging me to pull myself together and be optimistic. Whatever happened, Luke always tried to see the positive in things. I wandered back into his room, certain the new wee bag must be in place by now.
The nurse absently smoothed the bed sheet into place. ‘Have you and your husband … Luke, been together long?’
‘Five years. No, sorry. We’ve been married for five years, but together for much longer than that.’
I took a seat next to Luke. He had been properly cleaned up and his freckles were visible beneath his fading tan. The bruise on his forehead was developing into a spectrum of impressive colours, as if Tilly or Frankie had been making his face up with eyeshadow. Most of his body was still tightly bandaged and the machines continued their monosyllabic blip and chhhh noises, over-compensating for Luke’s complete silence.
It was so unlike him, to be silent, I thought, as I sat on the edge of his bed. Ever since we’d met, Luke had been at the centre of everything.
June, eight years earlier
‘Please come,’ Dee pleaded. We were sitting in the tiny garden of her flat on the outskirts of Bath drinking very strong gin and tonics. ‘It’s a party; what’s not to like?’
‘Whose party?’
I adjusted my chair. It was one of those fold-up things that made one’s backside sweaty and one’s posture inelegant. Recently boyfriend-less, I wasn’t in the mood to hear about a party, let alone go to it. I berated myself for being so grumpy.
‘Liberty’s.’ Dee pulled a face. ‘She’s pretentious, I know, but her parties are fabulous, Luce. Champagne in the bath, trendy live music.’
I glanced at her. There had to be more to it than that. Champagne and trendy live music were two a penny in the circles Dee moved in, even if Liberty’s parents did own a gorgeous stately home thing just outside Bath. There was a man involved; there had to be.
I pulled at my hair, which was in desperate need of some sort of hair product. Heat made it frizz up like those bright orange crisps, Nik Naks. My hair wasn’t orange, you understand. Just … full of kinks.
‘Who’s going?’ I asked. It was a pointed question.
‘Dan Sheppard,’ Dee admitted, knowing there was no point in denying it.
I smiled. Dan Sheppard was an arty type Dee had recently met at her brother’s barbecue. Usually cool about men she had a thing for, she’d talked about him non-stop since they’d met and that meant that Dee was serious about him.
I gulped down my gin and tonic. I knew I’d be going to the party, because my friend needed a wing-woman. But I was feeling rather low right now. Lack of boyfriend aside, I’d been working in a book shop for almost a year at this point and the literary degree I’d finished seven years ago felt like a distant memory. I felt as if I had lost my way a bit because, even though I wasn’t overly ambitious, I did want to do something fulfilling with my life, something I enjoyed.
‘I don’t have anything to wear,’ I offered lamely.
Dee
