Lifesaving for Beginners (39 page)

‘He’s—’ She stops right there and I wait to see if she’s going to say something else but there’s nothing but silence down the phone.

I say, ‘Maybe Ed could come with you?
When he’s better, I mean?
You could both come.
I could take Ed to my lifesaving class.
I told him all about it.
He said it sounded great.
He said he swims too but he doesn’t do lifesaving.
I could show him some of the techniques I’m learning.’

‘Milo, I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘I can’t come.
Not now.’

‘But sometime, right?
You can come over sometime?
Later, I mean.
Not right now.
I don’t mean right now.’

‘I don’t know.
Everything is .
.
.
up in the air at the moment.
With Ed and .
.
.’

‘But he’s going to get better, right?
You could come then.
When he’s better.’

‘He’s having an operation.
Tomorrow.
Today, I suppose.
I just came home to .
.
.
I don’t know really.’

‘Tell Ed I said good luck.’

‘I’m sorry about .
.
.
the way I answered the phone.
It’s just .
.
.
I thought you were someone else.’

I’m glad I’m not the person she thought it was.
It sounds like that person is going to be in for it whenever he does ring.

She says, ‘I’d better go.’

‘Me too.
I’m supposed to be in bed.
Asleep by now.’

‘Faith doesn’t know that you’re ringing me?’

‘No way.
She’d kill me if she knew.’

She says, ‘I’m sorry,’ again, but I don’t know what for.

‘Hopefully Ed will be better soon and you can come over then.’

‘Milo?’

‘Yeah?’

But then she just says, ‘Goodbye,’ before she hangs up.

I’ve lost track of time.
There’s something about hospitals that makes time drag.
Or stop altogether.
I went home for a couple of hours during the night.
Mum said I should get some sleep.
I didn’t sleep.
I don’t know what I did.
Milo rang while I was there.
He talks about Ed like he’s known him for years.
Ed has that effect on people.
He’s just that sort of man.

Now it’s the next morning and Ed is having a procedure.
That’s what the consultant called it.
A procedure.
Like it was nothing.

Thomas says, ‘Hey.’
He is sitting on the chair beside mine.
He reaches over and puts his hand on the back of my chair.
When he smiles, I think, just for a moment, that everything is going to be OK.

I stand up.
Start the pacing thing again.

‘How long has it been now?’

‘Not long.
Don’t worry, Kat.
He’ll be fine.’

‘How do you know?’
He sounds so sure.

‘He’s in good hands.’
I walk past his chair and he reaches for my hand.
Presses it between both of his.
Coaxes the warmth back in.

‘You’re frozen.’

‘I’m always frozen.’

‘Do you want some tea?’

I nod.
I don’t want tea.
But the getting of it.
The drinking of it.
The process of it.
All that helps pass the time.

When he comes back with the tea, I say, ‘You don’t have to stay, you know.
I’ll ring you.
When he’s out of theatre.
As soon as he’s out.
I’ll give you a ring.’

Thomas shakes his head.
‘I’m better here.’
I don’t tell him how relieved I am.
How grateful.

We drink the tea.

My parents are still in the chapel, lighting candles.
For all the good that will do.
They arrived at the hospital about half an hour after me and Ed.
Staff in green and blue scrubs were waiting for us when I skidded to a stop at the door.
They had a stretcher, an oxygen mask.
Blankets.
They looked like a group of people who knew what they were doing.
Reliable.
That’s the word that comes to mind when you look at such a bunch of people.
I felt relief.
When they lifted Ed out of the car with their efficient, reliable hands.
When they placed him – so gently – onto the stretcher.
Covered him in blankets.
Put the oxygen mask over his face.
Stepped back.
Smiled at him.
Smiled at me.
I thought – just for a minute – that everything was going to be all right.
Then someone pulled a lever and someone pushed the stretcher away from me.
It went down a corridor and there were double doors at the end and the doors swung open and the trolley was wheeled through, then a nurse put her hand on my arm and said, ‘Don’t worry.
Your brother is in good hands.’
And the double doors swung shut and the relief drained away and fear was all that was left.

Thomas says, ‘Kat?
You OK?’

I shake my head.
‘I should have known something was up with him.
I wasn’t paying enough attention.’

‘You got him here as quickly as you could.’
When Thomas smiles, his eyes change from grey to green.
He is wearing wellingtons and an ancient wax jacket.
There’s a bit of hay in his hair.
He was mucking out the stable – where he keeps his one goat, two pigs, three hens, the garrulous goose and the lamb-bearing ewe – when I rang him.

I reach up and pull the hay out of Thomas’s hair.
Habit, I suppose.
I hand it to him and he takes it and I look around the room, even though there’s nothing much to look at.
Just some faded linoleum and three hard-backed armchairs that don’t belong together.

We wait.
My parents return from the chapel.

Dad says, ‘Any news?’

I shake my head.
Thomas says, ‘Not yet.’

The consultant said it was a routine procedure but that didn’t stop him getting us to sign forms with lists as long as your arm as to what could go wrong.
Transparency.
That’s what he called it.
Covering your arse, more like.

Mum says, ‘Tea?’
Everybody nods, and she looks relieved.
That she has something to do.
Something to fill the space between the start of Ed’s procedure and the end.

After she’s got the tea, Mum retreats to the corridor to pace it.
Dad stands as close as he can to the operating theatre without being in the way.

Thomas and I stay where we are.

We don’t say much.
Having him here, in the room, squashed into the narrow chair beside mine, isn’t strange.
I suppose it should be, when you consider everything.
But it isn’t.
It’s a comfort.
Like the embers of a fire on a hard day in November.
It’s almost as though I think that, once Thomas is here, nothing bad will happen.
Nothing bad will happen to Ed.

Time somehow passes.
I don’t know if it’s a lot of time or a little but it passes all the same.
I don’t think about anything in particular.
If pressed, I’d say I’m thinking about Ed but I couldn’t tell you for sure.

Thomas sits so still, you’d be forgiven for thinking he is asleep.
He has a capacity for stillness that is rare, especially in someone so long.
His legs stick out in front of him, providing an impediment – and almost certainly a tripping hazard – to anyone entering the room.
I used to trip over them in the beginning.
Then I got wise and commanded him to ‘call them home’ before he got a chance to fling them around the place.

Later, Thomas gets me a coffee.
Not one from the machine.
He goes to the deli on the corner to get it.
A decaf-cappuccino with skimmed milk, one and a half sachets of Demerara sugar and a light dusting of chocolate powder on the top.
It’s perfect.
It’s definitely the best thing that’s happened all day.
Maybe even longer than that.

I don’t tell him that.
Instead I say, ‘Thank you.’

This part of the hospital is quiet.
There is something unnatural about the quiet.
As if the world is holding its breath.
Waiting for the bad news.
Or the good, I suppose.

I think about bargaining.
And then I dismiss the idea as ridiculous.
And then I go right ahead and bargain anyway.

With whom, I couldn’t say.

‘If you make sure Ed is OK, I won’t drink for a month.’

Nothing.

‘OK, two months, then .
.
.
Fine.
Three .
.
.
What the hell, I won’t touch a drop for the whole bloody year.
I’ll be a .
.
.
whatdyacallem .
.
.
a teetotaller.
For a year.
Twelve months.
So long as Ed is perfectly fine.
He has to be one hundred per cent perfect or the deal’s off.’

Thomas looks at me.
‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You did.
You said something.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘You did.
Something about a deal.’

‘I didn’t.’

We go back to being quiet again.

A face appears round the door and I jump.
It’s not a particularly horrific face.
It’s a perfectly acceptable, round little face, with spectacles and worry lines where spectacles and worry lines have every right to be.
It’s just that, curled as it is round the door, it looks a little disembodied.

‘Katherine?
Katherine Kavanagh?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Dr Collins, the cardiologist.
I’ve just spoken to your parents.
They’re in with Edward.
They asked me to come and find you.’

‘He’s out of theatre?’
I stand up so fast the chair topples backwards.
Thomas stands up too, puts his hand on my shoulder and says, ‘Steady,’ in the same tone he uses on his goat when the goose gets her goat up and she goes on one of her sunflower-fuelled rampages.

I put both hands on my face.
The tips of my fingers are cold, despite the dense heat of the waiting room.

I say, ‘How is he?’
Thomas stands beside me.

‘Edward presented with an acute arrhythmia, very probably brought on by his congenital heart condition, which doubtless was the cause of his collapse and loss of consciousness.’

I say, ‘How is he?
Is he OK?’

‘We performed a procedure whereby we inserted a catheter in through the leg and up into his heart, through his vascular supply, and in this way we’ve been able to put a patch over the orifice that appears to have .
.
.’

I study the man’s face but I can tell nothing from it.
It is the most impassive face I have ever seen.
I say, ‘Just tell me how he is, for the love of God.’

He nods and allows a curt smile to glance across his face.
He is obviously used to dealing with unpleasant people.
‘Given the severity of the arrhythmia, we felt it prudent to insert a pacemaker into Ed’s heart, but this is a precautionary measure.
On the whole, I believe that the procedure went well.
There were no complications and .
.
.
’

I look at his mouth and it’s still moving so he’s still talking but I’m not listening anymore.

He said ‘well’.

He said, ‘The procedure went well.’

I have the most curious sensation.
As if the world has stopped.
The world has stopped and everything is still and silent, and I get a sense of how ridiculous things are.
Saying ‘God bless you’ when someone sneezes.
Keeping a snake as a pet.
Fascinators.
And pseudonyms for crime novels.
Crime novels, for fuck’s sake.

‘OhmyGodOhmyGodOhJesusOhmyGod.’

‘Let her sit down.
Open a window.
Kat?’
It might be Thomas.
The voice is muffled.
Faint.

He said ‘well’.

He said, ‘The procedure went well.’

All of a sudden, I’m George Bailey in
It’s a Wonderful Life
and Clarence has just shown me what life would be without Ed and it takes my breath away.
It does.

‘I’d say she’s having a panic attack.’
That’s Dr Collins.
He sounds vaguely uninterested.
I’d be offended if I didn’t feel so .
.
.
peculiar.

‘Kat?’
Thomas again.
I want to say something.
There are things I need to say.
Hands push against my shoulders and I’m sitting in a chair now and suddenly there’s a sharp crack and lovely cold air comes gushing into my mouth and down my throat, like water down a mountain after a thaw.
I gulp it in, blow it out, gulp it in.
It feels delicious to be alive.
I’ve never noticed it before.
How delicious it is.
And it’s only then, after a few gulps and exhalations, that I realise that Thomas has hit me, with his open palm, right across the face.