Six Months to Get a Life (20 page)

I don’t know how to say this other than to just come out with it. Amy is in a coma in St George’s Hospital. She went to pick Lucy up from her ex’s after she left me at the restaurant last night but she didn’t get there. She was knocked down.

I didn’t find out until this morning. Jack phoned me first. And then Ray phoned. I don’t know any details yet. All Ray could tell me is that his brother and Amy’s mother are at the hospital by Amy’s bedside.

I can’t believe it. I feel totally lost, dazed, overwhelmed. I have never experienced trauma like this before. No one I have been close to has ever ended up in intensive care. Grandparents have died but that is meant to happen. Amy is my age. She isn’t meant to die.

She can’t die. I didn’t even say goodbye to her when she left the restaurant.  She doesn’t know how I feel about her. Why didn’t I tell her yesterday when I had the chance? We haven’t even done a fraction of the things that couples do together. We haven’t stayed in on a wet night and watched a film. We haven’t welcomed each other home from work with a kiss and a steaming hot plate of food. We haven’t argued about where to go on holiday. We haven’t argued. She can’t die without us having had a good dingdong. She can’t die because the last time I saw her, she had a tear in her eye.

I am being selfish. She can’t die because she has Lucy to mother. Jack had heard the news from Amy’s distraught daughter. He wants to come over to the flat but I put him off because I want to go to the hospital. I want to be there for Amy, to hold her hand, to tell her we will get through this together, to tell her it will be alright. Ray tried to put me off going to the hospital. I am not interested in having a scene with his brother but I am not going to stay away from Amy either. I told Ray I would go this afternoon and if his brother was still there, he would just have to deal with me turning up.

I have spent the last couple of hours trying to function, to do things, anything that will stop me going straight to the hospital. I just washed up my breakfast stuff. I could see cars passing on the road below my window. Dogs were barking too. All around my flat, life is carrying on. The traffic lights are still changing colour. Leaves on the trees are still shifting in the breeze. But, to me, today the world is on hold. Everything has stopped except for Amy’s struggle for life. Nothing else matters.

I am off to the hospital.

Amy is in intensive care, still fighting. Luckily the accident happened just down the road from St George’s hospital. She hit her head pretty hard. The surgeons operated on her almost straight away on Friday night to relieve the pressure on her swollen brain. She has been kept in an induced coma since the accident to give her brain time to recover. This afternoon we were told that the treatment seems to be working as the swelling is going down. They are going to reduce her medication over the next day or so and hopefully bring her out of her coma. No one official is making any predictions yet, though, about her long-term health.

When I arrived at the hospital yesterday and eventually found the right wing, the right floor and the right section, I immediately recognised Amy’s mother sitting in a waiting area next to a nurse’s station. Amy has her mother’s hair and her mother’s eyes.

‘Hi, you must be Imogen. I’m Graham,’ I said, holding out my alcohol-rubbed hand.

‘Graham,’ she repeated in a tired voice while nodding to herself. She showed no recognition of my name. No interest in me either. She just continued to stare at one of a number of curtained-off areas across the room. My hand was left dangling un-grasped until I awkwardly withdrew it.

You are supposed to meet parents of partners over dinner, or drinks, or if you are really lucky you wouldn’t need to meet them at all. You certainly aren’t supposed to meet them in a hospital waiting area with busy health professionals moving purposefully to and fro around you. You aren’t supposed to meet them when the person you have in common is fighting for her life.

I sat down opposite Imogen and waited. Isn’t that what you do in waiting areas? I hadn’t heard anything about Amy’s condition at that point other than what Ray had told me on the phone. I didn’t want to intrude on Imogen’s thoughts but I had to know. I asked her how Amy was. Finally she seemed to register that there was someone else present.

‘What did you say your name was again?’ she asked.

‘Graham. Graham Hope. I’m Amy’s, er, I am a friend of Amy’s,’ I managed.

Imogen nodded again and then proceeded to tell me in hushed tones about the operation to relieve the pressure on Amy’s brain. When she had finished, I asked if I could see Amy.

‘There’s someone in with her at the moment,’ Imogen replied. And at that moment Ray’s brother, also known as Amy’s ex, also known as Stuart, brushed aside the curtain that Imogen had been studying so intently and walked over to us.

Imogen stood up. ‘Has anything changed?’ she asked anxiously. Stuart shook his head. And then he focussed on me.

‘Who are you?’

‘Hi, you must be Stuart. I’m Graham,’ I said, holding out my hand and having the proffered handshake refused for the second time in ten minutes. Did I overdo it on the alcohol rub?

‘Ray has told me about you. I don’t give a shit if you are his mate. As far as I am concerned you can piss off.’ A
young nurse lifted her head up from the paperwork she was studying and gave us both a withering look. She was about to say something when Imogen stepped in and put a stop to our unseemly banter.

I didn’t get in to see Amy yesterday. As Stuart pointed out in no uncertain terms, I am not family. Technically speaking, now that he is divorced from Amy, neither is he. But in fear of getting a smack I decided not to push the point.

When I went back to the hospital today, Stuart wasn’t there. The curtains around Amy’s bed were closed, as were those around the other patients. It struck me how quiet it was in the intensive care unit. Other than the hum of mechanical noise from the machines keeping the people on this ward alive, there was little noise at all from the patients. Presumably they were all sedated like Amy.

I was pleading my case with the same nurse who had given us the look yesterday to let me go in and see Amy when Imogen stuck her head around the curtain and beckoned me in.

I have watched my fair share of hospital dramas but nothing prepared me for how fragile Amy looked. Her head from her eyes upwards was pretty much covered in bandages. Wires and tubes were feeding in to space-aged machines at the side of her bed. The machines were beeping and gurgling and displays were flashing, some at regular intervals, some irregularly. I couldn’t help wondering if the irregular beeps should have been regular.

Until that point, this whole episode had felt a bit unreal. I was almost going through the motions of saying and doing the right thing. But seeing Amy looking so battered and helpless threw me over the edge. I haven’t broken down so completely since, well, ever. Imogen sat me down in the one bedside chair and kneaded my shoulder while I held my head in my hands.

Amy looked so damaged. The whole left side of her face was scratched raw, presumably from when she landed on the tarmac. Her skin, where it wasn’t cut up, looked impossibly pale. It took me a while to compose myself.

Imogen and I sat with Amy for a good hour, both of us mainly lost in our own thoughts about the woman we cared for. Imogen did break her reverie to tell me the news about the doctors gradually reducing her medication in the hope that she would slowly wake from her induced coma. She also told me about Amy’s left eye. Something pierced it in the accident. The doctors are concentrating on Amy’s brain at the moment but one of them told Imogen this morning that if she does recover, they aren’t sure that they will be able to save her eye.

I sat and stroked Amy’s fingers. Even her right hand was bandaged, presumably from when she put it out to break her fall. The news about her eye is awful but if her brain doesn’t recover sufficiently for her to breathe for herself, then whatever other damage there is will be irrelevant.

After a while we heard Stuart and Lucy arrive on to the ward. Imogen and I withdrew from Amy’s cubicle and went down the two flights of stairs and outside for a bit of fresh air, leaving Stuart and Lucy to sit with Amy. And that’s where the questioning started.

‘How long have you known Amy for?’ her mum opened with. I gave her a potted history of Amy and me, mentioning things like the dog walking and our trip to the Lake District but leaving out any mention of Jack and any encounters with my ex. When Imogen asked me if I had met Lucy much before today, I just played a straight bat and said yes.

‘I am going to stay at Amy’s for a few days so that Lucy can come home,’ Imogen announced. ‘I can’t bear the thought of her staying with that man, even if he is her dad.’ So there is no love lost between Imogen and Amy’s ex then. I expect the
affair with the au pair now shapes Imogen’s opinion of him.

Eventually, after exchanging phone numbers with Imogen, I left her at the hospital entrance waiting for Lucy to emerge with her dad. I had no desire to have another faceoff with Amy’s ex, particularly in front of Lucy.

When I got home I listened to my phone messages. I had several missed calls from my ex’s number. I wasn’t sure whether it was her or Jack phoning. I dialled the number and my ex picked up.

‘I am sorry to hear about what has happened, Graham,’ she said.

In view of her previous intervention in mine and Amy’s love life, I suspected she was anything but sorry but I didn’t have the energy for a confrontation. I asked her to put Jack on.

‘How is Lucy’s mum, dad?’ my boy asked once he had been handed the phone. I filled him in on the latest developments. He had probably heard them all already from Lucy but he wanted to check in case things had moved on.

‘Lucy wants me to come to the hospital with her tomorrow,’ Jack informed me.

‘But it’s a school day tomorrow son,’ I rather stuffily told him.

‘Mum says that if it is OK with you then I can come,’ he pleaded.

I agreed to think about it. If I take Jack along tomorrow then Imogen will get to see the full me/Amy, Jack/Lucy picture, but then why shouldn’t she see it? I phoned her once I had got off the phone with Jack and arranged to drive Lucy to the hospital in the morning. I didn’t mention Jack though. I offered Imogen a lift too but she said she would make her own way there a bit earlier than the 9 o’clock I was suggesting.

It has been a long weekend. I am mentally and physically
exhausted. I hardly slept last night. Tonight I have had a couple of fingers of Scotch to help me relax. I don’t think I have eaten anything all day so the whisky has gone straight to my head.

I put the telly on to take the edge off the silence in the flat. The first image I saw was a photo of Amy. As well as describing Amy’s condition as ‘critical but stable’, the local news was appealing for witnesses to the accident. The car driver hadn’t stopped at the scene.

When you gossip about someone being injured, you immediately talk about how it happened. But when that someone happens to be someone close to you, all that matters is that they get better. Until now I hadn’t even given a thought to how the accident had happened. Now though, as well as being wracked with panic over the possibility of losing Amy, I have found a bit of room in my heart to hate the bastard who, to all intents and purposes, left Amy for dead on Garratt Lane.

I have said before that shit happens to those that let shit happen. It also obviously happens to those that don’t. Basically, shit happens. I shouldn’t mess with a well-established phrase.

Jack and I picked Lucy up from her Wimbledon Village home and took her to see her mum. It was heartwarming seeing Jack sitting in the back of the car holding hands with Lucy, being there for her in her time of need. How my eldest son has grown up over the last few months. I wish he hadn’t had to grow up so fast but now that he has, he is doing an  excellent job of it.

My boy has been doing his research on brain injuries too. He reminded Lucy about Jesse Ryder, the New Zealand cricketer who made a full recovery from a coma. I notice he didn’t mention Michael Schumacher though.

Imogen was at the hospital when we arrived. I introduced Jack.

‘I have heard all about you from Lucy,’ Imogen said to Jack, ‘and I am pleased to finally meet you, young man.’

Turning to me, ‘But I didn’t know Jack and you knew each other?’

‘I have known him since he was born,’ I told her. Imogen smiled and we left it at that.

The doctors were in with Amy when we arrived. To give them a chance to give us the full picture without having to worry about sweetening the pill for the sake of the children, I sent the two young love birds off with some money to get
themselves a snack. The hospital staff wouldn’t have allowed the four of us in to see Amy at the same time anyway.

Eventually the two doctors emerged from Amy’s cubicle, notes in hand. As soon as I saw them emerge, I started looking for any tell-tale early signs as to whether the news was good or not. The younger of the two was smiling and nodding away at his older colleague’s words. The older one, who subsequently introduced himself as Mr Crane, wasn’t smiling but he didn’t look unduly pensive or concerned either. Mr Crane shook my hand but mainly addressed his update to Imogen because he didn’t know how I fit in to the plot.

‘Your daughter is still seriously ill but we do think there is some reason to be optimistic,’ he informed us, to our immense relief. ‘This morning’s scans have shown us that the swelling on her brain has continued to decrease. We are really pleased with the progress she is making. We will have a much better idea about her prospects by tomorrow. In fact, the next few days are critical.’

You don’t exactly have to be a brain surgeon to see that.

Mr Crane also reminded us how lucky we were that the accident had happened so close to the hospital. And not just any hospital but St George’s in particular. “This hospital is a major trauma hospital and has an excellent neurology department. We had the staff and equipment to operate straight away. If your daughter’s accident had happened anywhere else, we might be having a very different conversation right now.”

Mr Crane’s words left me feeling cold. It’s hard to think that someone is lucky when they get run over but in this case, it seems that Amy certainly was. I don’t want to imagine what would have happened if she had been run over somewhere else.

I stayed at the hospital for the morning. I had told Jack on the way over to picking Lucy up that he may not get in
to see Amy, but that if he did, he should be prepared for what he would see. In the end, Lucy went in with her grandmother. Jack and I waited outside.

‘What if she’s brain damaged?’ Jack asked me when we were on our own.

If truth be told, I haven’t got a clue what will happen if Amy doesn’t recover fully. She lives on her own with Lucy. If she comes through the accident but with a loss of some of her mental or physical faculties then who would help look after both of them? From what I know of Amy, she would hate to rely on her ex for anything. How much would her mum help? How much could I help?

I don’t even know the answer to that last question. I have just got myself a full-time job. Practically, how much could I do? I know I am sounding a bit of a sap but I have fallen for Amy big time. She has put the colour back into my life over the last couple of months. When I am with her I am no longer a divorced man but a man with a life. She makes me smile. She is the first person I want to share life’s events with.

But is all that enough? What if she doesn’t regain all her faculties? What if she isn’t the woman I fell in love with? They do talk about people who have suffered a brain injury changing their personality, becoming more snappy and moody. I couldn’t cope if Amy turned into my ex all over again.

All I could think of to say to Jack was, ‘Let’s hope we don’t have to cross that bridge, son.’

Much to Jack’s annoyance, I dropped him off at school at lunchtime. I then nipped round to see if my ex was in. She was. I needed to talk to her about the whole relationship thing. Adult to adult. I don’t yet know whether or not Amy will make a full recovery. I am trying not to dwell on the negative thoughts though. When she does come out of hospital, fighting fit and ready to resume her life, I want our relationship to go back to how it was before my ex stuck the
boot in. Which was why I found myself sitting in my old kitchen having coffee with my ex this lunchtime.

‘You look as though you haven’t slept in days,’ she observed once she had invited me in.

I didn’t really know where to start. I didn’t have the mental capacity to plan the conversation out in my head so I just jumped right in.

‘Has Jack talked to you about Lucy?’

‘Yes, all the time,’ my ex admitted. ‘He tells me she is his soul mate and that if I try and get in the way of him seeing her, he will move in with you.’

I was too tired to smile at that. Even if I wasn’t too tired I am not sure I would have smiled. We can’t have the kids playing one of us off against the other. I still believe in presenting a united front to the kids when possible.

I did my best to convince my ex that I was an appropriate adult, acting appropriately. ‘I know it must be hard for you because you aren’t as involved as me in that part of his life, but I do supervise what they are up to. They still operate within ground rules.’

‘I know,’ she acknowledged, ‘it is just that he is growing up. He’s having new adventures and I am not involved in them.’ Welcome to my world.

She went on to ask me whether I had talked to Jack about sex.

‘I have talked to him about kissing, but as far as I can tell he was embarrassed enough about that. There is no way he is going to be getting his willy out any time soon.’ That seemed to pacify her.

We then talked about Sean and the effect that the father and son, mother and daughter thing might have on him. Sean has never said a bad word about what is going on. He seems to like Amy. That, above everything else, is probably the hardest part for my ex to deal with. She did though seem
genuinely sorry that she had threatened to get her solicitor involved if I carried on seeing Amy. ‘I was at a low point,’ she confessed. ‘Mark and I had split up. You were getting your life back together, Jack was growing up. It just felt like it was me and Sean against the world. I lashed out at you. I’m sorry.’

My ex is very into rotas, lists and ground rules. She has rules for everything, from who is washing up each night right through to a behaviour code that the children must abide by. By the time I had drunk my latte and headed back to the hospital, I had agreed a set of four simple ground rules with my ex that would govern mine and Jack’s relationships with Amy and Lucy. I undertook:

1. Not to sleep over at Amy’s when I am looking after Jack and Sean.
   
2. Not to let Amy and Lucy sleep over at my flat when Jack and Sean are there. This rule is unnecessary because my flat isn’t big enough to accommodate a mass sleep-over. I didn’t bother pointing that out to my ex though.
   
3. Not to let Jack spend extended periods of time alone with Lucy upstairs. This one will be harder to enforce because he goes to Lucy’s without me being there sometimes.
   
4. Not to let Sean ever feel like the odd one out.
   

I was quite happy to agree to abide by these rules if it meant that my ex got off my back. I had pretty much come to these conclusions on my own anyway.

I felt slightly happier as I drove back to the hospital. Now all that remains in the way of mine and Amy’s relationship is Amy’s recovery and her acceptance of my baggage.