The Woman Who Stole My Life (4 page)

I take a quick look at Karen, just to check that the Parvenue thing hasn’t upset her, but not at all. She’s remarkable.

She helps Dad into the seat. ‘Get in, you old snob.’

‘How can I be a snob?’ he splutters. ‘I’m part of the under-class.’

‘You’re a reverse snob. A well-balanced working-class man: you’ve a chip on both shoulders.’ Then, with a flourish, she lifts the lever and Dad rises up the stairs.

We all clap and shout, ‘Woohoo!’ and I pretend I don’t feel sad.

Overcome with the excitement, Clark decides to take all his clothes off and dance, naked, in the street.

Dad returns to his customary position in his armchair, studiously proceeding with his book, and Mum, Karen and I sit in the kitchen and drink tea. Mathilde snuggles on Karen’s lap.

‘Have a fairy cake.’ Mum throws a sixteen-pack, cellophane-wrapped slab of buns onto the table. I don’t need to look at the ingredients to discover that there’s nothing that sounds like food and that the eat-by date is next January.

‘I can’t believe you eat this shit,’ Karen says.

‘Well, I do.’

‘Five minutes’ walk away, in the middle of Ferrytown, the Saturday Farmers’ Market is selling fresh, handmade cupcakes.’

‘It’s far from fresh, handmade things you were reared.’

‘Grand.’ Karen is too canny to waste her energy getting into an argument. But she’s going to leave soon.

‘Have a fairy cake.’ Mum slides the package at Karen.

‘Why don’t
you
have a fairy cake?’ Karen replies and shoves the package back.

The fairy cakes have suddenly become a battleground. To diffuse the tension, I say, ‘
I’ll
have a fairy cake.’

I eat five of them. But I don’t enjoy them. And that’s the main thing.

‘To be able to scratch the sole of my foot using the big toe of the other foot is nothing short of a miracle.’

Extract from
One Blink at a Time

My left hip felt like it was on fire. I could see the clock at the nurses’ station – that was one of the perks of being on my left side; when I was on my right side I was just staring at a wall – and it was another twenty-four minutes before someone came to turn me. They rotated me every three hours, so that I wouldn’t get bedsores. But the last hour before ‘the turn’ had started to become uncomfortable, then painful, then very painful.

The only way to endure it was to reduce time to bouts of seven seconds. I don’t know why I picked seven – perhaps because it was an odd number and it didn’t divide into ten or sixty, so it kept things interesting. Sometimes four or five minutes could pass without me noticing and then I got a lovely surprise.

I’d been in ICU for twenty-three days. Twenty-three days since my body had packed up on me and the only muscles that worked were the ones in my eyes and eyelids. The shock had been – was – indescribable.

That first night in hospital, Ryan was sent home by a nurse. ‘Keep your phone by your bed,’ she told him.

‘I’m not leaving here,’ he said.

‘If she deteriorates further, we’ll ring you to come in.
You’d better bring the kids too, and her parents. What religion is Stella?’

‘… None.’

‘You must say something.’

‘Catholic, I suppose. She went to a Catholic school.’

‘Okay. We’ll organize a priest if one is needed. Go on now. You can’t stay. This is the ICU. Go home, get some sleep, keep your phone on.’

Eventually, looking like a whipped puppy, he went and I was left alone and I plunged into a surreal horror world where I lived a thousand lifetimes. I was in the grip of the worst fear I’ve ever known: there was a very real chance I was going to die. I could sense it in the atmosphere around my bed. No one knew what was wrong with me, but it was obvious that all the systems in my body were shutting down. My lungs had given up. What if my liver failed? What if … horrifying thought … what if my heart stopped?

I concentrated all my efforts on it and urged it to keep beating.
Come on, come on, how hard can it be?

It had to keep beating because, if it didn’t, who would take care of Betsy and Jeffrey? And if it didn’t, what would happen to
me
? Where was I going? Suddenly I was staring into the abyss, facing the likelihood that this was where my life ended.

I’d never been religious, I’d never thought about an afterlife, one way or the other. But now that there was a good chance I was on my way there, I discovered, a bit late in the day, that I really was
interested.

I should have done self-development courses, I berated myself. I should have been kinder to people. I mean, I’d tried my best but I should have done more. I should have gone to Mass and all that holy stuff.

What if the nuns at school were right and there really was
a hell? As I added up my sins – sex before marriage, coveting my next-door neighbour’s holidays – I realized I was a goner. I was going to meet my maker and then I was going to be cast into the outer darkness.

If I could have whimpered with terror, I would have. I wanted to sob with fear. I desperately wanted a second chance, to go back and fix things.

Please God, I begged, please don’t let me die. Save me and I’ll be a better mother, a better wife and a better person.

From listening to the nurses coming and going at my bedside, I gathered that my heart rate was dangerously fast. My fear was making that happen. It was good that my heart was still beating but not so good if I went into cardiac arrest. A decision was made to give me a sedative, but instead of relaxing me it just slowed my thinking down so that I could see my predicament more clearly.

Over and over again, I thought,
This can’t be happening.

The fear alternated with helpless anger: I was outraged by my incapacity. I was so used to doing anything I wanted that I never even thought about it – I could pick up a magazine, I could shift my hair out of my eyes, I could cough. Suddenly I understood that to be able to scratch the sole of my foot using the big toe of the other foot was nothing short of a miracle.

My head kept sending orders to my body –
Move, for the love of God, move! –
but it lay like a plank. It was defiant and disrespectful and … yes
 … cheeky
. I raged and foamed and flailed, but without moving a muscle.

I was afraid to go to sleep in case I died. The lights around me were never switched off and I watched the clock tick away the seconds all through the night. Finally it was morning and I was taken downstairs for a lumbar puncture, then I wished I
could
die – even now the memory of the pain makes me feel faint.

But, very quickly, it produced a diagnosis: I had something called Guillain-Barré Syndrome, an astonishingly rare auto-immune disorder, which attacks the peripheral nervous system, stripping the myelin sheaths from the nerves. None of the doctors had ever encountered a case of it before. ‘You’ve a higher chance of winning the lottery than contracting this yoke,’ my consultant, a plump, dapper, silver-haired man called Dr Montgomery chortled. ‘How did you manage it!’

No one could say what the trigger had been, but it sometimes ‘manifested’ (medical speak) after a bout of food poisoning. ‘She was in a car crash about five months ago,’ I heard Ryan telling him. ‘Would that have caused it?’

No, he didn’t think so.

My prognosis was cautiously optimistic: GBS was rarely fatal. If I didn’t get an infection – which I probably would, apparently everyone in hospital got infections; by the sounds of things you had a better chance of living a healthy life drinking seven litres of unfiltered Ganges water every day – I’d eventually recover and be able to move again, to speak and to breathe without a ventilator.

So at least I probably wasn’t going to die.

But no one could tell me when I’d get well. Until these myelin sheaths – whatever they were – grew back I faced a lengthy spell, paralysed and mute, in the intensive care unit.

‘For the time being, the name of the game is keeping her alive,’ Dr Montgomery told Ryan. ‘Isn’t that right, girls?’ he yelled to the nurses, with – in my opinion – rather inappropriate merriment. ‘Keep her going there, Patsy!

‘And come here to me, you!’ He grabbed Ryan by the arm. ‘Don’t you be rushing home and Googling things. They write all kinds of codswallop on that Internet and scare the
drawers off of people and then you’d be coming in here boohoohooing and saying your wife is going to die and be paralysed for ever. I’ve been a senior consultant in this hospital for fifteen years. I know more than any Internet and I’m telling you she’ll be grand. Eventually.’

‘Are there no drugs to speed up her recovery?’ Ryan asked.

‘No,’ Dr Montgomery said, almost cheerily. ‘None.’

‘Could you run tests to get some idea of how bad she is … how long before she’ll be well?’

‘Hasn’t the poor woman just had a lumbar puncture?’ He glanced over at me. ‘That was no day at the races, was it?’ He turned his attention back to Ryan. ‘You have to wait this thing out. There’s nothing else you can do. Cultivate patience, Mr Sweeney. Let patience be your watchword. Maybe you could take up fly-fishing?’

Later that day, when they’d finished school, Ryan brought Betsy and Jeffrey to see me. I watched their faces as they noticed all the tubes snaking in and out of me. Betsy’s big blue eyes looked terrified but Jeffrey, being a fourteen-year-old boy, with an interest in all things ghoulish, seemed fascinated.

‘I brought you some magazines,’ Betsy said.

But I couldn’t hold them. I was desperate for a distraction, but unless someone read to me, I couldn’t have it.

Ryan angled my head on my pillow so that I could look at him. ‘So how are you feeling?’

I stared at him. Paralysed, that’s how I’m feeling. And unable to speak, that’s how I’m feeling.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how …’

‘Do that thing,’ Jeffrey said. ‘I saw it on TV. Blink your right eye for yes, or your left eye for no.’

‘We’re not in the fecking Boy Scouts!’ Ryan said.

‘Do you think it’s a good idea, Mom?’ Jeffrey shoved his face close to mine.

Well, it was the only one we had. I blinked my right eye.

‘Score!’ Jeffrey exclaimed. ‘It works. Ask her something!’

Faintly Ryan said, ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this. Okay. Stella, are you in pain?’

I blinked my left eye.

‘No? That’s good so. Are you hungry?’

I blinked my left eye again.

‘No. Good …’

Ask me if I’m scared. But he didn’t because he knew I was and so was he.

Already bored, Jeffrey turned his attention to his phone. Immediately there came the sound of running footsteps. It was a nurse with a face like thunder. ‘Turn that thing off!’ she ordered. ‘Mobiles phones are not allowed in ICU.’

‘What?’ Jeffrey asked. ‘Ever?’

‘Never.’

Jeffrey looked at me with what was, for the first time, compassion. ‘No phone. Wow … Where’s your TV? Hey,’ he called in the direction of the nurses’ station. ‘Where’s my mom’s TV?’

‘Would you
shush
?’ Ryan said.

The angry nurse was back. ‘There’s no TV. This is an intensive care unit, not a hotel. And keep the noise down; there are very sick people here.’

‘Calm down, dear.’

‘Jeffrey!’ Ryan hissed. To the nurse, he said, ‘I’m sorry. He’s sorry. We’re all just … upset.’

‘Quiet,’ Jeffrey said. ‘I’m thinking.’ He seemed to be wrestling with some terrible choice. ‘Okay.’ He reached a decision. ‘I’ll give you the lend of my iPod. Just for this evening –’

‘No iPods!’ the nurse shouted from a distance.

‘But what are you going to do?’ Jeffrey was deeply concerned.

Betsy, who hadn’t uttered a word since she arrived, cleared her throat. ‘Mom, I think … I’d like to pray with you.’

What the hell?!

My own plight was instantly forgotten and I flashed my eyes at Ryan. For a while now we’d suspected that Betsy had been dabbling in Christianity, the way many parents fear their teenagers getting into drugs. There was some sort of holy youth club that trawled her school for membership. They preyed on the vulnerability of children who’d been brought up by agnostics and it looked like Betsy might well have fallen into their clutches.

It was okay for me to pray in my own head, but praying – out loud! – with Betsy, like we were middle-Americans, was all wrong. I blinked my left eye – no, no, no – but Betsy took my useless hands and bowed her head. ‘Dear Lord, look down on this poor miserable sinner, my mom, and forgive her for all the bad things she’s done. She’s not an evil person, just weak, and pretends she does Zumba when she never goes to class and can be quite bitchy especially when she’s with Auntie Karen and Auntie Zoe, who I know isn’t my real auntie, just my mom’s best friend and they’re on the red wine –’

‘Betsy, stop!’ Ryan said.

Suddenly an alarm started to sound, urgent pulses of noise. It seemed to be coming from about four cubicles away and it triggered the nurses into a frenzy of activity. One of them rushed into my cubicle and said to Ryan, ‘You all have to leave.’ But she hurried off to the emergency and my visitors, keen not to miss the show, stayed.

I heard the swish of a cubicle curtain and lots of loud voices giving orders and relaying information. A woman in a
doctor’s coat clipped briskly to the scene, followed by two younger-looking blokes, their white coats swinging.

Then – and you could feel the change in energy – all the noise and activity stopped. After a few seconds of absolute nothingness I heard, very clearly, someone saying, ‘Time of death is 17.47.’

Within moments a lifeless body was wheeled past us.

‘Is he … dead?’ Betsy stared with saucer-eyes.

‘A dead person,’ Jeffrey said. ‘Cool.’

He watched the fast-disappearing gurney then he turned back to look at me lying motionless in the bed and the light in his eyes died.

As I walk home from my parents’ house in my ill-fitting and weather-inappropriate clothes, I notice I have a missed call. My head goes funny when I see who it’s from. And he’s left a message.

I shouldn’t listen to it. Clean break, didn’t I decide?

My fingers are trembling as I hit the keys.

And there’s his voice. Just three words. ‘… I miss you …’

If I wasn’t in the street, I’d double over and howl.

I only realize I’m crying when I notice the interested looks I’m getting from passing car drivers. I hurry towards home and pray that I don’t meet anyone I know.

Once I’ve shut the door safely behind me I do what I’ve been doing for – I count back – two months, three weeks and two days: I get on with things.

I check on Ryan’s video. It hasn’t been viewed since I last watched it this morning and nothing new has been added. We could be in the clear here.

Right, I’d better find some summer clothes. Bad and all as I feel, I’m grateful to have a project so that I don’t have to try to write. Sitting in front of that screen, with an empty head, would leave too much room for terrible thoughts to rush up.

I dive into my spare wardrobe and start pulling out the warm-weather stuff I’d brought from New York. How nicely and neatly I’d hung them up! There’s no evidence at all of the distress I was in when I’d unpacked. I’d have expected hangers to be overloaded and at jingle-jangle angles and for sandals and flip-flops to be in a messy pile on the floor. Instead it looks like an ad for an expensive Italian custom-made wardrobe. I’ve no
memory of arranging everything so tidily but it looks like I’d accepted that I really lived here, that this was now my home, maybe for ever.

I’m in a state of shock: I have nothing to wear. None of my New York things fit me. Sometime over the last couple of months, I’ve put on weight. How much exactly, I couldn’t possibly say. There are scales in the bathroom but no way am I standing on them. Anyway, I don’t need to. I have my evidence – nothing fits me.

It’s my … front-piece. Whisper it
 … belly
 … I can hardly even think the word. Mentally I clear my throat and force myself to confront head-on the unpalatable truth: I have a belly. Full-blown.

And I always knew this day would dawn …

After a lifetime of barely containing it, the wretched thing has finally snapped its moorings.

I force myself to stand in front of the only full-length mirror in the house. It’s on the inside of the door of the spare wardrobe and I realize that since I got back to Ireland I haven’t looked at myself in it. Obviously because I don’t have much dealings with my spare clothes.

But that’s not the only reason I haven’t noticed my expansion. I’ve been in denial about myself, about my appearance, about my very existence. I’ve ignored my hair, even though it’s clamouring to be cut, and my nails are bitten and broken, even though Karen keeps offering me free manicures.

I’ve simply got through every twenty-four hours, dealing with the fresh set of challenges that each new day offered to me – money, Jeffrey, the great big hole at the centre of me …

I’ve sort of … shut down. I had to, in order to survive.

Although, I’ve
eaten
a lot for a shut-down person.

Poor Jeffrey. I’d maligned him by thinking he’d shrunk my clothes, when it was my fault all along.

I flick glances at myself. Tiny ones. I can only digest this unpalatable truth in morsels, in little splintered flashes. Is that me? Is that
me
? I look like an egg on legs. A … 
belly
 … on legs.

For the last couple of years I’ve kept the b-word at bay with near-daily running and Pilates and a high-protein eating plan. But my personal-trainer-private-chef life has disappeared and in its place I’ve been given this … front attachment
 … thing
. If I don’t say the name, maybe it will go away. Maybe all it wants is validation and if I ignore it, it’ll eventually slink off and attach itself to another woman who will shower it in attention by grabbing wobbly handfuls and wailing, then immediately dropping to the floor and doing eighteen frantic crunches, then hopping to her feet and Googling How To Get a Flat Tummy in Twenty Minutes.

Yes, I will ignore it. I will carry on as before. I feel calmer now that I have a plan.

Except I still have nothing to wear …

This is a worry.

I won’t be beaten down by this! I am a positive person! And I’m going shopping!

I come home empty-handed and very concerned. I have stumbled over a shocking fact: there is nothing in the shops for a woman of forty-one and a quarter. They don’t make clothes for us. They skip right over my age group. There are sleeveless tops and clingy lurex dresses for the twelve to thirty-nine-year-olds. There are easi-clean trousers with elasticated waists for the sixty-plus gang. But for me, nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

I followed Karen’s lead by trying on ankle-cut skinny jeans and a fancy T-shirt but I looked like an obese schoolboy. Next I went for some tailored linen trousers and looked in the mirror and wondered how Mum had got into the changing room. Then I realized that the person in the mirror was me. Horrors!

No disrespect to Mum. She’s a good-looking woman. For seventy-two. But I’m only forty-one and a quarter and this is not on.

Suddenly I understand why designer clothes are so expensive. Because they’re better cut. Because the fabrics are of a higher quality. I thought I was just paying that extra money for the laugh, so that I could swank around with a DKNY carrier bag, thinking, ‘I’ve made it! And I’ve just proved it by paying two hundred dollars for a plain black skirt that you could get in Zara for a tenner.’

Is this absence of clothing for my generation some sort of plot? To keep us housebound so that our unpalatable ageing will be hidden from the eyes of a youth-centric society? Or to make us spend all our money on lipo? I vow to get to the bottom of it.

As I hurried back to the car park, I cut through a newsagent’s and was mocked by magazine covers, many of them featuring women who each claimed to be ‘Fabulous at 40!’

I stopped in front of one of them. I knew the woman smiling brightly at me; I’d been on her talk show in New York, and let me whisper you something: her ‘Fabulous at 40’ spiel is a tissue of lies. Her face is full of injectables,
full
of them. She’s mentally ill from chronic hunger. And she’s not forty, she’s thirty-six – she’s cannily aligned herself with the monied forty-plus market, branding herself as a skinny, youthful-looking role model. With her every smile and gesture, she conveys,
I am one of you.
But her army of acolytes will never look like
her, no matter how much of her clothing line they buy. It won’t stop them trying, though. And it won’t stop them blaming themselves when they fail.