“We’ll give you a lift, or you can follow us in your car,” said Gareth.
She suddenly realized she still had to change and the idea of being delayed a minute more panicked her into action. She started to run back up the hill.
21
Saturday, August 23
LATER, LAURA WOULD NOT REMEMBER IT AS BEING HER BIRTHDAY—although she’d never have another one without brushing up against that wild terror, a sensation of stopped breathing, of panicked, unasked questions and an overwhelming, animalistic need to be with her son—but she would remember it by the smell of roses. It had been a scent that she loved, but that would soon have the power to plummet her into a dark place. Stooped in the garden, near the fence, she’d been pruning the dead heads away from the new blooms when the phone rang. She distractedly picked it up, still snipping away with the secateurs.
“Hello, can I speak with Mrs. Cavendish, please?”
She remembered being mildly irritated, half-expecting some marketing company who’d gotten hold of her number or the dentist calling to remind her of an annual checkup date.
“Mrs. Cavendish speaking.”
The voice paused a millisecond, and in that moment, it got her attention.
“Mrs. Cavendish, I am a nurse, Nurse Hadley, from Wrexham Maelor Hospital in Wales. I’m afraid I have some bad news about your son.”
22
THE JOURNEY TO WALES WAS AGONIZING. EVERY TRAFFIC LIGHT, EVERYcar hogging the fast lane, not getting out of their way, every time the autocratic highway speed signs flashed at them to slow to sixty, then forty miles an hour, she would move restlessly, angrily in her seat. The physical pull to be next to Daniel was so strong, if they weren’t going as fast as possible, her body started to move itself, as if to make up for it. All the while, Howard sat beside her, driving, a pained expression on his face.
She’d had to call him on the golf course, and to his credit, he answered immediately—she never rang, preferring to leave him to it, knowing she was all but excluded from that side of his life—so perhaps he’d known something was wrong. While he was driving back to her, she threw a few essentials (toothpaste, change of clothes for them both) into a bag, then sat in the hall chair when she wasn’t pacing in frustration. She rushed out as soon as she heard the car pull up outside and he didn’t even have time to switch off the engine before they were back on the road.
The first few minutes of the journey were spent repeating over and over what the nurse had told her, which was very little. “Your son is unconscious after falling from a raft in a white-water-rafting accident.” He was currently “in surgery,” but she couldn’t or, more likely, wouldn’t give any details on why or what, but instead asked them to get there “as soon as they safely could.” When Laura had pressed for details, anything to try to make sense of itall, Nurse Hadley always answered with the same thing: “It’s better that you speak to a doctor when you get here.” Although Laura understood why, she felt a deep hatred for her at one point, so desperate was she for clarity and reassurance.
“He’s obviously hit his head,” said Howard.
“You think so?” said Laura, although deep down she also believed the same thing, she just didn’t want to admit it.
He nodded.
“And the surgery?” Laura’s voice trembled.
Howard didn’t say anything at first, as they both knew that whichever way you looked at it, this was bad. “We don’t know yet,” he said gently.
Laura saw him glance at the GPS again and shared his anxiety at the time. Two hours to go, with an estimated arrival of 5:07 p.m. She looked at her watch, where two hours on registered 5:05; she could be with Daniel a whole two minutes earlier, she thought, before realizing what a ridiculous notion that was. Two hours was two hours, her watch was just a bit slow. They said the accident had happened at 10:15 a.m., and so Daniel would have been almost the entire day without his family by the time they arrived. Thinking this made her almost shake with a sense of neglect. What if he was waiting for her, for someone to hold his hand? What if the presence of her or Howard at the hospital would make a difference to his surgery? Howard, in a rare moment of tenderness, rested a hand on hers.
“He’s in the best place and they’ll be looking after him. And they’ll call. They’ll call,” he emphasized, meaning with good or bad news. Anything significant.
It was at this point that Laura realized he wasn’t dressed in his golf clothes, meaning that he’d either changed after she’d called, which seemed highly unlikely considering the urgency, or he hadn’t been at golf at all. She didn’t answer, just squeezed his thumb, an acknowledgment she’d heard.
* * *
They were led into a small room, a consultation room that Laura sensed had been used to tell a lot of people bad news, to ask them to make difficult decisions, maybe occasionally toimpart something joyful. It felt like a room that had a burden to it. She and Howard stared at the walls, the safety posters, the help lines, and the vase of surprisingly real, fresh flowers on the table. They were waiting in silence for the doctor to come and speak to them, having exhausted what little they could squeeze out of what they already knew.
There had been no sign of Cherry.
The door opened and Laura started. In walked two doctors. Laura urgently scanned the face of the one who led—a kindly, bright Asian woman—trying to read it for news.
“Mr. and Mrs. Cavendish,” the doctor said, indicating the chairs, “thank you for coming so quickly.”
Neither sat. “Where is he? Can we see him?” asked Laura.
“Very soon, of course. And I know you’re anxious to.” She indicated the chairs again and they lowered themselves into them, as did the doctors.
“I’m Dr. Raina, the neurosurgeon, and this is Dr. Kennedy, the anesthetist.” She indicated the man on her right, a gangly redhead who smiled at her. “We’ve been looking after your son since he came into hospital this morning. Daniel suffered a head injury when he was white-water rafting this morning. After investigation, we found it had led to a subdural hematoma, which is a bleed on his brain. We took him into surgery immediately and successfully removed the buildup of fluid.”
