“I’ll be honest with you, Cherry, you look a state. Go home, have a bath, and get some rest. In fact, why don’t you take some time out. When’s the last time you had a proper break?”
“What do you mean?”
“A week away. A change of scene. Some time when you don’t think about Daniel.”
“I always think about him.”
Laura began to get irritated and could feel her compassion wearing thin.
“For heaven’s sake, get yourself some sun. Take a holiday or something. Daniel will no doubt be in the same state when you get back.”
“Do you think?”
Laura reluctantly nodded.
Cherry gave her a watery smile. “I think you might be right. I could do with getting away.”
Laura nodded again, then stood. “Good-bye, Cherry.”
“Good-bye, Laura.”
* * *
Cherry watched her leave, and when Laura had disappeared down the road, Cherry decided to get a chocolate brownie from the counter. After all, she had something to celebrate. The truthwas, she was exhausted. Exhausted from visiting, from waiting, from wondering. She wasn’t sleeping well, and the doctor had prescribed some Zopiclone, which had helped at first, but the pills left her listless. At first, just after the accident, she’d missed Daniel terribly. He’d become such a big part of her life and they’d spent so much time together, but then, after a while, the sadness spread beyond him. She was also feeling a terrible loss for her new life, for their—her—future.
Things had changed rapidly since the accident. There were no more dinners at nice restaurants, no staying in his swanky flat. She winced every time she thought of that beautiful, expensive place going to waste, empty with no one to enjoy it. She’d even had to give the car back the day Howard returned from Wales. He’d phoned her at the office and asked her to park it outside his house and drop the keys through the letterbox. Christmas had been utterly miserable. Wendy had invited her back to Croydon and it had been just the two of them around the fold-up table with a turkey crown and paper hats, which she had removed at the earliest opportunity.
Every time she saw Daniel, she urged him to hurry up and get out of his coma so they could be together again, continue with the life she’d planned for them. But more than five long months had passed, and so far, nothing had changed. Cherry had religiously visited him twice a week, every week, when she could quite easily have made excuses not to—but she hadn’t—and the vigil was beginning to take its toll. She started to wonder how long she would be expected to stay girlfriend to a man who couldn’t respond to her in any shape or form. She was young; she had plans; and the longer she sat by that bedside, the more she wondered what other opportunities were drifting away. She’d planned on getting engaged in about four months’ time, a year since she’d met Daniel, and if that didn’t happen, which it didn’t look like it would, then she’d have to start all over again. When she thought like this, she fell into an agitated despair, mourning what could have been.
It was made worse by the fact that work wasn’t going too welllately. She was too clever for it, and it bored her. She had to work extra hard to keep up her agent’s persona, but she felt trapped. She couldn’t leave, because if she didn’t have a job, she’d lose her flat and Croydon loomed. She could look for another position, but she’d only been there a year and it wouldn’t look good on her résumé. What she was desperate for was a break, a chance to rest, take stock, get a new perspective on things. She’d saved a bit and could book something cheap, a last-minute trip. But she hadn’t wanted to disappear on a two-week holiday to Mexico and come back all tanned and relaxed, because she didn’t want Laura thinking she was callous. Now, however, she had permission. She smiled. The tears had come at the right time.
26
Tuesday, February 24
TWO WEEKS LATER, LAURA GOT A PHONE CALL FROM THE NURSINGhome. Her heart was hammering, but the doctor’s message was not the one she’d been hoping for.
“Mrs. Cavendish, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
“What’s happened?”
“I’m afraid Daniel’s no longer able to breathe unaided. He’s been readmitted to the hospital and they’ve had to put him on the ventilator.”
Her world crashed yet again.
* * *
She was first to the hospital. The specialist, Dr. Murray, came to speak to her immediately and explained that at 9:20 a.m. Daniel had stopped breathing; as a consequence, he suffered a cardiac arrest. The team had successfully resuscitated him, but he was now back on a ventilator. Howard arrived in the middle of it all and she listened to the report again, the words digging like knives in her heart. It was as if Daniel, after all this time, was slipping away, but she couldn’t understand why.
“What caused it?” she asked Dr. Murray. Laura was desperate to make sense of the change.
“He’s contracted pneumonia. I’m afraid that patients who are in his condition are highly susceptible to it.”
Laura lashed out from distress and frustration. “He can’t be perfectly fine one day and the next get pneumonia and have a heart attack. It doesn’t make sense!”
Dr. Murray remained patient. “Mrs. Cavendish, he’s not perfectly fine. He’s in a coma. It’s often difficult, or impossible, to predict the outcome of such an injury.”
It didn’t satisfy her. She felt as if she’d taken her eye off the ball, just routinely visiting and waiting, hoping. She should have beendoingsomething.
