Eileen Brennan looked at her son’s face. They had removed the tape from his eyes. That was something, she thought. A gesture to be hopeful about.
She was holding his hand once more, clasping it with both hers, frightened it would be taken away from her. And talking. Incessantly. Telling him all the things she hadn’t been able to say to him when he had been around, all the things she had kept inside, decided not to share, thinking there would be another time to do so, a later time, a better time. But the events of the last couple of days had changed her.
‘And … and I’m telling you all this because … ’ A sigh. ‘Because. Because I should say them to you. Before it’s too late. There were things I wanted to say to Don, should have said to Don … ’ She drifted, her eyes watery glass. ‘And now, now I never will … ’ Another sigh. ‘So … there is no better time. There is no time. There’s only now … ’
She kept talking, kept clasping his hand. Telling him about her husband. His father. Don.
‘I met him by chance, you know. And I didn’t like him. Not at first. I didn’t like policemen, see. I was a social worker then, properly political, militant you’d probably say now. We thought they were the enemy. And they could be at times. But not all the time. And not all of them. I thought he was at first. All cocky, Jack Regan, throwing his weight around.’ She laughed, eyes no longer in the room. ‘He said he was just doing it to impress me. Told me that years later. Thought it would be the kind of thing I’d go for. Didn’t know me at all well … ’
She drifted off. Lost in memories. Came back again.
‘Kept asking me out. Eventually I said yes, just to shut him up. And he was different. To what he had been, to the others too. Softer, gentler. Talked about his work, about the things he’d seen. Some of the problem families he’d dealt with, the things he wished he’d been able to do but couldn’t. To put things right. I liked him … ’
She smiled at the memory, clung to it, instead of facing the present.
‘And then we … ’
Phil’s eyes moved. Eileen missed it.
‘We started to see each other regularly. And I knew. He was the one. The one for me … ’
Phil’s eyes moved again. Flickered back and forth beneath his eyelids.
This time Eileen noticed.
‘No … no … ’
She looked round to see if there was a nurse in sight. Not a seizure, an attack. She couldn’t bear that.
His eyes kept moving. His body moved too. Shoulders lifting up, dropping, as if he didn’t have the energy to move fully.
‘Phil … ’ Eileen didn’t know what to do. She held on to his hand. ‘No, don’t … don’t go, I’ve got so much more to say to you … ’
Then his eyes opened. Fully.
Eileen stared.
‘Phil?’
She watched as they focused, flinched from the light in the room, closed again.
‘Phil?’
And opened once more. Slowly this time, cautiously.
‘Phil?’
He saw her now. Smiled.
‘Phil … ’
The tears sprang from Eileen’s eyes, ran down her cheeks. A nearby nurse hurried in.
But Eileen didn’t notice.
She had her son back.