A harsh and repetitive noise pierces Annabel’s consciousness; it sounds like something one might hear at an airport, going through security. She is sluggish to wake up and then confused about where she is. She is not at the airport, she is at the hospital. But who is she with? Jarrod or Daniel? Jarrod, of course; Daniel was discharged earlier in the day. Annabel sits up in the pull-out bed. How could she forget where she is? She’s been in this same room, sleeping on this same thin mattress, for two long weeks. What’s different is that she has never found it so difficult to wake up. The beeping is coming from Jarrod’s monitors, red lights flashing to the same insistent beat. She rushes to him, the floor cool beneath her bare feet. His hand twitches when she takes it in hers.
‘You’re coming back to us,’ she whispers, her other hand reaching to stroke his face.
The door flies open and two nurses rush in. Annabel steps back to allow them access.
‘I think he’s waking up,’ she murmurs.
One of them lifts Jarrod’s hand to take his pulse, the other rolls back his eyelids and shines her torch into his pupils. Neither of them acknowledges that Annabel has spoken. She realises that they didn’t even hear her. They press buttons on the monitors, their movements quick, their voices urgent as they relay various readings. Annabel feels the beginnings of fear.
‘Paging Dr Chan. Paging Dr Chan.’
Dr Chan is the neurosurgeon who inserted the tube into Jarrod’s ventricle, to drain fluid and relieve the pressure. Has something gone wrong with the tube? Is more surgery required? She needs to sit down; she can no longer trust her legs to bear her weight. She half falls on to the pull-out bed, the bedclothes thrown back from when she scrambled out only moments before.
‘What’s happening?’ she rasps. ‘Can someone please tell me what’s happening?’
Finally, they hear her. They glance at each other – wordlessly deciding who will answer – before the older one approaches, crouching down so she’s at Annabel’s level. She’s about Annabel’s age, hair scraped into a bun, her face compassionate.
‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Harris. We think he’s having another bleed. Help is on the way.’
Before she has finished speaking, the door bursts open again. Two more staff in green scrubs, doctors of some description. Terse questions and replies. More fiddling with the monitors. Now they’re doing something to the bed.
‘We’re just taking him down for an MRI so we can see what’s happening,’ the nurse explains breathlessly. She has left Annabel on her own again and now she is unplugging equipment from the sockets behind the bed. ‘Dr Chan is on his way.’
The wobble in her voice gives her away; she is scared that Dr Chan will not get here in time.
‘One, two, three.’
On ‘three’ the bed and associated equipment are mobilised and manoeuvred out of the room. Annabel goes to follow them. Then realises she has no shoes on her feet. Echoes of the day when Jarrod was admitted, and she was about to hop into the police car barefoot. Have they come full circle? Is this the end of what started that day two weeks ago?
She searches the floor for the sandals she was wearing before going to bed. Slips them on her feet and – quite bizarrely – decides to straighten the bedclothes and plump the pillow. She stifles a sob. The rattle in the nurse’s voice, the haste at which Jarrod was wheeled from the room, the fact that Dr Chan would only have stumbled out of bed minutes ago and would be in transit, at best – all of these things, as well as her own gut instinct, are telling her this may be her last time sleeping on this pull-out bed, in this room.
The MRI is undertaken in the medical imaging department on the ground floor, and the emergency surgery that follows happens in one of the theatres on the fifth floor. Between Jarrod and Daniel, she is an expert on all the different floors and facilities at the hospital. Annabel sits rigidly in her seat while she waits for news. She doesn’t look at her phone or the pile of dated magazines that are within reach on the coffee table. The only thing she checks is the time. 2.17 a.m.: she imagines Jemma, Daniel and Mia sleeping in their beds at home, blissfully oblivious to what’s unfolding. 2.34 a.m.: she’s reliving those early, heady days with Jarrod. Feeling the heat of his eyes as they rest on her during class. Standing close together at the lockers, breath mingling, fireworks going off in her chest. 2.51 a.m.: she is back in the ICU room, visualising an entirely different scenario, one where Jarrod wakes up and gazes lovingly into her eyes. 3.02 a.m.: over an hour has passed since the monitors went crazy, indicating an increase in intracranial pressure and possibly another bleed. 3.17 a.m.: someone familiar is coming towards her. He’s wearing scrubs and his sallow skin is pale and etched with exhaustion: Dr Chan.
He sits down next to her and takes both her hands in his. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Harris. I’m so very sorry.’