“Sadie, Sadie. Wake up.”
The gentle pressure of someone touching my shoulder rouses me. I rub the tiredness from my eyes and blink, trying to focus and recalibrate my brain into remembering where I am. My eyes feel gritty and my mouth is awfully dry. I mustn’t have been out of it for that long, just long enough for someone to have filled my head with sand.
Squinting, I look about the room. The blind is drawn and a nurse stands beside the bed, pointing a small torch toward the floor. Her face is calm, yet super serious, and it makes me worry. A baby is crying. That makes me worry more.
“What time is it?” I ask, shuffling up in the bed. My entire body is aching. I must have strained every muscle possible giving birth. Even my eyelashes are hurting.
“About three.” She confirms the time on the watch at her breast. I’ve never actually seen one of those watches in real life. I thought they were something from movies.
“Is it time to feed the baby?”
The nurse’s face is soft, caring, but she shakes her head. “Not yet. You need to come with me. There’s been an accident.”
I sit bolt upright. My body tenses with fear. “Not my baby?”
“Shhh. No. He’s fine. He’s in the nursery. The night girls are in love with him already, little monkey. You’ll have to fight them to get him back.”
But she said something was wrong. If it’s not the baby then what?
“I don’t understand.”
“There was an accident,” the nurse repeats.
It’s now I feel the blood drain from my face. Suddenly, my heart is thudding in my chest, it’s trying to leap out of my throat. I’m cold. So cold. I begin to shiver. I hear my voice, a mere squeak, asking if it’s Nicholas. He should have been here by now, his message said he was on the way but that was ages ago. It’s hard to know if I’m actually speaking my ears are ringing so.
“It’s Mr Lawson,” the nurse confirms. “We weren’t sure to begin with. He had no ID on him. The police went through the contacts on his phone and your name came up in the recent calls. Luckily, admissions was able to put two and two together.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t swallow. I am going to die. “Is he alive?”
“He’s in ICU.”
“How long’s he been there?”
“A few hours. He was unconscious when he came in and the doctors took him straight into surgery but he’s awake now. He’s asking for you.”
All this time Nicholas needed me and I was lying here eating sandwiches in the dark and drinking cups of tea. I was planning what I’d wear for the baby’s christening, for Christ sake. How did I not know? We’re meant to be soul mates. How could I not know Nicholas was hurt? I throw back the bed covers and swing my legs onto the floor. “Take me to him.”
“Sadie, slow down. You’ll be no good to Nicholas if you burst your stitches and can’t walk.”
She’s right, of course.
“Let’s get a dressing gown on and I’ll take you to see him.”
I swipe the nurse’s hand away and grab my dressing gown from the end of the bed. “Fuck the stitches. I need to see Nicholas now. I need to tell him I didn’t mean it. I need to show him our baby. Nicholas is meant to help me choose a name.” I’m darting hysterically round the room, grabbing my hairbrush and ripping it through my hair. I’m searching for socks because in my panic to pack I forgot any type of footwear other than the sneakers I had on when I got here. “I want the baby. Get me the baby.”
“Sadie, calm down.”
“I can’t. I have to get to Nicholas now. Don’t you understand?”
By this time Emily has woken up and is stretching her cricked neck side to side. In the semidarkness she looks from the nurse to me. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Nicholas. He’s hurt.” I open the door to my room.
“Sadie! Come back. You don’t know where you’re going.”
I stop. Fucking shitty, shit, shit. Why does everyone else have to be my voice of reason?
“Well, hurry up then.”
The nurse brings a wheelchair and I flop into it for the second time in twenty four hours. This time I don’t care who sees me. I grip Emily’s hand as we head along the corridor and down in the elevator to Intensive Care. All I want is to be with Nicholas and tell him I love him.
*****
The Intensive Care Unit is deathly quiet, possibly because most of the people in it are near death but I’m trying not to think about that. Nicholas is alive and that’s all that matters.
Before I’m allowed to see him I have to have an inane conversation with a doctor. I don’t care about his injuries now, there’s plenty of time for talk later. All I want is to be with Nicholas. I have to be with Nicholas.
“Nicholas was hit by a car that lost control on the wet road,” the doctor tells us.
I tap my fingers against the arm of the wheelchair.
“We haven’t been able to piece the story together as yet but there’s been no rain for weeks. The first rains always make the road slippery. The driver, a girl in her first year of driving, is distraught. She’s down in emergency at the moment.”
She’ll be worse than distraught if I get hold of her. Nobody should be driving at speeds so fast they send someone else’s body flying through traffic on impact.
The doctor continues, “Nicholas has extensive internal injuries. We’ve operated to control the bleeding around the heart and lungs but the next twenty-four hours are crucial. He’s lost a lot of blood, so we’re giving him a transfusion. He also has multiple lacerations to his head and body. I’m concerned about brain trauma. Prepare yourself, he’s pretty banged up. Try not to look too surprised. We don’t want to alarm him.”
I nod slowly. This can’t be happening. It can’t.
“Will he be okay?”
“As I said, the next twenty-four hours are crucial but…”
I swallow. Bile rises in my throat. I cannot lose Nicholas.
There’s one visitor allowed on the ward at a time, so Emily waits in the waiting room while the doctor wheels me through a heavy set of double doors and past a nurses station. As we wheel along the row of cubicles, each with its own bed, the curtains separating them billow behind us. They’re that awful cabbage green colour they make curtains in hospitals, and for some reason I find myself wondering why they couldn’t have made them a prettier shade. Nicholas likes blue. Why can’t the curtains be blue?
God, this place is awful. It’s depressing. I have to get Nicholas out of here.
The doctor pauses at the end of the row. There’s a bed and I can see Nicholas’ feet under the white cover of the blanket. He’s very still. A huge desk masks the rest of him from my view. A nurse, wearing baggy green scrubs, is writing something on the chart. She looks over at me and smiles. “I’ll give you two some space. Do you want me to take the baby?”
Stupid question. I hug the baby to me.
“It’s fine. He wants to meet his daddy.” Slowly, I raise myself from the chair.
The doctor whispers, “I know you want to talk to him, Sadie, but take it easy. He needs rest. A lot of it.”
“Okay.” I nod again and walk slowly toward the head of the bed where I collapse into a chair. The act of walking is tiring so soon after giving birth, it seems.
Then we are alone. Well, apart from the beeping and weeping and the quiet shuffling of the nurses.
I place my hand on Nicholas’ forehead, smoothing his brow. I study his face. It’s black and blue near his temple and they’ve shaved off some of his hair to stitch up one of the lacerations. His lip is swollen. I want to kiss it better but I fear I’ll hurt him.
Oh Nicholas, my darling Nicholas.
His eyelids flutter and open. “Sadie?”
“It’s me. Shhh. Rest. The doctor says you have to rest.” I lean a little closer and take his hand in mine. Gently, I lift it to the bump on my chest, placing it on the baby’s head. “It’s our baby, Nicholas. He came early but he’s here and he wants to say hi to his daddy.”
“Show me.”
I unstrap the baby from my chest and place him gently in the crook of Nicholas’ arm. I cover them both with the blanket. Oh, to be there right now. In the bed with him. If only we could go back to yesterday morning where we were cuddled up in bed with me in that very same position. “You okay? It’s not hurting?” I ask.
“Not at all.” Nicholas looks down at his son and his eyes fill with tears. “He’s beautiful.”
“He’s like you. So,” I say as brightly as I can, “I’ve been thinking about names.”
Nicholas turns his head to face me and as I entertain him with all the silly names Emily and I came up with during my labour, I see him smile. A little. It’s his Nicholas smile, the one I love.
“Was it hard?” he asks.
“What? Choosing names?”
“The labour, you dope.”
“Brutal. I swore like a bitch.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
“It’s okay. You were tied up at the time. And Emily distracted me by attempting the breathing thing. Hashtag no freaking idea.” I kiss the corner of his lips. I feel their warmth and softness. I feel every inch of love he has for me pouring from them. “Is it cool if we call the baby Joel for his middle name?”
He squeezes my hand. “Sounds like a plan. He is both of our best friends. We can’t let wonder boy get offended thinking we’ve forgotten him.”
“And I want to name the baby after you. Without the Clayton part, so he’ll be Nicholas Joel Lawson. We can call him Nicky or Nick.”
He squeezes my hand again. I see pain in his eyes as he attempts to swallow. “Sadie?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean any of it. It’s not your fault.”
I put a finger to his lips. “I know. I’m sorry, too.”
“If something happens, I want you to go with Joel. He loves you. He always loved you. He’ll look after you.”
“Nothing is going to happen. Apart from the fact that you’re going to get well and we’re going to get married. You promised you’d never leave me.”
“I’m trying hard to keep that promise.”
“I love you, Nicholas.”
He sucks in a ragged breath. I can see he’s tiring. “I… I loved you… from the first moment… I laid eyes on you. I… never wanted… anyone… the way… I want you.”
“Rest,” I whisper.
“I could never… love anyone else… Come here…” I lean forward over his body. My lips are so close to his I can feel the heat from them.
“Closer,” he whispers.
Then he kisses me full on the mouth. I know it hurts him. I can see the agony on his face when we separate, but I feel the love too, a tremendous love that I’ll never let go of.
We sit for a while after that. I take the baby and reposition him on my chest to keep him warm. I hold Nicholas’ hand while he dozes. I kiss his eyelids in turn and smooth his hair from his brow. I run my finger along his cuts, willing them to heal. And I pray. I’ve never been one for praying, so I hope God understands.
In the time that follows, I whisper everything I ever wanted to say. I tell Nicholas how much I love him. I tell him about the blinding desire I feel for him, how he made me physically quiver the first time he kissed me. I tell him how hard it was for me to leave that time at the lighthouse and then how hard it was to begin our relationship again, knowing that one day I’d hurt him. I never dreamt I’d hurt him like this, though. I tell him how I almost fainted that day in the office when I found out he was my boss, how damn hot he looked. The tears streak down my face as I remind him about the day we held hands in public for the first time, when I found out I was pregnant and when he asked me to marry him. And as I sit and talk hours drag on and I feel his hand go cold in mine. I know it’s over.
Nicholas is gone.