I don’t see Daisy until she enters the room to carry out her observations the next morning. At first, she is blurry. My gaze has been fixed on the middle distance, my eyes are swollen, and my glasses are smudged from several days without a polish and from the debris that comes with keeping your fists balled into your eye sockets. Wordlessly, Daisy places a box of tissues on the stand next to the bed and begins her rounds by straightening the cover over Maggie.
“Do you know that Maggie knows when you are here?”
“I doubt it,” I say, immediately hating my own cynicism.
“Really, Frank, she does.”
“I hope so,” I say, trying to summon a smile this time, but the corners of my mouth remain resolutely tight.
“I see it in the readings that are taken at night, once you’ve dropped off to sleep. Everything is a little lower—her heart rate, oxygen flow. She wants to be back with you. Whatever you have to say, she clearly wants to hear it.”
“It’s hard.” I try to swallow as it strikes me that I have yet to get anywhere close to the difficult bit. With Mags, it has always been so easy to be blinded by the positives.
“I know. No one ever said otherwise.”
“How do you do this?”
“What? The job?”
I nod.
“Yeah. I’d say it’s hard too.” I catch Daisy’s eye before her gaze moves to the window. She looks exhausted: some of her hair has escaped from its elastic band and frizzes at her hairline; her previously impeccably pressed scrubs have a network of creases daggered down their back. “You see some terrible things. Course you do. But there are some brilliant weeks too. The recoveries. You have to remember them when it’s tough, or you wouldn’t last long around here.”
I am too scared to ask whether I will be one of the lucky ones, the sort that gets the patient home and pretends this was all a bad, bad dream.
“Thank you.” My voice comes out quietly, but it is enough to stall Daisy as she heads for the door. “For everything, Daisy. And you were right, about the talking. I mean, I don’t know if she hears, but I hope she can. There’s so much I should have said already.”
“We all feel that way, Frank, but you’re lucky you have still got time. You’ve got the time to say what you need.”
How much time, though? Enough for me to get there, to explain myself in full? To let Maggie know that my silence had nothing to do with her? No, it never could have done. It was about me, my failings. How I let her down. The fact that she could never forgive me for that.
“You all right there?” Daisy goes to separate one of the cardboard sick bowls from the stack on her trolley. “Frank? Here.” Daisy passes one over and lays a hand between my shoulder blades. “You’re going to be OK, Frank. You and Maggie both. Don’t stop now.”
The cardboard feels rough and grainy in my hands, its woody smell doing nothing to settle my stomach.
“I can’t,” I mumble.
“You can, Frank. If anyone can, you can. You will get her back, and you will get her home, and you will take good care of our Maggie. I know it.”
That was always the plan.
You were three months along when you told me. You had eaten something bad and spent a night vomiting, rendering your pill ineffectual. For some reason, you hadn’t thought the incident bad enough to warrant some additional protection. I remember being pretty unsure of what they had been teaching you at nursing college, but I bit my tongue regardless.
We decided to tell our families of the engagement but held off on news of the pregnancy while we found a place of our own and worked out how quickly we could get a registry office to take us. You ended up falling for the first flat we saw, something about the light and the way it fell in the living room. The minute the estate agent stepped outside, on the pretense of checking the parking meter, you spun around, arms spread wide, and declared it our home. I nearly balked when I saw the size of the deposit on the rental agreement, but then I caught a glimpse of you, running your fingertip along the windowsill in that very same light, and all my doubts dissipated. I signed on the dotted line. We would move in a month later.
In all honesty, I was mainly happy to be out of my poky single room and catapulting into a life with you, Maggie. I’ll never forget how, in advance of our moving day, you led us on a quick-fire tour of the charity shops of Oxford, on the hunt for the cheapest and cheeriest furniture we could find. We took that sofa missing a back cushion on the proviso you would make a replacement yourself, and a kitchen table so old that it might have seen the Industrial Revolution. They never did get the renovations you promised, did they? Dare I say it, I grew quite fond of them as they were.
Our first night in the flat was perfect. Two beanbags, a large pizza, and a six-pack of that disgusting orangeade you had been craving for the past few weeks. In the corner, the one item we had unpacked so far: a cactus with tiny pink flowers that I had bought you on one of our earliest dates at the Botanic Gardens. “Short and spiky. Like me,” you’d said. We had been so busy moving in the boxes that you fell asleep mid-slice, one hand sprawled out in the direction of the spines. I tucked your abandoned crusts back in the box, cleared some space, and shifted my beanbag so we could fall asleep under the uncovered duvet together. I could replay that night on a loop forever, Mags, I really could.
The next morning you were up and at the unpacking before I had so much as rubbed the grit from my eyes. You were in your element as you set about making the flat a home, and I thought it best to leave you to it. Do you know, Mags, that to this day that is my greatest regret? Leaving you to it? God knows you were—are—the vision of competence, but at that stage? I should have known better.
After tightening the odd handle and oiling some hinges, I could sense my aimless standing about was getting in your way and on your nerves. With my stomach growling, I set off for some interim supplies. I can’t have been gone long. Long enough, though. When I think back now, I wonder when exactly it was that I realized something was wrong. When you didn’t get the doorbell? When I couldn’t see you in the sitting room? Whatever it was, it was the quiet that confirmed it.
“Mags! Mags! I’m back. I’ve got stuff for tea and toast—shall we have it now? Mags, where are you?” I go from room to room, popping my head round the door frames. Upstairs, the bathroom door is locked. I knock, quietly.
Silence.
“Mags, are you in there? Is everything OK?”
Silence.
I’ve never been a door-barging type of man, and I’m not going to start now, however terrified I might be. After a few seconds, I hear the bar of the lock being drawn back. Slowly, cautiously, I inch the door forward.
You are sitting on the toilet seat, tights bunched around your knees, your head in your hands. You don’t look at me. I follow your gaze. Crimson against the crisp white of the floor tiles: a pool of blood.
You don’t say a word. Not then. Not for three days. Your silence is louder than any scream could ever be.
I run the bath. You offer no resistance as I strip off your clothes, leaving them in a pile to soak up the soiled reminder of what we have lost. Your naked body is as limp as a rag doll as I scoop you up, one hand around your torso, one under your thighs, and carry you, childlike, into the tub. In the cruelest twist of fate, you have become my baby. I run only a small amount of water, fearful that you cannot, or will not, hold your head up and will drown if I so much as blink. There is still a small orange blotch on your sternum where some of the tomato sauce from last night’s dinner fell short of your mouth. I have to rub hard with my thumb to remove it, but you don’t register it at all.
I am out of my depth. Should I call a doctor? Can I do that without your permission? My only reassurance is that this is, or was, your area of expertise. You must have seen women like this before, you must know what needs to be done.
Kneeling at the side of the tub, I use my hands to scoop the warm water over your body, watching as the first clear palmfuls turn increasingly rosy. You have yet to unpack any towels, so, when the water begins to feel tepid, I lift you from the bath and wrap you in the sheet from the single bedroom. Cloaked in the bobbly white cotton, you could be a child playing dress-up as a bride, your dainty features dwarfed by an event that feels too adult for us to bear.
I get you to bed and close the curtains. In the darkness, I can see you curled in the fetal position, your back to me. When I am certain you will not move, I tiptoe into the hallway in search of your handbag. I have thought no further than that I must find Edie. Her number is in your address book, tucked, as I had hoped it would be, in the inside pouch. We have yet to meet our downstairs neighbors, but I need a phone and my awkwardness pales in comparison to my need.
Thankfully, they are in. My distress must be obvious, because the surly-looking kid who answers waves me right through to the hallway. Edie does not pick up on the first few rings. I can feel a knot of anxiety tightening in my bowels. There is no plan B.
At last . . . “Hello?”
“Edie, it’s me, it’s Frank. Can you get here as soon as possible?”
“What is it, Frank, what’s wrong?”
“It’s the baby, Maggie, she . . .”
I don’t know how I will say it, but Edie knows.
“I’m leaving now, Frank, go sit with her. Leave the front door open.”
When Edie arrives, I am on the edge of the mattress, tentatively stroking your hair. Some of the strands have dried crisp and dark. Edie gets into bed, next to your shrouded body. There is something about the intimacy of the moment that leaves me feeling as if I am trespassing, and I go back to the bathroom, on the pretense of cleaning. Should that have been me, Mags? Did I let you down? I’m sorry, so sorry if I did.
Edie finds me perched on the side of the bathtub, halfheartedly scrubbing at the rusty marks along the waterline.
“We’re going to take Maggie to the maternity unit. I’ve got a friend on duty who should be able to take her quickly. She’s getting dressed now, then I’ll drive us all down.”
I do not know if she is including me to be nice, out of pity, perhaps. Then again, it is my loss too.
There is fresh hell in you being taken to the ward you shouldn’t have been admitted to for another few months, in seeing all the new mothers being wheeled to their cars, their eyes sunken with exhaustion but somehow still beaming with delight. You keep your eyes on your shoes, but I still see you wince with each newborn’s cry.
For the procedure, you go in alone. Edie and I sit, outside, an empty chair where you waited between us.
“You will still be there for her, won’t you, Frank?”
“Of course.”
“The wedding . . .”
“I still want to marry her.”
“I know—it’s just . . . the timing. Ten days?”
I nod. “I’ll wait as long as it takes, though.”
“You’re a good man, Frank. She knows that.”
I hope desperately that what Edie says is true. I can’t stand to lose you too.
When you emerge, you look as if you have shrunk. Your coat hangs off one shoulder; the hollows of your cheeks are more sunken than before. The doctor gestures to Edie but, oddly, I don’t feel affronted. All I want to do is to be with you. I wrap an arm around your shoulders, shepherding you back to the car.
I only notice that you are crying when we reach the main entrance. Your body slips from under my arm, bent double and shaking. It is just us two.
I didn’t say anything then. Not that night, not in the days just after. This wasn’t about me. I was terrified of making things worse. I always have been. It’s paralyzing, Mags, it really is. If I had my time again? Yes, I would do it differently. There was so much I wanted to say, so much that I should have said. “It’s not your fault” would have been a very good place to start.