Thirty-Five

Before her evening surgery, Ruth went up to the hospital.

Although the neurology department was housed in the modern wing, ITU was, conversely, in the oldest part: a muddled jumble of buildings closer to the town centre. Parking was a nightmare at the best of times, so Ruth was forced to park on the pavement opposite, and hope that she would not be given a ticket.

Consequently she went inside in a hurry, anxious simply to check on Caroline Devlin’s progress with the ward staff. But as she came out of the lift on the fourth floor she spotted Martin Devlin, sitting beneath a huge garish abstract print of depressing blues; his elbows were resting on his knees. As she walked towards him, he looked up.

‘Hello, Martin,’ Ruth said. She stopped opposite him.

‘Hello,’ he mumbled grudgingly.

‘How long have you been here?’

‘An hour.’

‘Is your uncle here?’

‘Coming later.’

She sat down on the other end of the bench. ‘You must be going to university in a month or so,’ she said.

‘Polytechnic,’ he muttered. ‘I was going to Polytechnic.’

‘But you’re still going?’

He looked up at her. ‘Why don’t you just push off?’ he said.

Ruth drew back. ‘I came to see how your mother is.’

‘What do you care?’

She stood up, hesitating a long moment. ‘Do you mind if I go in?’

‘Do what you like.’

Glancing back at him, Ruth went on to ITU.

There were only three patients there: Caroline on one side of the ward, an elderly woman and a middle-aged man on the other. The small unit was full of muted sound: the constant buzz and bleep of monitors, the voices of the staff. Alongside the male patient sat a woman in her fifties, her eyes closed.

Ruth studied Caroline. She was hardly recognizable as the woman Ruth had known. Her hair was tied in a plait on her shoulder; her hands lay on the sheet on either side of her. Without make-up, she looked considerably older, her face slightly swollen, and the ventilator tube taped to the side of her mouth. Ruth glanced over at the ward station, where the nurse’s shift was in the process of changing.

She was surprised to observe Martin standing directly behind her.

‘What I can’t understand,’ he said in a soft monotonous tone, ‘is that … you see that woman over there? What is she … seventy? Maybe eighty? And there’s my mother, fifty-two. She’s twenty, thirty years younger than this other woman, and yet she’s here …’

‘Martin,’ Ruth said. ‘I really did all I could.’

He turned to stare at her. ‘That why you came here—to tell me that?’

‘No. But I hope you can believe it.’

He looked at the floor.

‘It isn’t anyone’s fault, Martin,’ Ruth said. ‘An awful lot can be done for coronary patients, but there are a certain proportion who simply die from the first attack, from the first sign.’

‘That’s just it,’ he said. ‘She had pain in her chest a lot of times, but she didn’t think it was important. She always thought other people were more important.’

Ruth did not reply.

‘Is it worth it?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry … is what worth it?’

He was staring down at his hands. ‘Getting involved with everyone. She worried about everyone,’ he said. ‘I never got it … never. Why’d she bother about these people, all these neurotic people? Why did she bother? What use was it?’ he continued almost to himself. ‘Look where she ended up.’

He glanced up towards his mother. ‘She always said you had to be part of other people,’ he said. ‘That’s rubbish, isn’t it? What do other people care—what is it to do with them? People don’t give a shit—that’s what I think. Not really. You have to get on by yourself. By yourself.’

Ruth could not think of an answer.

‘She always wanted to talk to me, and I just didn’t want to talk back,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t stick this talking all the time. I mean, you get on with things by yourself a lot faster. I didn’t want her always interfering …’

He put his hands to his face, his voice breaking. Ruth looked at the floor and wished fervently that he would not start to cry.

‘You must try to be strong,’ she said.

He looked up immediately. ‘Why?’ he said, his face tear-stained and reddening. ‘Why must I be strong? I don’t want to be fucking strong! I want her back!’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘You don’t know!’ he shouted. ‘When did you ever care about anyone?’

‘I do care,’ Ruth said.

‘You doctors are all the same. I know what you are.’

The nurse hurried to their side. ‘Would you move along the corridor, please, if you want to talk,’ she said.

Ruth took Martin’s arm. She managed to steer him twenty yards away. ‘We do have hearts, like anyone else,’ she murmured. ‘But if I wept over every patient, where would I be? How could I do my job?’

Martin wrenched his arm away.

‘I really do hope …’

‘Do you?’ he demanded. ‘Do you bloody hope? Well, ace—because I don’t hope. And I don’t want you pawing me, and I don’t want to be here, and I don’t want to hear another fucking bastard’s opinion, and I don’t want you—and I’m going to see you never keep a straight face over any other corpse you’ve killed. Never! I’m going to wreck you, all right? Wreck you and your smug bloody life …’

Ruth turned and walked away.

She got to the door to the ITU unit, and then to the waiting area outside the lifts, and then she began to run. She ran down the corridor until she reached the women’s toilets, where she slammed open the door. She stood staring into the mirror for ten seconds, while her heart banged mercilessly in her throat.

She saw any number of images other than her own. She saw the hot summer ward, that sticky grey cubicle, the mother’s wretched face, the face of the consultant paediatrician … and she saw an anonymous room where her own hearing took place, one rainy autumn afternoon. You didn’t even consider anaphylactic shock? It never occurred to you?

Anaphylactic shock. Wasp sting.

No, it had never occurred to her.

She had thought she was seeing a case of child abuse, of possible subdural haematoma. She had been tired that day, weary, defeated, slipping in and out of sleep because she had been on duty for thirty-two hours. Anaphylactic shock? So obvious, obvious, obvious. Obvious to the most junior nurse—but not to her. She had missed it …

Accused the parents to their faces.

Never slept properly since. Covered up the guilt and confusion, scraped through, moved area, worked herself into the ground, cauterized any possible emotion, never allowed herself an abandonment to pleasure. Blame and guilt … Broken nights …

The nausea crawled up her throat and she lost the battle, vomiting into the toilet.

She’s a monster.

When did you ever care about anyone?

You’ve got no feelings.

A monster.

When Ruth had found out, later, that she couldn’t have children, she had felt that it was a judgement on her. She had accepted it almost mildly; personal fulfilment seemed like a very dim echo at the bottom of her soul. And then she met Kieran, who cruised through life—without searching for reasons or analysing anyone, Kieran who admired her, admired her resolute calm more than any other quality, and …

And then came Lin.

Ruth stood up, wiping her face with a pinched-up bundle of toilet paper.

If she could get him back, the world would not seem so jumbled—not so dangerous. If she had him back, accusations like Martin’s would once again roll over her, past her …

Monster.

It meant nothing to them, of course. It was just a word said in anger. They couldn’t actually believe—sincerely believe—that she was monstrous. She could show love. She could be loving. She could weep and plead. She could be desperate and show it …

‘Oh God,’ she whispered.

Ruth dragged herself back to the mirror. She looked old, her skin flaccid and grey, her hair too yellow, over-bleached and stiff with lacquer. She looked at her pale-blue jacket and then, in numbed slow motion, rubbed at flecks of stain with a finger wet from the cold tap.

You are a little oasis of sanity.

Sanity. Sanity?

She glanced back at herself.

Life with Kieran was sanity. Everything else was a caricature.