‘Oh my God,’ Lainey says. ‘I know they said she was sick, but this is worse than anything I imagined. She looks awful! Like all those tubes and machines are just keeping her alive. I’ve seen things like this on TV – it’s horrible. And sometimes the person never comes round again, and they have to switch off the life support …’
‘Lainey, shhh,’ Luke whispers. ‘What if she can hear you? Don’t say those things!’
Lainey’s eyes fill with tears. ‘It’s just, well, you know how close we were at primary school. Alice was my best friend. And we haven’t always been close just lately, but best friends are forever, right? And now … oh, I can’t bear it! Look at her! She’s like, just a shell! It’s like she’s already gone!’
Lainey starts to cry, and Luke puts an arm around her shoulder and offers her a tissue, trying to edge her towards a visitor’s chair. To tell the truth, he is just as shocked as Lainey at how sick Alice looks. This is serious.
Once, long ago when all of them were six or so, Luke remembers that Alice had been chasing Lainey and Yaz across the playground in the middle of some game when she’d tripped and fallen so hard she’d torn her navy blue woolly tights and skinned her knees. Luke had stopped his game of football and gone over to help her up, and then Lainey and Yaz had taken over, bringing her across to the playground attendant who’d cleaned her up and splashed on antiseptic and stuck big wads of lint on to Alice’s knees with beige sticking plaster.
She had looked so cute with those crudely plastered knees sticking out from the holes in her tights; it was probably around that time that Luke had realized he really liked her, in a gruff, no nonsense, six-year-old kind of way.
This, though; this is way scarier than skinned knees. This makes Luke sick with fear. He doesn’t like hospitals at the best of times; the sharp, antiseptic smell of them, the uniformed nurses with serious faces and clipboards filled with ominous information, the machines, the syringes, the too-bright look in the eyes of every visitor.
And Lainey is right; Alice looks terrible. She is deathly white with smudges of mauve beneath her eyes, that big crescent-shaped scar, her cheeks and lips bleached of all colour. She looks like a broken doll.
Lainey is snuggling into him, looking for comfort, but Luke can’t find the words to tell her that things will be fine; things don’t look fine at all. He takes his arm away before Lainey gets too attached, and the two of them perch on chairs at Alice’s bedside.
‘What is it they call it?’ Lainey is saying. ‘When somebody is stuck in a coma for years and years and there’s no hope left for them at all? A persistent vegetative state, that’s it. Do you think that’s what’s happened to Alice?’
‘Shhh,’ Luke says, angry now. ‘Lainey, what if she can hear you?’
‘She can’t hear,’ Lainey argues. ‘You know she can’t, Luke. Don’t kid yourself. Just look at her! She’s like a – well, a vegetable!’
Luke takes Lainey’s arm a little too roughly, pulling her to her feet.
‘We should go,’ he says. ‘This isn’t working.’
‘I know,’ Lainey snuffles. ‘It’s heartbreaking. It’s just too cruel. She was my best friend. Not now, maybe, but once – and I can’t forget that, Luke, not ever!’
He grits his teeth and steers Lainey out of the room into the corridor. ‘I’m sorry, Luke. I know we’re supposed to pretend she’ll get well again, but …’
‘Shhh, Lainey,’ he says. ‘Her parents are in the family room right over there. Can you just shut up, please? Have some respect!’
‘I do!’ Lainey protests. ‘I do! I’m just gutted. I had no idea it would be this bad …’
‘Hang on,’ Luke says. ‘I’ve forgotten something. I’ll see you down in the lobby in five minutes, OK?’
He propels Lainey out of the ICU and leaves her standing, open mouthed and tearful, on the far side of the double doors. Luke walks back to Alice’s room, enters quietly and walks over to the bed. He cannot blame Lainey for her reaction; Alice looks like a broken girl, expertly put back together, but no longer quite whole.
His fingers reach out to touch her hand, cool and bird-like as it lies on the coverlet. The last time he held her hand, Luke thinks, Alice leaned against him so her long hair fell like a curtain between them, softly crimped and smelling of coconut shampoo. Today he can smell nothing but the sharp, chemical smell of disinfectant, and Alice’s hair, if it hasn’t all been cut off, is hidden beneath a cocoon of bandages.
‘Alice?’ he whispers. ‘Look, I’m sorry about Lainey. She found it all a bit … too much. I’ll come back tomorrow, on my own, I promise.’