8 February 2006
My cardiologist once told me that when your heart goes into ventricular fibrillation, it quivers like jelly, moving this way and that but unable to do anything useful.
That’s how my whole body feels, after the text from Tim.
My father finds me, pacing the kitchen, not knowing what I should do next. He checks Leo’s OK first and when he sees him gurgling happily in his highchair, Dad turns to me.
‘All right, J?’
‘No. It’s Kerry. She’s in hospital and I don’t know whether to go in, or whether that’ll make it worse, and I can’t think of what the hell to do, Dad, I—’
Dad rears back slightly. ‘OK, we can fix this, slow down.’
‘We can’t fix it. I want to see her but she might not want to see me, I could make everything even worse.’
‘Flowers,’ he says. ‘Flowers fix most things.’ He walks into the hall and calls up the stairs. ‘Lynette! We need you for grandmotherly duties.’
Before I can argue, Dad’s bustling me into his 4x4 and heading towards Seven Dials. He stops outside the florist. ‘What do you want to say? Get well soon? Sorry? I love you?’ He laughs at the last comment.
‘I don’t want balloons.’
He shakes his head. ‘No, the florist can tailor what she puts in the bouquets depending on the message you want to get across.’
I wonder how many ‘it was fun while it lasted’ bunches he’s sent to his mistresses over the years. ‘I want her to know she means a lot to me, and I’m sorry.’
‘Right. Won’t be a tic.’
He disappears into the shop. Is my dad’s crap example the reason I’ve messed up so badly with women? No. I take all the blame for this fuck-up myself.
He emerges from the shop with an arrangement bigger than his head. No balloon, at least. There isn’t one for ‘Sorry you’re ill and I am such a loser’.
‘Bloody hell, Dad, how much did that cost?’
‘Money’s no object for the woman who saved your life, right?’ He gets into the car and hands the bunch to me. There are roses and tulips and lily of the valley. The scent of the flowers is so intense that they don’t seem real.
‘Do you know what’s happened to her?’
‘No. Just a brief text from her fiancé, Tim. You remember? The one who was there at the same time.’
‘The nerdy one? Surprised they’re getting hitched. I always thought she had more about her. Didn’t you two have a thing for a while?’
I shrug. ‘Nothing serious.’
‘When did you last see her?’ Dad asks.
‘A year or so ago. We’ve mostly lost touch because . . .’ I don’t know how to finish the sentence. Because I was a coward who wasn’t good enough for her.
‘You know, J, you can’t blame yourself for getting it wrong, sometimes.’
I can’t see his expression through the flowers.
‘After the thing happened . . .’ Dad has never been comfortable with the term cardiac arrest, unlike Mum who has revelled in the whole my son was dead for eighteen minutes business. ‘You were different. I don’t know if you were even that aware of it yourself, but I looked it up. When your brain has been deprived of oxygen, it’s a bit like after someone’s had a head injury.’
‘I was a monster,’ I say, quietly.
‘No. No, you were never that. Well, OK, there were times when you did display monster-like characteristics, but that was never you. The old Joel could be self-centred, but only when it came to football. And you jumped in with both feet sometimes, but again it was instinct, and yours was usually right.’
As he indicates left to head east, I don’t know how to respond. Dad doesn’t go in for speeches and that’s probably the longest I’ve heard him talk uninterrupted – well, ever.
I suppose it helps that he can’t see my face either.
‘But after your event, you were Joel on steroids. Selfish, with an insanely short fuse. But the worst bit was seeing you turn all this anger on yourself. I even called a helpline . . . well, several different ones. Turned into a bit of a habit. A guilty one, mind.’
‘Did they say there was no hope for me?’
He scoffs. ‘No, they mostly said to give you time. Though managing that was the hardest thing we’ve ever done, me and your mum. You were in self-destruct mode and we could do nothing but watch. One day, when Leo starts going out in the world on his own, you’ll find out what that’s like. Though hopefully he won’t go nearly as far as you did.’
I can’t ever imagine letting him out alone. ‘I worry I lost the nice bits of myself when I had my cardiac arrest.’
‘Well, if you did, you found them again.’
He reaches out to push the bouquet aside so he can look at my face. ‘Just because we’re not the most demonstrative family doesn’t mean me and your mother aren’t proud of what you’ve become. How you handled the Leo situation in the end . . . how you’re working to get trained as a PT. The Unbeatables. It was close at times but—’
‘The lights have changed, Dad.’
He puts his foot down quickly before anyone can insult him by honking, and we’re almost outside the hospital.
‘Never too late to fight for her, J. If she’s what you want, you—’
I open the car door. ‘Yeah, thanks.’
As I walk along the last bit of pavement towards the weathered Georgian entrance, I repeat the words in my head. Never too late. Never too late.
Before I have second thoughts, I walk quickly into the hospital lobby to the reception desk, where a white-haired man frowns at me.
‘I’m looking for Brunswick Ward. What do they treat there?’
‘It’s Gynaecology. Eleventh floor of the tower block. But you’re not allowed to bring flowers onto the ward. Not since 1996.’
‘Oh.’
‘Infection risk.’
I go back outside, wondering what the hell I am supposed to do with the bouquet. This hitch has rattled me and I need a second opinion about whether I should go through with this. I cross the road, head towards the sea, and get my phone out to call Ant.
Even though I can hear the familiar sounds of cafe breakfast chaos in the background, he doesn’t sound stressed or pissed off to hear from me. He’s become the best surrogate uncle to Leo and has proposed to his girlfriend Ellie, partly because Leo makes him so broody.
‘Whassup, Banana Man?’
I tell him where I am, and why.
‘Poor Kerry. Great that she called you, though, I thought you’d lost touch.’
Ant doesn’t know how close we came to getting together the Christmas before last.
‘We fell out over something quite big and . . . she said she never wanted to hear from me again. I’ve written to her since, a couple of times, and she hasn’t responded.’
‘Ah. I won’t ask. So how come you’re at the hospital?’
‘Tim texted me so it must be quite major. I’m worried about her. But I don’t want to upset her either.’
I hear him thump the coffee into the machine, followed by the hiss of steam. It’s cold here on the seafront. I crave the warmth and the feeling of belonging I get whenever I go to the Girasol.
‘I’d say . . . yeah, two quid, mate, cheers . . . Joel, I’d say go for it. Nothing to lose, so long as you’re prepared she might tell you to leave. What if she does that, Joel? How would you feel?’
‘At least I’d know I’d tried. Thanks. I needed that.’ I’m already retracing my steps towards the hospital. A weary-looking woman is walking her sea-wet spaniel up the street and as I pass her, I say, ‘Could you give these a home?’ and hand the bouquet to her without pausing to see her reaction.
The man from reception taps his blazer when I walk back in again and I think it’s some old-man sign of respect until I look down to see pollen and leaves stuck to my fleece, along with some of Leo’s banana porridge breakfast.
The route to the tower block lifts is familiar and I select the eleventh floor. This building is my second home. On the top floor, Zoë gave birth to Leo. I wish I knew how she was doing now. I paid private detectives to look for her, and they sent me the address of a hostel in a Somerset seaside town. It was a relief she was still alive, at least, and I wrote offering to let her see Leo, to pay for any help she needed. I didn’t hear back.
On the ninth floor, I lay in a coma and woke to Kerry’s face. On the seventh, I recovered from my surgery – and returned more than once when I tried to die but my ICD told me who was boss.
‘Floor Eleven, doors opening.’
I go right, following the signs to Brunswick, but as I turn the corner I see something – someone – that makes me freeze. It’s Tim, a few metres ahead of me. I hold back as he buzzes the intercom to get past the ward doors.
It’s never too late . . . except when it is.
A nurse turns the corner and swipes her entry card, so I slip in behind her, in time to see Tim heading into the bay on the left.
And now I see Kerry, sitting up in bed. Her face is too far away to read but I’d recognize her thick chestnut hair and her posture anywhere. They don’t kiss when he walks in but he’s holding something – an envelope – and she tears it open. It’s obviously a big deal because I hear a squeal and now they are embracing and kissing and—
‘Can I help you?’
The nurse I sneaked in with stands behind me. She has that ‘don’t fuck with me’ stance they must learn in training.
‘Oh, I came to see a patient. Kerry Smith.’ I move backwards, behind a trolley, so Kerry won’t see me if she looks up.
The nurse narrows her eyes. ‘It’s not visiting hours, so only immediate family are allowed in.’
Immediate family. Does that mean they’re married already?
I can just about hear Kerry’s voice from here, the excitement in it, though not the precise words, and I know whatever it is Tim has told her, this is not the time to interrupt.
I got what I came for: I know she’s OK. To push for more would disrespect her decision to make it work with Tim.
Sometimes it really is too late.