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The young, pretty nurse silently left the room as soon as Beth woke, and in that moment, she knew Luc was dead. A slim, middle-aged female doctor with glasses on a chain and puckered smoker’s lips entered a few minutes later. The draught of her arrival smelt of nicotine and antiseptic hand wash, and her grey hair was clipped untidily to the back of her head. Was she to be the messenger?
When the doctor gently put her hand beside Beth’s head, she wanted to sit up but felt as if every one of her muscles had seized. Was she paralysed?
“Good morning, Mrs Jordan, I’m Doctor Falconer.” Her scrutiny played around Beth’s face but she didn’t meet her eye. “A nurse will be in shortly to make you a little more comfortable.”
“Luc?” she enquired, but it hurt to say his name. Pain locked itself tight to the left-hand side of her face, and her mouth filled with saliva. She didn’t want the preamble. Didn’t want to delay the revelation by being told that she, at least, was going to live.
“You’re going to be in this position for at least another couple of days. Your jawbone was in fragments. You had titanium plates inserted to hold it together.”
“Luc,” she repeated flatly. She could feel the resistance of the dressing around her cheek.
The doctor met her gaze, blinked slowly and nodded as if acknowledging her wishes. She swallowed quickly and Beth watched the moment between ignorance and confirmation bounce in her throat. “I’m afraid your husband didn’t survive the crash.”
She’d hoped her instincts were wrong, that she was girding herself for words that wouldn’t come, but the doctor’s sentence was a thick blade thrusting into her sternum.
“I’m so sorry.”
There were too many implications to absorb. She knew the reality of Luc being gone was something she couldn’t begin to acknowledge, but it was the immediate certainties that were overwhelming. She hadn’t been there. Luc had died without her. She’d been oblivious. “How?”
“His neck was broken.” The doctor put her hot hand on Beth’s wrist and it felt like it would scald her. “He didn’t regain consciousness during the flight in the air ambulance and died before they reached the hospital. He didn’t feel any pain.”
Beth remembered tenderly touching the back of Luc’s head in the car and his agonized expression as he lay on the stretcher. The doctor’s features blurred, the tendons in Beth’s neck hardening as she attempted to sit up.
She put her other hand gently on Beth’s chest. “I know how difficult this must be, but please try to remain still. You’ve been transferred to the UK. You’re now in St Andrews, Wandsworth.”
“How long have I been here?”
“You were in a coma.”
Beth felt panic stampede through her. “How long?”
“Just over nine weeks. You woke briefly last night and then fell into a deep sleep.”
Beth needed to rise but couldn’t; the blade felt like it was thrusting in deeper, pinning her to the mattress.
When she looked up, she caught the doctor slyly glancing at her watch. Her pale green eyes returned to Beth’s, and they were briefly devoid of emotion. They softened in sympathy again. “Nobody was able to predict how long you’d be in the coma. I’m afraid arrangements had to be made in your absence.”
Beth tried to see past the euphemism and quickly guessed what it meant.
“Your husband’s funeral had to go ahead...”
Husband? She hated that label. She was talking about Luc, but Beth was trying to remember whether he wanted to be buried or cremated. He couldn’t be gone. Not just like that. How could everyone who had known him but her have said goodbye to him? Buried or cremated? “When?”
“I don’t have the exact date.”
“Find out!” The painful vibration of the outburst travelled down her body and her bones amplified it. Buried or cremated? She imagined his body in a coffin under the earth. Saw it burst into flames. “What date is it today?”
“Today? The 19th... of March.”
How long since Luc had been–
“We’ve notified your family; your brother’s on his way. You mustn’t upset yourself.”
Buried or cremated? The doctor’s words were losing their meaning.
“If you want, I can get somebody to sit with you.” Just sounds about her wrinkled lips.
Beth closed her eyes.
“Can I get you some water?”
She kept her eyes sealed until she heard the doctor leave. She lay there, listening to the tile polisher in the corridor outside. She wanted her world to sound different somehow: vacant and inhospitable, not full of trivial background noise. It didn’t. It just didn’t have Luc in it any more.
For hours she just lay looking at the spotless white ceiling, waiting for tears that didn’t come.
