I slept easily when I got home, my dreams were full of Jack smiling, and Daisy with dark hair like his, eyes likes his and a cheeky smile like his.
I woke up at ten-past five and lay in bed staring at the lines of light leaking around the blind covering the window. It was weird, because now I knew the daughter he’d spent so much time talking about, and the parents he’d always sounded like he was wary of. But his parents seemed nice; mine had spent half the day getting to know them and they got on. Mum had put on her posh phone voice the whole time, though.
I got up at five-thirty and went to find a twenty-four-hour supermarket and bought him some clothes to wear. Then I went into the hospital. He was already awake. The nurse, another guy, was feeding him porridge because Jack wasn’t strong enough to do it. The nurse left us alone and I took over, spooning it into his mouth like he was a kid. I tried to make a joke of it, but he hated it.
He was in a different mood today.
‘I’ve had enough.’ He clasped my wrist and pushed my hand away when I tried to persuade him to take another spoonful.
I put the spoon back in the bowl and left it on the side. He was in a bolshie mood, like he’d been in when we’d fallen out the other day. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong.
His teeth gritted and he looked up at the ceiling, silent. Helpless.
‘Do you want me to go?’
‘No.’
I felt like saying, then what do you want, because you’re confusing me? I was too close to the emotional rollercoaster I’d ridden over the weekend to take awkwardness and silence.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said quietly.
Jack looked at me, his eyes dark and cagey.
I touched his cheek. ‘Why are you in a bad mood?’
‘Maybe because half my body was smashed to pieces and I’m stuck in here.’
His mood had been okay yesterday.
‘I want to get up. I want to get out. I want to be free from all these fucking wires.’
The nurse came back in. ‘I just heard; the doctor said you can go up to a private ward today, Jack, there’s a room for you. We’ll get you moved in an hour or so.’
I looked at the nurse. ‘Can I help him get dressed? I brought some clothes in. It might help him feel more normal.’
‘Sure.’ He looked at Jack. ‘You’re a bit down today, aren’t you, Jack, but it’s the medicine wearing off. People always get the blues for a couple of days after they come off morphine.’
‘God he’s patronising,’ Jack whispered when the nurse walked out of the room, and now I got it; he might be down because of the drugs, but one thing Jack, my Captain Control, would really hate was a stranger treating him like a child, especially when he could do nothing for himself. This was Jack’s hell as much as that cliff in the Lake District had been mine.
‘Well, you’re getting out of here now and I presume you’ll be able to get out of bed and move around on the ward.’ I’d help him find the footholds and get up this cliff.
‘I don’t want to be on a fucking ward. Can’t you get a wheelchair and take me home?’
‘And if you got really sick again—’
‘I won’t.’
‘Just stay in here a few days, maybe until the weekend.’
‘The weekend – I’m holding you to that,’ he said as he unsteadily tried to swing around sideways, to hang his legs over the edge of the bed, but there were long white dressings on his legs, covering where they’d operated on his bones, and his legs were swollen, so he couldn’t bend them easily. I opened the pack of boxers, pulled out a pair and threw the others back in the bag I’d been forced to pay five pence for, then carefully slid them over his feet and up his legs.
He stood up at the end, so I could pull them up, but he had to hold my shoulders and his fingers clasped tight as he wobbled, and he turned white.
‘Should you be standing? Shall I call the nurse?’
‘Don’t you dare. I don’t want that bloke back in here. Help me get that t-shirt on. I can do whatever I want to. It’s my body I don’t need his permission. If I wanted to walk out of this hospital I could and I would. I’m not his prisoner.’
‘But you just had surgery.’
‘I saw the surgeon just now and he told me everything is fine and I should get my limbs moving as soon as possible to avoid another blood clot.’
‘Jack…’ Captain Control was angry and fighting.
‘What? My bones are bolted back together. He said it’s fine to stand. Movement gets the blood to the bones and helps them heel. And if they’d pinned me together that badly that everything would fall apart, it would fall apart whether I stood up today or in a week.’
But getting the t-shirt on was impossible with the drip in his arm and the monitors on him. He was all for ripping them off himself but I went out to get the condescending nurse.
As Jack was going up to a ward so he would be taken off the machines soon anyway and probably because he knew Jack was an awkward patient, the nurse agreed to take it all off now. He took the drip line out, then told Jack to press on a pad of cotton wool to stop the bleeding. Jack was too weak to do it for long, so I took over as the man detached Jack from the machines and switched them all off.
Jack was getting well again, but there was no way I was going to let him discharge himself when he was still this unsteady. He’d been near death two days ago.
When the porter came with a wheelchair to take him up to the ward, Jack had jogging bottoms and his t-shirt on and he looked more like Jack, just a pale version of himself, but he got paler and paler as we travelled up in the lift.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes.’
I didn’t think he’d admit it if he wasn’t; he was in full on control mode now. He was going to get better no matter what his body thought about it.
The nurses up there were nice. They got him settled into a room with a TV, a view of the city and an en-suite with a shower.
He wanted to sit in the chair in there, to escape the bed. ‘Jack you look as if you’re going to faint, get on the fucking bed.’
He laughed at me then, because I didn’t swear loads so he knew my patience was running out.
I smiled at him sarcastically, but held his arm to help him move.
When he’d lain down, as he shut his eyes I touched his arm. He looked as pale as the sheet. ‘You rest. I’ll go down and get some breakfast. My parents are probably here now.’
He caught hold of my hand and his eyes opened. ‘Your parents…’
‘Yes, they haven’t been in to see you – they just wanted to support me. But now you’re up here, do you want to meet them?’
‘You’ve met mine so, yes. But give me an hour to recover from the move.’
‘Okay.’ I stroked his hair off his forehead. Maybe later, if the nurses agreed, I could help him use the shower, I could wash his hair for him. That would make him feel better and give him another foothold. ‘I’ll leave you to sleep. I’ll see you later.’ I leaned down and kissed him. His hand clasped my wrist and tried to hold me down, but his hold was too weak.
‘Thanks, Ivy. I’m sorry I’m putting you through this.’
‘You aren’t putting me through anything. I’m here because I love you—’
‘I love you twice as much as that.’ He shut his eyes and almost instantly fell asleep.
I didn’t leave him for an hour, I left him for two; from the colour of his skin he’d needed a really good rest.