Chapter Four
December 2015
Lydia had graduated with a second class honours upper division degree. She’d scored an entry-level position at a major daily newspaper in London in the summer of 2008, and had written everything from articles about footballers’ wives and the latest antics of the Royal Family, to features on the trendiest dogs to own and cafés that embraced your love of canines.
But all the writing practice over the years, and deciphering words that were new to her, could never have prepared Lydia for what she faced right now.
Seated outside the ICU – the intensive-care unit as Lydia had learned in the last three days – she was embracing a whole new set of terms. Medical speak. Like a foreign language, it left people like her, Theo’s mother, Anita, and anyone else who came in from the outside, confused, unable to ask meaningful questions. They asked things, of course they did, but when your brain couldn’t work out what the answers meant, you were unable to form follow-on questions and make sense of anything.
Three days ago Theo had driven to a meeting with a client. Lydia had no idea where the off-site client had been, and she didn’t much care. The fact was, Theo’s car had hit a patch of black ice, skidded and been forced into oncoming traffic where it had been hit and rolled onto its roof. The police had shown up at her front door after Theo’s driver’s license pointed them to their shared address, and delivered the devastating news. And ever since she’d arrived at the hospital where they’d taken him, Lydia had heard enough simple words tossed around to understand the severity of the situation: brain injury, survived, extensive injuries, intensive care. But the longer she was there and Theo was stuck in the ICU, the more confused she was getting. Her mind kept taking in new words but they were like clues in one of those Times crossword puzzles, cryptic and unrecognisable, unsolvable, no answers on a back page anywhere.
‘Here, drink this.’ It was Anita, handing her another cup of unwanted coffee. They’d never really got on overly well – Anita was one of those parents who assumed nobody was quite good enough for one of her offspring and only she knew the best for her child.
‘Thanks.’ Lydia took the cup graciously. If the woman actually knew her she’d know she hated coffee and really only drank black tea, but it seemed so ridiculous to identify it as a problem when here they were in the area outside the ICU not knowing whether Theo was going to live or die. The woman looked shattered; from the situation, from the excruciating drive she’d had to make from Suffolk down to Somerset, not knowing whether her son would be alive by the time she got there.
‘Any change?’ Lydia asked her now.
Anita shook her head. She had the same dark hair as Theo except some greys were creeping in, more so in the last few days, Lydia was sure of it. She had the same almond-shaped eyes and eyebrows that almost met in the middle, except plucking kept hers kempt and womanly. Theo could get away with leaving them in their natural state, being a guy.
‘The operation was a success though,’ Anita said more hopefully. ‘The bleeding in the brain has stopped but the doctors have no idea when he’ll wake up.’ She nursed the cup of coffee that was as untouched as Lydia’s.
Lydia knew all of this already, but guessed repeating it was Anita’s way of reassuring herself as much as anyone else. Unlike Lydia, Anita seemed to use descriptions about her son and his progress as a coping strategy. In the accident Theo had sustained head injuries – a traumatic brain injury they called it, muttering the phrase TBI between them, an acronym Lydia knew only too well now. She’d probably heard it before, along the way, but never let it settle into the part of her own brain that saw it as important, information to keep a hold of.
Lydia resisted the urge to say, ‘If he wakes up’, because it was pessimistic, glass-half empty. At least, that’s how Anita would see it. The doctors tended to talk in hushed voices, exchanged looks laced with secret meaning, but Lydia wasn’t daft. She knew the severity of the situation even if his mum had chosen to diligently put on her blinkers every time she went into the room.
Lydia took a few sips of the coffee out of politeness and left it on the table at the side of the room, where plenty of other people had left their empties and some cups looked as unwanted as hers.
‘I’ll go in now,’ she told Anita who managed a nod and a glance at her son’s girlfriend of eight years.
The critical-care unit had patients in ICU and others in the HDU, which she’d come to know was the high-dependency unit. Lydia guessed it was still serious in there but probably a pretty good step up from where Theo was now.
The hospital didn’t like too many people in the ICU at once, and each time any visitor entered, they were to wash their hands at the sink provided. Lydia went through the ritual all over again. It was about the germs and infections that patients were susceptible to, but it was a routine that also reminded Lydia how serious this was.
The taps were those ones with the long extended handles that you could turn off with your elbow and after she’d washed her hands, she dried them on disposable paper towels and used a pump dispenser to deposit antibacterial handwash onto her palms. Once upon a time Lydia liked that smell, it was fresh. Now it made her stomach churn every time she used it.
Theo was at the far end of the ICU and Lydia always tried not to look at anyone else as she walked towards him. Yesterday she’d seen a girl who couldn’t be more than eight or nine years old with her parents distraught at her bedside. Lydia had hurried past and vowed to only keep her eyes on Theo’s bed from then on.
Three days ago she’d made love to her boyfriend, he’d winked at her when he left their house and she’d savoured the memory of his touch. But the ordinary day she’d started off with had been ripped away from her by a knock at the door that had changed everything. Looking at him now, she wanted to lie next to him on the clinical white bed sheets, feel the rise and fall of his chest to know he was still breathing, put her arm around him and smell him up close. But instead she sat in the chair provided and gingerly put her hand on top of his. His sister, Grace, was desperate to come and see him but she’d come down with a winter bug on the day of the accident and had only just started to feel better. She wouldn’t be allowed within a hundred metres of her brother for at least a few more days, but in a way it was better. The fewer people pondering what was going to happen long-term, the less often Lydia’s mind raced around leaping off in tangents whenever it felt like it.
Machines beeped and flashed numbers and words that Lydia couldn’t begin to comprehend, or didn’t want to, she wasn’t sure which. They were to monitor Theo and support his bodily functions until he recovered, but to Lydia, it was a confusing tangle of tubes, wires and cables that were meaningless. When they’d brought him in, Theo had a ruptured blood vessel in his brain and he’d undergone an operation. He had a bandage around his head still and Lydia wondered whether it was from the operation or an external head wound. She had no idea, no idea about anything right now. But Theo’s doctors were satisfied the operation had gone well and X-rays had revealed, miraculously, that there were no broken bones from the accident. In a way she wished there were – she wished he’d broken both legs and arms or was in a full body cast because any of that would mean he was still here making jokes and being Theo. With a traumatic brain injury and a few minor cuts on his face and his bare chest exposed, it was a kind of torture: her Theo, but at the same time, almost a completely different person.
Lydia rubbed the top of his hand with her thumb. She knew his mother had been talking to him, chatting away as though her voice would wake him up, but Lydia hadn’t been able to bring herself to do that yet because every time she opened her mouth to say something the words died and the tears spilled over.
If only he’d wake up.
Come on, Theo. Come back to me. Please.
*
‘Lydia, Lydia…’
She came to and realised Anita was gently shaking her shoulder. She’d fallen asleep in the chair with her head resting on the side of Theo’s bed. Strange how those terrifying machines and the gentle murmur of visitors to other patients had lulled her into a state of relaxation. Then again, she’d barely slept in the last few days and she was surprised she’d managed to stay upright at all with so little sleep. The walk to the bus that whisked her to the hospital each time, at least helped in some way, the cold snap outside waking her so she could function from day to day.
‘I called Graham.’ Anita’s eyes didn’t leave her son once.
‘Is he flying over?’ Lydia asked. Theo’s dad, Graham, lived in New Zealand.
‘Soon, yes.’ Still she didn’t look at Lydia. ‘And Melanie and Ricky are here now.’
‘Who?’
‘They work with Theo. Melanie was in the car too. She was lucky.’
Lydia shook herself awake. ‘I’ll go and stretch my legs and send them in.’
Anita made some sound of acknowledgment as Lydia kissed Theo’s cheek and left them to it. She desperately needed a big cup of black tea and this time she’d sit down until it was finished, letting the warmth work some magic.
A woman stepped forwards as soon as Lydia entered the visitors’ room and Lydia had to assume this was Melanie, upright on her own two feet with her arm in a cast and a bruise on her head that had already passed through its worst phases of purple and black and deep green and now had tinges of yellow at the edges. Lydia knew she was being horrible resenting the fact this woman, this colleague, had been in the same vehicle, in the same accident, yet walked away in a much better state than Theo. Perhaps it was human nature to think that way, or maybe she was just a bitch and completely selfish.
‘You must be Melanie.’ Lydia managed a tiny welcoming smile and directed another at the man who came over to introduce himself as Ricky.
‘How’s Theo?’ Ricky asked.
‘No change.’ She couldn’t go into more detail. Not right now. It was too horrible in her own head, let alone trying to voice the details out loud. She’d already done that when she’d explained what was going on to her parents and when she’d told her best friend, Sally. She’d leave it up to Anita to update anyone else on her boyfriend’s progress, comfort them when they showed emotion, direct them to the facilities when they needed them. It was her way of processing the information through her own brain, as though the first time hadn’t been enough, but perhaps the fourth, fifth or tenth time she described everything it’d finally get through.
Ricky was in a suit but Melanie was evidently not back at work yet, dressed in jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt. She looked a bit uncomfortable and with her long, poker-straight blonde hair, Lydia suspected she was more into dark fitted suits and killer heels than the outfit she had on now.
Dark fitted suits… didn’t you wear those to funerals?
Ricky reached out and caught Lydia when her legs gave way beneath her. ‘Come on, let’s find a seat for you.’
‘I’m just so tired.’ Lydia had allowed herself to be steered to a chair and Melanie, even one-armed, made her a black tea while Ricky went in to see Theo.
‘Thanks.’ Lydia took the tea and closed her eyes after her first sip. The warmth slid down her throat and settled inside her. When she finally opened her eyes she asked, ‘How are you feeling?’
Melanie shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine. Once this has healed.’ She nodded at the cast that was yet to have any signatures upon it, or maybe she was too refined for such a thing. ‘I was very lucky.’ Lydia didn’t say anything. ‘I feel so bad.’ Lydia wished she’d shut up. ‘I was supposed to be driving but I’d had wine with the client lunch so I asked Theo to drive. The driver took the full impact.’
Lydia felt the hand that wasn’t curled around her cup scrunch up into a ball.
‘Isn’t there any change at all?’ Melanie asked.
‘No. He’s still in a coma.’ Boyfriend in a coma, that’s what she had now. Her life had gone from the minutiae of coupledom with shared dinners, arguments over whose turn it was to put the rubbish out and whether they should drink red or white wine with their meal, to an ever-revolving routine of hospital visits, mealtimes usually of day-old sandwiches at the canteen, a shower when she got home, a fitful night in a bed she’d rarely slept alone in, and then a shower to mark the start of the routine all over again. Her friends called often, they texted, they sent Facebook messages. The support was there but Lydia had kept herself on a conveyor belt that always followed the same route and she didn’t have the time to deviate from what had unfortunately become the norm. Sally delivered evening meals on occasion and stayed for the odd glass of wine, but she knew Lydia too well and had stepped back, waiting in the wings until Lydia was ready for more. Lydia hadn’t even danced since the day the accident happened, and she wasn’t sure she ever would again.
‘People wake up from comas all the time, don’t they?’ Melanie grasped at the same hope Lydia had been summoning in the last few days.
Her resentment gave way to empathy. Melanie obviously felt terrible. She’d walked away relatively unharmed compared to the man she’d asked to drive because she couldn’t resist a drink. Or perhaps that was still a bit harsh. ‘Yes, I suppose they do.’ Some also went on to die but Lydia didn’t say that. Saying it out loud could bring bad luck and they didn’t need any of that right now. ‘The doctors are hopeful,’ she added. It was as much as she could offer.
One doctor they’d spoken to had made them feel as though Theo had a good chance of regaining consciousness, but the neurologist had painted a grimmer picture, talking at length about traumatic brain injuries and how they were unpredictable and nobody really knew what could happen. Lydia would’ve taken it as a hopeful message but she felt sure the look on his face, the grave knitting of his eyebrows and excessively deep creases on his forehead spoke of nothing of the sort.
Lydia finished her tea. She’d already burnt the tip of her tongue but she didn’t want to sit here and talk about Theo; she did enough of that with his doctors and his mum. She wanted to remember how to breathe, remember to be strong for him no matter what, and most of all she wanted him to just wake up. She watched Melanie, nervously rubbing her usable palm up against her jogging bottoms.
‘When will you be back at work?’ Lydia asked her question for something to break the eerie silence rather than because she was actually interested.
‘I’m not going back to work for a while. And when I do, I’ll be heading overseas.’
‘A promotion?’
‘No, it’s a sideways move, but I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be away for at least a year.’
It was another reminder that life for Lydia and Theo had changed in an instant, altered with a small patch of insignificant-looking black ice in the right spot hit at completely the wrong time.
‘Well, best of luck,’ said Lydia.
‘Thanks. I won’t fly until I’ve had the all clear. My parents are coming down tomorrow and taking me up to the Lake District to stay with them for a while.’
‘That’ll be nice.’
‘I wish you and Theo all the best.’ Melanie smiled nervously and put her empty cup in the bin before turning and making her way to the ICU.
Lydia had returned her smile because she didn’t have it in her to resent the woman who’d walked away almost unscathed. Perhaps one day she wouldn’t need to make the effort with Theo’s work colleague, maybe he’d walk out of here soon and they’d all chat about the accident and how treacherous the roads could be.
Maybe everything would soon carry on as it was before.
Or maybe, from today, their lives were destined to be completely different.