Chapter 17
The first signs of trouble were the ones indicating a detour off the motorway as they approached Girona. Adrián’s navigation app seemed completely averse to turning around and within ten minutes they were stuck in traffic.
Jo gazed up at the looming cathedral as they inched over a bridge, catching glimpses of the old town in shades of orange, clustered on a hill. There were people everywhere – and cars and motorbikes and bicycles.
‘Do you think something is… happening?’ she asked, her question sounding inane to her own ears. She swiped sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand.
‘Maybe,’ Adrián said, sounding as listless as she felt.
By the time they’d inched their way to the airport, it was nearly two o’clock and Adrián was freaking out about whether the office would have siesta hours and leave them waiting until four. Jo pulled into a drop-off area and gestured for him to jump out.
‘I hate airports,’ she muttered to herself, putting the car back into gear and peering for signs to the short-stay car park. When she parked the car, she realised she was thirsty, but she’d left her plastic bottle at Carles’s house and hated the idea of paying €5 for a bottle of airport water.
Calling Adrián, she was at least relieved to hear he’d retrieved the guitar already and was on his way to the car park.
‘Is it okay? Not damaged?’ she asked anxiously when he returned.
‘It’s not damaged,’ he assured her, handing her the guitar when it was too difficult for him to get it into the boot with one arm. ‘I’m surprised you care so much.’
‘It wasn’t that I didn’t care, back in Lourdes. I didn’t understand,’ she explained – a little snappishly, but she was uncomfortably hot and incredibly thirsty. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
The roads and roundabouts by the airport were a chaos of confusing signs and twisting motorway ramps and, before Jo realised what was going on, she’d accidentally taken the turn-off to head back into Girona – and then they hit another roadblock.
‘What the hell is going on?’ she asked, slapping the wheel in a fair imitation of Adrián.
‘Here, have some water,’ he said, handing her his bottle with the cap off.
‘That only solves problems for little kids who need distracting,’ she muttered, but she grabbed the bottle and drank half of it in two swigs.
‘Have the rest,’ he insisted when she tried to give it back.
‘You have it,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘We’ll stop on the way and get more. How long is the drive again?’
‘Three-and-a-half hours.’
‘If we ever get out of Girona,’ Jo muttered.
‘Dios, now you’ve done it!’ Adrián groaned. ‘That invisible force will find us and stop us from getting to the wedding again.’
‘An invisible force,’ she repeated with a snort. ‘You mean a manifestation and amplification of our mutual reluctance.’ She executed a feisty three-point-turn and headed the car back in the direction of the airport, fuming.
‘You know, I was thinking about that,’ Adrián added quietly and Jo’s stomach sank.
‘I embarrassed myself last night, but that doesn’t mean I want to talk about this.’
‘No, I was thinking about me.’
That took the wind out of her but didn’t exactly buoy her spirits. ‘Go ahead then.’
He paused, glancing over his shoulder to where the guitar was propped up in the boot, partially obstructing Jo’s rear view. ‘I don’t want to get back together with her, so why couldn’t I wish her well and keep walking?’
‘Is that a rhetorical question?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said, giving her a sidelong glance. ‘Because I think I know the answer.’
‘Oh, God, another man with all the answers. Enlighten me.’ She swiped a drop of sweat off her top lip, peering up ahead to see cars slowing and backing up. What was wrong with this town today?
‘It’s grief,’ Adrián said, his voice high with wonder. ‘I don’t want her any more, but I’m still sad about our old life and holding on.’
Jo braked as gently as she could – which was not very gently in her current state of mind. The ache behind her forehead had started up again and seemed to echo in her stomach. ‘That was a big lightbulb moment?’ she asked with a sigh.
He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘I thought it might help you to see things that way too.’
‘Adrián, I’ve been separated for five years. I know I’m grieving. I just don’t know what to do about it. At least when someone dies they’re actually gone, but Ben hangs over me like a bad smell.’
She waited for him to try to fix her or give her advice, to hint that her feelings weren’t constructive – anything to feed her weird mood and unsettled tummy. The wedding must be giving her an ulcer. So much for, ‘It’s all going to be okay.’
But Adrián just nodded. ‘I suppose we have to deal with grief in different ways. It was just something Carles said to me last night that made me realise why I was still hanging onto… her, the family – whatever it is I miss.’
Jo didn’t resist asking for long. ‘What did he say?’
‘He just said “I’m still here”. It probably won’t mean anything to you. Like I said, we’re different. But I’m still here. There’s more to life than being Mónica Hernández’s ex-husband. Maybe I’ll play that guitar at her wedding for myself too, to show who I still am.’
All of Jo’s fight drained out of her and her vision blurred with tears. How could he be so peaceful? Mónica had left him – and without watching her language, Jo suspected. But this obviously passionate man was calm about the wedding, while everything still turned over inside her when she thought about Ben.
I’m still here.
Jo wasn’t. She was a forty-six-year-old woman. Outside of her job and her role as parent, she was invisible. She barely had time to blink in her busy life. It hurt to think she’d been walking around in circles for five years, looking for a way back to the land of the living and failing to find it.
Of course she was fucking grieving. She was grieving thirteen years of her life lost.
‘Jo?’ Adrián’s voice sounded distant, as though the Corsa had suddenly grown to the size of a coach and he was calling from the back seat. ‘Are you all right? You look… pale. Jo?’ His voice grew agitated. ‘Jo, pull over, corazón. You’re worr— Oh shit!’
With an almighty heave, Jo’s body ejected the meagre contents of her stomach onto the dashboard.
Adrián lunged for the steering wheel with his good arm, hollering, ‘Brakes!’ as the car lurched to the right. He managed to swerve away from the crash barrier as the vehicle mercifully slowed.
The Corsa was so old it still had a handbrake lever, which he engaged in a panic, then flicked on the hazard lights. Jo slumped on the steering wheel alarmingly, but the horn sounded and she jerked back up, clutching her stomach.
Tipping her head up, he peered into her eyes, noting the sheen of sweat on her forehead. ‘Fuck,’ she moaned, which he took as a good sign. ‘I feel really weird.’
‘Just stay with me, okay?’ he crooned, stroking her cheek and taking in the mottled rash on her chest.
She nodded weakly. ‘I’m sorry?—’
‘No, shh. I’ve got you,’ he promised her. ‘Right, okay,’ he muttered to himself, taking far too long to consider the problem. ‘We don’t have any water.’ He pressed a quick kiss to Jo’s forehead. ‘Stay there. I’m just going to grab something to clean up and see if I can get someone to stop.’
She protested weakly when he took his hand away, but he shushed her gently, grasping the door handle and anticipating some relief from the sauna inside the car – except it turned out the car was in a sauna and not the other way around. The afternoon sun belted down on him and he realised they couldn’t stay where they were for long.
Opening the boot and rummaging in his shopping bag, the best thing he found to clean up the sick in the car was a pair of his new boxer briefs from Lourdes, which he snatched up with a sigh. A car roared past and didn’t stop, despite his waving.
The next, though, did stop, flicking on their own hazard lights and rolling down the window. It was a family stuffed in like cartoon characters, the car bulging with people and equipment and cuddly toys.
‘?Hola, buenas tardes! mi… novia necesita agua! ?Puedes ayudarnos?’ He barely hesitated over calling Jo his girlfriend.
‘Sí, sí, claro,’ the father said as the mother rummaged at her feet. Adrián nearly fainted with relief to see the cool box in the footwell. The father explained they were headed all the way south to Málaga – a couple of days early to avoid the high prices of school holidays – and had come prepared.
The woman loaded Adrián up with soft drink cans, all of them blessedly cool. A litre of bottled water followed, as well as a pack of baby wipes, and he thanked them profusely, propping everything up on his sling and waving away offers of help to carry them to the car.
Before the family even drove off, he rushed back to the open passenger door and dumped his bounty on the seat. Frustrated at his lack of mobility, he grasped the Velcro fastening of his sling between his teeth and tugged, loosening it enough to get the thing off. His shoulder twinged, but it was the least of his worries.
Popping open a can of soft drink – he didn’t even notice which type – he closed Jo’s hand around it and helped her hold it to her lips to drink.
‘I can do it,’ she insisted weakly. ‘Oh, wow, this is the best thing I have ever tasted.’
He pressed another can to her forehead, rolling it over her face while she purred with relief. ‘I think you are dehydrated – and suffering in the heat.’ Just how badly, he couldn’t be sure.
‘Are you going to make a menopause joke?’ she shot back, but her eyes were closed and her head was propped against the seat.
‘You have no idea how happy I am to hear you getting back to normal. You scared me.’ He was still a bit scared, especially of the angry rash on her chest. A quick search on his phone located their next stop – away from Girona and not back into that nightmare traffic – and he memorised what he could of the route.
Quickly swiping up the bit of sick caked onto the steering wheel and obscuring the speedometer, he tossed the wipes and his poor boxer briefs in the rear footwell with a grimace and came around to the driver’s side, opening the door.
‘Out you come,’ he said, grasping her around the waist with his good arm. She plopped her legs out and allowed him to shepherd her into the passenger seat, her head heavy on his shoulder. Quickly hanging one of his T-shirts over the window and pulling down the sunshade in front, he clipped her in and raced for the driver’s seat.
Settling himself in, he took a deep breath, his hand hovering over the gear stick. ‘It can’t be so hard,’ he whispered to himself. He knew the theory of driving a manual – at least he was old enough for that. He tugged the stick into neutral and turned the key in the ignition.
‘Have you finished that can yet?’ he asked as he gingerly gripped the wheel with his bad arm, leaning forward when the pain and stiffness in his shoulder protested. She obediently took another slug as he pushed in the clutch, changed into first and the car lurched forward unsteadily.
Once he’d coaxed the little car up into fifth, he raced down the two-lane motorway, pushing the speed limit. He hated that he couldn’t drive and check on Jo, so he drove in a frenzy, barking at her intermittently to take a drink.
Steadying the wheel with his bad arm, he fumbled for the bottle of water in the centre console and plopped it in her lap, risking a quick press of his palm to her forehead. Still sweaty.
‘How big do you think my bladder is?’ she asked and he wondered for a moment if her voice sounded stronger, but he could see that rash in his mind’s eye and hurried on. The fact that she didn’t say anything about his terrible driving was not a good sign.
Fumbling for another can of soft drink while doing his best to steer, he pressed it into her hand. ‘Drink!’
‘God, you’re bossy,’ she muttered, but she held the can to her forehead before opening it and taking a swig.
Peering at the road, he exhaled in relief when he saw the turn-off he’d been watching for. After twenty-five minutes of veering around corners, jerky gear changes and two sudden stalls, he pulled up in front of a blocky, concrete building with the words ‘Hospital Comarcal de la Selva’ set above the entrance in white lettering.
‘Do you want to go in by yourself or shall I park first and take you?’ he asked, torn between his need to get her seen quickly and his reluctance to leave her alone.
Her head rose suddenly, as though she’d been asleep. ‘Where are we?’
‘The hospital. Here, I’ll park and take you in. That’s a better idea.’ He started the car again, but it stalled immediately when he tried to take off. With a grunt of frustration and pain from holding the wheel with his bad arm, he tried again.
‘What? Adrián, we don’t need the hospital,’ Jo said.
He turned to her in agitation, but paused to find her studying him, her back straight and her eyes clear. His gaze dropped to her chest. Even the rash looked to be fading. ‘Just to be sure,’ he insisted. ‘You nearly passed out.’
‘I didn’t,’ she contradicted him. ‘I don’t need a doctor. You said it yourself: I was dehydrated and suffering from heat exhaustion. I’m already feeling much better, so that must have been it.’
‘I’d really rather?—’
‘I’m okay,’ she assured him. ‘I’m sorry to?—’
‘No! I’m sorry I made you?—’
‘You didn’t make me do anything?—’
‘I can’t let anything happen to you!’ His chest heaved as he stared at her. The fact that she was arguing back with fervour suggested she was probably right and Accident and Emergency was a step too far. But he’d been so worried.
She watched him silently, her gaze flitting to his shoulder, to the hand resting on the gear stick. ‘I’m feeling much better. Here, let me look something up.’ A moment later, she’d found a site on her phone and read out, ‘Symptoms of heat exhaustion: headache; dizziness; being sick, et cetera. Sounds right, hmm? Here it says to seek medical help if: the person is still unwell after thirty minutes of cooling; has a seizure; is confused; has a fever, fast breathing or a fast heartbeat. How about we just find somewhere to keep cool for half an hour. You can monitor me. If you’re still worried, we can come back.’
He frowned at her, knowing she had a point, but not happy about it. ‘We’re here now.’
‘Do you want to spend hours this afternoon in AE?’
He really didn’t. ‘You’ll let me look after you?’ he asked, a warning in his voice.
‘Yes.’
He took another quick glance at the maps app on his phone before giving a sigh. ‘All right then. Just one second. Stay there!’ He reached back with his good arm for the disgusting boxer briefs and the pile of wet wipes, dashing out of the car to pop them into the bin by the hospital entrance.
When he got back into the car and mopped up his hands with one more wipe, he grasped her chin to peer into her face, brushing a thumb over her lips to feel her breath and pressing his fingers lightly under her jaw to find the jump of her pulse. She was sweaty and warm, but not clammy as she’d been earlier.
Perhaps if he looked after her, she’d be okay.