43. Marlowe
CHAPTER 43
Marlowe
I f there is a more depressing combination than eating a sweaty, plasticky cheese sandwich while doom-scrolling Instagram photos of a supermodel draped all over your gorgeous boss, then I’d love to know.
Actually, I wouldn’t.
Things are crappy enough already.
I take that back. I feel guilty even thinking that, because nothing is crappy.
Tabs has a new pulmonary valve, and she’s out of the ICU and sitting up in bed, and her cheeks are a lovely pink colour, and all of that is amazing.
Miraculous. It’s the dream!
For as long as I can remember, I’ve prayed for this outcome.
My entire future happiness has hung in the balance as I’ve desperately fought for a way to get this life-saving operation for my daughter.
So it’s safe to say the big things in my life are going really, really well.
They’re fantastic, really.
I’ve secured a few more years of optimal health for Tabs, and nothing else matters.
I say that last part to myself through gritted teeth, because gratitude in these moments is important, and I shouldn’t be sweating the small stuff.
I’m not, really. It’s just that I’ve spent two nights sleeping in an armchair next to Tabby’s bed in the ICU, and exhaustion seems to have robbed me of all perspective.
They have a no-parents-overnight policy, which is far from sensible if you ask me.
Why am I any more likely to spread infection at night than during the day?
I was just lucky that the duty nurses looked the other way as I sat in that chair all night.
Now we’re back on the paediatric cardiology ward, which is great.
It’s just that it’s noisy, and I’m so tired.
My head is throbbing, and the poor little girl diagonally across from us keeps screaming in pain.
There’s a family visiting in here, and their twin toddlers are running around and yelling at the top of their voices.
I’ve given Tabs my noise-cancelling headphones so she can nap, and I’m kicking myself for not bringing earplugs, too.
I have no idea how she’s supposed to heal in here.
Busy paediatric wards are the least restorative places on the planet.
I’m not usually one to throw a pity party, but I’m not normally so sleep-deprived either.
I wasn’t doing too badly, actually, until I scrolled through Instagram in a vain attempt to distract myself from this revolting hospital cafeteria sandwich and my feed served up GOSH’s posts of its latest fundraiser.
The very first post on the carousel?
Brendan Sullivan grinning and looking like every woman’s wet dream in black tie with the ridiculously gorgeous Brazilian supermodel Fernanda Luz da Costa on his arm.
She’s so leggy and flawless, and he looks so suave and, let’s face it, smug.
They’re perfect together.
They both look like megastars.
Do you know what? It’s a good thing.
It’s a helpful reminder that this guy’s lane is a motorway and mine is some country road full of potholes and I should stay in my lane.
I should be grateful for this additional piece of evidence that the universe has served up to nudge me back on course.
He and I have had a very specific kind of relationship, and he made it clear exactly what kind of worth I have in his mind on Friday.
I shouldn’t require any more data.
I throw my phone onto the bed in disgust and pick up the little pink notebook by Tabby’s bed.
It’s her gratitude journal, a habit I’ve tried to instil in her even while I’ve failed to take my own good advice.
We write in it together every single night.
When she was little, I would do the writing, but now she does it.
I open it and leaf through the pages.
Mummy sang to me when I couldn't breave.
I gave Daniel chease and he gave me his paw.
Mummy says were going to Amercia and a special doctor will fix me.
I feel breathless, suffocated by that constant chokehold of love and terror and gratitude and unresolved intrusive thoughts.
Last night’s entry, written in the ICU, was this:
My hart is better and i had strawberry jelly.
It’s the perfect reminder from my greatest and most treasured teacher that we can give thanks for the big stuff and the small stuff alike. But right now I’m so broken that it feels impossible.
I close the notebook and slump forward on my hard plastic chair, creating a cradle with my arms so I can lay my weary head down and attempt to nap alongside my daughter.
brENDAN
Our nine-hour flight proves an excellent opportunity to interrogate Athena on every aspect of Marlowe and Tabby. Having been Mr Boundaries for so long, the dam has burst and I’m insatiable in my thirst for details.
But there’s one area where she’s unyielding.
‘Talk to me about Tabby’s father,’ I demand, and she shakes her head.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because that’s Marlowe’s story to tell. If you want to know more, you’ll have to ask her.’
Fair enough. Her intransigence makes me like her more, actually. It’s been clear to me since I met Athena that she’s ridiculously hot and ridiculously competent, but she strikes me as a bit of a cold fish. It’s made me question at times whether she’s the right person for my brother, who has the most golden heart you could wish for.
But the more I understand about her relationships with Marlowe and Tabby, the more I understand what a fiercely loyal protector she is, and I’m glad. Glad my brother has found happiness with her, and glad Marlowe has her in her corner.
‘Just tell me if he’s still around.’
She toys with a piece of mango on her fruit platter, spearing it elegantly, before locking eyes with me.
‘He hasn’t been around since Marlowe told him she was pregnant.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What a loser. So he’s not in the picture at all—he has no relationship with Tabby?’
‘He’s never met her. And that, mister, is all you’re getting from me.’
My contempt for this guy grows even as some kind of sick relief hits me that I’m not competing with anyone else here. How the hell do you walk away from a woman like Marlowe, and how the hell do you make the decision to miss out on fathering her child? It’s fucked, that’s what it is.
‘So she got pregnant at uni?’
‘She completed a three-year degree in four years. What do you think?’
So she got knocked up at uni and then not only went ahead with the pregnancy but went back to finish her degree. Plus, she got herself an MBA afterwards. Seriously fucking impressive. But I realise that trying to push Athena for more is a fruitless task. She’s a vault. I change the subject.
‘So how do you two know each other?’
‘We became friends at school—Cheltenham Ladies. She doesn’t come from money—she was there on a full choral scholarship. She’s an incredible singer, you know.’
‘I know,’ I tell her. ‘I caught her singing Ave Maria at my place. It was unfuckingbelievable.’
Her face softens. ‘Yeah. She’s really something.’
‘Do you think she’d ever want to pursue it professionally?’ I venture.
Athena fixes me with a steely look. ‘That’s not a dream she’s ever had the indulgence of entertaining.’
I nod. Life got in the way, and she was stuck raising a sick kid and making enough of a living to support them. I ask the question that’s been circling around and around in my head. ‘You said her parents were in the picture, but how the hell has she juggled working full time with all the hospital visits? It must be a lot.’
Her face is grim. ‘Sheer determination, and commitment, and immense sacrifice. Not to mention organisation. She has these printed fact sheets at Tabby’s school with her full medical history. They get doled out every time an ambulance is called. It’s the same as for most single parents, with the added kicker that she never knows when she’ll get the emergency call.’
‘Does it happen often? It hasn’t happened since she worked for me, has it?’
I rake over my memories of these past couple of months of Marlowe’s employment. She’s always been so professional. So put together.
‘She had one a couple of weeks ago,’ Athena tells me now. ‘You have to understand, Marls was adamant when she took this job that she wouldn’t let her personal life interfere. She knew what an opportunity you were giving her, and she got fired from her last job for leaving early to go to the hospital.’
Fury washes over me in a scorching wave. ‘Wait. She was fired ?’
‘Yes, because her boss was a total dick. And she couldn’t afford for that to happen with you. So she’d already made it clear to Tabs that if she got sick during the week, it would be her grandparents taking her to hospital.
‘But she had a bad spell the other day and they had to call an ambulance. Marlowe’s mum called her at work to let her know, and apparently your PA found her crying in the loos and bundled her off to the hospital.’
I stare at her, horrified, trying to understand how she could have suffered through so much drama under my very nose while I remained totally fucking oblivious.
‘She went home sick a week or two ago,’ I say slowly. ‘At least, Elaine told me she was sick.’
‘That was probably it. She had a late one, I think. She told me you found her asleep the next day and were very sweet about it, but she was mortified.’
Jesus. That day in the hotel room. She was sleeping off a night in hospital?
This narrative I’ve woven for myself which, like everything else in my life, has me at the epicentre, is, I now realise, completely unreliable. All this time, Marlowe has existed as some kind of side character, there to humour and entertain and service me , and this entire time she’s been dealing with the kind of shit I’ve never encountered in my cushy, entitled life.
‘She was exhausted,’ I whisper. ‘I remember. Fucking hell.’
I remember far too much about that hour in that bed with her. I remember the feelings that lying there with her elicited. The feelings that prompted me to freak out and behave like a callous, disrespectful twat.
That ends now.
‘It’s going to be different now,’ I promise Athena. ‘Now I know the score, I’ll look after her.’
She puts down her fork and lays her elbows on the table between us, glaring at me with her signature ferocity.
‘Let me be very clear. If you think what’s happening here is that you’ll swan in and save the day, then you’re wrong. Marlowe’s not a victim. She’s stronger than any of us. This is about you having the privilege of seeing her clearly for the first time, and fully appreciating what makes her so special, and then supporting her. It’s about her and Tabs. She’s been rescuing herself and her daughter for the past eight years without much help from anyone, so she doesn’t need you swooping in like Superman now. Got it?’
Yeah.
For what feels like the first time since I laid eyes on this beautiful woman at the RA, I finally get it.
J esus, hospitals give me the heebie-jeebies. Like most unpleasantness in the real world, my family’s money has insulated me from this sort of stuff. I’m happy to keep things that way, even if I know deep down that money doesn’t guarantee good health. Far from it.
But I could really do without being reminded up close of the existence of a world where people are ill and suffering. Where kids are ill and suffering.
As Athena and I walk along the bright corridor, it occurs to me that this is an integral part of Marlowe’s life. Hospitals and valves and oxygen levels and God knows what else are all part of her existence, her vernacular. They’re second nature to her. Unlike yours truly, she doesn’t have the option of burying her head in the sand and pretending these parts of society don’t exist.
I’m a bit of a mess, to be honest. I barely slept last night, and I was up well before dawn packing my bags. Athena’s revelations on the flight over have hit me hard, and I’m still struggling to process, to recalibrate everything I thought I knew to be true. I’m also nervous as hell—nervous that Marlowe will hate me, that she’ll be furious with me for overstepping. And I’m scared of confronting her in this new reality, of having the truth of her suffering laid bare for me.
Luckily, my brother’s impressive girlfriend takes the lead, marching me briskly down endless corridors and stopping to ask staff members for directions when we get ourselves lost.
It’s when we get to a cheery nurses’ station decorated with the words THE HEART HEROES UNIT in colourful paper letters that I suspect we’ve reached our destination. Again, Athena takes charge, giving Tabby’s name to the duty nurse. I watch in trepidation as the woman points towards an open-doored ward.
‘Tabby is in bay nine,’ she tells us with a friendly smile.
‘Come on,’ Athena says impatiently. ‘What are you waiting for?’
I follow the noise, which escalates as we enter the ward. Fucking hell, this is utter carnage. Machines beeping and kids screaming and a hum of chatter—it’s like a refugee camp or something. Why the hell didn’t they get a private room? I look around in abject horror, attempting to process this hellish overstimulation of colour and noise.
And then I see them.
At least I think it’s them.
The third bed has a tiny blonde girl in it. She’s asleep, and she looks frail as fuck. The oversized headphones she’s wearing dwarf her small face.
Next to the bed sits a woman, her upper half slumped over the bed. She too looks to be asleep with her head in her arms, long blonde hair tied in a messy topknot.
Marlowe.
Even from here, she looks utterly defeated.
The two of them are still and quiet at the centre of this total fucking circus, as if even the chaos around them couldn’t stave off the demands of their exhaustion.
I take them both in, and I know for certain that I will never be the same again.