Chapter twenty-two
For a weightless second, Lewis had felt himself catapulted forwards by a wave of joy, joy beyond anything he’d ever experienced: Beth behind him, the tandem skimming the tarmac like a perfect machine in motion, the air filled with the sound of laughter and applause.
He was generating so much happiness that he thought his body would burst from it.
It was the same warm feeling of ‘rightness’ as his dream, that sense of Beth’s heart beating close to his, their legs moving in synchronicity, that wink from the gods that this was approved, that the cogs in his world had finally lined up in the sequence they’d been made for, and the energy they created was pure light.
They couldn’t speak, and he couldn’t see Beth’s face, but Lewis felt the power surging from her pedals; she was matching his rhythm, and he was pedalling hard and fast. Every so often he heard an inarticulate noise – exhilaration?
Frustration? – and the power would surge again behind him.
He had a sudden mental picture of his grandfather’s soft-eyed dairy herd when they were let back out on to pasture for the spring, flicking up their delicate heels and galloping with a mad kind of pleasure that was touched with wildness, kicking away the winter’s confinement as much as revelling in the fresh air in their nostrils.
And then, without warning, that pressure of Beth’s forehead against his back, then the magical change of pressure as she lifted her head and he felt her lips brush his spine . . .
And then it had been snatched away.
Eunice rapping at the window, drawn with panic, frantically waving her little hands to get his attention.
Lewis recognised the specific panic in Eunice’s expression as soon as Beth had shouted and pointed up at the window; he’d seen it before.
It was shock, and a special, personal, fear: one of the elderly residents had had an accident that might just as easily have befallen her.
The grim reaper’s cloak had brushed her as it passed.
Instantly, Lewis’s brain clicked into emergency mode.
One: get to the door, fast.
(One a: make sure Beth safely off bike.)
Two: assess situation.
Three: emergency services.
He slowed down before they reached the group of watchers, dismounted in one movement, and helped a confused Beth do the same.
‘Don’t react,’ he said in a low voice, as she adjusted her clothes, breathless and jumbled, ‘I don’t want anyone panicking. Wheel this to the sheds as if everything’s fine, and tell Pam to come inside as fast as she can.’
Would he remember later what it felt like to steady Beth’s hot back with his hand as she dismounted, how gracefully she swung her long leg over the saddle? Lewis hoped so, even if his brain didn’t have the luxury of noting it now.
‘Where shall I say you’ve gone?’ She looked scared.
‘Phone call? Loo? Doesn’t matter.’ His brain was clicking over checkpoints; every second made a difference.
‘Of course. Lewis?’
He’d set off but turned back, to see her smiling uncertainly.
‘Thank you. That was everything you’d said it would be,’ she said. ‘Now run!’
Lewis didn’t run – that would draw too much attention – but he set off at the rapid stride that he deployed normally, and when he got into the house, he sprinted up the stairs, three at a time.
Eunice was on the landing outside Hugh Lloyd’s room; she looked as if she’d seen a ghost.
‘Hugh’s had a heart attack,’ she said, succinct with fear. ‘Linda slipped trying to get him up. Looks like her hip’s gone. She was talking before, but she’s out cold now.’
Lewis pushed open the door to see for himself, even as he was dialling 999 on his phone.
Hugh was slumped face down over the foot of his single bed, as if he’d been saying his prayers and had fallen asleep. Linda was lying on her side just inside the door. Quickly, Lewis turned Hugh over. His face was the same colour as his maroon jumper, and Lewis struggled to find a pulse.
A flicker of an old, old panic rippled through his subconscious as it always did, a distant child’s wail of fear, but Lewis blocked it out with training. He lifted Hugh’s floppy body on to the floor, moved him in the right position for chest compressions, and braced himself to start resuscitation.
‘Let me,’ said Kemi, pushing him aside. ‘I am good at this. You phone the ambulance.’
Next Pam appeared in the doorway, flushed and out of breath. ‘Oh no! Oh no . . .’
‘Hello, ambulance, please.’ Lewis stepped aside so Ellie, following Pam with the first-aid bags, could start administering help. He was relieved to see how calm and confident she and Kemi were with Eunice; that would go in the report he’d already mentally begun compiling.
‘Is the patient breathing?’ asked the call handler.
‘Is he breathing, Kemi?’
Kemi had started chest compressions on Hugh, quick and strong, with muttered words of encouragement on each shove. Now she put her ear to Hugh’s mouth. ‘I do not think so.’
‘Yes!’ said Ellie, who was leaning over Linda. ‘Yes, we’ve got a pulse, but I’m worried about moving her.’
Linda let out a groan. ‘Don’t move me. Hip. Warm.’
‘She’s a nurse,’ said Kemi. ‘She knows best.’
‘One breathing, one not breathing,’ said Lewis. He gave the address, listened to the instructions, then stood up. ‘Pam, stop anyone coming up here for the time being, and take charge downstairs, please? We don’t want everyone getting into a flap. Usual drill.’
Lewis routinely constructed protocols to roll out in the event of accident or other distressing events that inevitably happened now and again in residential homes.
Not quite ordering the band to play ‘Nearer my God to Thee’ while lifeboats were loaded, but in his experience a sense of business of usual helped keep things from spiralling.
‘Stay with us, Linda,’ said Ellie, with a wobble in her voice. She’d found a blanket and draped it over Linda’s small body.
‘Good job, Ellie. Now could you find Kay? Before the ambulance gets here.’
Ellie’s breathing was quick and too fast; he could tell she was struggling, and he squeezed her shoulder. ‘Stay calm. The ambulance is on its way.’
‘I just wish I’d been . . .’ Her face crumpled.
‘Stop that,’ said Lewis. ‘I take full responsibility for this afternoon’s events.’
‘But I didn’t hear a call bell!’ she almost wept. ‘Why didn’t we hear the call bells? My bleep didn’t go off! No one’s bleep went off!’
Lewis didn’t want to think about sabotage, not right now. ‘Ellie, please go and find Kay. One thing at a time.’
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and hurried down the stairs.
Kemi was still doggedly performing compressions on Hugh, and when Lewis approached she indicated that she did not need to be relieved.
Instead he crouched down next to Linda and touched her hand, to let her know he was there. ‘Hang on, Linda. Help’s on the way.’
She was trying to say something, even as she was struggling for breath.
‘What is it, Linda?’
‘Bill.’ It was little more than a rustle. ‘Look after Bill.’
Lewis flinched against the sudden punch of emotion: another memory from his grandparents’ house, but one that came long after he’d first seen the cows joyfully kicking down the spring air in the meadow. Henry. Henry.
Whenever this happened, and it had happened many times in his career, it was never just the resident in front of him that he was fighting to keep with him.
If Lewis closed his eyes, he could smell his grandmother’s White Linen eau de toilette, his other grandfather’s darned woollen jumper, his gran’s papery skin.
‘Help’s on the way, Linda,’ he said with all the authority he could muster. ‘Hang on there, for Bill.’
And for me.
Once Lewis had sprinted up the stairs and I’d passed on the discreet message to Pam, I wasn’t sure what to do.
Lewis snapped into action so efficiently I didn’t think he needed anyone’s help, let alone someone with office first-aid skills as rudimentary as mine.
But I wanted to help somehow; I was dithering in the reception area when Pam Woodward came trotting down the stairs, now in a full panic; I could tell she was in a panic, because when she saw me her expression changed from terror to fake happy, as if someone had swiped across it with a finger.
‘Hello!’ she said. ‘Everything’s fine!’
That told me it wasn’t.
‘Is the ambulance coming?’ I asked, and with some relief she nodded and gabbled, ‘Linda’s broken her hip and I don’t know what’s happened to Hugh, he’s out like a light.
Lewis wants me to carry on as if everything’s normal so we’re going to have tea early, I think,’ she went on, her voice getting higher.
‘I need to let the kitchens know. And the carers.’
‘Are you all right, Pam?’ I asked, and she nodded again, more violently.
‘I’m fine! I’m just . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know why the call bells didn’t sound! We should have heard.’ Her eyes widened, as if a thought had suddenly struck her, then she looked devastated. ‘Oh God. That electrician.’
I squeezed her shoulder. ‘Tell me what I can do. Do you want me to help get people inside? Shall I speak to the kitchen staff? Can I get you a cup of tea?’
Pam looked as if I’d offered her a stiff brandy. ‘Oh, Beth, I would. I’d love that.’
I helped usher the residents inside for tea, and waited until the ambulances had left and an anxious calm had settled over Rosemount. Then, when I was sure there was nothing else I could do, I went home.
I collected Tomsk from Rachel’s, and drove to the nearby Forestry Commission wood where we walked in silence around the whispering trees.
I couldn’t bear to go on our usual route around town, when I thought of how I’d snuck glances at me and Fraser in the windows.
It ended up being a longer walk than I’d planned as my feet just kept going and going, and after supper, Tomsk fell asleep on the sofa, his body draped over my lap like the most comforting weighted blanket in the world.
Dusk had started to fall, but I didn’t feel like supper.