Chapter 22 Marc
On the day that Silvie has the transplant, Marc chews on his hospital bedsheet. He sits and sweats and chews. It will be hours before she comes out.
After much argument the hospital consented to one parent observing from the glassed-in gallery. Marc and Claude agreed it should be her.
‘You did the first part.’ Claude put her hand on Marc’s. Her nails were ragged, bitten down to the quick. The red polish was almost all gnawed off. ‘Now it’s me.’
Marc kissed her hand, careful not to hurt the raw places where she chewed her nails and cuticles, and for once neither of them could find anything biting to say. They argue, he and Claude, but they’re part of each other too.
Marc shakes at the thought of what’s happening now, Silvie’s tender flesh, the scalpel moving on her unconscious body.
He levers himself out of bed and takes the clunky wooden crutches from where they lean against the wall – his new prosthetic will not be ready for some weeks – and makes his way across the hospital.
It takes him a while to get to Riley’s ward, step by clumsy step.
The crutches feel like using roller skates after years of ice skating.
But there is something comforting about the solid wood under his arms, the reality of it.
Riley is awake. She blinks slowly, eyes still unfocused from the anaesthesia. She is so thin that she almost blends in with the bed. Marc feels the fall of terror. What if she dies because of what he has asked of her?
Riley catches her breath when she sees Marc. Her smile is awkward, unpractised; he supposes she hasn’t had much call to use it over the years. ‘They’re doing it now,’ she says. ‘For Silvie.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I guess I came to see if you were ok.’
‘I’m ok,’ Riley says. ‘So long as you know it’s not two for one.’
Marc snorts quickly, covering his laugh with his hand.
‘Does it hurt?’ he asks.
‘No.’ She winces even as she speaks.
‘Don’t lie to me, Riley,’ Marc says, furious, ‘not now.’ He’s shocked at the sound of his voice which is not his own. It’s the other one he gave up years ago. Marc is scared of letting Oliver back in. It means too much.
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, Oliver Olive,’ Riley says, ‘but I know you’re doing everything you can and so am I. So is everyone. Ok?’
He nods. The fear is so strong it’s hard to form a thought.
‘Let’s wait together.’ Riley holds out her thin hand and he takes it quickly in his. They sit like that for a time.
‘I miss my children,’ Riley whispers.
‘Why do you keep saying things like that?’ She constantly provokes him with these fantasies, it makes him furious. ‘You understand reality, Riley, I know you do—’
‘So do you, Oliver Olive.’
‘Don’t call me that. I’m going outside for a cigarette.’
A doctor appears in the doorway. The doctor opens his mouth and Marc forgets everything else.
Marc and Claude get balloons and cake. They get pointed party hats and soda and buttons saying ‘You’re the best!’ They make their way up to the ward clutching big plastic bags of these things.
Silvie is asleep. Marc and Claude sit down on the hospital chairs as gently as if they might break them.
Silvie stirs. ‘Hi.’ She sounds so small. ‘I feel sick.’
Marc leans over her anxiously. ‘Are you ok, you want a nurse?’
‘Is that cake?’ Silvie points. ‘Can I have some?’
Claude quickly cuts a piece for her. Silvie nibbles at the frosting, leaning back against her pillow. ‘Mm,’ she says. A moment later she is asleep again.
Claude and Marc sit by her bedside, talking in whispers and moving forkfuls of sheet cake around on paper plates. At their feet plastic bags spill party hats and streamers onto the white linoleum floor.
Silvie has banned all crying, so even though she is asleep Marc leaves the room to do it. He puts both hands flat against the tiled wall of the hospital bathroom and presses hard, harder, down until he is empty.
Marc finds Riley staring out of the window as usual.
She is healing slowly. A week ago they moved her to this rehab room on the fourth floor so she could move about some.
She doesn’t move, though. All Riley does is stare down at the small patch of grass they call a garden, or out at the parking lot.
She hasn’t been in a city for thirty years.
Riley doesn’t seem to hear Marc come into the room.
‘You have a visitor,’ Marc says.
Her head turns as quick as a snake.
‘She wanted to thank you in person.’ Marc is scared now. Maybe this isn’t a good idea.
Silvie pushes past Marc, impatient. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ Riley says, grave. They look at one another.
‘My dad says not to upset you because you’re crazy,’ Silvie says. ‘But you don’t look crazy.’
‘Your dad’s right.’ Riley bares her teeth in a snarl, snorting hard through her nostrils, crossing her eyes. ‘I’m completely crazy.’
Silvie shrieks with laughter.
Riley glances once more at the window.
‘There’s not much green out there,’ Silvie says. ‘It must be hard. You’re used to having grass and animals and stuff.’
‘Where I live,’ Riley says, ‘there are tons of rabbits. Sometimes there are hares. Do you like rabbits?’
‘I loved my rabbit,’ Silvie says. ‘He was called Snow Machine.’
‘Snow Machine is a great name for a rabbit.’ Riley sits down on the bed and pats the chair beside her. Her cheeks have taken on a faint pink.
Silvie sits and casts a baleful glance at Marc. ‘I know.’
‘What kind was he?’
‘He was a lop-eared rabbit,’ Silvie says. ‘They look a little dumb but Snow Machine was not dumb. I even taught him to come to his name …’
Riley nods, eyes wide, listening.
Marc hovers. He wonders, uneasy, how Riley knows how to do this. To talk to children, after all those years alone.
Marc takes Silvie to bed. Then he comes back to Riley’s room. She is alert, waiting.
Riley says, ‘She’s a great kid.’
‘You get out of here in a week,’ Marc says, sharp. ‘What are you going to do? You have to do something.’
Intimacy can cause Marc to be abrupt, make him act out. His new therapist has explained this to him. He doesn’t trust the therapist, but he trusts himself even less.
‘I don’t know,’ Riley says. ‘I thought I would live with you and Silvie.’
‘Of course we could love that. I mean, we would love that.’ He clears his throat. ‘The thing is, I travel most of the year for work. And Silvie is with her mother half the time.’
‘Ok,’ Riley says, watching Marc.
‘Wouldn’t you get lonely?’ He feels her eyes like a weight on him.
‘I’m used to it,’ she says. ‘I’ve been alone for a long time.’
‘Yes.’ He is weak with relief – she realises this now. She has let go of her delusion. ‘You have been alone.’ Riley has been through a lot but she has always been smart. She will figure it out. ‘You’re as game as a pebble,’ Marc says, absent-minded.
Riley bursts into laughter. ‘Do the accent.’
‘What …’ But it comes hurtling back. Marc covers his mouth with his hands. He hadn’t known it was still lurking in the depths of his mind after all these years. It’s one of Cousin’s phrases, borrowed from some show on Masterpiece Theatre.
‘What a plonker,’ Marc says in cockney. Riley laughs and Marc does too and then they can’t stop. ‘He’s all dead now,’ Marc says. ‘Innit?’ They’re breathless, helpless. ‘Innit?’ Marc keeps saying.
At about the same moment they both remember that Cousin really did die and how. Riley and Marc look at one another.
‘Thank you,’ Marc says to Riley. ‘I’ve never said that. Thank you for getting us out of there, away from him.’
Riley shrugs. ‘It’s not a choice. You know that by now, I guess. Family.’
The next night Marc has dinner with Silvie on the paediatric ward. Afterwards he goes up to the fourth floor to say goodnight to Riley. One day, he thinks, everyone will be out of hospital. One day.
As Marc approaches he sees that there are two nurses outside Riley’s room. Their heads are dipped together, touching. They talk in low urgent tones. His heart begins to thump hard. He is braced, has been for years, for bad news. He strides towards them.
‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘Whatever it is.’
Riley’s window is swung wide. There had been a stopper on it to prevent it opening fully but that is dismantled and on the floor.
Marc kicks the silver cylinder and it rolls under the bed.
Night air comes in. Autumn is here, there is decay and leaf mould in the air.
Marc leans out and feels the pull of the thirty-foot drop below.
‘But how did she get out?’ Marc asks.
The two nurses burst into talk, theories and explanation. There has been someone on reception all evening, this is a closed ward – she would have been noticed, leaving …
‘So she got down this way?’ Marc asks. The open window yawns black night. The nurses look at him in silence. ‘Maybe she flew,’ he says.
They laugh, dutiful and nervous.
Marc doesn’t wonder where Riley went. Some part of him always knew that she could never survive outside Nowhere.