Chapter 14
It’s done. I’ve taken the steps necessary to finalise the deal. Gregory Ryans is about to become the proud owner of a company he hates and his own father’s demise.
Now I’m standing in the window of my office, watching people going about their business on the streets below. It’s approaching rush hour. If I’m going to dinner, I have to leave soon.
Am I going to dinner?
I fold my arms across my chest. I think it would be best if I didn’t. If I walked away.
It wouldn’t help to see him again. This is cleaner. ‘But…’ I practically exhale the word.
I should really go, see Lawrence, Williams and, yes, Gregory, because they are clients. Even if they don’t come back to me, the legal world is small, we should part ways on good terms.
Then there’s Jack. Gregory wiped out my boss and had some part to play in his resignation from the partnership. I want to know what that is.
I move to my desk and slump into my chair as Margaret calls goodnight.
And why does he feel the need to protect me?
And what was that, in the room, before he left? Was he going to kiss me?
Flopping forwards, I drop my head in my arms on my desk. I can’t remember ever being so confused.
He’s had more than one chance to kiss me and he hasn’t. I’m not delusional. He’s chosen not to kiss me.
Do I even want him to kiss me?
In the few times I’ve met him, he’s lost his temper with me – and just as quickly turned on the charm. He’s punched my boss. He’s tried to fight Pearson – for good reasons. He’s taken something, immorally, underhandedly – although I understand why.
‘Damn it, even now I’m defending him.’ Closure is what I need.
Glancing at my watch, I quickly shut down my computer and start packing up my tote.
I’m going to put an end to this.
As I head out to the street, I decide to treat myself to a cab instead of the Tube. After the last few days, I deserve a cab.
My phone starts to ring as I slip into the back of the car and relay my address to the driver.
‘Sandy, hang on a second.’ I clip in my seat belt as the driver pulls out into traffic. ‘Sorry, I’m back.’
‘Scarlett,’ she sobs. ‘It’s your dad.’
A feeling of terror slithers around my torso and constricts my chest. ‘Sandy, what’s wrong? What’s happened?’
* * *
In less than half an hour, I’m running from the cab, throwing notes at the driver, hurtling into Accident and Emergency.
‘I’m looking for my dad, Doctor Phillip Heath,’ I say frantically to the girl at reception. I watch, my feet bouncing, my temperature rising, as she types details into her keyboard. ‘Please hurry,’ I beg.
‘Scarlett!’
I turn to Sandy and grab her tightly, pulling her in to me. ‘How is he?’
‘They won’t let me see him because I’m not family,’ she says, clearly distressed, her eyes red, wet and swollen.
‘What! Excuse me,’ I snarl at the receptionist, ‘this lady is more family than anyone else I know.’
‘Sorry but the policy is immediate family only.’
I have to think quickly. ‘She’s my stepmother. She’s lived with my dad for more than twenty years. They’re common-law husband and wife.’
The receptionist pouts as her eyes run from Sandy’s head to her toes. ‘She didn’t tell me that. He’s in room seven. Go down the corridor, all the way to the end, turn right, go through the double doors and it’s about halfway down on the left-hand side. You can both go.’
Thanking her, I take Sandy’s hand and we march towards room seven at such a pace, Sandy is forced to remove her burnt-orange, wool coat.
Sandy bursts into tears as soon as she sees the frail man lying before her, bruises already showing on his body.
I’m numb, unable to move from the spot where I’m standing.
He’s propped up on one pillow, his head wrapped in a thick bandage, blood seeping at his temple.
He’s dressed only in tubes beneath the sheets and his clothes, which have been torn from his body, are piled on the plastic chair at his bedside.
Intravenous drips are strapped into the back of each hand.
Tubes pumping oxygen into his tiny, helpless body are wrapped around his head and nestled into his nose, artificially inflating his lungs.
His eyes are red and black, swollen shut.
A machine beeps, frightening me out of my trance and I step towards him, saying his name.
There’s no response. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and goose pimples form on my arms. The shell lying in the bed, the shell wired up to these machines, is not Dad.
A doctor dressed entirely in green enters the tiny prison of a room with a clipboard. His grey hair is in stark contrast to his black skin. ‘You must be…?’
‘Scarlett, his daughter.’
His large hand is ice cold as it shakes mine.
‘This is Sandy, my stepmother.’
‘I’m Doctor Jefferson,’ he says, turning to shake Sandy’s hand.
‘How bad is it?’ My words are shaky.
‘Your father has sustained some superficial wounds and broken his right arm. We can clean the wounds and x-ray the arm but we needed to stabilise him first. When he fell down the stairs, he suffered serious injuries to his head.’
‘I think he must have hit it on the stair lift.’ Sandy sniffs. ‘There was blood.’ She shakes her head and retrieves a tissue from inside her jumper sleeve.
The doctor nods as if Sandy has offered the next piece of a jigsaw puzzle and it fits. ‘The impact fractured his skull. It caused severe swelling and haemorrhaging.’
An intangible weight forces the air out of my lungs and my hand moves to my open mouth.
‘Will he be okay?’ Sandy asks through a tissue.
The doctor flashes a look of sympathy to Sandy then speaks to me like a professional, stoically. ‘Scarlett, it’s possible that your father may never regain consciousness. We have machines breathing for him. We’re keeping him alive to give him a chance to recover.’
‘Why do I get the feeling there’s a but?’
‘Your father’s health was already poor. The chances of him recovering are reduced because of that.’
Sandy steps between the doctor and me. ‘I don’t understand. He will recover?’
The doctor sighs, in the way medics sigh in movies for dramatic effect right before they tell the relatives that their loved one is dead. ‘If he does wake up, he will have irreparable brain damage. How bad that will be is a guess at this stage.’
Sandy sobs hysterically into her tissue.
I don’t know whether I thank the doctor but he leaves the room. I slip my fingers into my dad’s cold, lifeless palm.
He would hate to live like this. Even if he wakes up and goes back to his old life, the life he had just hours ago, I know he hates living that way.
But he still has good days. They might be few and far between but they exist. For so long as he has coherent days, days when he looks at me like my dad and I can see and feel how much he loves me, I’m not ready to let him go.
There’s an unbearable, mounting pressure in my brow and behind my eyes but I don’t cry.
He’ll recover. He’s my dad.
* * *
Dad is moved to a side room on a ward and registered as an inpatient.
I wonder if he’ll ever become an outpatient.
Sandy and I watch him in his vegetative state whilst auxiliary nurses bring us endless cups of tea – the good old English cure for anything – and give us each a plate with four cheddar triangle sandwiches and half a bag of ready salted crisps.
‘The only other spare meals we have are dysphagic but you’re welcome to try if you like?’ Valarie, the evening nurse, asks.
‘Thanks all the same but cheese sandwiches are great,’ I say.
Valarie chuckles. ‘I thought you might say that.’
The food reminds me where I’m supposed to be.
The completion dinner.
I slip out of the room and I’m grateful for the fresh, crisp air in the hospital car park. I find Gregory’s number on my phone and dial, staring up to the dark sky, trying to keep it together.
‘Scarlett.’
It’s crazy but something in his voice, the sound of my name, brings everything that’s happened crashing down on me.
‘Scarlett? Are you there? Is everything okay?’
I sniff back the first sign of tears and pinch the bridge of my nose between my finger and thumb. ‘Gregory, I’m sorry but I can’t make it to dinner.’
‘Scarlett, what’s wrong?’ His tone shifts to rigid concern.
‘I, ah, it’s my dad. He…’ I breathe out slowly and wipe a tear from my cheek.
‘My dad has Alzheimer’s. He, ah, he fell down the stairs and…
’ A sob unwittingly breaks from my throat.
‘I don’t think… He’s, he’s brain damaged.
I don’t know if he’s going to wake up. I’m sorry.
I shouldn’t be crying to you. I’ve got to go. I’m sorry about dinner.’
* * *
I send Sandy to the café on the ground floor of the hospital for a break. It’s getting late and we’re both exhausted but as long as the nurses keep turning a blind eye to us being here, we won’t leave him.
I sit with my dad, having a one-way conversation for almost an hour.
There’s no change. Once or twice, I imagine him responding to my voice, answering my questions, but if it weren’t for his chest subtly rising and falling, he’d be still.
The machines that keep him alive beep and whisper in rhythm.
A score of death. That’s the brutal reality.
Dad, the man he was, has been slowly dying. But this can’t be the end.
My body goes stiff with both realisation and disgust. Part of me, tiny though it is, is relieved that his suffering might be drawing to an end.
His skin is increasingly pale, almost translucent under the fluorescent lights when we eventually leave.
Sandy and I walk out of the main entrance linked together.
She carries a plastic bag containing my dad’s torn clothes in one hand and holds the lapels of her coat closed at her chest with the other.
‘Scarlett, I’m sorry.’