Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
I don’t really know what happens next, or in what order. I go upstairs and throw on dry clothes. The front desk guy calls us a taxi. Maybe it’s island time, or because it’s 10 p.m., but we seem to wait an eternity for it to arrive. Argument. Harriet missing. Pneumonia. In the taxi, flashes of dark sea and structural white go by, all of it dazzling me.
‘Stop torturing yourself,’ he says. His hand on the seat seems to instinctively slide towards mine, but his baby finger stops just shy of my own. ‘She’s going to be okay.’
Pneumonia.
Missing.
While I was half naked in a hot tub, thinking how much I wanted to join every part of my body with the man who was in there with me, my daughter was lying in a hospital bed? This is so awful I can hardly bear to think about it.
Aiden is waiting for us at the entrance. He is pale and drawn, his hair all over the place, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes; nothing like that self-assured young man I met in Malibu. More like a kid who’s just realised that adulting is overrated.
‘Dad!’ He steps forward into Frank’s embrace.
I watch them hug, Frank’s solid, spontaneous embrace. He’s a good dad; the thought just travels to me. No one hugs their son like that if they’re not a good dad. When they pull away, Aiden turns to me and his face blazes red. ‘I’m very sorry, Moira. This is all my fault.’
Fault.
‘What happened?’ I ask, pinning him to the ground with my gaze.
It takes him a moment, then he says, ‘We had a big fight. She was really furious with me, and she took off.’
‘When was this?’ I glance at Frank who won’t meet my eyes.
‘Last night,’ Aiden says. ‘She took off and she was… she was gone all night.’
‘What the hell do you mean she was gone all night?’
Frank says, ‘Hey, maybe we should chill and maybe sit down.’
‘I don’t want to chill and sit down,’ I throw back. ‘I want to know why my daughter was out all night.’
Aiden looks horribly out of his depth. ‘Like I say, we had a fight. I went looking for her. I… When she came back this morning, she was cold and hungry, and she had this terrible cough.’
‘I need to speak to a doctor.’ I search around. The small waiting area has only a few people in it. A kid nursing his arm like it might be broken. His mother tinkering on her phone. An elderly Greek man and his wife. A teenage girl holding a puke bucket. ‘Harriet had pneumococcal meningitis when she was nine,’ I say. ‘She was very, very sick and spent two weeks in hospital.’
I remember the girl guides’ weekend. The headache, stiff neck, confusion. Me rushing her to hospital and the young doctor almost making light of it. Me saying no, no, no, it’s not just some virus. Rupert beside me, little more than a bewildered bystander. His words: Darling, the doctor thinks she’s fine. But then they did the tests I insisted they do, and she wasn’t fine.
Frank puts a hand on my lower back, tentatively, then takes it away. ‘Don’t start jumping to conclusions. We’ll hear what the doctor says, and if we’re worried, we’ll get a second opinion.’
We.
I stare helplessly into his eyes, longing to take his comfort, but at the same time, conscious that I am not entitled to it. The doctor walks through a set of doors. ‘Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald.’ He looks straight at Frank.
I tell him I’m Harriet’s mother, but this is not her dad.
Aiden says, ‘And I’m Harriet’s fiancé.’
Frank says, ‘She’s right. I’m just Frank.’
The doctor looks puzzled, but then addresses me. ‘Okay, Mrs Fitzgerald… We did a chest X-ray. Your daughter has pneumonia. We have her on a strong antibiotic, giving her a little bit of oxygen and some rehydration. You do not need to worry too much. She will be fine.’ His tone is all smiley-faced emojis and a big, yellow thumbs-up.
I search his expression. ‘Fine? That’s it? But… you don’t realise… Harriet had pneumococcal meningitis when she was nine. Is this going to turn into—’ I try to rush it all out because I can tell we’re his brief pitstop on the way to somewhere else.
He cuts me off with a nod. ‘She told me.’ He places a firm hand on my arm. ‘I understand your concern. But the two are not related. Having pneumococcal meningitis as a child did not make her more susceptible to pneumonia on her holiday to Greece, nor will it impact her recovery.’
‘She got pneumonia just from being out all night?’ Frank asks somewhat sceptically.
The doctor shakes his head. ‘Not exactly. Though she is not the first tourist to underestimate how fickle the weather on Santorini can be in March!’ He smiles at us again. ‘Most likely she was exposed on the plane, or in a restaurant. Then maybe she is a little run down, a little stressed, her immune system a little low, and… bam! She winds up in the hospital in Santorini.’ He looks at me again. ‘We gave her a stronger antibiotic just because of her medical history, just to be cautious, but there is no reason to worry. We will keep her in overnight to help her breathe better, but tomorrow most likely you can come and get her.’
‘She can’t breathe?’ I say, almost breathless myself.
I feel Frank’s hand on my back again. The doctor is still smiling. ‘She is fine,’ he repeats. ‘You might want to give her a day or two before you travel home. Coughs on aeroplanes these days… But she will be feeling better on the antibiotic very soon.’
‘And how long before she’s fully back to normal?’ Aiden asks.
The doctor says, ‘The lungs are like a sponge soaking up all that bacteria.’ He makes a grabbing gesture with his hand. ‘So before all that cleans up properly… Four to six weeks.’
Aiden’s says, ‘Oh, man.’ And he looks at his feet.
‘You want to see her?’ He asks it like he’s a tour guide seeing if we’d like to visit the ruins.
‘Yes,’ Aiden and I say together but I flash him a look.
The doctor starts walking and we’re supposed to follow, but Frank touches Aiden’s arm and says something I don’t hear. Then Frank says to me, ‘You go see Harriet first.’
I try to send him a thank-you with my eyes, but his gaze falls away.
Aiden says, ‘Please just tell her I’m really, truly sorry, and…’ He lowers his eyes, possibly so I don’t catch the tears in them. ‘Tell her I love her.’
This is all my fault…
Frank pats Aiden on the shoulder and says, ‘She will, son. She will.’
In her room, Harriet is propped up with pillows, attached to oxygen and an IV. Her face is ashen and her eyes red from lack of sleep. She looks smaller somehow, stripped of the vitality that is so my daughter.
‘Mum?’ She scopes me out, frowns. ‘Wait a minute… Am I dreaming?’
I push a rogue tear from my cheek, force a smile. It reminds me of when she used to have nightmares as a kid and didn’t recognise me at first when I crept in to comfort her. ‘No, love. You’re not dreaming. I’m here. Frank and me. We came to surprise you for your wedding.’
I don’t know whether it’s a processing thing, or because right this minute she’s incapable of showing joy, but she just looks at me blankly. And then she bursts into tears.
I hug her. I kiss her clammy forehead. She cries and wheezes, and then makes a stoic effort to right herself and blow her nose. I perch beside her on the bed. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m just so sorry.’
She upturns her palm to meet mine, and I’m blasted back to ten years ago when I sat by her hospital bed and did pretty much this same thing. For hours. Days. Me and Harriet. My parents. His parents. Rupert was always dropping in, hurrying out. Showings. Closings. Got to dash. Grimace. Leave you to it then.
‘You have nothing to be sorry about,’ I tell her. ‘You haven’t done anything.’
She is staring at a fixed point on the bed cover. Her dark hair hangs lank around her shoulders, her crown slick with grease. ‘I’m just sorry you came all this way,’ she croaks. ‘We’re not getting married, so you both wasted your time.’ No sooner are the words out than she does an ungodly wheeze that makes the others pale into insignificance, and panic ignites my every last nerve. I am assuming she means they are no longer getting married given they’ve had some sort of fight but then she says, ‘Mum, we were never getting married. Not here in Greece, not this weekend. I’m really sorry. We were both just so mad at you guys that we just wanted to get away.’ She hangs her head for a second or two, while I try to make sense of what she’s just said.
‘There was never going to be a wedding in Santorini?’ I hear my own bemused voice. ‘You were never eloping?’
‘No.’ She shakes her head, her cheeks reddening. ‘When I said that bit about think of us this Saturday … I’m sorry. I knew exactly what you’d assume. I suppose I just wanted to…’ She frowns like she’s going to cry again. ‘I wanted to reinforce that I am an adult and you don’t get to control me.’ She says it firmly. As firmly as you can when you’re wheezing. ‘But it’s beside the point anyway, because I’m so annoyed at him!’ It comes out in a rasp of nerves and emotion which sets off a full-blown coughing fit. ‘Ow…!’ She cuddles herself around her middle. ‘It hurts like billy-o.’ Her dad’s favourite expression that manages to make him sound both posh and like a relic from another era. Harriet used to mock him for it, then adopted it herself. ‘Is he still here?’ she asks. ‘Is Aiden still outside? Did he tell you what he did? How he betrayed me?’ She lays that word down like cement with a trowel. ‘I don’t want him coming in here! I don’t want to talk to him or even set eyes on him.’
‘Of course not,’ I say, my heart sinking. The bastard must have cheated on her. She hacks again, and the rattle of her chest is almost more than I can stand to hear. ‘He’s not coming in. Don’t think about him right now. You never have to see him again. Don’t get upset. Please, Harriet.’
Her eyes are streaming, and she wipes her face with the back of her wrist. I spot the box of tissues and pass her a handful. ‘I can’t believe I trusted him! I can’t believe I saw him as this upstanding human being.’
I am boiling with anger. Aiden – the rat standing outside with his father, acting like he loves my daughter – has betrayed her with another girl. I’m going to kill him.
‘Please don’t think about what he’s done right now,’ I implore her again. I just want to hold her and make all this go away. ‘I can promise you he’s not worth your tears.’
And he’ll be dead soon, so there’s that.
‘I know.’ She presses a hand to her side.
‘Shush…’ I stroke her leg on top of the blanket. ‘You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get you better. We’re going home.’
How could he stand there and ask me to tell her he loves her? Ugh! The worm! The wriggling, slimy human tapeworm stuck in someone’s colon.
‘I promise you, Harriet, this feels massive, but you will get past this. And when you meet a real guy, the guy who would never consciously hurt you, you’ll realise you dodged a bullet, that this was a necessary part of growing up, and a valuable life lesson.’
She nods and sniffles, a little of the angst subsiding.
By seeing I’ve been able to comfort her, even in the smallest way, I puff up like a silly, sad superhero. ‘You’re an amazing young woman. I am so very proud of you.’
She doesn’t answer.
‘You trust me on this, right? That it’s all going to be okay?’
‘I trust you,’ she says, unconvincingly, and then she struggles out a smile. ‘I trust you because you’re my mum and you’re the one person who genuinely wants nothing but the best for me.’
Yes. To the power of a million.
But so too does Rupert. I’m going to have to call him. What am I going to say?
Her brows pull together again. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I can’t believe you and Frank came all this way…’
Frank. It suddenly occurs to me that if I’m going to despise Aiden, I have to despise Frank; he’s the cheating cad’s dad, after all. I think of our time together these last couple of days, the shared confidences, the easy way I can talk to him, and I don’t know why, but I suddenly feel horribly unprepared to have to despise Frank.
‘Let’s get you out of here tomorrow and we’ll work out what we’re going to do,’ I say. ‘Maybe we’ll spend a few days here, just you and me in a lovely hotel.’
‘Okay,’ she nods. ‘This all feels like a mess. All my stuff is in America but right now I just want to go home.’
‘Your term is finished now. You can go home.’ I squeeze her hand. ‘But let’s sort all that out later. Let’s just get you feeling better first.’
A bubbly young nurse comes in with medication. ‘ Kalispera , Miss Harriet!’ Her arrival resets us like a breath of fresh air. Harriet responds to her banter like a reflex, takes the pills.
‘Mum,’ she says. ‘It’s late. You must be tired. I’m really, really sorry again. Why don’t you go and get some sleep.’ I’m sure she knows I need permission to stop being a mother hen. ‘I’d like to listen to my music and then try to rest.’ We agree that I will return first thing in the morning.
Once I reach the door, I turn and wiggle my fingers in a wave. ‘Say hi to Frank,’ she says.
In the taxi back to the hotel, which the very kind hospital staff called for me, I check my phone. One message from Frank.
Aiden’s wiped. He’s gone back to his place to try to sleep.
Aiden is wiped. Oh, poor Aiden.
I text him back.
Just on way back to hotel now. I suppose Aiden has told you there never was going to be a wedding in Greece. They weren’t eloping.
I wait a while then I see the dots.
Yup!
I wait for a snarky comment. But instead, he types: How is Harriet?
Not great, I reply. Glad they’re keeping her in overnight.
I wait to see if he’s going to ask how I am. But after a minute or so passes, he writes: Let’s hope she’s a lot better tomorrow then.
Once I decide that’s the end of the communication, I turn my mind to Rupert. I am going to have to call him. But it’s so late now that I decide to save that job until tomorrow.