Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
At the John Radcliffe Hospital, some people’s lives were coming to an end while others were just beginning.
Surgeons, nurses and admin staff were the cogs in the NHS wheel and making a difference between life and death.
For the more fortunate patients, timely intervention was saving their lives, giving them a second chance.
The paramedics had kept Tom in the ambulance for a while when they first arrived, as they treated him and waited for clearance to get him inside.
At the house, they had asked Clara for his next of kin, but with no idea about his family dynamics and him having always rebuffed any questions, she had given her own name as his emergency contact.
Clara was on pins as she kept her phone in her hand and paced the hospital corridor waiting for news.
She had wanted to follow the ambulance but they were too fast for her and she wasn’t going to break the speed limit again.
Besides, Tom wouldn’t be able to see visitors for a while yet, although Clara wanted to be there the moment he could.
Being a woman of the cloth, waiting around hospitals for visiting time was something she was no stranger to, even though she despised it after being at this very hospital as she sat beside her dying mother a number of years earlier.
However, it wasn’t her first visit since then and the last time she had stood in the vicinity of Tom’s ward was when one of the students needed to have her appendix removed.
Clara had been the first visitor to greet her when she came around since her parents were still flying in from Hong Kong.
She had been determined that the young student wouldn’t come around alone, as she knew what it was like to have no parents beside you, no matter how old you were.
As Clara waited for the go-ahead to see Tom, she thought about his state of mind.
She understood that nobody knew what was going on in someone’s head, but why would Tom do something so extreme?
What had driven him? Had an incident, some kind of trauma from his past, led him to this desperate situation?
Why would a man with everything to live for end up here?
They were questions only Tom could answer.
It was getting late, and Clara had already hung around for two hours at the hospital.
Patience was something that she normally had plenty of but tonight she was struggling.
She was getting more tired and was about to get into a fight with the coffee vending machine when a young nurse approached her to inform her that she could finally see Tom.
Clara forgot about her change in the machine as she quickly followed the nurse.
While Tom still looked unwell, with an oxygen tube branching up his nose, he was a much better colour than when he was last seen being wheeled into the ambulance.
‘He’s still very sleepy,’ said the nurse soothingly. ‘His body’s taken a real battering.’
Clara nodded her head. She couldn’t imagine what his body had been through. She managed to get a headache after three glasses of wine. She wasn’t convinced that her body would have pulled through at all if she had drunk that much.
Gingerly, Clara approached Tom in his hospital bed. Although there was a canula in his hand, she very carefully stroked around it.
‘Tom. Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling so low? I thought we were having fun together. I thought you were happy.’
He didn’t respond and she wondered if Tom could hear her.
She had listened to many stories of how unconscious people could detect what was going on around them.
He wasn’t quite unconscious, but she hoped he could hear something in his comatose state.
There was so much she wanted to say, not to mention ask, but this wasn’t the time or place.
‘I’ve missed you so much. You gave me such a fright with that message, Tom. Thank goodness I found you in time,’ said Clara softly. She noticed how his hair had flopped onto his face and gently moved it behind his ear as she spoke to him.
As Clara kissed Tom’s forehead, she heard something like a slurred ‘sorry’ from his lips, but she wasn’t quite sure what he had tried to say. She was only grateful that whatever it was, at least it signified that he knew of her presence.
‘I’ve been so worried about you. I wish you’d have realised that you could’ve spoken to me. No matter how bad it is, you can always talk to me. Don’t ever do anything like that again.’ Clara could feel Tom’s fingers try to grasp onto hers as she spoke.
‘Oh, Tom. I’m so pleased you can hear me.’
‘Excuse me, sorry,’ a voice interrupted. Clara looked up to see the young nurse standing above them.
‘Do you mind if I do some checks on him?’ she said, gesturing Clara out of the way.
Clara didn’t mind at all, as she needed some air. It had been quite the evening and she felt sick when she thought about it all.
‘It’s fine. You know what? I’ll come back tomorrow. He needs rest anyhow.’
‘Yeah, it’s better for him that he rests now. Don’t worry, I promise we’ll take good care of him.’
Clara thanked the nurse for her kindness and gave Tom another kiss before telling him to have a nice sleep as she left him. She promised she would be back first thing in the morning and hoped they could talk properly then.
Despite being exhausted by the evening’s events, when Clara got home to bed, she hardly slept as she saw the flashbacks of Tom in his dressing gown on his sofa, needing help.
To think that he was lying there while she was cleaning the house waiting for him to message her.
She had so many regrets and couldn’t stop wishing she had gone around sooner, instead of trying to call him all that time.
She should have knocked on his door and spoken to him face to face instead of allowing him to ignore her messages.
Her heart hurt as she thought of him alone and struggling while all the time she thought she had been ghosted and ignored.