Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
A hand on her arm brought Grace out of a daze. For a moment she struggled to remember where she was. She looked up at a woman wearing a blue uniform. A nurse’s uniform. She was in a hospital, the place she hated most in the world.
For a moment she thought it was Phil she was waiting for, waiting to hear whether his latest operation had finally got rid of the cancer that was taking over his body.
But of course it wasn’t Phil. Her husband was long dead. The events of the evening came back to her in a rush. It was Will in there. Will was being operated on at this very moment. There were people behind those doors trying to save his life.
‘I’m sorry, but you can’t stay here.’
It was like the woman was talking to her through a glass barrier.
As soon as she finished speaking, a trolley with another patient lying flat on their back was rushed past them and through the magic doors.
The nurse held out a hand and Grace took it and staggered to her feet.
‘I’m Eva, and I will take you to our reception area, where you can wait for news.’
Grace looked back at the metal doors that had swallowed up the next patient and slammed shut in her face again.
‘But I want to go in there.’
Eva pulled on her hand.
‘It’s not possible. Please come with me.’
Grace let herself be led away, away from the man she’d only just admitted to herself how much she cared about. As she walked down the corridor hand in hand with Eva, yet more medical staff rushed past in the opposite direction. Grace tried not to think about where they were going and what emergencies they’d have to deal with when they got there.
After Phil’s last spell in hospital, when they’d sat her down and told her that a hospice was the next and final step for her husband, she’d vowed never to set foot inside a hospital again if she could help it.
But she couldn’t help it now. She could no more walk away from Will than she could one of her own children.
She put up her fingers to pinch her nose shut. This was obviously a luxury hospital; the neutral decor was immaculate and there were staff everywhere you looked. From the corridor she glimpsed smart offices and rest rooms with pastel furniture and rugs. A bit different from the hospitals she’d been in with Phil. They’d had scruffy eau-de-nil walls and broken chairs, though admittedly the same incredibly dedicated staff, just far fewer of them. But however much money they’d lavished on this hospital, underneath the citrus air freshener being pumped out, it was the same smell. A smell she could never forget. Disinfectant mixed with a myriad other notes. The smell of despair.
The nurse took her to a brightly lit reception area and sat her down in a pale green upholstered armchair.
‘Would you like a coffee? Or a water?’
Grace shook her head.
‘I think you should try to drink something. You have a long wait ahead. Mr’—the woman looked at the electronic tablet she was holding—‘Lancing will be in surgery for several hours yet.’
So, Will’s second name was Lancing. He was Will Lancing. She hadn’t known. How could she feel so much for the man, a man she’d had glorious sex with, when she didn’t even know his second name?
‘Several hours? So there is no news yet?’
‘No, and there won’t be for a while. Please accept a coffee.’
Grace nodded this time. The Greeks thought coffee was an answer to many a problem. It couldn’t solve everything, but it was a good starting point.
The nurse went off to fetch her drink, and Grace caught sight of the front of her own T-shirt. The pale pink cotton was splattered with blood, Will’s blood.
A man sitting on the other side of the room gave her a confused stare.
Grace waved.
‘It’s OK, don’t worry. It’s not mine. None of it’s mine. It’s all Will’s.’
The man looked away again. He obviously thought she was insane.
Eva had added sugar to Grace’s coffee. She almost spat it out, but the nurse encouraged her to drink it.
‘The sugar is good for shock. Please try.’
Grace swallowed the hot sweet liquid and drank most of the bottle of water the nurse gave her as well. Her head did feel clearer.
Eva pointed at her T-shirt.
‘We have a lost property section here. I could find you something to put on if you like.’
Grace held onto a fold of the T-shirt. She was ready in case the woman tried to bodily take it off her. It might be all she had left of Will. Some drops of his blood.
‘No!’
‘OK, that’s fine. Don’t worry.’
The woman was looking around her as if she didn’t want to alarm the other relatives waiting for news. The room had filled up a bit since she’d first arrived.
‘Sorry, but I’d like to keep it on.’
‘I understand.’
She obviously didn’t but had been trained in dealing with difficult customers.
‘There is a hotel around the corner where we send our relatives in these circumstances. It’s only a two-minute walk, so would you like me to arrange that? It’s all paid for by Mr Lancing’s employers. We will ring you the second there is any news.’
‘No, thank you. I want to stay here until Will comes out of surgery.’
Eva gave her a look which told Grace she’d been hoping to get rid of her.
‘I understand.’
She wished the woman would stop saying that. She didn’t understand anything. When she’d walked out of the hospice for the last time, she’d had to leave her husband in there. Or what was left of him. She wasn’t going anywhere.
‘There is a cafeteria at the end of this corridor’—the woman pointed in the opposite direction to the operating theatre—‘where you can buy meals. And the machines with coffees and snacks are behind me. They are free.’
‘OK.’
‘Please don’t ask reception for updates. They won’t have that information. I will be on shift all night, and I will come and tell you as soon as we have any news.’
Grace nodded.
‘I’ll get you a blanket, and then I suggest you get some sleep. You can use one of the sofas if you like.’
Sleep was the farthest thing from her mind.
The woman came back with a pale green fluffy throw, which matched the furniture, of course, and a clear plastic bag with a phone, some keys and a wallet inside.
‘These are your… brother’s things. I’m passing them to you for safekeeping.’
Grace dimly remembered saying she was his sister, to be allowed on the helicopter. That seemed like many hours ago. It had obviously gone down on the official form. She stuffed the sealed bag inside her rucksack. Then she quickly checked to see if there was anything useful already in the rucksack. She couldn’t for the life of her remember packing it. All it had in it was a bottle of water, her phone, keys, sunglasses and a cat toy she’d forgotten to give to Karen. Nothing remotely useful. Not even a spare T-shirt. It was only supposed to have been a quick walk to Will’s and back along the coast path.
‘Thank you.’
‘Could you sign here, please, to say you’ve received them.’
She scribbled her name, Grace Foreman, on the tablet with the plastic pencil, under the eagle eye of the nurse.
‘I take it that’s your married name?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
That at least was true. Or it had been. She wasn’t about to sign it as Grace Lancing– that was edging into fraud territory. She might be dazed, but she wasn’t stupid.
Eva was staring at her bloodied T-shirt again, obviously desperate to wrench it off her.
‘As I said earlier, it would be a good idea for you to get some sleep.’
‘I’ll try.’
Grace was convinced it was code for ‘Be quiet and don’t make any more trouble.’ She checked the time on her phone. It was two o’clock in the morning. A sudden pang of hunger made her stomach growl. She’d had nothing to eat since a couple of biscuits at Will’s about ten hours before. The woman had told her it would be ages yet before they heard anything, so she might as well grab something.
Since it was a cafeteria in a Greek hospital, there was plenty of food on offer, even at this hour of the morning. Grace chose a portion of what looked like homemade moussaka with greens, or horta as they called them, and poured herself a glass of water from a jug. Will wouldn’t want her to starve. He constantly made comments about her ‘healthy appetite’.
Various medical staff were seated at the tables, talking animatedly in Greek. Perhaps they were discussing cases, but for all she knew they could be chatting about nightclubs and cocktails. She picked a seat at the only unoccupied table, in a corner. As soon as she sat down, a middle-aged man with faded blond hair appeared with his tray and gave her a sad smile.
‘Are you English?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah, I guessed right. Do you mind if I share your table?’
It wasn’t really what she wanted, but she could hardly say no.
‘Please… go ahead.’
He sat down opposite her.
‘I’m Hendrik. I’m just visiting. We live in The Hague.’
Grace forced a smile.
‘Grace.’
She looked down at his tray. It boasted a very strange selection of things. A yoghurt, three chocolate bars and a child’s drink, bright orange, in a see-through plastic bottle. It was like he’d chosen his food in the dark.
Hendrik tore open the straw and started on the drink. Grace forked up a mouthful of moussaka and realised just how hungry she was. She ate her way through the plateful while she watched Hendrik eat two of the chocolate bars in quick succession, cramming them into his mouth.
When he started on the third one, she realised his eyes were full of tears.
She reached over and held his hand.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s my wife, Johanna. She collapsed in the street.’
‘Oh, no, that’s awful.’
‘She has always wanted to see the Acropolis…’
The man took a deep breath.
‘The doctors told us last month that her cancer had returned.’
He wiped his eyes with a serviette.
‘They said that if there was anything she wanted to do, she should do it now.’
Grace felt the room spin. She’d forgotten for a moment that she was in a hospital full of sick people and their relatives. It wasn’t just her and Will. She’d had so many chats with random strangers in hospital cafeterias just like this one when her husband was alive. They’d pour out their stories and she would tell them hers. Phil would be somewhere out of sight, being operated on, or receiving treatment in some far-flung corner of the hospital. It didn’t matter whether it was night or day, there was always someone waiting and willing to talk in the cafeteria. It was the same grey light above them, fluorescent panels that created a strange twilight world she wouldn’t wish on anyone.
She had to get out of there before she fainted.
Grace pushed back her chair and picked up her rucksack. She gave the man’s shoulder a squeeze as she passed.
‘I really hope your wife improves. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.’
Outside in the corridor, Grace bent double and took in great gulps of air. Would she ever be able to separate Will from the memory of her husband and truly move forward? What if Will survived but was permanently disabled and needed round-the-clock care? Could she really take that on? Just a few minutes back in a hospital and she was already losing it.
Grace sank to the floor with her back against the wall for a moment and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, it came to her, clear as a bell.
It was time to fight for the living, not dwell among the ghosts of the past. There was a man just a few feet away who needed her to believe he was going to make it. Will and her husband weren’t rivals for her affection; they never had been. She’d got it all wrong and mixed everything up in her mind. Her love for Phil had been all too real, but that part of her life was well and truly over. The girls were grown and gone too, focused on their own lives, as it should be.
But she hadn’t died along with Phil. It had sometimes felt like that, but life was a precious gift, and she was going to grab it with both hands.
If Will pulled through this, she was ready, at last, to see where it took them. But even if it didn’t take them very far, her time in Greece had helped her realise that she could cope on her own and still enjoy life. She’d achieved more in the past three months than the previous three years.
Her new experiences had given her renewed strength, and it was time now to use that strength to help Will as much as she possibly could.
Grace made her way back to reception and checked her phone yet again. People always said that no news was good news. She had to believe that was true.
The nearest sofa beckoned, so she took off her shoes and cuddled up under the blanket, although sleep was out of the question.
Someone shaking her arm pulled her out of a dream where she had to choose who to save in a ferocious storm at sea– Will or her husband? The waves were overwhelming the boat. She had to know the answer. She tried to stay on board, but the picture was dissolving in front of her eyes. Eva was stood in front of her.
She studied the nurse’s face for a sign of what was to come, but the woman gave nothing away. Had she perfected the blank expression on some sort of course? Grace looked her in the eye.
‘Tell me. Please.’
If it was bad news, she wanted to know immediately. No beating around the bush. She’d had enough of that.
‘Your brother has come through his surgery successfully.’
Grace punched the air.
‘Yo!’
‘He is weak, but he was lucky.’
She’d hardly call him that, but she let it pass.
‘The knife did not damage any vital organs. He has lost a lot of blood, and he needs another transfusion, but the doctors are hopeful he will make a full recovery.
‘Yes!’
Grace did a little dance around the waiting area, but the thought that other people might not receive such good news stopped her in her tracks. She’d been on the other side of the fence too.
‘Can I see him?’
‘We don’t usually let relatives in at this point. Mr Lancing’s still in the intensive care unit.’
Eva pursed her lips.
‘But you do seem very devoted to your brother. I’ll have a word with the surgeon.’
Grace crossed her fingers on both hands until Eva came back and beckoned her forward.
‘Just a couple of minutes. He really needs to rest.’
The sound of machines whirring, doing their vital jobs, hit Grace as she entered the room. She’d been asked to mask up, and the sight of doctors and nurses in green scrubs attending to patients made her halt briefly at the door. The inside of an intensive care unit was something she’d hoped never to see again. But this wasn’t about her. She was here for Will.
There was a patient in a bed in each corner of the room, and from where she stood it was hard to tell which was Will. They were all in white hospital gowns and covered in wires and tubes.
Grace forced her feet to move and passed the first two people, trying not to stare too hard. They had enough to deal with without her gawping at them. She spotted Will’s muscular hairy legs first, sticking out of his gown. He was at the end on the right. The gown stopped above his knees; they obviously didn’t have one quite long enough.
When she reached his side, she stopped for a moment to take in the face that had become so dear to her.
Will’s eyes were firmly closed, but the nurse at his side motioned for her to come closer.
Grace leant in and stroked his face.
‘Will…’
He opened his eyes as if it was a huge effort, but when he saw her, Grace was rewarded with a big grin.
‘Hello, sis.’