Chapter 43
43
‘I don’t care if you don’t want to go. We’re taking you. End of. Now get in the car.’
‘Honestly, Michelle, I’m fine. I feel a bit better now.’
‘You think that clutching your chest and telling us you think you’re having a heart attack and then saying you are fine fifteen minutes later is going to make us say, “Oh, that’s OK then. We’re off now”? Now, I’m not saying it again, Jo, get in the car .’
Reluctantly I climbed into the passenger side of Emma’s car. I felt like such a fool, but honestly, I really thought that I was having a heart attack. The letter I received this morning in the post had, as my mum used to say, put the willies up me. After everything that had happened recently with Michael, I didn’t think that he could stoop any lower. How wrong I was.
Just thinking about it made the pains come back again and I felt incredibly short of breath. Maybe it was good that they had insisted on taking me. They do say that stress can cause a heart attack and I was annoyed with the fact that it was Michael that had brought it all on.
I felt like my life was flashing before me. I had tried so hard not to dwell on the past. Mum’s positivity over the years had taught me that it had no purpose and that you had to acknowledge the past but keep moving forward. And I tried so hard to do that. But as the pains were getting worse and worse, I thought about the girls and whether they’d be OK without me. I knew they would in fairness. They had their dad, Claudia, a new half-sister on the way and their own busy lives ahead of them. Yeah, they’d be sad without me, but they’d cope. The saddest part of feeling like this was that apart from Mum, I didn’t think anyone else would really care about whether I was here or not.
One of the worst parts for me since I’d split up with Michael was the feeling of not belonging, to a marriage, a partnership, a family even. The utter emptiness that the feeling brought for me; the not feeling part of something. Some days before I moved I could go for days without speaking to or seeing a soul. I would watch the clock for hours on end, waiting for the hands to move, waiting until it was a reasonable time for me to go to bed to relieve the sheer loneliness I felt. That was until I moved here and met these two wonderful ladies who were ferrying me to the nearest A&E department because they cared about me. It had been a long time since someone cared and I was so glad that I’d moved here and started over. And now I could have it snatched away. The palpitations started again just thinking about it.
‘So tell us again what the letter said, if it’s not too painful.’ I could see a look pass between Michelle and Emma and knew that they were just trying to keep me chatting to take my mind off what was going on.
‘The sneaky bastard’s solicitor said that they were going to appeal Michael’s Aunty June leaving the house to me because I wasn’t even family and that in hindsight, he should never have agreed to the divorce settlement that he did and that they should have contested it at the time. They will be letting me know about their findings in due course.’
The huge tear which had been welling in my left eye plopped onto my lap. I had always loved that house, but now, even more so. I felt like we’d really got to know each other. At first, I was wary of staying there. Lying awake at night listening to the creaks and groans of a different house freaked me out a little, especially being on my own. But, daft as it probably sounded to everyone, I felt like we’d come to an understanding. That the house knew that I was going to restore it and bring it back to its former glory. I already loved it more than the modern characterless family house that we’d moved to once the business had started to thrive. I’d done what I could to make it home, but it had been hard. I’d preferred the two up, two down terraced house we’d bought when we were first married personally. But Michael wanted to show his friends that we’d ‘made it’.
Emma and Michelle kept me talking all the way to the hospital. Every time I closed my eyes, Michelle shouted at me not to go to sleep.
‘Should I slap her round the face?’ she asked Emma. ‘I saw on Grey’s Anatomy that you shouldn’t let a patient sleep if they’re unwell.’
‘Only if you want a punch in the face back,’ I replied and they both laughed.
‘You’re clearly not that bad if you are joking about things,’ Emma said. ‘At least you haven’t lost your sense of humour.’
‘Not yet I haven’t but I can assure you that if anyone slaps me, I will.’
‘Okey dokey. We get the message. No slappers in this car.’ We all tittered, despite the circumstances.
When we arrived and checked in at the reception desk, I did indeed feel calmer and the receptionist looked at me like I was a complete fraud when I explained the symptoms that I’d had earlier. She over-emphasised some of her words.
‘So, you were feeling pains in your chest? But you’re not any more ?’
‘That’s right.’ I nodded.
‘So, can you describe what symptoms you are feeling right now ?’
‘Well, actually I feel OK right now,’ I told her. She rolled her eyes. The bitch.
‘Do you feel excessively hot at all?’
Emma appeared from nowhere and stuck her face up against the glass barrier.
‘She’s a bloody fifty-year-old woman. Of course she feels excessively hot.’ She peered at the receptionist’s name badge. ‘Welcome to our lives, Jade. It’s all right for you youngsters. You have your whole exciting life ahead of you, while we don’t. It’s nearly all over for us. Especially us…’ she fake sniffed back a fake sob, ‘widows.’
Michelle appeared on my other side.
‘I do apologise for my friend Emma. She has apparently officially entered the peri-menopause stage of her life and thinks it’s the end of life as she knows it. And she has this constant rage. Although that might be something to do with the fact that she’s a… well… you know…’
‘Widow?’ I volunteered.
‘Bitchbag, I was going to say.’
A slight smirk did appear on Jade’s face. I do have to say that even in my current circumstances, the three of us had a witty repartee which fed off each other and we thought we were highly amusing.
‘Please take a seat in the waiting room, ladies. There is quite a delay at the moment.’ She pointed to the clock on the wall, which showed the waiting time.
‘Two and a half hours. Are you kidding me?’
‘We’re very busy, I’ll have you know.’
I thought Emma would be the next one to need checking out. Her blood pressure must be sky high.
‘Oh, fuck off, Duck Lips,’ she muttered.
‘Emma!’ both Michelle and I reprimanded her. Duck Lips smiled at us. And the clock changed to say three hours.
‘Both of you please just sit down. You’re stressing me out.’
Subdued, they sat either side of me.
‘Anyone fancy a game of I Spy?’
‘Me first,’ yelled Michelle. ‘I Spy something that starts with HFD.’ She had an extremely smug look on her face as she crossed her arms and we looked around the room.
‘Hormonal Fat Divas,’ Emma yelled. We all guffawed. Loudly. Duck Lips glared.
‘Sorry!’ I sheepishly shouted over.
‘Hot Fricking Dames,’ was my guess.
‘Nope!’ Michelle’s face was getting smugger by the second.
‘Hairy Faced Damsels,’ Emma yelled out and I snorted which set us all off again.
‘Speak for yourself.’
I laughed at these two people who three months ago I had never even met, but who were now some of my best friends. It made me think about friendships. Life is ever-changing. And friendships were the same. Sometimes friends that we’ve had for years fade into the background of your life. Sometimes that’s because life takes over and people have their own priorities. A busy friend isn’t a crap friend, they’re just a busy one and probably doing their very best to keep juggling all their balls in the air. And that’s OK. Newer friends come into your life and at that particular time, because your worlds align, they become your closest confidantes and that’s OK too. And we should appreciate and celebrate them all. And right now, these were the two ladies who had my back. They’d been by my side at one of the most difficult times of my life and I would be eternally grateful to them.
‘Do you give up?’ Michelle asked. ‘You’d drifted off a bit there, Jo.’
‘We give up!’ Emma and I said in unison.
‘Hot! Fucking! Doctor! Look at him!’