Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
GEMMA
It should be easy to find a place that feels better than the one I’ve just come from. How hard can it be to beat a prison? But I might have come to the one place that is worse than being locked up behind bars.
I hate hospitals and everything they represent. Sure, some people are here because they are welcoming babies into the world. But most people are here because they are doing everything they can to not leave this world before their time, and that’s what brings me here today.
My request to leave prison on compassionate grounds to come and visit my sick and dying mother has been granted, thanks to Jack helping the process along, so here I am, walking these wards on my way to find the woman who gave me life.
It feels cruel that I will now get to go on living while she departs, but it is the natural order of things, I suppose.
Being allowed here is not the only thing I have to be thankful to Jack for.
I am also grateful that he has continued to do whatever he can to try and progress things with Reid and Sadie and my vendetta with Luna on the outside while I have been locked up, and he has most recently done that by visiting this hospital and checking up on Sadie’s current condition.
Unfortunately, he was spotted by Reid, which led to another unpleasant altercation between the pair, but it was not in vain.
That’s because Jack was able to overhear a doctor telling Sadie’s family that she was showing signs of potentially coming out of her coma, and that is fantastic news for me.
It would mean that I have my ally back, another woman who is just as motivated to prove Luna’s guilt as I am, and the sooner she is back on my side, the better.
I need all the help I can get against our common enemy, so hopefully Sadie wakes up soon and, when she does, I’ll be sure to try and get Jack to get a message to her to let her know that Luna is still at large, but her time is running out.
But for now, my focus has to be on my mother, and I take a deep breath as a nurse leads us to the room where she resides.
I tell myself that I am ready to see her, in whatever condition she may be in, and I naively thought that was the case.
Nothing can prepare me for when I walk into her hospital room and see my mum lying in the bed before me.
She looks half the woman she once was.
This is not the strong mother who supported me.
This is a terminally ill patient who now looks to others for support.
‘Please can you give us some privacy?’ I ask the police officer who has escorted me every step of the way since I left my cell early this morning and was transported here.
I get that she has to keep a close watch on me in case I try and escape, but I’m not going to do that.
I simply want to spend some time with my mother, time that I have so far been robbed of by the person who framed me and put me in prison.
‘I’ll be right outside the door,’ the officer tells me, or possibly warns me, so that I know she won’t be far if I do try anything that I shouldn’t. The only thing I’m going to try is to wake up my mum so I can hopefully talk to her.
As she leaves the room, I approach the bed, looking at my mother’s closed eyes and wondering if she is actually sleeping restfully or just drowning in a cocktail of drugs given to her to keep her pain at bay.
I take a seat in the chair beside the bed and then reach out for the patient’s hand, instantly feeling how frail and fragile it is, and the lightweight nature of the hand that once cared for me instantly brings tears to my eyes.
‘Oh, Mum,’ I say, wiping my eyes with my free hand whilst feeling utterly useless in the face of the disease that is cruelly taking her from me.
‘Gemma? Is that you?’
I hear the faint voice and realise my mum is awake. Her eyes are now open and she is looking right at me, a sight that only makes my eyes cloud over with tears even more.
‘Mum, I’m here,’ I say, reassuring her. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m tired.’
‘That’s okay. You just need to rest.’
‘Who is that woman? Is she with you?’ she asks me then, and I realise she is referring to the police officer lingering outside in the corridor.
She is currently looking in through the window at us, as if I cannot be trusted to sit in here as I said I was going to.
I feel like making a rude gesture to her, but decide against it, not because it’s the sensible option, but because even at my age, I don’t want my mum to see me swear.
‘She’s from the prison,’ I say. ‘She’ll be taking me back there after our visit is over.’
‘You’re still in prison?’ Mum asks, uncertainty in her voice, and I realise she could be losing her sense of time and reality.
‘Yes, but I’ll be out soon,’ I say, telling a lie that I think is acceptable in the circumstances. ‘And when I am, we can go for lunch. Would you like that?’
‘That would be lovely.’
‘Okay, then you just need to hang on here and make sure you get better, okay?’ I say, battling more tears because I know my mum getting better is not possible, but I’m trying to stay positive for both of our sakes.
‘I’m not sure I will get better, darling,’ Mum says then.
‘Don’t say that, Mum,’ I say, wiping my tears again.
‘You need to find yourself a good man,’ Mum urges me. ‘Start a family of your own. Promise me you will. Promise me you won’t be lonely when I’m gone.’
‘I won’t be,’ I say, even if the reality is that I feel lonelier than I ever have before.
‘Whatever happened to that man you worked with?’ Mum asks me. ‘The one you said was very handsome and you thought he liked you too?’
She is referring to Reid. There was a time when I was genuinely hopeful that something might happen between us beyond the racy messages that we had been sending one another while he was still married to Sadie.
I foolishly told my mother about him, if only because she was always asking me if I was dating anybody, but it feels even more foolish now, considering it is my involvement with Reid that has messed my life up so spectacularly.
‘Nothing happened there, Mum,’ I say, which is the simplest way of answering that question.
Her illness had already begun to take hold by the time I was arrested and sent to prison, so I have been able to spare her all the details of what happened.
All she knew was that I was going away for a while, and now, it seems she can hardly even remember that.
‘That is a shame,’ Mum says. ‘Don’t give up on him. Always give love a chance. Just like me and your father did.’
The reference to my late father doesn’t do anything to help my tears and I expect to spend the rest of this visit sobbing.
Then I remember that the officer I was with kindly allowed me to pick up some snacks from the canteen on the way here, strictly for the patient to enjoy, so I reach for those now and open them up.
But when I offer them to Mum, despite her taking one, it becomes clear she doesn’t have the strength or appetite to eat anything.
My dear mother is literally wasting away before my eyes, and I can see that she doesn’t have long left.
This is most likely going to be the last time I am ever with her, and while I might be allowed to attend her funeral, with a police escort, of course, this will be the final time I get to look into her eyes and say everything I need to say to her.
‘I love you, Mum,’ I tell her, meaning every word of it, and like most people who end up in this situation, I imagine they wish they had said it more over the years.
‘I love you too, darling,’ Mum replies, and I gently rest my head on her shoulder and just lie there, trying to savour every second of this visit that should be something I get to do tomorrow and the next day, but cannot.
Because of Luna.
She has robbed me of something I cannot get back.
For that, somehow, I will make her pay.
The rest of my visit passes by in a blur of tears, reminiscing, and a little laughter before the officer steps into the room and tells me that it is time to go.
‘Goodbye, Mum. I’ll see you soon,’ I say very optimistically as I give her a kiss on the head and smell her soft hair, instantly transporting me back to my childhood when all I ever wanted was a hug from my mother.
I leave the room in floods of tears and, thankfully, the officer by my side doesn’t bother trying to engage me in conversation or order me around too much.
She doesn’t need to say anything, anyway.
I know what happens now. We go back to that prison and I return to my cell, where I will stay until I get word that my mother has died.
That’s it. That’s all I have to look forward to.
It might as well be me lying in that hospital bed.
What’s the point of having all this life ahead of me if I can’t enjoy any of it?
‘Help me!’
The anguished cry from the room we have just passed causes both me and my escorting officer to pause and share a confused glance.
‘Help me! I’ve fallen over!’
That second cry tells us that one of us needs to do something, and as we can’t see anybody else around, I guess we are going to have to come to this person’s aid.
‘Come on,’ the officer says to me, leading me into the room where we heard the voice come from.
As we walk in, I see a female patient lying on the ground, her hair covering her face and her hands seemingly trapped beneath her body.
‘Let me help you,’ the officer says, quickly bending down beside the stricken patient to try and help her up. But no sooner has she done that than the patient rolls over and makes a very quick motion towards the woman offering aid.
It takes me a second to realise what has happened, but when I do, my hands go over my mouth as I recoil in horror.
That’s because I can see the needle sticking out of the officer’s neck.
The patient has just stabbed her with it, and as she falls backwards, clutching at her wound, it looks like it could prove to be a fatal blow.
But before I can cry out for help, or even consider running to avoid any danger that might be coming my way, I get a proper look at the patient who just deceived us.
When I do, the horror only grows.
‘Hello, Gemma,’ Luna says to me before she reaches out and closes the door behind me, trapping us in here while the police officer loses her fight for life on the floor beneath us.