Chapter 22
22
Gwen had been put through more tests than she could have listed, even if her brain hadn’t felt like it was made of marshmallow, and some of the results had already come back. When she and Barry had described her symptoms to Meg, she’d hit upon the mention of increased thirst and the resulting need to go to the loo more often.
‘It could be diabetes. If that’s gone undiagnosed, it could also explain some of the confusion.’ Gwen had wanted to latch on to Meg’s words and will them to be true. No one wanted diabetes, but there was treatment she could have to stabilise her insulin. To her disappointment the tests for diabetes had come back negative, and her confusion couldn’t be blamed on another UTI either. Her blood pressure was low, which could explain the dizziness, the headaches, and possibly even some of the confusion. But she couldn’t pin her hopes on it being that simple, not with the other symptoms she’d had: the desperate low mood, the loss of interest in eating and a lethargy that felt all consuming at times, like life was just too much. She’d watched her mother experience those same feelings when her illness had started to progress. It didn’t matter how often Meg or any of the other medical staff tried to reassure her that her symptoms didn’t fit a diagnosis of aphasia, she could feel it in her gut. In meant that despite her exhaustion she couldn’t sleep, because the results of the tests could come at any time.
‘Come back to bed.’ Barry’s voice was gentle but firm as he came into the living room, where she lay on the sofa, staring into the darkness, as she had been for the past couple of hours.
‘There’s no point, I’ll just end up lying there awake and that will disturb you.’ Gwen hated nighttime lately, the endless hours of darkness when the fear crept in, and nothing could shake it. There’d been a time not so long ago when she’d have happily gone back to bed just to be with Barry, even if she was struggling to sleep, but now the night felt like her enemy.
‘You could just come up and have a cuddle. Sitting here on your own worrying won’t solve anything.’ When she didn’t move, Barry crossed the room and joined her on the sofa, taking hold of her hand. ‘Whatever happens, whatever all of this is, you don’t have to face any of it on your own. We’ve always been side by side, and that’s not going to change.’
Gwen didn’t answer for a moment. The clarity of her thinking seemed to come and go, which was part of the torture. She could convince herself for a little while that she was okay, but then there’d be another incident where she couldn’t coordinate her thoughts with her speech. Right now, Gwen knew exactly what she wanted to say and when she finally started to speak, her mouth seemed willing to comply for once. ‘I don’t want you to have to be there when I stop being me. I don’t want to put you through that.’
‘You’ll never stop being you, not to me. And there’s nothing you can say that will make me change my mind about staying by your side until one of us shuffles off this mortal coil. I’m not going anywhere and, if you’re not coming back to bed, I’m staying here with you.’
Gwen’s response was so quiet that if Barry hadn’t sat down beside her, he might not have heard it. ‘I’ve been so lucky with the life we’ve had, and I can’t complain if that luck runs out, but I really don’t want it to.’
‘Neither do I, but I wouldn’t trade a day of the life we’ve had for anything. No matter what.’ Barry pulled her towards him and Gwen rested her head on his shoulder. She didn’t want to be facing any of this, and she was still terrified, but if she had to go through it she was so grateful it was with Barry. He’d always loved her unconditionally and she knew he meant what he said, because if the situation had been reversed she’d have felt exactly the same.
* * *
Amy and Lijah had been openly ‘back together’ for a grand total of thirty-six hours before the first photographs of them holding hands had appeared online. Lijah had tried to keep things low key and to protect his identity since he came home, but someone who’d witnessed the accident had leaked the fact that he’d been involved in helping Ellen, and there’d been even more press sniffing around after that. It meant a photographer was there when Amy and Lijah had gone out walking with Monty, on one of his first short walks. The vet had suggested getting a pet pushchair, so that the little dog didn’t overdo it, and they’d pushed Monty down to the beach and then let him out for a little while when they got there. Neither of them had noticed the photographer lurking in the distance, snapping shots of them. The weather was getting warmer, and Lijah hadn’t been wearing a hat, his joy at Amy finally being willing to give things a proper go making him drop his guard more than he should have done. He hadn’t wanted to play into the fears she’d expressed by acting like a paranoid celebrity, but he should have known the risk he was taking. His reticence had given the press the perfect opportunity to capture candid moments between the two of them, the headlines that accompanied the pictures as salacious as possible, to guarantee the maximum number of clicks on the article.
Troubled singer, Lijah Byrne and his childhood sweetheart enjoy time on the beach with their baby
It was only later in the article that the journalist admitted the ‘baby’ in question was in fact a dog. The majority of the story was just as full of half-truths and fabrication as the headline, but worse than that it had stirred up a hornets’ nest of interest from other journalists and, by the third day, it was obvious it was really getting to Amy.
‘They were outside the hospital again today.’ There was a sigh in her voice when she got back to the flat, where he’d been waiting with Monty. Lijah had wanted to pick her up from work, but she’d told him it was a bad idea, because it would just encourage the journalists. ‘I thought they were going to follow me all the way home.’
‘It’ll calm down, I promise.’ He swept the hair away from her face as he spoke, hoping he was right, but she looked close to tears.
‘Have you read what they wrote?’
‘Don’t take any notice of that, they just make up whatever they want.’ He was doing his best to make it sound easy, when he knew from bitter experience it wasn’t.
‘The comments from people online are worse than the article itself. I can live with being described as curvy, when I know they mean fat, and having a girl-next-door charm, when I know they mean plain, but the comments…’ Tears welled up in Amy’s eye, and she furiously wiped them away. ‘I hate myself for caring so much, but my God some of the comments are horrible.’
‘You’re beautiful, inside and out.’ He wished she could see it, but he knew she probably never would. ‘The people who post horrible comments are saying far more about themselves than anything else. It’s got nothing to do with you, there’s something wrong with them and people like that just need an outlet for their hate. You get used to it after a while and it gets easier to ignore.’
‘I don’t want to get used to it. One of them said I should have been drowned at birth and another said that if we did have a real baby, it wouldn’t look like a dog, it would look like a pig, because it would take after its mother.’ She tried to laugh, but she didn’t quite pull it off, and he felt capable of violence towards the people who were deliberately setting out to hurt Amy.
‘There are some awful people out there, but I promise you that?—’
She cut him off before he could finish, pulling away. ‘I knew this would happen and that people would say I wasn’t good enough for you.’
‘It’s the other way around, you’re far too good for me.’ He pulled her closer again, relieved when she didn’t resist. ‘Don’t let anyone take this second chance away from us. Please, Ames.’
‘I won’t.’ She nodded, but he could see the doubt those comments had put in her eyes. She’d admitted it was other people who’d made her question whether things could work out between them the first time around, so-called friends who’d suggested that when his career took off he’d inevitably outgrow her. It meant they’d never had the chance to find out for themselves. Amy had seemed far more assured when they’d reconnected, and he’d assumed it was the desire to protect the life she’d built for herself that had made her set parameters on their relationship. But he’d seen the signs that her self-doubt was still there and he knew from experience just how damaging online comments could be to someone’s self-worth. He couldn’t bear the thought of this coming between them.
Kissing her gently, Lijah wished she didn’t have to try and grow a skin thick enough to deal with all the hatred out here. He’d had years of that, and it still had the power to drive him to the edge at times. Whatever Amy might believe, he wanted to protect her from every kind of hurt. Yet, because of him, she was being exposed to a vicious onslaught. Part of him knew it would be kinder to walk away, but he couldn’t do that, because he was already struggling to imagine his life without her and he didn’t even want to try.
* * *
‘Can you tell me again exactly where the pain is?’ Amy was spending the shift triaging patients and she was almost certain the man in front of her was trying to pull a fast one. She had enough experience to recognise the signs when she saw them. The man didn’t wince, until she directly questioned him about the source of his pain, and when he did react it was with clinical regularity. One, two, three, wince. One, two, three, wince . His description of his pain had been textbook too, almost as if he was reading it out, which was why she’d asked him to repeat it.
‘It started just below my belly button and then radiated out until it was concentrated on the right-hand side of my abdomen.’
‘It sounds like it could be appendicitis.’ Amy made some notes on the computer, turning back in time to see the man, whose name was Tom, trying to take a surreptitious photograph with his phone. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Just a hospital selfie, you know, for Instagram.’
Amy’s scalp prickled. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to get out and stop wasting hospital resources, but she could just imagine how that would be reported. So, she breathed out slowly instead. ‘I’ll go and speak to one of the doctors. They’ll need to do some test to establish whether it’s appendicitis.’
‘What kind of tests?’ For the first time, Tom’s over-confidence seemed to desert him, and the corners of Amy’s mouth twitched, something Meg had said recently inspiring her.
‘A rectal examination is the best way, but you’ll probably need an enema first.’ It was an outright lie, one she could get into serious trouble for, but it was worth it for the look of sheer horror on his face. ‘I won’t be long.’
Amy almost laughed as she left the room and she had a funny feeling that, by the time she came back, Tom would have made a miraculous recovery. As it turned out, he’d disappeared altogether, and she was more certain than ever that he’d either been a journalist, or a member of the public hoping to make a bit of money by selling a story. The thought of being photographed at work made her feel sick. She was just trying to do her job in a service that could ill afford time wasters, and the idea of having her face splashed all over the papers horrified her. She didn’t want to believe anyone could sink low enough to make up an illness, but she knew they could and she hated the fact it might make her doubt a genuine patient, in future.
‘Tough shift?’ Isla asked when they had the chance to catch up properly in the staff room, just before Amy was about to head home.
‘I had a journalist in, pretending to have appendicitis and trying to take photos of me.’ Amy frowned. ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’
‘Don’t let them take this away from you Ames.’ Isla lowered her voice to almost a whisper as Eden came into the staff room. ‘It’s obvious how you feel about Lijah.’
‘You don’t have to whisper. Eden knows about me and Lijah. Everyone does.’
‘I think it’s great.’ Eden smiled. ‘But then I always was a sucker for a good love story, and you can’t beat one about childhood sweethearts who get back together.’
‘It’s probably the reason why the press are so interested. It’s a really nice feel-good story and we all need more of those these days.’ Isla was beaming and Amy envied her naivety, but then her friend probably hadn’t looked at the comments on the articles about her and Lijah. There was nothing feel-good about those.
‘They’re interested because no one can believe someone like him would go for someone like me.’
‘Why do you keep saying things like that?’ Isla’s tone was sharp. ‘If you ask me, he’s the lucky one.’
‘You have to say that because you’re my friend and I love you for it.’ Amy blew her a kiss. It was the same thing Lijah had said, but she still didn’t believe it. ‘He could date one of the world’s most successful models if he wanted to. I know because he has in the past.’
‘He’s dated you in the past too, it’s not like his feelings have come out of nowhere.’
‘That’s different, he wasn’t famous then.’
‘Is that why things finished first time around, because Lijah met other people and thought he could do better?’ Isla was giving her an appraising stare, and Amy suspected her friend already knew the answer to her question.
‘I ended it.’
‘Why?’ Isla was still looking at her.
‘Because I thought that’s what would happen, and other people told me that’s what would happen. So I wanted to end things before it did.’
‘Do you think that saved you any pain, or just made you wonder whether you’d ended something that could have worked?’ Isla didn’t even seem to need to blink, and Amy gave an exaggerated shrug, wishing her friend hadn’t read the situation quite so accurately.
‘Probably the second thing, but I didn’t know what was going to happen with Lijah’s career then. Now I do, and he’s got the whole world at his feet. How am I supposed to believe a life here, with me, could ever really be enough?’
‘What about if it had been the other way around?’ Eden gave her a questioning look. ‘If you’d been the one who became famous, don’t you think you’d still want to choose Lijah?’
‘Would I have had a choice between him and Ryan Gosling?’ Amy laughed, but Isla wasn’t letting her off the hook.
‘All the things you’ve been through in the past ten years, and all the people you’ve met, haven’t altered your ability to fall in love with Lijah again have they? So why should it be any different for him?’
‘I never said anything about being in love with him.’
‘You didn’t have to.’ Isla shook her head. ‘Stop overthinking it. Nobody knows for sure whether they’ll last forever, even if they are in love. Sometimes you’ve just got to enjoy life as it comes and accept you can’t control all the outcomes.’
‘Oh, and if Lijah can introduce you to Ryan Gosling, feel free to send him my way, seeing as you’re already in a relationship.’ When Eden laughed, they all joined in, but there was still an uncomfortable feeling niggling in Amy’s gut. She didn’t want other people’s opinions to drive a wedge between her and Lijah again, and she knew Isla was right about learning to enjoy the moment. But that was a lot harder to do when it felt as if half the world’s press was desperate for her life to fall apart, and that every internet troll would be waiting to celebrate when it did.