Chapter Three
Three
I woke to a cacophony of noises and the smell of vegetable soup.
A slow, steady beep, a high-pitched irregular bleep, a loud continuous pinging… I was in a hospital bed surrounded by corrugated curtains. Cocooned in duck egg. I took a deep breath, and it was a relief to feel the oxygen fill my lungs.
I was OK, I was alive, and I’d somehow made it into a hospital gown without my bra. There were wires stuck to my chest and a plastic tube poked out of my hand, surrounded by purple bruises. At least I still had my knickers on.
An eye appeared at the corner of the curtains, followed by a hand. ‘Ah, good evening, Sara. You’re awake.’
‘Hi,’ I mumbled, my mouth parched.
‘My name is Dr Fielding. You fainted in the office, do you remember?’
I nodded.
‘We’ve been monitoring you for the past few hours. We suspect it was a type of anxiety attack.’
I frowned. ‘Nothing to do with my heart then?’
‘No. Your ECG was clear, so no problems there. It looks to have been more of a vasovagal response.’
I leant forward to hear him better. Did he say vaginal?
‘In layman’s terms, your blood pressure and heart rate dropped at the same time, and you fainted. This kind of reaction is usually triggered by stress and exhaustion.’
‘Right.’
‘Your colleague Cheryl Garner admitted you and informed your husband. Mark, is it?’
My stomach flipped at his name, and I nodded. I didn’t need to correct him. Mark was still technically my husband and by default my next of kin, but I could imagine the confusion on his face when Cheryl called. Like – why was she telling him? No doubt he put her straight on to Mum.
Dr Fielding tapped away on his iPad. ‘I spoke with him earlier and he gave us full permission to go ahead with whatever treatment we deemed necessary.’ Course he did.
A timely reminder to update my will. Not that I had anyone to leave it to – not in the next generation, anyway. Abi and Kat would have to draw straws.
‘Your bloods are all fine, but your cholesterol has been flagged as high.’
‘Really?’ I croaked, thinking of the wine and cheese fest I’d had with the girls.
The doctor ploughed on, despite my one-word answers. ‘Do you exercise regularly?’
‘Yes,’ I said, affronted. ‘Swimming, HIIT classes, running occasionally.’ Very occasionally. And I hadn’t been to HIIT for months, now I thought about it.
He frowned. ‘Typically, we’d associate this kind of episode with a trauma reaction. Has anything happened recently we should take into consideration?’
You could say that.
‘I’m a lawyer, so work is always full-on. Criminal defence.’
‘Mm-hmm. We don’t usually class work as trauma,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Anything else?’
‘Not really,’ I whispered, scared to say the words out loud. I smiled into the silence, as Dr Fielding scratched his head, then I made myself tell him. ‘Apart from the divorce.’
My heart ached as I said it and I really didn’t want to go through it all again. Reliving the split and that awful, awful, conversation with Mark.
‘We got married too quickly,’ he’d said, and I froze.
I could tell immediately this wasn’t just one of those conversations.
He was serious this time. ‘I got carried away and that’s on me.
We barely knew each other.’ I’d heard the words, but I couldn’t believe he was saying them.
‘I love you in principle, of course I do, but this isn’t going to work. ’
‘You love me in principle?’ I’d repeated, as he smashed my precious memories to smithereens. ‘What the hell does that mean? It wasn’t quick – it was a beautiful, romantic whirlwind.’
‘It was,’ he’d said sadly. ‘But the whirling has stopped now, and we still have a fundamental issue… you know it as well as I do. This isn’t all on me.’
Mark had said he was open to having kids when we’d first started dating and the same when we’d got engaged and tied the knot.
There’s no rush though, he’d said. Let’s wait and see what happens, he’d said.
But then nothing happened. And the more nothing happened, the more it became clear Mark didn’t want anything to happen.
‘We barely have time for the dogs with our careers, and I don’t want to commit to any more responsibility. The truth is, Sara, I’m just not interested in being a dad, and I know I never will be.’
It was Mark’s go-with-the-flow vibe that had attracted me to him in the first place.
Sailing high on the open seas at Cowes, his ginger curls blowing in the wind while he shouted instructions at his race team.
He was laid-back and easy-going, open to different scenarios.
But his view on family life became more and more fixed once we were married, until eventually there was no turning back.
And I’d been devastated. I would forever be devastated.
But the doctor didn’t need to know all that.
‘Divorce?’ Dr Fielding repeated. ‘A stressful time then, no?’
‘Yeah, but it’s nearly done now,’ I said, with a shrug. ‘Soon to be signed and sealed.’
Dr Fielding’s typing picked up pace. ‘It’s likely a contributing factor,’ he said gently, perching on the end of the bed to talk on my level.
He looked genuinely concerned. ‘These big milestones can take a while to land and it’s important we consider all aspects of your life.
Your general health, work stressors, family situation…
these layers add up and have a cumulative effect on your nervous system.
You may need to think about some lifestyle changes. ’
I scratched the flaky skin behind my ear, and it felt deliciously satisfying.
One dry patch had turned into two and then somehow spread to my elbows.
Where had it all gone wrong? My throat constricted at the thought.
I’d killed myself getting into law school, passed all my exams, dated carefully, married well and been an excellent wife – even if I did say so myself – and where had it got me?
Itchy, overworked and nearly divorced. It was hard to make sense of the version I now knew of Mark, and the version I fell in love with.
We were strikingly similar, au naturel, with our red curls and Roman noses.
Noble noses, he always called them. We’d been drawn to each other at the regatta that year; I’d been with clients on the VIP terrace and Mark had skippered the winning crew.
CSH sponsored the Captain’s Cup each year, and I’d been the one to present it to him.
His green eyes had a sparkle about them I’d wanted in on, gleaming bright against his freckles.
He was vibrant and alive and so different to the potato-faced legal eagles I usually surrounded myself with.
‘Congratulations!’ I’d said, handing him a methuselah of Moet.
He’d kissed me on both cheeks, the mix of sea salt and spicy aftershave giving me a rush.
‘Fancy helping me drink it?’ he’d whispered in my ear.
He was wild and sexy and rugged all at once, so it was a surprise to find out he was a city boy and only twenty minutes in a cab from the office.
I’d locked myself in the loo to check out his LinkedIn profile and make sure he was legit.
After a bad Tinder date with a creative director who turned out to be an unemployed hairdresser, I always did my due diligence.
Real estate seemed so boring for such a firecracker, but he was more of a property scout when it came down to it, which he loved.
Non-stop travel and lots of networking – it played to all his strengths.
I hated that I was still thinking about him so much.
But if the doctor had called him, maybe he’d come and visit.
It was certainly one way to get his attention.
The thought of losing me forever might jolt him into action.
Make him backtrack. The paper curtain flickered again and Dad’s nose poked in.
‘Hi, lovely,’ he said, balancing a slice of cake and three coffees on a tray. Mum wasn’t far behind, marching with conviction, despite all her bags.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Dr Fielding said, disappearing discreetly.
‘Sara! Sweetheart! What happened?’ Mum rushed over and put the back of her hand to my forehead. ‘You’re boiling hot. Jeff! She’s boiling hot!’
‘She’s alright, love,’ he soothed, handing me a coffee and kissing me on the cheek. ‘Decaf, I’m afraid. Doctor’s orders,’ he said, nodding silently at Mum.
I held it gratefully to my chest. ‘Thanks, Dad.’ It felt good to have a little piece of normality in my hands. ‘How did you know I was here? Did Mark call?’
‘No, he did not,’ Mum snorted. ‘The chicken-shit.’
‘Technically he did inform us,’ Dad said, quietly. He was a stickler for the truth.
‘A voice note is the coward’s way out, Jeffrey,’ Mum snapped. ‘And tells me all I need to know about that boy. My baby girl is on her last legs in hospital, and he’s left her for dead.’
‘Has he?’ I sat up, panicked. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’
‘No. But you could be for all he cares. Thank God you saw fit to leave that marriage. You’re so much better off without him.’
Mum liked to rewrite the narrative to suit her version of the story.
‘I told him we’d come and get you,’ Dad whispered. ‘He’s just got back from Finland and was exhausted, otherwise he’d have been here.’
My heart slumped. Exhausted? Mark didn’t know the meaning of the word.
He was a human jumping bean. When we’d first started dating, he’d drop everything if he could see me for even half an hour at lunchtime.
He couldn’t get enough. Neither of us could.
And now not even a call from A it’s filled to the brim with negative energy.
’ She bit her lip, and Dad put his arm around her.
‘No point going through the should’ves now, is there, love? Let’s keep the focus on Sara, shall we? On the here and now.’
‘What do you think I’m doing?’ she said, brandishing the sage at him like a shaman expelling a demon.
I closed my eyes to shut out her nonsense, but the bell was too loud. There’d be no peace until she’d finished.
‘What have the doctors said, then?’ Dad asked, while Mum carried on carrying on.
‘They think it was a panic attack, which is ridiculous – what have I got to panic about?’ The beeping from the heart monitor picked up pace and Dad gave me a look. ‘What?!’
‘Let’s be real, love; it’s only us here now,’ he said, gently. ‘You’ve been running yourself ragged and you know it.’
‘You’re worn out,’ Mum agreed, her energy finally spent. ‘Working sixty hours a week, with all this Mark stuff going through on top. It’s been too much. Staying with us probably hasn’t helped.’
‘It has! I’d have had nowhere to go otherwise. I’ve really appreciated having you there, and it was only a temporary solution – I’m back in the flat now.’
‘That you are. Which is a step in the right direction,’ Dad said. ‘As long as you don’t spend the hour you’ve saved working. You need time to rest and play too.’
‘It’s been a lot for me and your father, so I can only imagine how you must feel.’
‘You’re a stress sponge, Sara,’ Dad said. ‘Absorbing it all in with no complaints, and now it’s too heavy to carry. Time to put it all down.’
‘Knock, knock,’ Dr Fielding called, whipping back the curtain to reveal several other people on the ward. He immediately clocked the sage bundle in Mum’s hand.
‘Just giving the space a quick cleanse,’ she said, with a reassuring smile.
I shrank under the sheets, as the monitor kicked in again, my heartbeat back to normal.
‘Can we take Sara home?’ Dad asked.
‘I think so, yes. There won’t be any medication dispensed, but please think about your lifestyle and try and make good choices when it comes to diet and exercise.’
I instinctively took a deep breath to oxygenate myself.
‘Exactly,’ he said with a smile. ‘You might also consider taking some time off work. I’d be happy to write to your GP.’
‘This is what we’ve been saying, Sara,’ Dad chided.
‘I am taking time off – I’m on annual leave for the next two weeks.’
‘Right. Well then, that’s a good start,’ Dr Fielding said.
‘It is,’ Mum said, solemnly. ‘Sara, you must do exactly as the doctor says. He’s here to help.’
‘Of course, I can only advise you.’ The doctor finished tapping his notes into his iPad. ‘Entirely up to you what you choose to do with it.’
I breathed a sigh of relief. Advisory was fine. A fortnight pottering around the flat and I’d be right as rain. I just needed a bath and a Snickers.
‘Most people would be thrilled to have some time off work,’ Mum said, fussing dramatically. ‘You’ll stress yourself into an early grave at this rate. No one “makes partner” in heaven, you know.’
Dad nodded his agreement. ‘No pockets in shrouds.’
‘I don’t want any pockets – what are you two talking about?’ The heart monitor started beeping. ‘Why can’t you understand how important this promotion is to me? I’m at a critical stage in the process and I just need your support.’
I wanted to scream, but I was conscious of three sets of eyes on me and the heart monitor giving me away. I swallowed down my panic and smiled sweetly. ‘Thank you for the advice, Doctor. I’ll get myself home, then see how I feel.’
No one could force me to stay off work. I’d have my two weeks at home and that would be that.