Chapter 7
Isaac
She is lying on the bathroom floor. There is blood around her head, a crimson stain against the grey tiles.
The paramedics move around her with a kind of controlled urgency. I listen to their calm voices passing instructions back and forth. The sound of bags opening and equipment clicking into place. Beep. Beep.
“You the husband?”
I realise the woman is looking at me, talking to me. I nod.
“She’s breathing, but we have to get her on this stretcher, so I need you to back up.”
Relief hits me so hard my knees almost give way. I back up as far as I can and still see her.
“She has taken some of those pills. We don’t know how many. Do you know how many were in the bottle? No? We’re concerned about the fall. She’s hit her head.” She keeps talking as they get Luna on the stretcher.
And just like that, the relief vanishes like smoke.
I stand here, useless. Completely fucking useless.
I watch as they work, as they lift her.
As they check her pupils, her pulse, her blood glucose.
It doesn’t feel like this is my Luna.
Not my Luna.
They carefully move her onto a stretcher. I realise they are probably trying to calm me down.
And I just follow. The ambulance ride passes in flashes.
Blue lights. The constant, sharp wail of the siren.
The space is cramped. I am at her feet. That’s where they tell me to sit. Lily promises to follow with Amelie.
So, I do what I am told like a good little husband.
I watch from a distance as my trembling fingers reach for her toes. She has a sock on one foot while the other is bare.
Cold. So cold.
For a second, I can’t breathe—
My brain scrambled, desperate to make sense of it.
Luna always has cold feet, I tell myself.
Always. She takes the hottest bath, cranking up the hot water to the max.
She shoves her little stockinged feet between mine in bed without warning, making me swear and jerk away.
“Jaysus, Luna, your feet are like ice!”
And she’d just look at me with mischief, like a little imp. She’d invented a brand-new form of torture just for me.
I called it cruel and unusual punishment.
She loved it, and secretly, so did I.
The machine beside her beeps steadily, matching the beat of her heart.
That sound becomes everything, proof that she is still here.
***
After what feels like hours, we reach the hospital.
I don’t remember the transition. One moment, we are in the ambulance. The next, there are bright lights. Doors crashing open. Loud voices and doctors and nurses in scrubs, converging.
“Let’s take her to Resus,” I hear someone shout.
They take her from me. I follow in a daze and stay outside the curtain like they ask me to.
Hands are everywhere again. People who know what they are doing.
I stand off to the side, out of the way.
And suddenly, Lily is here with Amelie wrapped in a swaddle.
I didn’t even realise she had arrived.
I am glad she is here for Amelie because I am fucking useless, flopping around like a bloody penguin, not knowing where to go, what to do, who to be.
A husband? A father? I can’t manage either.
All I can do is let them lead me to the waiting area and hold my breath, like that might somehow keep Luna alive.
Amelie starts whimpering, and Lily takes a flask out of the baby bag she has slung over her shoulder.
I take my baby, her familiar weight a comfort, and then take the bottle that Lily silently hands me.
She doesn’t say anything, but I can see she is holding back.
As I feed Amelie, I find myself praying—possibly for the first time since I became an adult.
“Heavenly Father, hallowed be thy name …”
***
Time blurs.
They move her again from Resus to ICU.
More doors. More people. More words I don’t understand.
Or maybe I do, and I just don’t want to.
“We had to intubate her,” says the ICU doctor. She looks tired, sitting in the waiting room, talking to us. Mum and Dad are here, as is Lily. Nora and Oliver are on their way.
I remember the term as if it belongs in a textbook or a TV show, not attached to Luna.
They’ve intubated her.
And all I can think is, please don’t let that be the last thing I ever hear about her. “We had to intubate her.”
***
Time seems to lose its meaning. Nora and Oliver have arrived.
Another doctor comes out—scrubs, cap still on, mask hanging loosely around his neck. He is young, and he has asked us to call him Dr Gupta. He tells me he is the consultant.
He explains that Luna didn’t swallow too many pills, that she is young and doesn’t have any other medical issues. But she did hit her head, and she has what they call a subarachnoid haemorrhage—a brain bleed.
Words like airway, support, monitoring, feeding through an NG.
I nod. I think I nod.
But everything feels … distant, like I am underwater, and I don’t know up from down.
Sounds reach me, warped, delayed. Faces move too slowly or too fast. The only time I feel sane is when I hold Amelie in my arms. It feels like she is stronger than I am.
None of it sticks. Except one thing.
Luna is behind that door, and I am not with her.
“Isaac, what happened?”
Lily’s voice cuts through everything.
I don’t look at her. I can’t.
“I told you something was wrong,” she says, her voice a thin thread, anger slipping into sorrow and guilt. “I told you, and you just kept saying she was tired—”
“I know,” I say.
It comes out flat.
Because what else is there to say?
I know.
I know.
I know.
My mother is crying quietly beside us—small, broken sounds she is trying to hide behind her hand.
Luna’s father is holding her mother. I don’t remember who called them.
Everything blurs into one long, unbearable stretch of interminable waiting. We stand here together, like refugees caught in a storm we didn’t see coming. Somewhere in the middle of it, Amelie starts crying.
That is the only reality that wakes us up, because suddenly, there are hands. Lily’s. My mother’s. Luna’s mother’s, pale and shaking, but composed because Amelie takes first priority.
***
Over the next two days, they take care of Amelie because I can barely take care of myself. They take her home before she catches something and pass her between them. Feed her. Change her. Hold her.
Because I can barely stand, let alone take care of anyone.
They let us in to see Luna. I stand by her bedside and carefully hold her hand. There are so many tubes in her. I tell her I am sorry.
Chloe has been messaging me nonstop. I don’t realise how much until a day passes, when I finally charged my phone. Missed calls. Voicemails. Message after message after message.
My screen is filled with her name. I don’t listen to a single one.
I just delete all of it, then block her.
Clean and final, or so I naively think.
I don’t expect her to come to the hospital.
***
It is the third day. They said they are going to try to take the tube out.
“We have been weaning her off, and she has been doing well,” Dr Gupta says.
I am sitting in one of those plastic chairs that somehow manages to be both hard and unstable at the same time.
My back aches and my head throbs. I haven’t slept properly in I didn’t even know how long.
Mum is beside me. Lily stands a little further away, Amelie in her arms, swaying gently, her eyes flicking between me and the doors.
Waiting.
We are all just …
Waiting.
***
Mum stands up, and there is Chloe, walking towards us. She is in a bright blue dress, her hair gleaming, not a strand out of place. I don’t see her coming until she is almost upon us.
Mum starts towards her, and my hand automatically closes around her arm, holding her back.
She looks up at me, confused.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
I don’t answer because Chloe sees it. She slows and hesitates. Her eyes are wide now, uncertainty creeping in.
Good.
Let her feel it.
“Who asked her to come here?” I say, my voice betraying none of the rage, most of it directed at myself.
My voice sounds calm.
Chloe blinks. “No one … I just—I thought I’d come and help. You know, with what happened. And with the baby—”
“No.”
I turn to my mother.
“You should not have told her anything. It is none of her business. This is a private family matter. I don’t want her here.”
Mum’s mouth hangs open in shock “Isaac—”
“I don’t want her touching my daughter.”
Lily doesn’t move, just watching the drama unfold.
Mum looks conflicted. “She is family, Isaac. She’s only trying to—”
“That is where you are wrong, Mum. We are divorced,” I say, the words sharp enough to slice through bone. “We are not family. And my wife would not want her here. I don’t want her here.”
“I don’t want her around,” I continue, not stopping, not giving anyone space to interrupt.
“Stop telling her it is alright to reach out to me if she needs anything. It is not alright. If you want to see her, that’s fine.
Do it in your space, in your home. Don’t keep pushing her into my life.
” I hold my mother’s gaze. “She is nothing to me.”
Then, finally, I look at Chloe.
Her eyes are already glassy, shiny with unshed tears. I feel nothing, only regret for that fleeting moment when I thought of reaching out to her for comfort. But I think of her as a friend, and only that. I only love Luna. When I know this, why did I type that message …
“Go away.” I say, my voice not bearing a hint of unsteadiness. I wish I had put this boundary in place before it all imploded.
Her face crumples slightly. She nods.
“Okay,” Chloe says quietly. “I’ll … I’ll leave.”
She turns and walks away.