Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
As Clara drove over to Tom’s, she struggled with waves of nausea.
What if she was too late? What would she find when she arrived?
She broke the speed limit as she hurtled her Mini Cooper towards his home.
It would have been easy enough to have walked the ten minutes but driving seemed more fitting.
She thanked God that she knew his address.
There would have been no time for questioning him on his location now.
Clara knew it was important that she should call the police, or an ambulance, from the car.
She was always so calm in a crisis; it was part of her job.
This was different though; she was too close to the person involved.
Although she tried hard to separate her emotions from dealing with this emergency, she wasn’t thinking clearly.
She began to question whether she had misinterpreted the message and imagined the embarrassment of getting the relevant authorities involved when it turned out to be some kind of drunken text, or someone had taken his phone.
What if he simply meant he was leaving Oxford and she had misconstrued the message completely?
Perhaps he meant it as a way of saying he wouldn’t see her again in this life because he was leaving her and moving somewhere far away as he was a bad person.
But how could someone so nice be a bad person?
What was it supposed to mean? Clara couldn’t possibly think straight in such a situation.
Also, since Tom had messaged Clara, she wondered if he wanted her support to make sure he didn’t do such a tragic thing.
She had seen it many times before when a person who was desperate would message someone in a bid to get the support that they truly needed and didn’t truthfully wish to take their life.
Although her instinct was not to truly believe this theory as she rushed to Tom.
When she thought about it, she realised how often it was the quiet folk who smiled and seemed as though they had everything who were depressed.
Tom was a happy chappy with a dry sense of humour.
On the surface of it, there was no way he would do anything so devastating.
He was that jovial guy who turned everything into a joke.
She realised Tom fitted the profile exactly. Time was of the essence.
The problem was that there were roadworks and a temporary set of lights stopped her in her tracks.
Nobody was coming through either way as they froze.
Traffic was building up behind her as she waited and drivers beeped their horns impatiently.
Clara flashed her lights at the camera on top of the traffic signal.
She had heard that could sometimes alert the lights of your presence.
She realised she looked stupid as she flashed those lights away but anything was worth it.
She screamed in frustration and banged her head on the steering wheel as they stubbornly refused to change colour.
Clara had a good mind to take her chance and drive through the red light but, despite a dire emergency like this, she knew that would be foolish.
She regretted not taking her bicycle, even walking would have been preferable to being stuck like this.
Eventually, the lights shifted to orange and she was through.
Clara put her foot down hard on the accelerator and apologised to God and the police for breaking the speed limit.
The moment she pulled into a parking space around the corner from Tom’s home, she tried his number again. His phone was still switched off. She sprinted to his front door, banging on the glass with all her might. She didn’t even care about the consequences of her hand potentially going through it.
‘Tom, open the door. Open the door now!’ she shouted.
Clara still had some hope that Tom would walk to the door and have an apologetic story about how he didn’t mean it.
She wanted him to tell her how she had indeed misconstrued the message.
But, as she banged harder and harder on the door, she could see that either he wasn’t in or he was already .
. . She tried not to think of the latter.
She stood back looking at the door and realised that all this banging was futile.
She had to find a way to get inside. Searching around, she hoped there was a key somewhere.
At the rectory, she always kept a spare under a flowerpot in case of emergencies.
She looked at the yellow rose in a pot beside the door and searched underneath for any sign of a key, but found nothing.
She lifted the worn doormat to no avail either.
Then she checked under a flowering cactus behind the rose pot where she saw something shiny out of the corner of her eye.
By the time she put the key into the keyhole, she realised her hands were shaking.
Pushing the door over a pile of post, she forced her way through and was immediately hit by the most nauseating smell. Instinctively, she raised her arm to cover her nose with the cardigan she had thrown on.
‘Tom, are you in here? Tom. Where are you?’
Clara dry-heaved at the smell.
‘Goodness, it smells like a brewery in here.’
She shoved a door to the left of her but nobody was there.
The barren room gave hints of a bachelor pad with its lone chair and record player.
The cover of a Fleetwood Mac album lay discarded on the floor.
The needle was still going around the album, making a scratching sound.
Clara fleetingly felt inclined to switch it off and put it out of its misery but decided she had more pressing matters at hand.
She ran straight ahead into the kitchen where the fridge door had been left open.
She couldn’t help but notice how bare it was, and on the kitchen table there must have been at least ten empty beer cans.
Lying flat next to a recycling bin, were three bottles of red wine that had been cleared out.
She doubted that Tom would have managed to leave his home since he wouldn’t have got very far looking at the amount of alcohol he had managed to get through these past few days.
From the kitchen, Clara shouted for Tom and, when there was no response, she ran for the living room.
She opened the door to find the room pitch-black and the stench of lager repugnant.
She could see that there was something crumpled on the sofa, but couldn’t quite make it out.
She switched the light on and knew that she would never be able to erase the sight of what she saw from her memory.
She screamed Tom’s name, as she clambered over the empty lager cans, bottles and pill packets to get beside him on the sofa where he was out cold.
‘Tom, what have you done to yourself!’ She noticed how his skin looked waxy with a yellow tinge.
She huddled over him, shouting his name, but no matter what she did, he wouldn’t respond.
‘Come on! Wake up! Tom! Tom! Tom! You have to wake up!’
She repeatedly tapped at his face, which was cold and pale. Then, with one hand, she called for an ambulance as the other felt for his pulse.
‘Wake up. It’s Clara. You have to wake up, Tom,’ she shouted at him desperately, as she waited for the emergency operator to pick up. Clara searched for signs of life in between her tears.
As she opened up his grey towelling dressing gown to listen for a heart rate, a single tear dropped on his chest.
‘No, no, no. You can’t die on me, Tom. I won’t let you.’
Clara shook his head gently to stir him when she heard a quiet whimper.
Then she thought she noticed his hand moving. She stroked it while calling his name.
‘Tom. It’s Clara. Wake up!’
‘Lara?’ he slurred.
‘Clara. It’s me. Clara. An ambulance is coming. We’re going to get you the help you need.’
She tried to prop him up against some cushions as he opened one eye and attempted to focus.
‘Come on, Tom. You can do it. Look at me! Look at me!’
As he managed to sleepily open both eyes, Clara held him tight.
She heard the sound of an ambulance somewhere in the distance and could tell it was getting closer.
Still, it felt like hours before they barged through the door.
Clara begged Tom to stay awake as the paramedics rushed through the front door that she had forgotten to close in her panic.
It looked as though her haste had paid off.
‘He’s in here,’ she shouted.
Two paramedics in green uniforms rushed in.
‘Hello, I’m Josie. Do you know what he’s taken?’ said one of them.
‘I don’t. It’s all here, look.’
Clara had been far too busy trying to get Tom conscious to consider what he might have taken. It was time to leave it in their capable hands now as she stood back and watched as the other paramedic tended to Tom, and Josie picked up a half-empty strip of tablets.
‘Are there more of these around?’ she asked, holding up the blister pack.
‘Not that I’ve seen.’
‘Okay. Good. Looks like he might have passed out with all the booze before he could take too many,’ she said, as she noticed another brand-new, untouched, packet on the coffee table.
The relief Clara felt was enormous. It was only now she realised that she had driven over on a surge of adrenaline.
She looked down to find she was still wearing her slippers but the main thing was that she had arrived in time.
Tom was going to be okay; she was sure of it.
So many things ran through her head as the paramedics checked him over.
She would make sure that from now on he would get the help he so obviously needed.
She wished he would have told someone how he was feeling.
Even if he didn’t want to tell her, he could have spoken to the Samaritans.
There was always someone out there who would listen; someone out there who cared, whether a friend, acquaintance or family.
The astonishing thing was that she had never noticed Tom touch a drop of alcohol when she thought about it.
Even at communion he chose the non-alcoholic wine, yet now there was evidence of alcohol all around the house.
‘He’s going to be okay now, right?’ Clara begged Josie.
‘He’s not quite out of the woods yet. We’ll have to take him to hospital for observations to make sure he’s okay. He might have sustained liver damage. We don’t know what internal damage he may have done.’
Clara looked at Tom in disbelief that he could harm himself in this way. Then she agreed that he needed to be in hospital. Tom might be in less imminent danger, but nobody could tell what detrimental effect this would have on his health.
As the adrenaline wore off further, she felt tired as she looked at Tom in disbelief that this later-in-life Christian who she thought was the perfect man had been found lying here in such a sorry state.
It was such a cliché that you didn’t know what people were going through, but not once on any of their dates had Clara considered that he would ever do anything like this.
He had everything going for him. What on earth would drive him to do this?
She had feared so many situations: thinking that he’d gone off her, wondering if she had somehow upset him and she was being ghosted.
But she now recognised that none of this was about her, nor anyone else, not even the church.
Tom was fighting a battle that she had no idea about.
A battle he had managed to hide extremely well.
As the paramedics were putting him in the ambulance, Tom closed his eyes and what very little colour he had drained.
Clara heard Josie announce that his stats were starting to drop.
The paramedics threw the door closed and the lights started flashing as the ambulance drove out of sight as Clara could only stand and watch helplessly.
She was so annoyed with herself. How could she have let this happen?
She knew full well that when someone went quiet this was often when they needed help the most. She had never been so cross with herself – or so distraught.
If Tom didn’t pull through, she knew she would never forgive herself.