Close to Me Read online

  ‘. . . she was out for maybe one or two minutes, I’m not sure.’ Rob sits down in the chair next to the bed, his right hand balling into a fist on the blue waffle blanket. ‘They’re both absolutely fine. Worried about you, of course, but they’re fine.’

  The doctor tells me I can see them soon, clearly assuming our children are younger, still living at home and waiting for our return.

  ‘Home?’ Rob asks, standing up. ‘You mean now?’

  I listen to the doctor’s instruction that I mustn’t be left alone for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, but yes, I’m well enough to be discharged. Rob protests, says surely I need to stay longer, but the doctor tells him as long as he’s there to keep an eye on me I’m fine to go home. Rob explains how he needs to make arrangements; he has work to think of; other commitments. He finally remembers me, glances over and says of course he’ll sort it out, he just needs to make some calls. Shame he didn’t say that first, I think, looking away from his false smile.

  ‘Good, good.’ The doctor is writing now, his pen quick across the pages of notes. ‘The memory loss is most troubling, of course.’ He pauses. ‘It’s relatively common with this type of injury, but it’s unusual for it to be so protracted. I was just reminding your wife of the—’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ I look from the doctor to my husband. ‘What does he mean?’

  My husband sits beside me again, lowering himself into the armchair. ‘Last night, after you’d fallen, the paramedic asked what was the last thing you could remember. Do you know what you said?’

  I think back to yesterday, the ambulance that brought me here, the tests which followed, the drug-induced sleep. ‘I remember the ambulance, then here—’

  ‘No, before all that.’ He glances at the doctor then back to me. ‘You said something about Fin, that you were sad, then in the ambulance you said—’

  The doctor interrupts now. ‘Anything you like, Jo, just tell us what your most recent recollections are.’

  I know I woke up on the hall floor, the stones cold beneath me, the wind howling through the open door. I try to recall what happened before that, the details much harder to work back to. ‘I think I remember you and I on the landing,’ I say to Rob. ‘What were we doing?’

  ‘We were just coming down the stairs when your foot slipped. You don’t remember?’

  ‘Try not to prompt your wife, Mr Harding,’ the doctor says, moving closer. ‘Let her be the one to speak.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Rob stands and walks to the window, his back to us both.

  ‘I don’t remember how I fell,’ I say. ‘Just that I was at the bottom of the stairs.’

  ‘What about before the fall, Jo?’ the doctor asks. ‘Anything at all . . .’

  I take a moment, digging deeper this time, although it’s hard to concentrate with the pain in my head. I can’t be certain Rob and I argued, but I do recall our day. ‘We’d just got back from dropping our son at university,’ I tell him, then I speak to Rob, who has turned to face me, his left hand covering his mouth. ‘I don’t want Fin’s first few days disrupted. Tell him not to worry, he mustn’t come home just for me.’

  ‘Oh god, Jo. Is that really the last thing you remember?’ Rob sits down in the armchair by my bed. ‘Last night, you were so disorientated, I thought by this morning you might have . . .’

  ‘What?’ I ask him, trying to pull myself up, my right wrist sore when I try to use it.

  ‘I know you don’t remember falling, but—’ He looks away, glancing at the doctor.

  ‘What’s wrong? Are the kids okay? Rob, tell me!’

  ‘I’ve told you, Sash and Fin are both fine.’ He sighs and takes my good hand in his, staring at our entwined fingers for far too long before he speaks, the feel of his palm against mine unnatural. ‘But that wasn’t yesterday, Jo. You’re talking about something that happened a year ago.’

  ‘You must be mixed up.’ I pull my hand away.

  ‘I’m not, Jo. Fin went to university this time last September.’

  The doctor is explaining episodic and semantic memory, telling us I will most likely remember the everyday matters of my life even though the events of the last twelve months are currently eluding me. I can hear his words, but I’m not listening. It must be a mistake. The memory is so clear to me: dropping Fin at university, coming home to an empty house, the smell of his sheets as I gathered them around me. It feels as if it were yesterday; surely it must be so? I can’t have lost a whole year just because I banged my head at the bottom of the stairs. I’m here, I’m fine, just a few bumps and bruises. This must be a mistake. But even as I explain away the frightening facts, I sense their truth. It may feel like Fin left for university only yesterday, but somewhere deep within I know that, between that moment in Fin’s empty bedroom and my fall down the stairs, there’s a huge hole; an immense gap in my understanding.

  ‘Rob?’ I whisper, looking up at him. He’s on his feet now, pacing the room, filling it with his tall presence. ‘I don’t understand, Rob. You’re frightening me. What have I missed? Tell me what I’ve missed!’

  But Rob isn’t listening to me, he’s addressing the doctor, his voice raised to him, looking down at least a foot to the slight man he’s asked to clarify exactly what I will and won’t remember.

  ‘It’s like I was trying to explain to your wife last night, the events immediately prior to Jo’s fall may never come back,’ the doctor replies. ‘The brain may not have had time to encode them properly before the trauma, but everything else should return, given time. There are support groups, and counsellors, and I will keep in touch, see Jo in a few days, to check how she’s progressing. The good news is that there’s no permanent damage, the scans showed nothing untoward internally.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Rob roars. ‘That’s what I pay a bloody fortune for, so we can have the best care, and you’re telling me to take her home and hope for the best?’

  ‘If you could try to remain calm, Mr Harding?’

  ‘Rob, please,’ I say. ‘I need you to explain to me what’s going on.’

  Rob sits beside me again, gently resting his hands on the bed, but avoiding any direct contact, as though I might break if he should touch any part of me. He tells me everything will be fine, promises in fact. I sob, pushing Rob away when he tries to comfort me.

  ‘You can help your wife, Mr Harding . . .’ the doctor says ‘. . . guide her through this difficult time, but it will require patience. And you will need to be patient too, Jo,’ he tells me. ‘Of course, if you require any help, we will do everything we can, but rest at home is the best thing, where you will be surrounded by familiarity.’

  ‘And you still think this is likely to be temporary?’ Rob asks.

  I say nothing, the sobs all-consuming now. None of it makes sense; the doctor’s words unreal, as if it were someone else he and Rob were discussing. He tells us it will take time and, when I do remember things, it will probably be like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle falling into place, a bit here, a bit there. The doctor is leaving now, telling us he’ll ask the nurse to bring us some leaflets – support groups, that kind of thing. ‘If you need anything at all, please contact my secretary.’

  Rob waits until the door is closed, then stands to vent his fury. ‘That’s it? You’ve got a brain injury and they expect us to cope on our own?’

  ‘Please don’t shout,’ I tell him, wiping away my tears with my palm. ‘My head hurts so much.’

  All I want is for this to go away; for yesterday to be yesterday and Rob to be the husband I remember, but when I look at him I feel nothing but unease. I reach up to touch the sore spot on my head, a soft squashy egg on my scalp, too tender to explore further.

  Rob turns away and walks to the window again, staring out at the uninspiring view over the hospital car park. I glanced out on my first excursion to the bathroom, late last night after Rob had left. I felt sore and disorientated, but nothing like this and I don’t recall the doctor telling me about the memory loss. How
can I have lost a whole year? What has happened in that year? Fear and panic grip me and I sob again. Rob is at my side instantly, telling me the kids are fine, we’re fine, there’s nothing important that I’ve missed, I just need to rest, to get better. I have him. He will look after me. Just him and me. We’ll be fine, he promises.

  So we wait, Rob returning to the view, the silence slowly eating up the minutes as I try to find my way back to the events that brought me here. I know I was ferried to this room in the early hours, although time had become elastic, as if the night would never end. I was in a wheelchair, the young porter teasing me that I was off to the Ritz. ‘That’s what we call the private wing,’ he’d said, and I’d felt the need to apologise for my good fortune, then wondered why. It’s only now, as I recall fragments of a conversation between Rob and me, a memory from that lost year, presumably, that I begin to make the connection. I must have remembered the feeling it invoked last night, then lost the thread of the memory on our arrival in this room, overtaken by my desperate need to sleep. I think of it again now, something to do with a holiday we took, just the two of us, the same feeling of disquiet accompanying my recollections, but this time I hear Rob’s words more clearly: ‘They need our money, Jo. It’s what keeps their economy alive.’ I look up at him, his focus still beyond the window, his shoulders up, hands in his trouser pockets.

  ‘We were planning a holiday, just you and me,’ I say, triumphant at the retrieval of a lost memory, and so quickly, as if the rest will follow, an avalanche displaced by a shout echoing through the expanse of white. The hope of it all-important.

  He turns, his expression anxious. ‘You’ve remembered something?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I reply. ‘Did we go away?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘The Caribbean; last October.’

  ‘What else?’ I ask. ‘What have I missed?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ he says. ‘I’ll tell you everything when you’re home, but there’s nothing to worry about, I promise. Try to rest.’

  I turn my head to the pillow and close my eyes on the pain, too tired to argue with him.

  ‘Hey,’ Rob says as I open my eyes. ‘You’ve been asleep almost an hour. How you feeling?’

  He’s seated beside me and I can smell his cologne and the washing powder in his fresh shirt. ‘I’m okay,’ I tell him, looking towards the door. ‘Do you think it will be much longer now? Perhaps I should get dressed?’

  ‘I want you to come home, of course I do,’ Rob says, leaning closer. I wonder if he’s been beside me the whole time I was asleep, watching me. He smiles, then sighs, his breath glancing my cheek. ‘But this memory loss, Jo. We’ve no idea what we’re dealing with. Maybe if you stay another night or two—’

  The door opens and the nurse arrives, all bustle and business, tablets to explain, leaflets to pass on, then she’s gone again, telling us we need to get ready to leave. Rob unzips the bag he brought with him and helps me to sit, then stand, the wooziness each movement brings making my progress from lying to standing much slower than I’d like. I lean on him, the necessary contact unnatural to me, as though my hand in his were the last thing I want. The feeling is strong, but I have no idea why. I look at him and he smiles again, helping me to dress in the clothes he’s selected. Getting into jeans is awkward; my head pounds as I lean over to insert one leg, then the other. I tell him he chose badly, expecting him to react, but he surprises me and agrees, then apologises. He’s overly attentive, his constant fussing and questions tiring, and I tell him so. Again I think he’ll say something retaliatory, I don’t usually speak to him like that, but he doesn’t, just repacks the bag with the nightclothes I don’t now need, then he answers the door to the nurse, who’s returned with a porter and a wheelchair.

  ‘Ready to roll?’ the young man asks. I’m not certain if it’s the porter from last night, or someone similar, but either way his breezy attitude is welcome.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t need a wheelchair,’ I tell him, feeling weak as I stand again.

  ‘It’s hospital policy,’ the nurse informs me, helping me to climb in. ‘I’ll walk with you to the door whilst you bring the car around, Mr Harding. Just avoid the ambulance route, okay?’

  The nurse waits with me at the sliding doors, the ambulances coming and going, patients stretchered or walking, some with obvious injuries, the last one inert. I wonder if that patient, their identity concealed in a rush of activity, is already dead. The trolley disappears through the double doors to our left as the nurse is saying how kind my husband is, how handsome. ‘How many years have you been married?’ she asks.

  ‘Twenty-three,’ I tell her, then realise it must be twenty-four, although I don’t bother to correct myself. It doesn’t really matter.

  When Rob’s car pulls up beside us I hesitate, struck by the thought I may not want to go home after all. The nurse asks me if I’m okay, I look so pale. Then Rob is helping me into the passenger side, strapping me in.

  The nurse raises her hand to wave us off, her blonde curls turning back towards the doors. I want to call out to her, to keep her with me. I place my good hand to the window and allow the tears to fall, turning away from Rob as he reaches across to me.

  September – Last Year

  ‘He didn’t mean it,’ Rob says. ‘I’m sure he’ll be back for a visit before then.’

  ‘I know he didn’t mean it, of course he didn’t,’ I reply, picking up my pace so I’m slightly ahead of him, although I’ve no hope of maintaining my lead, with Rob’s long legs taking one stride to my two.

  Fin’s parting words, ‘I’ll see you at Christmas’, were clearly meant to lighten the mood, but I can feel the swell of my tears, a hard lump in my throat as I march towards Rob’s car, parked at the opposite end of the campus to Fin’s accommodation block. The realisation that all the closer car parks were full had finally stretched Rob’s tolerance beyond breaking point on our arrival and he’d argued with the jobsworth parking attendant, pointing to Fin’s belongings, which were stuffed into every inch of the car. It had already been a long morning, but Fin’s quiet words, ‘Dad, don’t’, had silenced him, and he’d driven into the packed car park without further complaint.

  ‘Come on, Jo. Don’t cry.’ Rob catches me up and grabs my hand. ‘I thought you’d be okay today; second time around and all that.’

  He’s right, but it’s actually much harder this time because we’re going back to an empty house. I glance at Rob and he grins back, squeezing my hand. Everything is so simple for him, emotions dismissed with reason and logic. He wants to solve my problem, always has, but I’m really not in the mood. I’d prefer to lick my wounds than be consoled or cajoled.

  ‘Anyway, you’ve still got me,’ Rob observes. ‘God help you!’ He laughs, swinging our clasped hands between us and I smile back, but the tears fall too. ‘Come on, Jo. You and me. It’ll be fun!’

  I pull my sunglasses from the top of my head and we walk on, past concrete sixties accommodation blocks identical to the one where we’ve just left Fin; right-angled buildings with square windows which afford brief glimpses of student life: empty beer bottles and pizza boxes, stacks of textbooks, and posters of films and bands I’ve never heard of. We drop hands to crush ourselves against a wall, past unloading cars, each one a repetition of much the same scene; teens disassociating themselves from their parents, ready to become something other than a child. I smile at a woman who, like me, is losing her battle with threatening tears, her cheeks damp as she cradles a box of belongings to her, hugging them tight. She smiles back; a moment shared.

  The drive home passes slowly, each mile extending the distance between me and my boy. And he is still a boy. I saw it in his eyes as we left; the throwaway comment to mask his emotion, his fragility as he allowed me to hold him and then shaken his father’s hand. I check my phone again, resisting the urge to send Fin another message, the first unanswered.

  ‘You okay?’ Rob taps my knee as he changes gear.

  I’m looking out of t
he window at the lorry we’re overtaking, the solidity of it then replaced with the blur of the endless grass verge. ‘I’m fine,’ I reply. ‘Just tired.’

  ‘Have a sleep if you like,’ Rob says, turning down the sound of the tennis match on the radio.

  ‘You think he’ll be okay?’ I ask, glancing at Rob’s profile against the fading light. ‘I mean, after what happened at school. He’s never really settled well, and—’

  ‘That was years ago,’ Rob says, patting my knee more firmly this time. ‘This will be the making of him. He’ll love it, promise.’

  I close my eyes, but although I’m exhausted, my mind is not. I see Fin in his student room, the accommodation so basic and lacking in home comforts, despite the posters we Blu-Tacked to the wall and the bright bedding I’d chosen. ‘You sure you’ll be okay?’ I asked Fin, hugging him one last time; taller than me, but still a boy.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about me, Mum.’ Then he lowered his head and flicked his fringe back, not in an ostentatious way, because that’s not Fin’s style, but because it helps him cope with those moments in life that overwhelm him. He looked so alone, waving us off at the door, his attempt at bravado slipping as soon as we’d walked away, his vulnerability caught in his expression as I glanced back.

  ‘You asleep?’ Rob asks and I shake my head, then close my eyes tighter, allowing the movement of the car to lull me into a fitful sleep.

  The barn feels bigger, the silence echoing around us, between us, from us. I leave Rob to bring in the emptied boxes and suitcases and go upstairs to change, pausing outside Fin’s room. The tidiness within is unsettling. ‘He hasn’t died,’ Sash said when I rang her from the car. ‘He’s just gone to university.’ I pull the duvet from its cover, strip the sheet from the mattress and the pillowcases from the pillows and, although I’d intended to throw the washing straight in the laundry basket, I sit down on the empty bed, gathering the musty bedding around me to inhale Fin’s scent.