My face must read wild-eyed panic, as Daisy lays a hand on my shoulder, a subtle pressure that flattens the crumples in the cotton of my shirt.
“Don’t worry about it too much. Just talk to her. Don’t let this time get away.”
Chapter 2
I don’t stay long that first day. The moment Daisy is gone, I feel my reserve creep back, despite my best intentions. It has only ever been Maggie who has had some way of cracking through it: my studious awkwardness, the well-meaning remark delivered always that bit too late, my inability to “just gel” with new people. In all our years together, Maggie has never felt as much of a stranger to me as she does here, a little, lined face among the network of taut tubing, reduced to a series of regular beeps and timetabled measurements.
There is so much I have to say that I have no idea where to begin. I can’t start with the reason why I stopped speaking. Not when Daisy has told me to go easy, to coax Maggie back to me. Talking has never been my strong point. “Not a man of many words,” my sixth-form tutor wrote on my university application by way of a character reference. My own mother used to describe me as a “quiet sort” to friends and relatives; even the traveling podiatrist got a version of that when she came to visit, every fourth Saturday, foot file in hand. It dawns on me now that I am about as much use here as an umbrella in a hurricane. I’m not sure I can do this after all.
I wait for the little bus that comes direct to the hospital. Pity on wheels. No one on board makes eye contact; it would tip us over the edge—the sufferers and the ones watching the suffering unfold in all its grotesque, undignified detail. What about those who inflicted the suffering in the first place? I doubt I would be welcome. I find a window seat and place my bag next to me.
At the traffic lights, a couple idling on the pavement nearly miss the green man as they cradle each other’s waist, their eyes intently focused on each other as they delve deeper into their conversation; behind me, a family with two children and a boisterous Labrador pack out a battered station wagon; a group of students ride their bicycles three abreast, unconcerned by the queue of angry, honking cars behind. I have never felt so alone. Wasn’t that what marriage, our marriage, was meant to keep at bay?
It has been swelteringly hot today, not that I felt it in Maggie’s artificially cooled room. When I get off the bus and stumble the short distance home, I feel as if I am being blasted by a hundred hairdryers, dry and intense, and wonder if anything will ever feel comfortable again. I get the key in the door after a few false starts with my faltering fingers. The last of this late August evening’s sunlight illuminates the hallway, a ribbon of dust dancing and swirling toward the scene of the crime. Hers or mine? I ask myself as I head up the stairs.
I can’t bring myself to go back to the kitchen, not yet. Without turning on the light, I head straight to our bedroom. Our. I hardly remember a time before I spoke in the plural. What I would give to have her back, here, on her side. In reality she had all the sides. I never knew how much space such a small person could demand, wriggling like an octopus throughout the night until I was squashed up at the precipice of the mattress edge, just a corner of duvet to my name. God, I never knew I could miss it.
I trail my fingers along the stack of books that has accumulated on her bedside table—some from charity shops, a slim gift book titled The Wife that I bought as a stocking filler a few years back, one in its plastic library jacket (firmly overdue). After she retired three years ago, she decided she would go and volunteer there, at the library in Summertown that was earmarked for closure. “In solidarity!” she’d said when she told me. I wasn’t sure if she meant with the books or with the overworked professionals who had enough on their plates without the threat of government cuts teetering over their heads. Either way, it was something to distract her until I retired a year later as well. She loved it there—the people, the sanctuary. She gave it up, though, when everything happened. I suppose you can’t help others until you are able to help yourself.
In recent years, she hasn’t been sleeping so well. She still tries to read but when I lean over, to plant a kiss behind her ear or to stroke the inside of her arm in the way she likes, I can see she’s still on the same page, her eyes fuzzy in the mid-distance. I make the call on when to turn out the lights, knowing full well neither of us will drift off easily. Instead, I draw patterns on the soft skin at the base of her spine, which is exposed by her pajama top. It takes me right back to our first dates together, when I was too scared to tell her I loved her but traced the letters out on her back instead, a coward’s compromise delivered with a trembling hand.
I kick off my shoes and lie down on top of the duvet. I am so desperate to touch her again, to spell out all the ways I love her. When I drift off, all I see is Maggie cocooned within it, one hand poking out to pull me in.
At the hospital the next morning, I am welcomed by my first name at the nursing station by a woman I don’t recognize in the slightest. I hope this is not a sign of how long they expect me to be visiting. At first, I don’t see Daisy and feel a rush of panic. She was so calm, so nonjudgmental. I can’t afford to lose her too. I scan the reception space with its bewildering array of staff, assessing their backs, their hair. Eventually I catch sight of her, busy at one of the computer booths in the corner, her back to me and her hips straining at the seams of her scrubs. My heart rate slows just a tad, and I clear my throat, loudly enough to feel like a nuisance. Loudly enough that a pregnant woman waiting five feet away covers her mouth with her scarf.
“Ah, Professor, good morning,” Daisy says, beaming as she wheels her chair round to face me and levering herself up, palms on thighs. She is even taller than I remembered from yesterday, only three inches or so shorter than me. She has the sort of build Maggie would have affectionately described as “sturdy,” as if she were assessing the stability of a tree in the back garden.
“Is that what you want to be called, eh? Professor?” she asks as she weaves herself out from behind the counter and leads me down the corridor. Her dark brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail that swings sleekly in time with her step.
“Well . . . er . . . ,” I begin.
“Cat got your tongue, eh? Don’t know your own name now?” Daisy smiles with the sort of easy complicity I always wished I could generate with my own family, let alone strangers.
“Frank,” I say decisively. “Please call me Frank, Daisy.”
Daisy turns to smile at me, and for a second I feel as if maybe, just for once, I have done some infinitesimally small thing right. Then we reach Maggie’s door, still closed, and I feel the weight of my own frustrated hopefulness crash down around me again. The blinds in her room have been opened, and I am able to take in the space fully. It is sparse, and I suddenly feel conscious of arriving empty-handed.
“We need to keep it all very clean here,” Daisy says, somehow sensing my embarrassment. “But I kept your chair, Frank, so you two can talk.”
Daisy moves behind me to adjust the blinds, lowering them slightly so I don’t have to squint.
“How did it go yesterday?” Daisy asks.
“Not well,” I admit.
“It’s hard, Frank. I get that. But our Maggie is going to want to know that you are here.”