such a tiny word hanging in the air all by itself. What had she been expecting anyway, a greeting party?
Something mildly panicky was rising through Alex’s body the closer they got to the main hospital entrance. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t have the words, for her mum or her dad. How did you apologise for finally putting your own mother in hospital? For being the root cause of her broken heart?
Jem nudged Alex with her hip. ‘So what’s this? The beach bum look?’
Alex glanced down at the denim cut-offs and faded Jaws t-shirt she’d yanked on in the middle of the night as the espressos took effect. ‘It wasn’t exactly a deliberate outfit.’
‘Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water?’ Jem read. ‘Keeping the fear alive, are we?’
Alex let out one of those breathy laughs that wasn’t worth the effort seeing as it wasn’t going to fool anyone. That fear was well and truly alive and kicking, like a great white killer shark, if great white killer sharks had legs. ‘Feels like ages since I last saw you, Al.’ Jem’s voice fell lower. ‘How are you doing?’ It wasn’t a good sign when Jem was quiet. It was like her defence mechanism. As if not talking about a thing could make it disappear.
‘I’m good.’ Alex smiled. It wasn’t Jem’s job to check on her, Alex was the eldest. She missed her role. ‘How are you doing, Jem?’ she countered, pulling Jem in to her a little as they walked past A&E. It was always a strange sensation Alex felt when they got together, as if it was possible to miss a person even more when they were within reach.
‘I’m OK. I’m just glad I was already up here and not still in London when Mal called. It was a bit of a shock, Alex. She didn’t look great last night. She didn’t look … like Mum.’ Alex’s throat narrowed as they crossed the hospital lobby. She should’ve done more to stop this from happening, somehow, instead of hiding from them all.
Jem reached for the lift button then stopped suddenly, as if something had just short-circuited in her head. She placed her hand flatly against the wall and held herself there.
‘She has to be OK, Alex,’ Jem said quietly. ‘I’m not ready for her not to be around yet.’
Alex hung back. She swallowed her own thoughts and tried for upbeat, being the big sister. ‘You think Mum’s gonna check out before she’s seen one of us walk down the aisle, Jem? Unlikely.’ Blythe had made endless references to the great altar race over the years. ‘Course she’ll be OK. Like you said, tough as Dad’s old boots.’ But Alex felt as if someone had just kicked her in the neck with one.
A cycle of what ifs began circuiting Alex’s head. What if she’d have come home this weekend, just for once? What if she’d have been with Blythe in the churchyard? What if that could have made the difference?
Alex stopped herself. There was only one what if that could’ve ever made the difference and they all knew it.
What if I hadn’t followed Finn into the bushes?
The Acute Assessment Unit was quiet. No drama. No urgency. Jem announced herself at the intercom. The doors onto the AAU opened. Alex followed quietly as Jem gave the nurses stationed at the central desk a salutatory smile and headed for the second side room on the left. Their roles were already set – Jem, the daughter who knew her way around, what to do, where to go – and Alex, the bumbling visitor.
Alex rubbed at the back of her neck. It was impossible not to feel anxious at what lay on the other side of the door in front of them. This awful ominous build up smacked of one of the games she’d watched last night on Takeshi’s Castle, the maze game with its skittish contestants where the only difference between salvation and some unknown horror was a couple of inches of plywood. And what’s behind door number two? A scary Japanese monster? An emotionally estranged father? An unrecognisable mother.
Alex eyed the door as Jem reached to push on it and felt an unpleasant lightness in her stomach. She could have taken a running jump, like the nervy lunatics on Takeshi, but Jem was already a confident step ahead, silently slipping through the door.
The smell was subtle as it hit. Alex shuffled quietly across the threshold, the scent as familiar as a favourite winter coat. She readied herself. She always readied herself.
‘Hello, Dad.’
Ted was standing, grey and monolithic, beside the only chair in the room. Alex lunged clumsily at him for their obligatory kiss. Ted turned from where he’d been watching her mum sleeping to receive Alex’s kiss. They bumped jaws awkwardly. His skin felt rough, bristly with the greying beard that wasn’t hanging onto the last of its blond quite as well as the rest of his hair. Alex gave him his personal space back and tried to remember the last time they’d made physical contact for anything other than this awkward hello–goodbye ritual of theirs. The last time she’d hung onto his arm or pecked him on the cheek for no particular reason.
‘I spotted her in the car park. She still snores like you, Dad, mouth wide open and everything,’ Jem chirped, filling the void with warmth before anything cooler could creep in there. Ted rewarded her with a lazy smile. Alex wished she could think of something to say of equal worth. Nothing came. She shuffled back to the bottom of her mum’s bed, away from that distinctly subtle cocktail of her father’s – coffee, morning tobacco, the last engine oil her mother’s flowery detergent could never quite purge from his overalls.
‘You shouldn’t have driven through the night, Alexandra. Folks fall asleep at the wheel all the time,’ he said softly. He gave Alex a few more seconds’ eye contact before his attention returned to her mum. Alex watched his huge gnarly hands move gently over her mum’s hair. It looked redder against the stark white of the pillow. Jem was right. She didn’t look like their mum. Not sick, at least, but older. Different. Fallible.
‘Is she …?’ Alex tried past the lump forming in her throat.
‘Your mother’s just sleeping. She’ll be right as rain once she’s had a good sleep, slowed down for five damned minutes.’ He was rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, he did this when something was niggling at him and he couldn’t light a cigarette.
Alex looked at the stranger in the bed. She’d never seen her sleeping like that, straight as an ironing board, sheets neatly tucked beneath her arms. It was all over if anything happened to her. Blythe was the thread holding their patchwork family together. It would all unravel without her.
‘Did she like the sunflowers?’ Alex heard her own voice.
Alex saw her dad’s forefinger begin back and forth against his thumb again only with more intent though now, as if trying to eradicate a sharp little irritant that kept finding its way back under his skin. Alex wished she hadn’t asked.
‘I, er … I know purple is mum’s favourite colour but the yellow …’ But the yellow was for you, Dad. Please don’t clench your jaw. He did it again. Jem saw it too and tried to pretend she hadn’t, which only made it a hundred times worse. ‘The yellow looked nicer against the thistles I thought …’ Alex was already floundering. Ted winced and she knew then that she’d already said something wrong.
‘Please, can we not talk about goddamn flowers? Just for five minutes? What the hell difference do flowers make anyway? Your mother wouldn’t have even been down there if she wasn’t having to cart the bloody things around.’
Alex felt herself recoil. Had her flowers arrived late? Was that why Blythe had gone back to the churchyard? Was it Alex’s fault Blythe had gone back there alone?
‘Sorry, Dad, I didn’t mean …’ She didn’t know what she meant. Stupid girl.
Ted’s hand opened out where he’d been rigidly holding it at his side. Alex wasn’t sure if it was to placate her or to silently implore her to just. Shut.