Afterwards

She doesn’t want to believe this.

‘Yes,’ I say, because how can I tell her what I saw last night? How can I frighten her more now?

You walk away down the corridor, and I’m worried you’re walking away from what you’ve been told. Even the suggestion of it. I go after you, away from Jenny.

‘Someone’s trying to kill her, Mike,’ I say to you.

But you can’t hear me.

‘I’ll stay with Jenny,’ you say to Sarah. ‘Twenty-four seven. Make sure the bastard can’t get to her.’

I love you.

An hour or so later and Jenny has gone for a wander round the hospital, which worries me, but: ‘I’m seventeen, for heaven’s sake, Mum. Besides, what more can go wrong now?’

I’m with you, next to Jenny’s bed. The world of the intensive care unit is so alien, so utterly foreign to anything in our previous life, that having a policeman next to Jenny now is no more peculiar than the banks of monitors that surround her. I think you are grateful to have a uniformed presence, but hover close to Jenny, still wanting to protect her yourself.

Although Jenny’s description of almost-dying – her birth of a soul – amazed me, it’s not totally accurate. Love can’t leave your body as it’s not there in the first place. Because I know as I look at you, and at Jenny’s damaged body, that love is held in whatever I am now.

‘Mr Covey?’

Miss Logan, that young consultant cardiologist, has come up to you.

‘We have the results of Jennifer’s tests back now,’ she says. ‘Shall we go into my office?’

But how can this pretty Miss Logan, this slip of a thing, as Dad would have said, possibly know what’s going on in the complex intricacies of Jenny’s heart? Surely she’s too young to be a proper consultant; to really know what she’s talking about. And even as I think this, I know I’m trying to invalidate what she might say before the words are spoken.

I follow you into a doctor’s office, the air dense with heat.

Dr Sandhu is waiting. He takes your hand in his and pats your arm and I try not to think that he’s giving you sympathy in advance.

Nobody sits down.

And I hate this hot institutional room with its depressing carpet-tiles and plastic stacking chairs and drug company calendar. I want to be in the kitchen with Adam and Jenny, just back from school, the French windows wide open, making Jenny tea and squash for Adam and listening to gripes about homework. For a moment I imagine myself there so clearly that I almost hear the thump of Jen’s bag on the table and Adam asking if there are chocolate mini-rolls left. Surely there’s a wormhole you can step into, taking you into a parallel universe where your old life, your real life, is going on the same if only you can find your way back to it.

It’s Dr Sandhu who speaks first, taking responsibility for breaking the news; like an eggshell, I think as he speaks, the contents poisonous and corrosive, destroying the way home.

‘We’ve run extensive tests on Jenny. And I’m afraid that, as we feared, her heart has suffered catastrophic damage.’

I look at Dr Sandhu’s face and quickly turn away, but it’s too late. In his expression I’ve seen there’s a moment when a doctor realises that the life he holds in his hands is too fragile for the medicine he knows.

‘Her heart will only be able to function for a few weeks,’ he says.

‘How many weeks?’ you ask, each syllable a physical strain, tongue forced against the palate of your mouth; sounds bitter as wormwood.

‘It’s impossible to be accurate,’ he says, hating having to do this.

‘How many?’ you ask again.

‘Our guess would be three weeks,’ replies Miss Logan.

‘This time in three weeks we’ll be in Italy! Only three weeks till Christmas, Ads! Just three weeks to A levels, don’t you realise how soon that is?’

When Jenny was born her life was measured first in hours, then days, then weeks. At about sixteen weeks it turned to months – four months, five months, eighteen months – until two, when you measure your child’s age in half years. Then gradually the measurement of her life became whole years. Now they’re measuring what’s left of it in weeks again.

I won’t let it happen.

I have got her from two cells to a five-foot-five-inches-tall teenager and she’s still growing, for crying out loud, and she can’t stop now. She can’t.

‘There must be something you can do,’ you say, as always, even now, certain there must be a solution.

‘Her only option is a transplant,’ said Miss Logan. ‘But I’m afraid-’

‘Then she’ll get a transplant,’ you interrupt.

‘It’s highly unlikely that a donor whose tissue matches Jennifer’s will be found in time,’ she says. Her youth gives her an edge, which separates her from the information she’s giving. ‘I have to tell you that the chance of her receiving a donor heart in time is extremely remote.’

‘Then I’ll do it,’ you say. ‘I’ll go to that place in Switzerland, Dignitas or whatever it’s called. They let you die if you want to. There must be a way of doing it so that my heart can be donated to her.’

I look at their faces, not yours; I can’t bear to look at yours. I see compassion rather than astonishment. You can’t be the first parent to suggest this.

‘I’m afraid there are many reasons why you can’t do that,’ Dr Sandhu says. ‘Primarily legal ones.’

‘I heard that your wife is still unconscious-’ tough Miss Logan begins but you interrupt her again.

‘What the hell are you suggesting? That I donate her heart?’

I feel a leap of hope inside me. Can I do this? Is it possible?

‘I just want to offer my sympathy,’ Miss Logan says. ‘It must be particularly hard for you with Jennifer.’ Almost as if she has to spell it out to herself. ‘In any case,’ she says, ‘even if your wife is found to have extremely limited brain function, she is breathing for herself so-’

‘She can also hear me,’ you interrupt, vigorously. ‘And she’s thinking and she’s feeling. She can’t show it yet. But she will. Because she will get better. And Jenny will too. They’ll both recover.’

And I admire you so much because in the face of ‘catastrophic’ and ‘three weeks’ and ‘extremely remote’ and your suicide bid proving futile, you refuse to admit defeat for Jenny or for me.

Inside your head now, on those wide-open prairies, I see a one-man stockade of hope, built by your strength of spirit.

Dr Sandhu and the young cardiologist say nothing.

An honest, ghastly quietness in place of agreement or reassurance.

You leave the mute room. Shortly afterwards Miss Logan also leaves.

I want to bolt to your one-man stockade of hope, but I can’t, Mike. I just can’t get there.

I can’t move at all.

Because I am surrounded by sharp spikes of information and a step in any direction will mean I am pierced through. So if I don’t move, I can stop it from being true.

Dr Sandhu thinks he’s alone. He brusquely wipes his tears away. What has led him to this room? I imagine a Science teacher noticing his intelligence and suggesting medical school; and his parents being proudly encouraging, and then a career path, with a right turn here and a straight ahead there, ending up here, now.

But the Dr Sandhu career-path distraction is useless. The spikes are coming towards me and they have a sound; the sound they’ve had since the words ‘three weeks’ were spoken – a tick tick tick over every thought, every action, every word until they are used up.

Jenny’s heart has become a watch after all.

Beating or ticking into an ending of silence.

11

Jenny is waiting for me as I come out of ICU.