Afterwards

Ivo is waiting outside.

‘And you’re sure you were next to her, all the time?’ Penny asks.

‘Yes, like I said. Right next to her.’ The doctor pauses as Sarah and Mohsin come in, but Penny gestures at him to carry on.

‘Someone must have walked past and quickly tugged out the endotracheal tube. It must have been quickly because I didn’t see. I mean, I didn’t take my eye off her for long. I was just looking at her chart and checking the details for her scan. I didn’t expect anyone to… Then I heard the alarm go off, the device that alerts us to a cardiac failure. And I was dealing with that. It was only when other people came to help that I saw the tube to the portable respirator. Saw it had been disconnected.’

‘Thank you,’ Penny says. ‘Could you wait in the corridor and a colleague will come to take a full statement.’

When he’s left the room, Penny turns to Sarah and Mohsin.

‘The MRI suite has four scanning rooms and a waiting room, with changing rooms and lockers. It has a secure door, but it’s far busier than ICU. There’s administrative staff as well as medical personnel – not only doctors and nurses who work with the MRI machines, but also porters bringing patients into the suite, and out-patients, some of whom bring a partner with them. I’ve got Connor interviewing the reception staff, and I’m hoping her boyfriend might have something.’

‘Have you got pics of Donald White and Silas Hyman to show?’ Mohsin asks.

‘We’re trying to organise it but it’s not easy to get mug shots when we don’t know the whereabouts of either man. And neither wife is being helpful.’

She calls Ivo in.

It had once seemed to me as if he was lying on the pavement being punched by facts. But now he walks in determinedly tall.

‘She’s not going to die,’ he says.

He reminds me of you. Not the denial in the face of the facts, that bullish optimism, but the strength it takes to walk upright. So she’s gone for a man like her father after all.

All these revelations; all so quickly. No wonder Nanny Voice left, the landscape of my mind can’t feel like home any more.

‘Can you tell me what you saw?’ Penny asks.

‘Nothing. I didn’t see anything.’

He is furious with himself.

‘If you could just tell me-’

‘They wouldn’t let me in with her. Other patients had partners with them, I saw them going in, but I wasn’t allowed to.’

His voice so furious still, this time with other people. Because older adults had discounted Ivo as I once had – just a teenage girl’s boyfriend; a world away from married adults.

‘I told her father I’d look after her. I said I’d be with her. So he could be with his wife for a little bit.’

‘I’ll explain and he’ll understand,’ Sarah said.

‘How can he? I can’t.’

‘Did you wait for her?’ Penny asks.

‘Yes. Outside the MRI bit. In the corridor.’

‘Did you see anyone?’

‘No one I noticed. Just what you’d expect. Doctors, nurses. Porters. And patients, some in normal clothes so I suppose they’re not staying in the hospital.’

Ivo leaves to return to Jenny. Penny answers her phone.

‘She was already dying for crying out loud,’ Sarah says to Mohsin. ‘Already dying. Why shorten her life any more? Why do that to her?’

‘Maybe Donald White or Silas Hyman – whoever did this – doesn’t know she’s dying,’ Mohsin says. ‘When you’ve spoken about it, it’s been about her needing a transplant. Maybe that’s what he has heard too.’

‘But the transplant was never really going to happen. Not really. We just wanted to… It was a million-to-one shot… in the time that she had left. And now…’

Mohsin takes her hand.

‘Perhaps he didn’t know that,’ he says. ‘Perhaps he was worried about her getting a transplant.’

‘I was here, all the time, I was fucking here and I didn’t stop it. Didn’t look after her. Right here.’

She breaks down. Mohsin holds her.

‘Darling…’

‘How can I help Mike?’ Sarah says. ‘How?’

A father’s voice now, wanting to do something; because she’s been a father as well as a mother to you and I’d never thought about that before.

She abruptly pulls away from Mohsin, furiously blows her nose.

‘We need to find the bastard.’

‘Are you sure you-’

‘His daughter is dying and his wife is dead in all but name and there’s nothing I can do to help. All I can do for him now is what I am trained to do. And he won’t care at all about justice now – what difference will it make to him, for fuck’s sake? But maybe in time, years, it will be one thing that was done right. Just one thing. Besides, it’s all I can do for him.’

Penny gets off the phone. ‘Baker wants us to wait for him before talking to Rowena White. Fifteen minutes. This time, we’ll get the truth out of her.’

You’re at my bedside. You’re silent, but I am used to that now; as if you can tell when I’m actually with you.

Ivo is with Jenny and I’m glad you’re demonstrating your trust in him by letting him guard her again.

I reach you and put my arms around you.

You tell me the doctors have said she will only live another two days.

‘Just two days, Gracie.’

And as you tell me the truth of it hits you. That open green prairie of your mind, with its stockade of hope, is flooded with terror for her. You can’t hope any longer.

I want you to tell me about the person who did this! I want you to vow vengeance, I want you to be Maximus Decimus Meridius.

But if your anger is still there you don’t notice it.

I think of the tsunami on Christmas Eve and the film of a woman in labour clinging high in the branches of a tree, too overwhelmed by childbirth to look at the violent destruction around her. Only she and the life of her child could matter.

You hold my hand and I feel you shaking and I can’t help you.

A nurse and a porter arrive to take me for a scan. The one where you need to pretend to hit a ball for ‘yes’, to light up a part of your brain for their monitors.

The porter unclips the wheels of my bed, like I’m in a buggy.

‘Hit it for yes, Gracie,’ you say. ‘Hard as you can. Please.’

I remember telling Mum that I was going to be Roger-fucking-Federer.

The porter wheels me out of the ward, a nurse at my side.

But I stay with you, holding your hand.

I’m sorry.

33

Rowena and Maisie are waiting in an office, with a young police officer I don’t recognise.