And it is true that I’ve somehow let the doctors believe this about me, that I’m widowed. I’ve never said it – I would never say it – but I also haven’t corrected them when I’ve known they’re making that assumption. My story is too painful to bring into the workplace, and visiting Mike is my private, special time. But Ewan Marigold has loosened my tongue.
It seems ages that Dr Marigold and I stare at each other. Then I shrug my shoulders.
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me.’
I can see he’s about to ask more, so I reach out and touch his arm. I’m not a toucher, and I don’t know if my gesture takes him or me more by surprise.
‘It’s complicated, Ewan,’ I say, using his name for the first time. ‘I don’t talk about it.’
He glances down at my hand on his arm, and then at my face. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I understand. But I’m here if you need me.’ He looks so concerned, and I can only imagine what strange scenario he’s constructing in his head. But I don’t have the energy to explain, to expose myself. ‘Thank you,’ I say.
I’m planning to tell Mike the good news that Julia has found someone, that she’s pregnant. I lay awake last night rehearsing how I’ll tell him that our time is finally coming, that I’ll be able to end the pain for both of us. In my fantasy, I leant over and held Mike’s hand as I whispered it to him, and when I got to the part where I said we could die, Mike squeezed my hand. I know it’s been twenty-six years since it last happened, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen again if something sufficiently exciting happens.
But when I get to Mike’s room, and I sit down and take his hand and start talking, I don’t seem able to follow my own plan.
‘I’m so worried about her,’ I tell him. ‘This man is married, and by the sounds of things to a very likeable, competent woman. I just can’t help thinking that he’s going to leave Julia and go back to his wife. And now there’s a baby.’
I look at Mike’s impassive face, and his chest rising and falling – miraculously on its own, the miracle that holds my hope – and I feel admonished.
‘It’s not that I don’t think Julia is loveable,’ I say, as if Mike has spoken. ‘Of course she’s loveable. But this man has been married. Julia doesn’t know about marriage.’
I squeeze Mike’s hand. We know about marriage, Mike and I. We know about true love and, God help us, we know about for better or worse. I don’t think Mike ever would have had an affair, but if he had, I think our marriage would have won at the end of the day. And when Julia described this Daniel to me, he sounded an awful lot like Mike.
‘Anyway, we’re going to meet him on Sunday. I’ll bring them here and you can see what you think.’ I lean back on the hard chair. ‘I just don’t want her to get hurt, but I can’t see how else this can end.’ I look at him.
‘I’m not being a pessimist, so don’t you go thinking that,’ I argue with my silent husband. ‘Believe me, I hope more than anybody that this works out well.’
Now is the time to tell him why, to explain what this really means to us. But somehow I don’t. I sit there holding his hand for another hour, thinking about Julia and wondering what the future holds. At the back of my mind, I’m weighing up whether I’ll be able to die soon. But mostly, I’m wondering what Julia will do if Daniel leaves her.
Being with Mike always brings me peace, and today is no different. After sitting with him, I feel calmer, more focused. ‘We’ll talk about the other stuff after we meet Daniel,’ I say. ‘We’ll know more about where we are then.’ I lean down and give Mike a kiss goodbye, slightly on the side of his mouth, which I consider my own special place.
When I leave Mike’s room, there’s a man sitting on one of the chairs in the passage. He’s crying. When Mike was first here, I often stopped and spoke to people I thought were in the same boat as me. We’d become friendly for a while, and then they would start to get better and move on, and I wouldn’t, and the acquaintance would end. So I just stopped trying. These days I don’t know any of the other long-term visitors; I hurry in and out of the building, speaking only to the nurses who care for Mike.
But there’s something about this guy. He looks so alone, and so broken, and I know how that feels. And I’ve been feeling different since Julia’s news – more hopeful and more worried and . . . well, I suppose there’s no other word for it. I feel more alive now that I can see my own death. And now here is this man, crying. I sit down next to him and pull a tissue out of my bag and hand it to him. He takes it silently, and wipes his eyes before blowing his nose with an incongruous trumpet.
‘It’s hard,’ I say.
He nods. He looks in his fifties, like me, which means it could be anyone in here – a wife, a parent, a child. It’s so long since I’ve had one of these conversations that I’ve forgotten the form.
‘So,’ I say, ‘it’s your . . . ?’ I wait for him to fill in the blank, which he does, but only after an awkward amount of time has passed.
‘It’s my wife,’ he says, and starts to cry again.
‘I’m sorry. I do know how hard it is. My husband’s been in a coma for twenty-six years.’
That gets his attention and he
