If You Knew Her Read online

  Unlike his mum’s, Jack’s hand is clammy, almost lifeless. He’s grown a sprinkle of reddy-brown stubble while they’ve been waiting overnight on plastic chairs.

  ‘I’m so sorry. This must be the most terrible shock for you.’

  Jack meets my eyes briefly and nods his head.

  ‘Let’s go through to the family room,’ I say gently, ‘so I can give you an update and then you can come back and spend more time with Cassie, if you like.’

  They follow me like zombies to the end of the ward. As soon as we walk into the family room I wish I’d binned the decorations in here as well. The Jensens don’t seem like plastic-reindeer people.

  They both shake their heads at my offer of tea or coffee. Someone’s thoughtfully arranged three chairs in a semi-circle; I think it must have been Lizzie. Jack pulls his trousers up an inch at the thigh as they sit down; a sweetly old-fashioned habit, I wonder briefly who he learnt it from.

  Charlotte takes a Kleenex out of the little packet in her lap, hands one to Jack, who holds it carefully in his hand, as if it’s too precious to be used for wiping and blowing.

  Jack is fiddling with something small and delicate in his hands. There’s a flash as it catches the light and I know what he’s holding: Cassie’s engagement and wedding rings. One of the trauma nurses would have given them to him for safekeeping. He wipes his eyes, then puts the rings in the breast pocket of his shirt. A second later, he pats the outside of his shirt, either to reassure himself the rings are still there or to check that his heart is still beating.

  He breathes out. ‘Sorry, Nurse, that was the first time we’ve seen her since yesterday. It was harder than I imagined.’ His mum puts her hand on his knee and he stares, unseeing, at the floor.

  ‘Please don’t apologise. It’s a huge shock to see someone you care about after an accident like this.’

  A phone buzzes. It’s on silent but Jack still apologises as he lifts it out of his trouser pocket, declining the call without looking at the screen. It gives me a second to look at them properly. The Jensens are an attractive duo. Jack is tall and broad without being gangly or boxy. I noticed earlier that his eyes are amber, like his mum’s, the whites laced red with worry. Charlotte’s face is a little puffy, from crying or lack of sleep or both; there are traces of old mascara and eyeliner around her eyes.

  ‘Can you give us an update on how she’s doing?’ Charlotte asks. ‘It’s been over twenty-four hours now and the surgeon didn’t say much.’

  I sit forward in the chair. The same chair I sat in when I told Ellen’s blank children that their mother would never leave a care facility, and the same chair I cried in when I couldn’t find anyone else to cry for Frank.

  ‘Cassie is obviously in a serious condition. She’s in a coma but that is the body’s natural response to an extreme shock.’ I talk slowly; shock can mess with people and this is my chance to reassure them that Cassie’s in the best place for her.

  ‘Think of it like a building going into emergency-shutdown mode to protect itself. Cassie’s body has hopefully only temporarily shut down to assess and eventually fix any damage caused by the accident. The good news is that she is healthy, young and most importantly breathing on her own. The ventilator is just to protect her airways. Her MRI scan showed a lot of swelling around her brain from the skull fracture, which is why she has a tube in her head, measuring the pressure caused by the swelling. We are hoping the swelling is a short-term response from the accident and will decrease over the next few days, so we need to wait to see if it does go down. Before then, any more scans we do may give us inaccurate results.’

  Charlotte nods gently; I think through her exhaustion, she’s trying to remember what I’m saying so she can reassure Jack in case he can’t remember later.

  Jack twists the wedding band on his finger and stares at his feet. Charlotte pats his knee as I talk.

  ‘Hopefully, Cassie won’t be here for long before she’s moved to a rehabilitation ward but, for now, she’ll be receiving the best care possible for patients in her condition. I’ll make sure she stays comfortable and that all her needs are met until we know more about what’s going on. Until then, I’m afraid it’s a waiting game. Her body needs to rest and that’s exactly what it’s doing.’

  Charlotte nods, unblinking, before she asks, ‘Is there anything we can do for her?’

  ‘It’s good to come and just sit with her. Talk to her if you can. It’s best to visit when you’re feeling strong and rested though. I’ve worked with coma patients for a few years and I’m quite certain they pick up on our mood and how we’re feeling.’ I don’t want to overdo it; Jack seems vacant with shock. I smile gently as I hand Charlotte the ward information leaflets and my contact details.

  ‘Mr Sharma, the consultant, and I were hoping to meet with you tomorrow morning at ten o’clock?’

  They both nod. ‘Ten o’clock, yes,’ Charlotte says.

  ‘Good. Well, if you have any more questions you’ll see me around the ward.’

  Jack and Charlotte are too tired to realise the conversation has come to a close so I stand up. ‘Try and get some rest,’ I tell them, before they shuffle to their feet.

  They thank me and Charlotte holds my hand briefly in both her own; they feel soft from rich hand cream. Even with grey shadows underneath her eyes, and in a lumpy jumper, she is striking. Her blonde hair is sleek, streaked with lightening white and grey. Her wrinkles seem to compliment her round face, like the fine lines in soft, expensive leather. She looks like the sort of woman who at any other time would be well groomed.

  ‘Maisie, the dog … she’s run off before,’ she says, releasing my hand. ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’

  I try to smile reassuringly. ‘You must try and rest.’ As they turn to leave I add, ‘Oh, sorry, I forgot to ask, does Cassie have any other family members you want me to contact? Parents, brothers or sisters?’

  Charlotte talks softly, as if she’s worried Cassie will overhear even from the other end of the ward. ‘No, no, her mum died from cancer two and a half years ago and she never knew her dad. So I’m afraid it’s just us. We’ve been a close little family though, haven’t we, Jack?’ She raises a hand to her mouth.

  Jack pulls her towards him, tucks her under his arm and says, ‘Come on, Mum, you’re exhausted. We need to get home.’ He guides her gently away.

  Carol, Mary and I eat our home-made sandwiches together in the nurses’ room. We’re an unlikely trio in some ways, but we’ve grown close and keep an eye on each other when a patient dies or the job is getting to us. As Mary says, in reference to the first time we clicked, ‘Nothing brings people together quite like clearing up a pool of puke at four in the morning.’

  Today, like most days, Mary is holding court, telling Carol and me about the Advance Decision she’s drawing up with her husband Pat. Turning sixty has made Mary more aware of her mortality. In November, soon after Frank arrived, we resuscitated a woman the same age as Mary, pumping her with chemicals. None of us wanted to, but the family was desperate. We squeezed three more days of bed-ridden unconscious life out of that poor woman. Afterwards, Mary was maudlin; she told us she’d haunt us for the rest of our lives if we ever put her through something like that.

  ‘I asked for a tattoo for Christmas,’ she says, running a finger between her eyebrows. ‘Yeah, I want “Do Not Resuscitate” tattooed on my forehead.’

  Carol and I laugh.

  ‘You should get “Do Not Intubate” on your upper lip while you’re at it,’ Carol says.

  Mary opens a packet of crisps. ‘Not a bad idea, Caz, not a bad idea.’

  Carol turns towards me. ‘You haven’t told us about your Christmas yet, Ali?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual: eating and drinking too much, presents I don’t really need, afternoon naps, arguing over Trivial Pursuit … all of that traditional stuff.’

  They both nod, their mouths full. I don’t tell them about how, for the whole week with my family home, I f
elt like I was leading my childlessness behind me, a great elephant crashing into every room. My mum desperately searching for something to say that wasn’t related to Harry and Elsa, my dad’s silence from behind his newspaper becoming another presence in the room, and my sister’s careful, apologetic smiles. Drunk, she told me once she feels guilty that she produced two perfect, healthy, pink babies, and started talking about ‘other options’, which was when I had to walk away. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to talk about other options. I feel for them, I really do, I don’t know what to say either. Sometimes I wish we’re the sort of family to scream and shout, that we could exorcise our grief together, mourn our lost grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins and children. Perhaps that would make the elephant turn tail and leave us all alone, for a while at least.

  There’s a pause for chewing and swallowing, before Carol says, ‘Pretty, isn’t she? This new Cassie.’

  ‘Yes, yes, she really is,’ I agree before Carol carries on.

  ‘I know it shouldn’t but it breaks my heart even more that she’s young and pretty.’ Half of the biscuit she’d been dunking falls into her tea. ‘Shit,’ she says under her breath and she starts trawling her cup with a teaspoon.

  ‘So what happened exactly?’ Mary asks, before putting a handful of crisps in her mouth.

  I tell them what I know of Cassie’s story. ‘She came back from a local party earlier than her husband to check on her dog. The dog spooked, ran off, and Cassie went out to look for her. It’s happened before, apparently. Her husband walked home a couple of hours after her, heard the sirens just as he got home. They live about ten miles away, near Buscombe, so it was one of those little windy country lanes they’ve got out there, no lights, raining. You know how icy it’s been recently. Well, it must have been worse in the countryside. The police reckon she either slipped or it was a hit and run.’ Both Mary and Jen tut and shake their heads as I carry on. ‘She fell into a stream by the side of the lane, badly, hence the bruising. She was in the stream for about forty-five minutes; it’s only about four degrees. She was found just in time. Sharma reckons she’ll most likely have some permanent damage.’

  ‘Of course he does,’ says Mary. ‘Old Dr Doom. So what is the family like then? Weepers and wailers or stiff upper lippers?’

  ‘Bit of both really. Poor things. Obviously, still in shock.’

  ‘The husband was pretty easy on the eye.’

  Carol’s like a sniffer dog when it comes to men. Neither Mary or I say anything.

  Carol defends herself anyway. ‘Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking the same thing.’

  I stand and put my Tupperware in the sink and wonder whether it’s a sign of age or contentment that I hadn’t been thinking about Jack, I’d been thinking about how close Jack and his mum seemed, their love for each other active and unashamed. But then, that’s what tends to happen, loved ones rally for the initial drama, attracted to the shock, and then slowly people wander away, disinterested in the long grind towards rehabilitation.

  ‘Jack’s mum waited with him all day yesterday while Cassie was in surgery. Jack didn’t want to leave Cassie and his mum wouldn’t leave him alone, so both of them waited all night as well,’ I say, just as there’s a knock at the door and Lizzie appears.

  ‘Hi, Liz,’ says Mary, ‘Carol was just telling us she fancies Jack Jensen. Did you see him?’

  Lizzie smiles at Mary, blushes, and says to me, ‘There are two police officers here to see you, I think it’s about Cassie Jensen.’

  I leave immediately. There’s one male and one female officer waiting for me. Lizzie showed them to the family room, so I meet with them there. The chairs are still arranged from my meeting with the Jensens. I sit in the chair Charlotte sat in. DI Anderson is prematurely bald and overweight, his head like a sweaty egg glistening above his too-tight collar. He makes a wheezy show of getting out of his chair as I come into the little room. He’s twitchy and uncomfortable.

  ‘Sorry, I hate hospitals,’ he says.

  ‘Most people do,’ I reply as I shake his pillowy hand.

  He introduces his colleague, Constable Jane Brooks, a young woman with short, spiky hair, and ears dotted with old piercing scars, relics from another life. Anderson tells me they’ve reviewed the case at the station and because Cassie has significant bruising on her right side, concurrent with being hit, and because they found tyre marks at the scene, possibly from an old estate or similar, they currently think it was a hit and run.

  ‘People get so carried away this time of year. There was one guy a couple of years back, killed someone just outside Brighton and swore blind he’d only hit a badger.’ Anderson is, I suspect, the sort of man who has a story for every occasion.

  ‘What can we do?’ Anderson asks no one in particular. ‘She was walking on a dark lane early in the morning, no witnesses, no nothing. We’re talking to the neighbour who found her now, a Jonathan Parker. He called the ambulance when his dogs led him to her. But the nearest cameras are over a mile away on the Brighton Road, so I wouldn’t hold your breath that we’ll catch the bugger.’ He shakes his head. ‘Anyway, we’ve put signs up around the area and have the incident on our website, but, as I said, I wouldn’t hold your breath.’

  Brooks keeps her head cocked to one side as Anderson talks. She squeezes the fingers of one hand with the other in her lap, like she’s trying to stop herself from saying something. She smiles at me quickly as we shake hands before they leave. It feels like an apology. She hands me her card before she dutifully follows Anderson, who’s already left the room.

  I knock on Sharma’s office door exactly at 7.15 p.m. as he requested. I had been getting ready to go home but he said it was urgent and I’ve learnt not to ignore him. He calls out, ‘Intrare.’ I don’t know what it means, so I just open the door.

  He sits behind his desk. It’s a boxy, bland office and Sharma has made no attempt to personalise it. There are no photos of his family, no home-made cards from his kids. There is no intimacy here. He seems slightly ruffled, less composed than normal. I have the sense that if I had entered two minutes earlier I might have caught him with his shiny head in his hands. It must be about one of the patients. I hope it’s not Frank. He asks me to sit and starts talking without preamble.

  ‘Nurse, Mrs Jensen had a full-body MRI downstairs in trauma before she was brought up to us.’

  ‘Yes, I thought she would.’

  ‘Well, the radiologist, a –’ Sharma pauses to look at the notes before him ‘– Henry Chadwick, ever heard of him?’ He glances at me but I shake my head. He keeps talking. ‘Well, Henry Chadwick saw something quite unexpected. He saw a foetus. It seems, against all the odds, Mrs Jensen is pregnant.’

  ‘What?’ It sounds like a joke; pregnancy, that word and all its meaning, belongs to a different ward, a different world to the one on 9B. Aneurysm, haemorrhage, tumour; they’re our kind of words … but pregnant?

  ‘She’s pregnant, praegnas, pregnant.’

  ‘But that’s, that’s …’ I want to say ‘impossible’ but at the same moment I realise that’s wrong; it’s entirely possible. It’s highly unlikely, of course – absurd almost that a foetus would survive the trauma of the accident and then almost an hour in a freezing stream – but it’s still possible. I feel light with the realisation. Sharma and I stare at each other. I’m pretty sure my expression matches his: eyes wide, faces made youthful, lit up by something so improbable, so fantastic, a laugh bubbles up inside me.

  Sharma blinks, clears his throat and looks at his notes again. ‘She’s approximately twelve weeks.’

  I want to tell Sharma to slow down. ‘Twelve?’ I ask, holding onto the back of the chair, but Sharma ignores me, relying on his notes to sober him.

  ‘An obstetrics consultant, a –’ Sharma looks at his notes again ‘– Elizabeth Longe, will be performing more tests on Mrs Jensen first thing tomorrow morning, to establish the health of the foetus and so on. I know you’ve been caring for her since she arriv
ed, so I thought it best to let you know, but we are keeping this confidential for now. Did the family mention anything?’

  I think of the puffy-eyed Jensens … the shadows under Jack’s eyes. Although in shock, they would have said something if they’d known, surely?

  ‘No, no they didn’t say anything.’

  Sharma frowns briefly, as if he’s smelt something unpleasant.

  ‘OK. I think in that case it’s vital we keep this between ourselves until we know more and we’ve had a chance to talk to the husband. It’s curious her GP, Dr Hillard, didn’t mention it either. Anyway, Ms Longe is going to perform the tests here tomorrow so we don’t have to move her. Who’s with her tonight?’

  I think of the thick-set, vacant-eyed Paula.

  ‘Paula Simms.’

  Sharma’s lip curls slightly; he thinks Paula is sloppy.

  ‘As I said, let’s keep this between us for now. I’ve gone over Mrs Jensen’s medications and checked nothing will impact negatively upon the foetus, so all should be well on that front. We’re seeing the family tomorrow?’

  I nod, tell him we’re meeting them at 10 a.m.

  He smiles at me briefly before dismissing me, a fleeting acknowledgement of the miraculous survival of this new, tiny life.

  I feel a little high as I walk out of Sharma’s office. Did Sharma really say twelve? Or did I not hear him properly? I want to go to the toilet, splash my face with water before taking some deep breaths and passing my day, my patient, this miracle over to Paula’s care, but before I make it to the toilet, Carol, who already has her black coat on over her dark blue matron’s uniform, calls out to me.

  ‘Alice, love, glad I caught you. Paula just called. She’s running late again, something about one of her kids being unwell. She won’t be in for about another half an hour. You couldn’t hang around, could you?’

  I’m often asked to cover into the evening for other nurses; they know I don’t have any bedtime stories to read. David thinks I shouldn’t, but I find it hard to say no. Tonight, though, this extra half an hour feels like a gift: some time with Cassie on my own.