A Heartbeat Away (15 page)

“What…?” Ben looked at her, incredulous. “You think I should
go
to the funeral.”

“It might be a good idea.”

He turned the idea over in his mind for a moment, before leaning across to kiss her papery cheek.

“Thank you,” he said simply, certain it was the right thing to do.

That night he slept fitfully, reliving the nightmare again and again, before waking with a deep weight in his chest as dawn broke. Again the questions tormented him. Should he have run away like that, he wondered, as he watched silver streaks slowly light up the morning sky? Or should he have waited? But for what?

 

Around midmorning, Ben walked with determined steps into the emergency department of Morland General Hospital. He had spent enough time in such places over the years to be immune to the distinctive, antiseptic smell that made most people cringe, and he felt quite at ease in the warm stifling atmosphere.

A broad-hipped, foreign-appearing nurse was behind the reception desk. Her pendulous breasts sat on the counter as she leaned forward, ignoring him, and while she filled out a form, he waited patiently, soundlessly rehearsing the speech that, he hoped, would get him Lucy's address.

“I'll be with you in a moment,” she murmured, still not looking up. His eyes flickered across to the busy waiting room. A little boy sat nursing his hand as his young mother glanced nervously around, and a white-faced man with blood on his arm stared at the floor as though fascinated by something he saw there. How did all those people manage to injure themselves so early in the day?

“Ah,” came a cry of delight from behind him. He peered around with a start to find the trim blond nurse who had been on duty the previous day.

“Well…if it isn't yesterday's hero!” she exclaimed, her face alight with a broad smile.

Ben felt a surge of anger at her good humor. “Some hero,” he snapped. “Didn't do much good, did I?”

Her eyebrows drew together into a puzzled frown and she touched his arm in an impulsive, sympathetic gesture.

“You did as much as anyone could have,” she insisted. “And now it's just a matter of wait and see. Nature really does sometimes do remarkable things.”

Ben stared at her with a bewildered expression on his face, but before he could respond, the nurse from reception attracted his attention.

“May I help you?” she called for the second time. He eyed her vacantly then shook his head, already pivoting to follow the blond nurse, who was marching down the corridor with short fast steps.

“What did you mean?” he asked, walking beside her.

She hesitated, looking up at him blankly. “About what?”

“Nature. You said that nature sometimes does remarkable things.”

“And so it does,” she agreed with a smile. “Who knows what she will be like when she wakes up.”

“Wakes up?” The pounding of Ben's heart seemed to take over his whole being.

“You didn't realize!” she cried in astonishment. “You thought she was dead.”

“And she isn't?”

His voice sounded too loud in his ears, and he felt a kind of singing deep down inside. “Lucy's alive?”

“No one can say how, but, yes, she's alive.”

“I heard the heart monitor…”

She took hold of his arm and gave it a quick squeeze. “Oh, you poor thing. I'd wondered where you'd disappeared to. Her heart did stop—that's the amazing thing. For five minutes she was technically dead, but they managed to get it beating again, and now, unbelievably, all her vital signs seem okay. They won't really find out until she wakes up, of course…”

“She's in a coma?” He grasped her narrow shoulders and turned her to face him, his eyes dark with emotion. “Is she going to be all right?”

“I told you—we have to wait and see. No one knows when she'll emerge from the coma, or even how normal she'll be when she does wake up.”

He dropped his hands to his sides. “What—so they think she could have some kind of brain damage?”

“Look,” the blond nurse began in a firm, sympathetic tone. “Nature puts people into a coma for a reason—to let them rest and heal. Lucy has every chance of waking up and being totally normal. All the tests they have done point to it. But no one
really
knows—”

“Until she wakes up,” finished Ben.

“Until she wakes up,” the blond nurse affirmed. “Would you like to see her?”

For a moment he hesitated, all of a sudden weak and helpless, as if his limbs belonged to someone else.

“It's been a shock for you, I realize,” she said gently. “But a nice shock, surely. I'm only supposed to let close family in, but as you did save her life in the first place, I can bend the rules a little.”

He cleared his throat, trying to control the emotion threatening to render him completely helpless. “Please,” he eventually managed to say. “Of course I'd love to see her.”

The blond nurse touched his arm with the tips of her fingers.

“My name's Pam, by the way. Oh, and in case you are interested, you don't have to worry about bumping into
Mr.
Lyall. He left a mobile number and told us to phone him if she wakes up.”

“But what about her other relatives?” Ben asked, falling eagerly into step beside her.

She splayed her hands, palms uppermost. “He said he would inform her aunt, but she hasn't arrived here yet.”

Ben held back for a moment when Pam pushed open the door to a small side ward. Suddenly it was all too much to take in. When she motioned him forward, he moved slowly across to the bed where Lucy lay, hardly daring even to glance at her for fear of finding out that it was all just a dream.

She looked so fragile, so white and still and vulnerable. Her thick dark lashes rested like two small fans against her cheeks, just as he remembered, but now a deep purple bruise ran down one side of her face. And they had shaved off some of her glorious hair to apply a stark white dressing to her head. How he longed to pick her up and cradle her safely in his arms, willing that vivacious girl from the park to come back from wherever it was she had gone. Instead he reached for her limp fingers and held them tightly, marveling at their warmth. Lucy McTavish really was alive, gloriously, joyously alive.

“I'll leave you with her for a little while,” whispered Pam. The door swished quietly behind her and Ben exhaled for what felt like the first time since he'd walked into the ward.

“Oh, Lucy,” he murmured, touching the smooth soft skin of her face. “Oh, Lucy.”

 

Ben spent most of the rest of the day in and around the hospital. He didn't dare go too far in case she woke up when he wasn't there, and he sat for hours, simply waiting for the tiniest flicker of her eyes.

He was supposed to be at work the next day, and had planned to catch the train back home to Dunstable that afternoon. Now he didn't know what to do. There had been a time, a long time, when he had been too sick to hold down a physical job. Now he reveled in his work with the forestry, loving the outdoor life and hard work the job entailed, but even that seemed unimportant at the moment. He called his boss with a lame excuse, feeling somewhat guilty but unable to force himself to leave Lucy alone.

Jed Mallock sounded curt and angry.

“Well, you'll have to be back soon,” he barked. “We're due to start on the northern ridge in two days.”

“I know,” said Ben. He imagined Jed's black-bearded face scowling in anger. “And I really am sorry. I'll explain when I get come home.”

“You'd better,” Jed warned, and slammed down the phone.

Ben slipped his cell phone into his pocket and went back through the front doors of the hospital, immediately putting thoughts of Jed out of his mind. If he could only be there when she awoke—that was all he wanted. But would she remember him? he wondered. And what if she slept for months?

 

The blond nurse, Pam, watched Ben sink wearily down into the chair beside Lucy's bed and lift her limp fingers to his lips. “I hope that Alex Lyall doesn't turn up,” she remarked to the tall dark-haired nurse on duty with her that day, who walked across to peer through the glass.

“Poor guy,” she murmured, catching her breath. “Is it true that he saved her life and fell in love with her there and then?”

Pam smiled softly, feeling a pang of envy at the expression on Ben's face as he gazed tenderly down into Lucy's face. “It does look a bit like that,” she agreed.

T
hey say that your whole life flashes in front of your eyes in the moments before you die. I knew that mine had, in a moment that seemed to last a lifetime. But life had come back to reclaim me from the light of perfect peace, before it finally drew me in. And in the seconds between sleeping and waking, as I lay in a strange and distant place, the memories still lingered, filling my brain at first with confusion and then quite suddenly a perfect clarity. For seeing my life like that, as if it had all happened yesterday, made me realize just how wrong I had been about everything.

I had imagined I was strong, but now I saw that I was weak, so weak that I made my poor sad mom seem like the strongest person in the world. I had been afraid of becoming like her, but in reality I was worse, for at least she had stayed to
try
to face her feelings, whereas I had selfishly run away. I had run away from my emotions, run away from my responsibilities, hidden even from myself. And now, in the moments before the memories faded and I reentered my life, I felt the ache of shame.

It seemed as though a great weight rested on my chest, and the ache in my heart began to overtake my whole body, dragging me down. I felt my eyes flutter, and closed them again as a bright light scalded my eyeballs, and way off in the distance somewhere I heard a voice.

“Her responses are good.”

Were they talking about me? Where was I? Vague memories of vibrant colors filtered through my mind, filling me with sadness and confusion. I attempted to open my eyes, but they seemed glued down, and then I felt myself drifting once more, higher and higher, until the distant voices disappeared and I was alone in the darkness.

When I attempted to open my eyes again, my eyelids parted uncomfortably. There was a blinding pain inside my head that dulled my thoughts, but it was the awful nagging agony in my whole body that made me want to cry out.

“Daniel!”

My lips mouthed his name, but no sound emerged. I tried to move, but I felt pinned down. And then someone grabbed hold of my hand and warmth crept through me, the warmth of safety and comfort.

Hope flickered inside. “Daniel?” I whispered.

Cool fingers stroked my brow, and I closed my eyes again. Daniel had come back to me, and now I could sleep.

Where was I? The room was in darkness, but beyond it were lights and sounds I didn't recognize. There was something in my hand, something irritating. I lifted it up. A tube. There was a needle in my hand and a tube. I was in hospital, but where was Daniel? He
was
here. I felt his hand, holding mine. And then I remembered. Daniel was dead.

Agony rose inside me, fresh and raw, as if Daniel's death had happened only yesterday. An image of his waxen face flashed into my mind and I cried out into the darkness as a suffocating sorrow dragged me into a deep dark place. And then someone really was there beside me. Soothing hands, a low voice…a man's voice.

“Daniel?” I murmured, opening my eyes.

“No,” he said. “It's Ben. Do you remember me—from the park?”

Ben? I felt muddled and slow as the memories filtered back. The car! Oh, my God! I started to struggle, overtaken by a mindless panic. He pressed me back, his hands firm but gentle against my shoulders, his honey-brown eyes reassuringly familiar.

“It's okay, you're going to be all right. Just relax now.”

How could I relax though, when my mind was in turmoil? Daniel, I wanted Daniel.

“I'll give her something to help with the pain. It will calm her down,” another voice interrupted.

The bright smiling face of a young nurse loomed over me. “Just a little prick, Lucy and then you'll feel much better.”

The warm hand still held mine as my eyelids drooped. Calming me as I floated out of my body into a strange foggy place where the pain spiraled away but my brain no longer seemed able to function. Who was Ben? I knew him so well, and yet I couldn't quite find the slot in my life into which he fitted.

“I'll be here when you wake,” he whispered. I closed my eyes and felt a warm blanket of comfort slipping around me.

When I woke again, it was still dark, but there were lights in the distance. I could hear the hum of voices and a monitor bleeped beside my bed with a regular rhythm. My whole body ached unbearably, and I couldn't move my left leg, but when I wriggled my toes and flexed my fingers, they all worked and my mind felt sharp and clear.

I recalled stepping out into the road and I recalled—my mind turned sharply away from the image of a black BMW, uncomfortable with it. I recalled running through the park, slithering and sliding through piles of old brown leaves in my silly red shoes…and meeting Ben.

In the moment that I found the slot to fit him into, suddenly I saw him, sitting beside my bed. His eyes were shut and he lolled uncomfortably in his chair. Why was
he
watching over me? Who
should
be watching over me? And then I remembered Alex.

I shivered at the thought of Alex, for he belonged to before, before the new clarity had overtaken my brain and awakened me to myself. Once again I knew how weak and self-centered I really was. I had been unable to cope with the tragedy of Daniel Brown, and that was why it still felt as though it had happened only yesterday. Because I had never faced up to my pain and learned to live with his death.

I had lost myself in a crazy physical affair with Alex Lyall, seeking solace in pure sensation with a man I didn't even like or trust. As well as my poor dear mother, I had let Aunt V and Edna Brown down.

I lay back on my pillows, trying to collect my thoughts. In one moment my mind was crystal-clear, and in the next I felt fuddled and vague. Memories from my childhood kept popping into my head, as though the events had occurred only yesterday, while the immediate past seemed a whole world away. Where had I been since Daniel Brown? It felt as though I had inhabited someone else's body, lived someone else's life.

“Lucy?”

Ben's deep voice snapped me back to the present. I turned to look at him with confusion in my eyes.

“How do you feel?” he asked softly. “Do you remember me now?”

I nodded, wincing as a searing pain shot through my body. He reached out to clasp my fingers, then dropped them again as if embarrassed by the gesture.

“The park…I met you in the park…Why are you here?”

He leaned down toward me.

“I just wanted to see that you were all right. Should I go?”

“No!” I reached my hand out to him without knowing why. “No…please…stay if you want. Is Aunt V here?”

He frowned. “Aunt V?”

“Surely they must have told her. How long have I been here? Why hasn't she come?”

I struggled to sit up, but a fiery pain racked my whole body. He placed a hand tenderly on my shoulder, urging me back.

“Shh, stay still. You must stay still and not upset yourself. I'm certain your aunt will be here soon. I'll ring for the nurse.”

Before he could press the buzzer, another thought flashed into my mind, and I reached out to stop him.

“What day is it? How long have I been unconscious?”

“It's Monday,” he told me. “You have been unconscious for three days.”

Tears filtered through my lashes as I recollected Aunt V's plea for me to attend her special day. I had let her down—again. Oh, what must she think of me now?

Ben took a tissue and gently wiped away the tears that had quickly turned into a torrent. I was crying for Aunt V, for Edna Brown, for all the lost time and, finally, for Daniel.

“Just let it all out,” Ben told me. “You'll feel better.”

Would it? I wondered. Would I ever feel better again?

He sat again then, clutching my hand, and I felt as if his strength were seeping into me.

“Sorry,” I said, making an effort to smile as my tears dried up. Ben let go of my fingers and smiled back with such a warm, honest expression on his face that I squirmed with guilt. I didn't deserve his sympathy.

“Does it hurt?” he asked softly. I bit my bottom lip, and as tears threatened anew, he stood.

“Look, why don't I go and fetch the phone and you can call your aunt yourself?” he suggested.

My response was instant. “Oh, yes…please.”

I half raised myself in excitement before falling back with a cry as a sharp pain pierced my chest.

The blond nurse burst back in through the swing doors. “Now, don't try to move, Lucy,” she told me in a firm voice. “We'll have to sedate you if you do.”

I breathed deeply, fighting to control the agony that filled my body.

“Why? What have I done to myself?” I asked with a flicker of panic. “Is something broken?”

She gazed at me with open honest eyes.

“It's up to the doctor to fill you in on all the details, but you have some broken ribs, a broken leg, a very nasty head wound and so many cuts and bruises that it looks as though Picasso has been at work on your body. But don't worry—you're going to be okay,
if
you lie still. Honestly,” she promised.

I managed a smile. “I believe you. It just hurts so much.”

“Well, we can give you something for the pain, and it'll hurt less if you try to stay still. Let's get you ready for the doctor.”

Ben had withdrawn to the rear of the room, but now he stepped forward, his strong, dependable figure towering over the bed. He stood awkwardly for a moment, moving from foot to foot, then he coughed behind his hand and the nurse peered around with a smile.

“I was just about to go and get Lucy the phone,” he said, glancing at me.

“Wouldn't it be better to wait until the doctor has been?” she suggested, with just the right amount of authority to tell us that her words weren't really a suggestion at all. “He'll be here in a minute, and I don't want Lucy getting herself all excited before he arrives. She's been unconscious for three days, remember, and she has to take things very slowly.”

She checked the monitor beside the bed, jotting things down on my notes with a distracted but convincingly reassuring voice.

“Now, don't go worrying yourself,” she ordered, popping her pen back into her top pocket. “I'm sure your boyfriend will have already contacted your aunt. He did promise, too. She'll probably show up any minute, although…” She eyed me and looked away again. “I'm afraid that we haven't actually been able to get hold of him just yet. He said to phone him as soon as you woke up, but…”

She hesitated; unsure what to say, and in the moment of awkwardness that followed, my disappointment about Aunt V became anger, a burning anger channeled toward Alex.

“I don't want him to know,” I blurted.

The ever-present tears welled behind my eyes again and the ache inside my head began to throb like a hammer inside my skull.

“I don't want him to know that I've woken up.”

The nurse shot Ben a dismayed glance, but he just stared at me, his brown eyes full of understanding. How could he understand, though? How could he know anything?

“I don't want you to phone
him
,” I repeated for his ears only. “I just want Aunt V.”

“Then why don't you give me her number and I'll go outside and phone her myself,” he proposed in a quiet, soothing tone.

I felt as though he could solve my every problem, and a sudden sense of security dried my tears.

“We can do it from here, if you like,” suggested the nurse.

He shook his head and looked at me appealingly. “Please…Let me do it. I'd really like to.”

When I nodded eagerly, she shrugged. “Okay then. I'll just run some more checks on you, Lucy. Dr. Abraham will be here in a minute and he'll expect me to have recorded everything.”

I lay back on my pillows, eyes half closed. Suddenly I felt so tired, as if everything was overpowering me. I longed for the purposeful presence of Aunt V with every fiber of my being, and a shiver ran through me when I remembered Alex. What was I thinking? What had happened to me in those long months since Daniel's death had broken my heart? The answer—as it had already—came at once, again and again. I had run away.

The nurse's bright voice broke into my reverie. “You are a very lucky girl, you know.”

I digested the information while she adjusted the needle in the back of my hand. Was I? Was I really lucky…but why?

I stared at her with disbelief and she paused, narrowing her eyes. “Do you recall what happened to you?”

Her tone was forcedly casual, but as I met the query in her eyes, all of a sudden I knew. With crystal clarity I knew.

“I died,” I said quietly. “I think I died.”

How did I know that? What, or who, had put those words into my mouth? Lights flashed inside my head and a sense of peace stole over me. The nurse stopped what she was doing and gazed at me in alarm. I met her gaze with certainty and saw confirmation in her eyes.