‘He’s breathing,’ Rose said, shaking him quite firmly by the shoulder, just the way she had used to with her mother. ‘Dad! Wake up!’
Unable to rouse him, Rose reached for a dusty cushion from the chair and put it under his head, rolling up a blanket that was strewn on the sofa and propping it against him to stop him from slipping onto his back.
‘Maddie, it will be OK,’ Rose told her daughter, who sat perfectly still in her original position, quiet and contained, her eyes big with fear. But she wasn’t about to panic – Rose knew that. Maddie had lived long enough with fear, even if she wasn’t entirely aware of it, to know that panicking didn’t help.
Taking her phone, Rose touched John’s forehead, checking for a temperature and finding him cold as she dialled 999. It was a brief call, in which she explained, as calmly as she could, the symptoms and, having sent Maddie to fetch them, read out the names of the pills that were stacked by John’s bed. None of it felt real, and as the dispatcher told Rose that an air ambulance was on its way and would be with them in minutes, Rose
felt
utterly detached, separated from what was happening just as she had on the day she found out about her mother. Only this wasn’t happening now, she told herself. No one was dying now.
Seeing her opportunity to get her away from the scene that she was so afraid would turn to one of loss, Rose sent Maddie to the yard to keep an eye out for a helicopter. Then she dialled Frasier’s number, unsurprised when it went straight to voicemail.
‘Frasier,’ she said as calmly as she could, determined not to let him hear the tears and panic that threatened in her voice behind the false façade of calm, ‘John’s collapsed again. It’s worse this time. He’s not conscious. I’ve called an ambulance. Please, please, for Dad’s sake, please come. He needs you. We both do.’
Hanging up, and without a second thought, Rose called Tilda next, thankful that she’d decided to put the number in her phone after all.
‘Hello, Tilda’s Things?’ Tilda answered the phone breezily, happily unaware of the words she was about to hear.
‘It’s Dad,’ Rose said, her voice breaking into sobs at last. ‘I’ve called an ambulance. Tilda, it doesn’t look good. I think … I think he’s dying.’
‘I’m coming,’ Tilda said, hanging up the phone.
Tilda’s car swept into the yard, stopping on its far side, as Rose watched her father, his face now obscured by an oxygen mask, being loaded into the helicopter, its blades making a tremendous noise as they swooped round.
‘We can’t take you with us,’ a young woman paramedic told Rose, shouting to make herself heard over the din. ‘We’re taking
him
to Furness General. They’ve got all the right care there to see what the trouble is. We’ll be there in minutes, so you don’t need to worry, OK?’
‘OK,’ Rose said, dumbfounded, as Tilda, her arms covering her head against the whirlwind the blades created, jogged as best as she could to her side.
‘He’s got cancer,’ she told the paramedic, out of breath, in such a hurry to deliver the vital information that she had clearly forgotten it was the first time that Rose was hearing the news about her father’s condition. ‘Liver, bowels, pancreas. He’s had treatment – chemo- and radiotherapy, and a bowel reconstruction.’
‘Right,’ the paramedic said, her eyes widening as she took the information in. ‘Thank you. When you arrive, ask at the main desk. They’ll tell you where to go.’
She ran back to the helicopter, and Maddie clung to Rose’s legs, cowering, as the aircraft lifted into the air, buffeting them with powerful winds. Rose did not move from the spot she was standing in until she could no longer see it. Then she turned to Tilda.
‘Will you drive?’ she asked her. ‘I’m not sure I could concentrate.’
Tilda nodded. ‘Rose, listen –’ Tilda began to attempt to explain, her face ashen with worry.
‘No.’ Rose shook her head, indicating Maddie, who was listening intently to every word with wide, scared eyes. ‘Don’t say anything now.’
Rose smiled at her daughter, hoping to look reassuring. ‘Maddie, I’m taking you back to Jenny’s, because I don’t know how long I’m going to be with Granddad, so I think it would be best if you stayed there tonight.’
‘But Jenny doesn’t like us any more,’ Maddie protested anxiously. ‘I don’t mind waiting. I’ll be fine. I’ll bring my sketchpad.’
‘Jenny is cross with
me
,’ Rose said, gently firm, ‘not you. Come on now, Maddie. We don’t have time to argue. Please do as I ask.’
Reluctantly, Maddie nodded, climbing into the back of the car as Rose picked up her bag of things.
‘Do you have a key?’ she asked Tilda, realising she had no way of locking the cottage.
Tilda shook her head. ‘No, John never locks it. I’m not sure he even knows where the key is.’
‘Well, then,’ Rose said, looking at the rough, shabby door, ‘we’ll leave it just exactly as it always is for when he comes home.’
It had been an awkward moment, the persistent ringing of the doorbell, and having to put her foot between the door and the frame to stop Jenny from slamming it in her face.
‘Jenny,’ Rose had said urgently, all too aware that Maddie was watching her intently from the car, ‘please, just listen. Dad’s collapsed and an air ambulance came. He’s got cancer. I’ve only just found out. Please, please take Maddie. I don’t know when I’ll be back and I’ve got no one else to ask. Please. None of this is Maddie’s fault. Don’t make her suffer because I’ve been an idiot.’
Jenny had opened the door at once, her features taut, but not completely unkind.
‘Of course I’ll take her,’ she said. Rose beckoned for Maddie to come out of the car, which Maddie did reluctantly, eyeing Jenny with a good deal of mistrust.
‘Are you going to be unkind to me?’ she asked Jenny.
‘No, dear, of course not,’ Jenny said, upset by Maddie’s wariness.
‘Thank you,’ Rose said, hugging Maddie briefly to her chest as she looked at Jenny. ‘I’ll pay for another night of board, of course.’
‘No need to do that,’ Jenny said stiffly. ‘You’re a local now.’
‘Jenny, you were so good to me,’ Rose said sincerely, ‘when I had no one else. I never did anything to deliberately hurt you or your family, I promise you.’
Jenny nodded, sucking in her bottom lip. ‘Well, I dare say you didn’t,’ she said. ‘But Ted is my boy, and I know him. I know he feels things more deeply than he’ll ever let on. I expect things will calm down. Go and be with your dad, and, Rose, I hope it’s not too bad, lass.’
Grateful for that one word of affection, Rose gave Maddie another kiss goodbye and ran back to the car, pulling on her seat belt as Tilda drove away.
‘Now, you can talk,’ Rose said to Tilda as soon as they were out. ‘Tell me everything.’
‘He was ill for a long time, of course,’ Tilda began slowly, telling a story that she wished she didn’t know off by heart. ‘Not that he would ever admit to it, or even go to a doctor. Not until the pain got so bad he couldn’t stand it. Frasier took him the first time. Marched him into the surgery like a naughty schoolboy, he was
so
furious.’ Tilda smiled faintly at the memory, her eyes on the ever-twisting road as Rose watched. ‘Frasier was the only one that could make him go, though. Thank God he did.’
‘And they diagnosed it straight away?’ Rose asked, feeling
strangely
detached from the devastating news, aware that news like that, news that cannot be easily recovered from, takes a very long time to filter through the body’s defences and hit home. It had been the same when they told her they’d found her mum’s body. It had been days – days of people being kind to her, speaking in hushed tones and bringing her hot meals in oven-warmed dishes – before any of it sunk in. Experienced in loss, Rose knew that she had to use the period of numbness to learn what she could, to try to understand why her father had never mentioned to her that he was dying.
‘Well, I think the doctor knew, yes. But there were tests. Lots of tests, biopsies. I went with him. Frasier and I both did when the consultant gave him the news. Bowel cancer, serious, and it had spread to the liver and beyond. They said that whatever they did now it was about prolonging his life, not curing him. I half expected John to say don’t bother, it’s fine, I’ll just die, but he didn’t.’
Tilda didn’t take her eyes off the road, but Rose could tell by the tension in her throat and the thickness in her voice that she was fighting off tears.
‘Why not?’ Rose asked her. ‘For you?’
‘For you,’ Tilda said simply. ‘John had long since given up any hope of seeing you again. In fact, after the cancer he told me it was the last thing he wanted: to see you, to find you again, only to lose you so soon. But for the last few years all the work he’s been doing, it’s been for you. All the money, almost all of it, has gone into a trust fund for you. He knew money didn’t make up for the father that he failed to be, but he said it made him feel a little better, knowing that after he’d gone, you’d realise that he had thought about you, had missed you. Even if you
never
touched the money or gave it away, he didn’t care. Just as long as you knew. So when they told him that he only had a couple of years at best, with surgery, radiotherapy, chemo, drugs, he took it. He wanted to make as much money as he could for you.’
‘Christ,’ Rose said quietly, ‘it’s so unfair, so unfair. Why now? Why now, after everything I’ve been through, when I’ve only just found him?’
‘At least you have found him,’ Tilda said. ‘Even if it’s for a short time, it’s better than no time at all. Keep thinking that. And, well, I’ll bet you any money you like he’s sitting up in bed complaining when we get there.’
But after a frustrating hour of driving, and several minutes of trying to find somewhere to park, not to mention tracking down exactly where John was, Tilda was proved wrong. John had been given a private side room, and his face was still covered with an oxygen mask. A nurse took them to his side, telling them he hadn’t been conscious since they arrived, but that a doctor would be with them as soon as possible to let them know what was going on.
Rose sat down on the odd pink plastic chair by his bedside, and looked at him. He looked so frail, so weak. As if the force of nature that made him who he was had all but evaporated, leaving just a shell behind.
‘I’ll get us some tea,’ Tilda said, putting a hand on Rose’s shoulder. ‘Try not to worry, Rose. Your dad’s been down before. And almost out, too, but if I know him at all I know he won’t give up fighting for every second more that he can squeeze out of life, and he’ll do that for you and Maddie. I promise you.’
Rose nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, adding with just as much calm measure, ‘I’m glad you’re here.’
‘Oh, Rose, dear,’ Tilda said, patting her once again on the shoulder and then rubbing it briefly, ‘I’m glad that
you
are here.’
They were standing in the corridor outside John’s room.
‘His main problem right now,’ said the doctor, who looked to Rose like he should still be at school, and not managing the life and death of someone that she loved, ‘is that he’s dehydrated and malnourished. I think he’s probably been in pain for a long while, not eating properly. From our initial examination we suspect an obstruction in the bowel, but I’m reluctant to investigate further until we’ve got his stats back up. We’ll know more tomorrow, but for now you should probably go home, rest.’
‘If it’s a bowel obstruction,’ Rose asked him, her face drawn and pale, ‘what then, another op?’
‘I don’t know,’ the doctor admitted reluctantly. ‘We need his notes from Leeds. We need to see what has already been done, if surgery is the way to go or … if a more palliative approach is required.’
‘Oh God,’ Rose sobbed, burying her head in her hands, making the young doctor shift awkwardly from one foot to the other and look longingly for an escape.
‘How am I going to explain this to Maddie?’ she asked Tilda, turning to gaze at her father through the slats of the blind at the window of his room, where he was lying silent and still, oblivious to everything that was going on around him.
Wake up, Dad, she pleaded silently. Please, please, wake up. Don’t give up now.
* * *
For the first few seconds after waking, it took Rose a little while to work out where she was. There was dim grey light filtering in through the thin hospital curtains, and the rhythmic beat of the heart monitor, but still it took a while for the realisation to dawn on her that she had spent the night in hospital. When it did, the worry that had had a continuous grip on her heart since yesterday squeezed hard again.
Forcing her stiff neck into an upright position, she winced as pain shot down into her shoulder. She remembered that she’d decided to stay the night by John’s bedside, waiting for him to come round. It had been John squeezing her fingers that had roused her.
‘Bloody hospital,’ John said, his mouth dry. ‘Why am I here?’
‘Here.’ Rose tried to hide her relief as she picked up a beaker of water from the bedside table and held it to his lips. ‘I imagine you’re here because you’ve been doing your level best to ignore that terminal cancer you’ve got.’
John directed his gaze upwards, his dark sunken eyes studying the ceiling tiles for some moments, Rose sitting paralysed at his side, finding it impossible to express all the emotion that had built up in her, suspecting that a crying, wailing daughter would be the last thing he would want.
‘I don’t want to be here,’ John said eventually. ‘Want to go home. I have work to do.’
‘Dad,’ Rose leant on the bed, resting her forehead on his hand for a moment, ‘why didn’t you tell me?’
‘No time,’ John rasped. ‘You’ve only just got here. I suppose this is my just deserts. To lose you now.’
‘You’re not going to die,’ Rose told him emphatically, even though she didn’t know it was true. ‘Well, not yet, anyway. Not
for
a very long time. The doctor seemed to think you’ve been ignoring symptoms. I bet they’ll patch you up and we can still do what we planned. Live together at Storm Cottage, be a family.’
‘Perhaps,’ John said wearily, ‘perhaps.’
‘Don’t leave me, Dad,’ Rose begged him desperately, her determination to contain her emotions crumbling away. ‘Please, not again.’