Tom Houghton (40 page)

‘Patrick, it's your mother. Please call me immediately.' The use of ‘mother' should be enough to convey some seriousness.

Next she called his office. This time she waited for five rings and with each one she grew more hopeful that he'd pick up and answer in his officious tone. But this too went through to a recorded message. ‘Patrick Apperton', he said awkwardly, ‘is not available' said a woman.

‘Just as I thought,' Maggie said to Kathy, ‘there's no answer there either.' Then after the recorded message she said, ‘Patrick, it's your mother, you must call me right away. Something's happened –' she left the threat hanging.

Though she knew it was very early morning in Paris, she decided to try Isabel's mobile. Isabel would have a better chance of getting through to Patrick. Not once could Maggie recall either of her children answering her calls. She was forever leaving them messages and waiting anywhere between one and five days for them to call her back in their own sweet time, if they bothered at all. Naturally, no one in the family had taught Maggie how to hide caller ID.

‘
Bonjour
,' said Isabel's voice message before continuing in French.

Feeling a little more desperate now, Maggie decided to mention the accident. ‘Isabel, it's your mother. Marcus has been in an accident. I need you to call me . . . please?'

Maggie closed her mobile and turned to Kathy with a smile. ‘No luck,' she said bravely, before bursting into tears.

Kathy hugged Maggie's shoulders as she wept. Even in her grief Maggie felt self-conscious as the driver glanced periodically in her direction. What must he be thinking?

They turned into the emergency entrance of the hospital. How sombre and imposing the grey building looked up close – a mecca of death and illness.

Her next conscious thought was of Kipper. Maggie was in the waiting room of emergency and the dog was on the small television screen two metres from the floor. A child sat on a makeshift carpet, his head turned at a sharp angle to see the screen. Maggie couldn't remember exactly how she'd ended up in this room, how they'd paid the taxi driver or how it was decided that emergency was where they needed to be. As she became more conscious, she understood that someone was holding her hand. The chubby fingers were interlocked with hers, and another hand lay resting protectively over both. Maggie turned to see Kathy's solemn face, her eyes full of love and concern.

Kathy had been speaking. ‘Don't you think?' she repeated.

‘Yes,' Maggie said remotely, taking a risk on what was being discussed. ‘Yes, I suppose so.'

‘Mrs Apperton?' asked a man dressed in white. He had a tanned, angular face with a distinctive five o'clock shadow. He was probably much older than he looked. ‘I'm Doctor O'Sullivan. Please, come this way.'

‘I'll be here, sweetheart,' Kathy said softly, slowly letting go of Maggie's hand.

Maggie silently followed the doctor through a maze of dull-coloured corridors. She couldn't remember the last time she'd experienced the cold sterility of a hospital. They came to a small, dark meeting room with two hard chairs facing each other across a plastic-topped table.

‘Please, take a seat. Can I get you something to drink?'

‘A wa-water,' she stuttered, her throat dry and poisonous.

The doctor poured her a minuscule cup from a water cooler in the corner. He placed it in front of her.

‘Not much of a cup,' he said, forcing a smile. ‘Let me know if you would like some more.' She swallowed it in one and was desperate for more but wouldn't ask.

‘I am sorry that we meet under such ghastly circumstances,' he said honestly. ‘Is there anything I can get for you before we begin? Anyone I can call?'

‘No, thank you, doctor. I've left messages with our children.' She motioned to a sign on the wall, ‘I'll turn my mobile off now, though?'

‘Yes, if you don't mind,' he said courteously before getting down to business. ‘Your husband suffered a sudden heart attack while driving this morning, Mrs Apperton. The collision would have caused him quite a shock and he suffered a number of cuts and abrasions to the face and hands. I can't be sure whether his initial heart attack was severe but he suffered a series of them, perhaps due to the trauma of the car crash, so there has been quite some damage caused.' Doctor O'Sullivan paused. ‘Should I continue, Mrs Apperton?'

‘Yes please, doctor,' she answered quietly, feeling the colour drain from her skin.

‘The ambulance arrived on the scene and could find no pulse. CPR was commenced and the paramedics managed to revive him but CPR continued for quite some time without your husband's heartbeat returning naturally. Once here, we placed your husband on life support, but it is my professional opinion that he suffered from a considerable lack of oxygen to the brain. We've done the necessary tests and there has been significant brain damage, I'm afraid. The odds of him regaining consciousness are virtually nil. Even if he was to regain consciousness, I doubt he would retain many of his capacities.'

Maggie felt numb. This was so clinical, hard for her to comprehend that Marcus was no longer within his own body. It felt impossible to refer to him in the past tense. And yet strangely, she felt calm. As though receiving some sentence for a crime she didn't commit – this could all be righted in the future. In a way, the information she received was pointless. Everything would be returned to normal, eventually. Surely this was all just a dream. ‘Continue, doctor,' she said blankly.

‘You need to decide how long you wish to sustain him on life support. I reiterate that it is my medical opinion that your husband won't regain his mental capacities and if we were to turn off the life support machine he would not survive for very long. Perhaps hours, perhaps minutes. I can tell you, though, he is in no pain, we are taking good care of him. Naturally, there's no hurry in this situation, Mrs Apperton; I don't want you to feel under any pressure. You can take your time to think through your options and, of course, you probably want to discuss them with your family. You should spend some time with Marcus before you decide anything at all. Do you have any questions?'

‘No doctor. I understand everything you've said.'

‘Mrs Apperton, would you like to see your husband now?' He spoke to her gently but she could detect no hope in his voice.

‘Thank you, doctor.'

Maggie followed him through a series of corridors before coming to the doors of intensive care. The smell and atmosphere of hospitals had always quietened her; the stillness, the gathering of strangers in the most intimate of circumstances.

‘I'll be outside if you need me for anything, Mrs Apperton. I won't be very far away. Your husband's bed is the last on the left, against the window.'

Maggie pushed through the doors and everywhere she turned she could see medical machines. It finally brought to her the seriousness of the situation. She felt useless now, knowing these events were totally beyond her control.

Walking with her head to the ground, she made her way to the last bed and took a deep breath before raising her eyes to the level of the pillows. Maggie focused intently on the man's face before her, trying desperately to find some semblance of the person she had seen nearly every day for forty years. It wasn't him. My god, she thought, this has all been a hideous mistake. She was about to turn back and explain the mix-up to the doctor but then her eyes caught the name on the clipboard at the end of the bed – ‘Apperton' – and just above that, she saw one of Marcus' feet. How could she mistake the dead skin that marked them so?

Maggie walked closer to the bed, staring at this strange face with thick tubes leading into and out of it. His whole body was swollen and she found it hard to believe it was Marcus, but there were his things piled neatly on the bedside table – his watch, his wallet, the mobile phone he had called her from this morning and his wedding ring. This man used to be her husband. Within her she knew Marcus couldn't be saved.

It was no longer the man she knew, just his shell, a vacant body. The wind rushed out of her and she struggled for breath as the tears rolled freely down her cheeks. Though she wanted to, she could not turn her gaze from his face – so at peace, a man whose presence she'd taken for granted for so many years that she had forgotten just how much she relied on him for everyday things. What now, she thought, do I just stand here and wait for something to happen? Do I speak aloud and say goodbye? Out the window she could see silhouettes of office workers going about their daily lives. How potent that life should continue so unashamedly this close to death. She stood, frozen, for ten minutes, unable to sit or move until the doctor's gentle touch on her elbow brought her back to the moment.

Maggie and the doctor walked back to the meeting room in silence as she tried to regain some of her composure. He asked her to sign a set of papers empowering the hospital to effectively end Marcus' life. She'd thought it through and could see no point in sustaining his machinated breaths, delaying the inevitable. What point was there in having Isabel or Patrick see him like this?

‘Your husband's personal effects . . .'

‘If you could just send them to me,' she muttered from somewhere deep within. ‘Send them next week. Not today, I just couldn't take them with me today.'

‘I understand,' he said softly.

What an awful job you have, Maggie thought, what a wonderful man you must be. ‘I assume you have my address from my husband's licence, car registration . . . If that is all . . .'

‘Mrs Apperton, I could prescribe something. If you felt you needed it.'

‘Thank you, doctor. Will that be all?' Though she knew she wasn't sounding herself, she also realised that Doctor O'Sullivan would have no ‘before' Maggie to compare her to.

‘You have my deepest sympathies, Mrs Apperton. With your permission, I would like to call you in a few days.'

‘Of course.'

‘Your choice of funerary company will arrange for the transportation of Marcus' body. Are there any family members you would like me to contact on your behalf?'

‘I will try my children again, if you don't mind. May I borrow your phone, doctor?'

‘Of course. I'll leave you alone, you let me know when you're done.'

Maggie dialled her children's mobile numbers and once again she left messages, though this time sounding more desperate. She would turn off Marcus' life support machine and if he could live long enough for his children to see him then that is what fate would decide. She even tried calling the reception at Patrick's work but once she told the girl it was his mother she was given a well-rehearsed excuse.

‘His mother? Oh, right!' the girl said and struggled to hide a nervous laugh. ‘I'm sorry, he's not available. Can I take a message?'

It was all Maggie could do to stop from screaming at this poor dumb girl. ‘Yes, you may take a message actually. Please tell him his father is dying. He should get to Royal North Shore immediately.'

‘Oh my God, I'm, like, so sorry –'

‘Yes, well . . . Please, I just beg you to track him down.'

Maggie knew she wouldn't be able to do it alone, so she asked the doctor to find Kathy.

•  •  •

Sitting on two plastic seats next to Marcus' bed, they waited in silence for the doctor to come and do the deed. Maggie sat staring straight ahead, gazing into the office block. How many of those workers had lost their husbands or their fathers? Behind her, Maggie could hear a mother crying quietly as she held her tiny child's hand. An old man on the other side of the room was breathing so heavily that it sounded like each breath was causing him immense pain. A nurse came and conspicuously closed the curtain around Marcus' bed. Maggie held Kathy's hand in her right and Marcus' in her left when the doctor came. It was as simple as flicking a switch. The slow rhythmic beats of his heart as reproduced on the monitor offered a sublime hope but almost immediately, the beeps began to slow. They grew further apart and Maggie couldn't help but count the seconds between them. One second, two, three . . . The beeps were replaced by a constant tone. A flatline, isn't that what they called it?

The doctor nodded slowly to announce that Marcus was dead, and turned off the other machines. He said simply, ‘He's gone.'

Maggie sat for a few minutes, unsure of what to say or do. Tears rolled freely down her cheeks and her limbs began to shake. This moment would change things, of that she was sure. This moment would scar her, not only for its immediacy, but for its long-running repercussions. She got up slowly from the plastic chair and went towards her husband's swollen face. She felt older than her years, somehow more helpless than she'd been just minutes before.

‘I'm sorry,' she whispered to her dead husband, a man who was responsible for so much of who she had become. Maggie kissed him briefly on the forehead and moved to whisper in his ear, ‘I'm so sorry.'

Maggie preferred that Kathy didn't see her like this so she walked calmly through intensive care and took a right turn. She lost her way in the unending corridors and took refuge in the first toilet she came to. She went into a cubicle, locked the door behind her, sat on the toilet seat, and began to sob uncontrollably. Her whole body shook as she wept, tears dropping onto her dress, mucus dripping from her nose. She had not cried like this for many years, she had not been as free with her emotions at any other moment. When she thought of this morning's kiss, of Marcus' phone call, she comprehended how out of character it had been for him. Had he sensed something?

Sudden heart attack? How ludicrous! Marcus' mother had died of heart disease, so had two of his brothers. How could he have been so ignorant, so complacent? How could she not have been prepared for this moment, or done more to prevent it? And she hadn't even looked at him this morning. Stupid woman, taking it all for granted. No wonder this . . . No wonder.