“I understand,” says the nurse. “It must be quite hard for you sometimes though.”
She has no fucking idea. “Harder for her, I think.”
“Of course, but equally it can be very painful watching someone you care about struggling to keep going, especially when it appears they really don’t want to. You found Gretchen, didn’t you?” she asks gently. “In her flat?”
“Yes,” I say very quietly. I’ve seen this coming. “The front door was slightly open,” I say. “I let myself in and there she was.”
“I wonder why she left the door open?” the nurse says.
“She wasn’t in her right mind,” I respond quickly.
“Had you spoken to her yourself, then?”
I dart a glance at the door. “No, I mean, I assume she wasn’t—to have done something like this.”
I stand up quickly, I just want to leave. She puts a hand out. “It’s a really horrible condition, Alice, but very distressing to see too. I’m just trying to give you the opportunity to talk. There are groups we could put you in touch with and—”
“She’s the one that needs help,” I say swiftly. “She’s supposed to be able to control it, it doesn’t have to be like this.” I suddenly find myself speaking with more energy than I should have at this time of night, especially given what has happened. “It can be treated. You can take pills to level yourself out, make the moods less extreme—I can think of plenty worse things. It’s only when you don’t take your medication, when you’re selfish enough to stop because you don’t think you need it, even though you’ve been told by people who love you and other people who are experts that you need to take it—that it becomes a problem.”
The nurse looks slightly surprised by my outburst, but not thrown. “It’s very normal to feel angry, Alice,” she says, and suddenly I’m aware I’ve balled my hands up into fists so tight that my knuckles have gone white. “It’s a common reaction and—”
But it’s too late—I’ve tumbled over the edge. All the shock, fear and anger are rushing up and through me. I can see her sitting slumped there in the sitting room, then frozen in the hospital bed … My pulse pounds at my temples, pushes at the back of my mouth.
“It’s just selfish!” I finally and tearfully explode. “She knows what she’s doing—this isn’t something that she has no control over! She chooses not to take her treatment, even though she knows what will happen. She knows that Bailey and Tom and … oh shit!” I scrabble for a tissue as my nose begins to run. I’m a mess of snot and hot, furious tears of frustration and anger. I’m so angry with Gretchen, and myself, that I’m shaking.
I also know I’ve said too much already, and I want to stop. I want to get away from this nurse. I stumble to the door and almost throw myself down the corridor. I hear her call, “Alice!” behind me, but I ignore it.
When I get back to the room, just Tom and a new nurse are in there. I don’t know where Bailey is.
“Are you OK?” he asks, curious, looking at my tear-stained face as I slump down next to him.
“Fine.”
“Do you know something I don’t?” he says sharply. “Bailey is still with the doctors. What? What is it, Al?” He reaches a hand out and clutches at my arm.
“Nothing’s wrong, Tom,” I say wearily, suddenly feeling totally exhausted.
Liar liar, pants on fire …
Nothing’s wrong? It’s never been more wrong in my entire life.
I sit forward and put my head in my hands for a moment and try to regain some composure. What the hell am I doing here? How has this happened? Tom leans toward me and rubs my back for a second, rather awkwardly. I sit back up.
“Better?” he says uncertainly and I nod my head, although to be honest I’m not really.
“You probably need something to eat,” he says. “I expect …”
But I’m not listening, because right at that precise moment, although I think I might have imagined it, I’m sure I see a tiny movement of a finger on the sheet. Did Gretchen just move her hand?
Oh holy Christ.
I look immediately at Tom, but he’s staring at me intently.
She did, I’m sure she did. Oh my God. Oh my God.
I start to shake, but try to make out like everything is normal and I haven’t just seen anything. At all. Is she coming around? She can’t! She simply can’t.
“You look pretty pale,” Tom says. “I mean even if you just have a bar of chocolate I think it’d do you good. Want me to give you some change?”
The nurse who has just been quizzing me appears in the doorway. “Alice, could I just—”
And then we all see Gretchen lightly twitch her head. Unmistakably. An alarm starts to sound again as I jerk my chair backward and jump to my feet like I’ve had an electric shock. The chair bangs off the back of the wall behind me with a plastic crack. I can’t take these fucking sirens going off every second—it’s shooting what’s left of my nerves to pieces.
“Shit!” Tom exclaims in shock and then a huge smile spreads over his face. “Did you see that?” he shouts, twisting to me then twisting back eagerly. “She moved!”
I cover my mouth with my hand and run from the room. I can hear the nurse calling my name again.
I slam down the corridor and into the ladies’ room, smashing into a cubicle, and dry retch over the bowl. My teeth start to chatter. I think I am moaning “Fuck, fuck, fuck …” I can’t be sure. I hear the main door open and the nurse say “Alice?” more calmly this time. She pushes on the door and because it isn’t locked and it’s a very tiny space, the door bangs lightly into my arm and I can see her face through the slit.
“Alice, are you all right?”
“Is she coming around? She is, isn’t she?” I blurt desperately, then I say it. The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “She can’t wake up—she just can’t!”
The nurse, to give her credit, does not look horrified. She just says very slowly, “You’re very distressed, in a heightened situation, but …”
I barely hear her. I can see Gretchen swallowing the pills again. Oh God, oh God. It doesn’t make me a bad person, it doesn’t. She asked me to help her …
“Help her?” the nurse says and I realize I’ve just said all that out loud.
There is a pause that seems to last a lifetime.
“Alice,” she says eventually. “You didn’t help Gretchen to do this, did you?”
I look at her and I can see, under that calm exterior, her mind racing through textbook phrases … assisted suicide … helping a severely depressed person to die, however good the intentions seem … illegal … carries prison sentence … more than a decade. Taking your own life by your own hand is not illegal. Helping someone to do it is.
“Is that why you don’t want Gretchen to wake up, Alice?” she says.
I make a sort of strangulated noise and then blurt out, “I never wanted this.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she says softly. “What you’re feeling is very normal, Alice.”
No it isn’t! Nothing about this is normal—nothing at all—it’s totally fucked up! How can she tell what I’m feeling is OK?
“You’re right,” she continues, like she’s sneaking up on a dangerous cat she wants to trick into a basket, “it doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s very hard to watch someone you love in pain and struggling.”
I watch her creep closer and suddenly I feel exhausted. I just want it all to be over now. I can’t do this anymore. I’m so sorry, so sorry.
“I thought … and she had this plan and I said it was stupid and wrong,” I’m struggling to get the words out, gulping my breath and shaking, “She said she’d do it anyway and I had to help her … she swallowed them … and I didn’t do it. She was waiting and I didn’t, I just sat there and—” I gasp. “Oh God, oh God. She’d just keep doing this over and over. Hurting herself, hurting those who love her. Is it wrong not to want that for any of us?”
I look at the nurse, utterly terrified.
“Did Gretchen ask you to help her die? Is that why you don’t want her to wake up, because you’re scared it’ll all come out?”
I shake my head vehemently. “No! She –”
But then I hear the door open. The nurse turns her head and I hear a male voice—it’s Tom. “Is she in here? Al?”
“I’m here!” I say desperately and then the nurse is standing back and Tom’s opening the door. “It’s OK!” he says. “It was just an alarm because she moved her head—but that’s a good thing,sweetheart—a really good thing. Don’t be scared! It’s going to be all right.” He looks at me, his face knitted with concern.
I sniff and tip my head back, trying so, so hard to get myself under control. “I’m sorry!” I say and tears rush to my eyes again.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” he says. “You’re shattered, it’s practically the middle of the night … Come on. Come back in the room with me.”
I can’t! She’s waking up! But I can’t stay here either—not with this nurse.
He holds a hand out and without looking at her, my head lowered, I slink past and bolt from the room. I wonder what she is thinking and who she is going to tell. I didn’t actually admit anything though, did I? Very nearly—but not quite.
Thank God for Tom.
T
he walk back to the room feels like the longest one in the world. I put one foot in front of the other, watching them taking me there. I know that she won’t be able to just sit up and talk, that she’ll be drowsy and confused, but it won’t be long until she does know where she is. I have to go, I have to …
We round the corner and Bailey is back, listening earnestly to a chiseled-looking doctor, nodding and saying, “I see.” The doctor looks brisk and impersonal, his features are rather too hard, but the younger new nurse at the back of the room seems to have come over all coy and distracted, so perhaps he is the hospital hottie. He glances briefly at Gretchen as he discusses her. She is mercifully still again and I get the immediate feeling he regards the physical manifestation of a bunch of symptoms as an irritation. Gretchen is just another body to him, a mass of cells. And we are hangers-on who are rather getting in the way.
“So that’s about everything, I think,” he says, looking again at the notes in his hand briefly before murmuring smoothly, “Thank you, nurse,” and passing them to her as if they were an empty martini glass.
He prepares to sweep out of the room when Tom says clearly and firmly, “So is Gretchen now showing signs of improvement after that earlier scare?”
The doctor looks at Tom as if someone vaguely familiar has approached him at the golf club whose name and status he can’t quite remember, but who, he’s pretty certain, isn’t worth bothering with. He glances at Bailey inquiringly and Bailey says, “It’s fine, I’d like them to be aware of everything that’s going on.”
At that, I see a flash of irritation on the doctor’s face, because he’s going to have to repeat himself. But then just as quickly he fixes it into an expression that must have been labeled “Concerned Assurance,” when he reached in and pulled it out of the box marked “Doctors’ Faces for Unimportant Friends and Relatives.”
“Hello,” he nods in introduction, “I’m Dr. Benedict. Gretchen has ingested a severe mixture of drugs and alcohol,” he says with some pace. “They have induced the early feature of coma and, as you have already seen, unfortunately, that carries a significant risk of cardiac arrest. There are also a number of adverse side effects, including a risk of respiratory depression and renal failure, among others. It is however positive that she has exhibited signs of movement and—”
Then he stops because an alarm goes off again, but this is our third time now, so we are used to it.
“As if on cue,” he says dryly and glances behind him as the nurse reaches across Gretchen.
We wait for a second. “You all right there?” he asks, slightly tersely, waiting to continue.
“Her sats have just dropped,” the nurse says, “I’m going to have to suction her.”
“Is that a good or bad thing?” Bailey looks at Dr. Benedict, desperate for some assurance, but he’s scanning the monitors swiftly as the nurse is concentrating on some sort of tube and pump-like apparatus.
“OK, guys. I’m just going to ask you to step outside for a moment so we can clear her airways,” the doctor tells us firmly. Tom and I now know the drill well enough to move straightaway. Bailey, however, starts to panic. “Why? Can’t she breathe or something? I thought she was waking up?”
Another nurse appears. “Please can you just wait outside?” Benedict says to us and then adds irritably to a nurse, “Shut that alarm down!”
“Come on, sis!” Bailey pleads desperately, ignoring him and looking at Gretchen. “Breathe!”
“Bailey, come on!” Tom grabs him. “Let them help her.”
“Get off!” Bailey shoves him off roughly. “Don’t do this to me, Gretch!” he says warningly, staring down at her, tears welling up in his eyes. “Don’t you dare do this to me!” He raises his hand up to his mouth and bites down furiously on a balled-up fist. “I know you can hear me!”
Back in the sickly spearmint room, we wait silently. Tom and Bailey aren’t speaking to each other, of course, and I have nothing I want to say. I am numb—both feet on the ground, hands in my lap—just staring straight ahead.
I don’t know how long we sit like this, I’ve stopped noticing time. We are all lined up along one wall and I am uncomfortably sandwiched between them, strapped into a rickety roller-coaster car. I have survived one round of loops and dives but I can sense that this drift, along the flat straight bit, is about to end. We are picking up speed again.
Sure enough, Dr. Benedict eventually appears, accompanied by the nurse who followed me into the bathroom. He explains in a calm voice that Gretchen’s condition has unfortunately now “significantly deteriorated.” I am aware that the nurse is watching me carefully.
No one says anything, but one of the boys, I don’t know which, makes a frightened gulping sound.
Dr. Benedict waits for his words to sink in and then continues. “Unfortunately, secondary complications often arise and Gretchen has now developed respiratory difficulties. We’ve removed a mucus plug using suction. Did she have a cold, flu, maybe a chest infection before she—” He stops briefly, clearly thinking of a way to avoid saying “tried to commit suicide” and opts cleverly for “was admitted?”
Tom nods. “She had a cold.”