‘I was but I thought I’d stay and say hello and tell you his progress.’
Lydia froze. ‘There’s been some?’
A huge smile spread across Anita’s face. ‘I was talking to him yesterday and I swear he looked right at me.’
Was that it?Lydia had read all about this. Sometimes the patient seemed as though they were looking at you but really they weren’t. ‘That’s good,’ she said, instead of voicing her opinions.
‘No, I mean I’m sure hereallylooked at me. But when I went up close to him he didn’t do it again.’
And there it was, what Lydia knew was just hope rather than evidence.
‘You try, Lydia. Talk to him.’ She was almost giddy. ‘Tell him about your day, little things, anything you think he’ll be interested in.’
If Anita got any more excited she’d need a sedative to calm her down. Lydia decided the only thing she could do would be to go with it, so she sat next to Theo’s bed and began to talk about her dancing. She felt sure she was boring him to tears, if he could hear, but she carried on and covered the topics of weather and her job too. She could barely think of much to say at all, and doing it with Anita in the room added a discomfort that wouldn’t allow her to wander off topic.
When Lydia stopped talking, Anita leaned in to smell the flowers she’d arranged so carefully. ‘I didn’t realise you’d stopped dancing,’ she said.
That’s because you never asked. Anita had been to see her dance once, in a performance, and she’d told her she had a real talent. ‘I stopped after the accident.’ She didn’t wait for Anita to ask why. ‘It was hard to go back at first, my body wasn’t used to moving that way, but it’s good now.’
‘Hold his hand while you’re talking,’ Anita prompted when Lydia’s focus returned to Theo. ‘It really helps, I know it does. He’s had enough of listening to me and nurses for now.’ She went on talking about secondary medical conditions Theo was susceptible to: urinary tract infections, pneumonia, pressure ulcers, and how it was important to keep a close eye on him. ‘I’ve been shown by a nurse how to care for him, how to do the PEG feeding.’
‘Don’t the staff here do that?’ Lydia wasn’t really surprised Anita had started to take control. Perhaps it made her feel less helpless.
‘They do but sometimes I like to do it. He’s my son.’ She looked fondly at Theo but then turned back to fuss with the flowers again. ‘Graham will be over to see him next month, and I think it’ll do Theo the world of good to see his dad.’
Lydia wondered whether Anita truly believed some of the things she said or whether she lived in a fantasy world, the only way she knew how to cope with the pain. She put a hand across Theo’s, felt the warmth of the skin she’d touched a thousand times before. She talked more about her dance, how she used more height and spin now she was getting back into it. But Theo spent the time she was there with his eyes firmly shut.
‘He’s sleeping.’ Anita was back beside her. She touched a hand to Lydia’s shoulder. ‘If you come in later or tomorrow he may be awake. Where are you staying?’
Lydia picked up her bag. She’d intended to hang around for a couple of hours but suddenly she couldn’t do it. ‘I’m not. I’m driving back this afternoon. I have to get back, for work.’
‘Oh, that’s a shame. Theo would love to see more of you, I’m sure.’
And before she could stop herself the words flew out. ‘He doesn’t even know I’m here!’
‘You don’t know that!’ Anita never raised her voice but she did this time.
‘He’s in a vegetative state for crying out loud!’
‘Don’t shout at me.’ Deflated, Anita slumped down onto the chair. ‘You can go.’
Lydia looked out of the window at the clouds floating by as if sticking two fingers up at them to saytheydidn’t have a care in the world,theyweren’t stuck in limbo not knowing what was going to happen next. ‘Anita—’
‘Lydia, let yourself off the hook. I’ve got this.’
‘Anita…’ She had to try to make peace. ‘I want to believe he’ll wake up, I really do. But this isn’t a romantic movie.’
‘Goodbye, Lydia.’
And with the last words hovering between them, Lydia left the care home, climbed in the car and drove back to Bath, back to the home she’d once shared with Theo, back to a life that had once been his but was now hers alone.
*
Anita had done her best to exonerate Lydia after that horrid day at the care home, and Lydia felt guilty because being pushed away hadn’t been as heartbreaking as it once might have been. She didn’t know whether time had made her coping mechanisms that much stronger, whether she was losing Theo more with every passing day, or whether she was simply tired of the whole situation.
Lydia did her best to keep abreast of the situation by texting Anita once a week as a minimum, to check in and see if there was any change, any developments, and for now Anita seemed happy to oblige. With Lydia at a distance, not visiting for the time being until things had settled a little, Anita would be Theo’s mother without anyone else interfering, and Lydia knew it was something she couldn’t possibly understand. She could say that she did, but really, she couldn’t, because she wasn’t a mother. Lydia wondered whether pulling apart from Anita now was the natural order of things when you started to pick up the pieces of your own life and start to see clearly.
In early October, as the heavens opened outside and the torrential rain didn’t look like it was ever going to let up, Lydia decided that even the weather was encouraging her to get on with sorting out the house. She cleaned sporadically but the place needed more than that. It didn’t look untidy at first glance but if you looked more closely there were signs it needed attention. The kitchen bits-and-bobs drawer was overflowing with pieces of paper and clutter, the scattering of magazines on the coffee table had turned into a dumping ground for odd bits of post and other paraphernalia, and the box room upstairs was full of papers she and Theo had put there for later, when they knew what to do with them, and like most people, later had never happened.
