He continuously thought about his days as a student, mucking around on the rugby pitch, his thrill at learning to drive for the first time, skiing over in New Zealand. Part of him would be missing if he never got to do those things again and he didn’t know if he wanted to learn how to be anyone else other than the man he’d once been.
And then there was Lydia, beautiful Lydia, the woman he lived with and loved with his whole heart. He shut his eyes and thought back to the early days with her, when she’d agreed to go out with him, how lucky he’d felt. But she hadn’t been attracted to this man, had she? The man lying in a bed or the man he was when the staff helped him into a wheelchair and pushed him around. His heart ached to see her again but at the same time he couldn’t bear the idea of putting her through any more of this.
That afternoon after his mum left, a nurse came in. She did the necessary checks and then sat down in the chair beside the bed. She’d told him about her day, about news snippets she could remember over the time he’d been in hospital, the care home and now here. And at the end, when she’d finally seen him smile, she said ‘One day at a time, Theo. One day at a time.’
His mum returned that evening and had transformed from the weak, downtrodden, abused-by-her-own-son mother to a headstrong, I-won’t-take-your-shit-anymore woman.
‘Theo,’ she began, ‘I understand it’s a shock to wake up and realise what you’ve missed. You must be incredibly upset and frustrated.’ She had her arms folded across her chest and it made him grin because that’s how she’d looked when she’d found him and the next door neighbour, Zac, setting tiny fires in the garage, or when she’d found him and Grace using chalk to colour in the kerbside all around the street. She’d kept her arms folded in the exact same way as she was doing now as he and Grace had got down on their hands and knees and scrubbed the kerb clean again that day.
‘I don’t know why you’re grinning,’ she said now. ‘And I have to point out that no mother would’ve wanted to let you die without at least trying. The doctors had no idea whether you’d ever get any better, neither did we. I trusted my instincts.’ His silence pushed her on. ‘And I don’t ever want to hear you use those adjectives about Lydia, ever again, do you hear me?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Lydia, for your information, made it clear how you felt about being incapacitated and your views on what was a life worth living.’
Her voice broke but it was only for a second before she carried on. Theo realised he wasn’t the only one who’d lost more than a year of his life. His mum, and Lydia, had been in their own private hell alongside him.
‘Theo, you need to know that it was me, I pushed to keep you alive, refused to contemplate anything else. Lydia tried to put across your point of view and I shut her down. In fact, I think I made that girl’s life much harder than it needed to be and I feel awful. I wouldn’t have any of it, I wouldn’t listen to her, so don’t you ever blame her for any of this. It’s my fault, and do you know what? I’m not sorry for standing by what I believed in. I probably wouldn’t even be sorry if you were still unconscious because no mother in their right mind would want to kill their son if there was a chance he could live.
‘Are you finished?’ He asked, his voice the softest it had been in days.
‘Not yet.’ She shook her head and this time wagged a finger at him. ‘Don’t you ever talk to me like that again. I won’t have it. Dealing with everything that happened has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and that includes picking up the pieces when your father upped and left. Are we clear?’
‘Crystal.’ It was a rebuke he’d used in his teenage years when she’d reprimanded him and he’d huffed and walked away and it hadn’t gone down well then, but this time she managed a smile. ‘Mum?’
‘Yes, Theo.’
‘Come here and give me a hug.’
*
As the weeks moved on, so did Theo’s determination and progress. He spent most of the daylight hours in a wheelchair very soon after he’d lost the defensive, angry attitude, and it had made a huge difference. His vantage point had changed and instead of the plain ceiling with its dimmed lighting and cracks that nobody else could see unless you were in his lucky position, he could now be moved to beside the window and look out over the gravel driveway and the trees that would soon show signs of coming into spring bloom.
Grace had been in to see him several times and it had broken the monotony of seeing only his mum, but every time either of them mentioned Lydia he changed the subject. He’d thought about calling her, and if he’d had a phone in his room he may have done it. He harrumphed as he sat in his chair looking out at the rain one day. The only way he’d ever call would be if he could pick up the phone himself and dial numbers, which he wasn’t sure he could do yet. And besides, what was her phone number anyway? He had no bloody idea. It was another thing that had fallen out of his head somewhere along the way.
The next few weeks evolved with continuous therapy. He heard how he’d been in a care home for some of the time and he was glad he couldn’t remember it because it sounded terrible. And if he’d woken up in there, surrounded by old folk, he may just have shut his eyes and never bothered to wake up again. But this place was much more suitable for him and he often had a bit of a laugh and joke with the staff who were encouraging rather than patronising. He guessed a lot of it had to do with his attitude now.
In therapy sessions they got his limbs moving. With the dietician they gradually introduced solids and liquids so he could begin to eat normally again. He talked with another therapist about using yoga for strengthening, and when Theo had laughed and said yoga was for girls, the therapist had shown him a video of another patient’s progress and strength returning. The man was an ex-marine and well-built and seeing the masculine images propelled Theo into wanting to achieve the same improvements.
Two months after Theo began to speak again, he was doing well, defying all the medical suggestions that he may have difficulty learning to walk again, talk, do lots of things he’d taken for granted. True, he wasn’t walking normally on his own yet and his speech faltered sometimes, but by the day he’d told his mum she could call Lydia – he’d figured it’d be too much of a shock for him to make the call himself – he was able to walk slowly with crutches for a few metres, and more than that, he felt triumphant. He was on his way back.
Anita had at last made the call she’d wanted to make for a long time, and Lydia had apparently been so shocked she’d hung up. But later she’d texted Anita to say that yes, of course, she’d be on her way up the following day. That news was given to Theo this morning as he’d been able to eat his breakfast, a task he’d only managed to relearn in the last week.
So now, he was waiting in his room where he’d stay until Lydia got to the rehab centre. He’d told the nurse on reception he wanted to see Lydia in the lounge downstairs, not his room. He didn’t want her to see him lying in his bed or anywhere near it. Not anymore. He wanted her in the lounge, beside the fireplace so he could walk in upright and show her he was on his way back to the man he had been before. The nurse was to settle Lydia on one of the comfy sofas and then come to get him and take him downstairs. The rest he could manage on his own.
On this freezing cold March day with snow on the ground outside, Lydia was on her way to see him, finally. And Theo was as nervous as he’d be if it were a first date. He was waiting to see the woman he hadn’t seen for more than a year and the woman he last remembered from a holiday they’d taken a long time before that. And when he saw a car pull up at the end of the gravel driveway and Lydia climb out, he had to remind himself how to breathe in and out again. He watched her discreetly from the window upstairs, the way she moved, the beautiful brown-as-a-berry skin on her face, the hair he longed to run his fingers through. He watched the boots on her feet as they crunched through the snow and she tentatively climbed the steps up to the house. And then she disappeared out of sight. And he knew it was time.
It was time to see the love of his life.
