She stared at me guiltily, and it took me a moment to realise she actually didn’t know my surname. If it had been any normal circumstance, I might have teased her for not remembering it. But I didn’t have it in me.
“Owen,” I offered. “No S.”
Poppy flashed a thankful smile at me then finished typing in her search.
“Damn, that carer of hers must know somebody.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she’s been here less than half an hour and she’s already having scans done,” she said. “Here. I can walk you.”
* * *
Ethel’s back was broken.
After waiting hours for the CT and X-ray scans to come back, it turned out that the “arthritis” we’d been treating in her back for the last month hadn’t been arthritis at all, but an S2 fracture they’d missed in their initial scans.
“It’s a good thing I ordered that angle,” Dr Mulling said, “and that Mr Agha here told me about her back pain.”
I nodded gratefully at Anil, but I was cursing myself. I should have noticed something bigger was wrong. I’d made it my life’s mission to make sure Ethel was comfortable and cared for, and yet, whilst I’d been making googly eyes at Amy and playing silly games, she’d been hobbling around with a broken back. I would never forgive myself for missing it.
“I’m not surprised it’s been painful, Ms Owen,” Dr Mulling continued, directly to Ethel this time. “That must have been really uncomfortable.”
“The jab helped, I think,” Ethel said. “Can’t I just have another?”
“You’ll get painkillers, yes,” Dr Mulling said, nodding, “but those shots were because we thought the problem was your arthritis. We wouldn’t prescribe it for a fracture.”
“So we’ve been missing this for years, since her hip?” I asked. “Why after all this time is it just now giving her pain?”
Dr Mulling frowned. “Oh, this isn’t from that fall. It’s far newer than that.”
Anil and I exchanged an alarmed look, and I racked my memory for when she could have hurt herself that badly.
“When, then?” Anil asked, but he didn’t need to. Realisation sank over me.
“About a month ago,” I said, looking up at Dr Mulling for confirmation. She nodded. “She fell out of bed at night. Then she started having that pain. I just thought it was the arthritis like they said. I figured the fall must have made it worse.”
And it was the first and only time she didn’t know who I was, I thought. At least her CT scans had come back clean, so I knew she hadn’t acquired a spinal fractureanda traumatic brain injury all in one night.
“Now, Mr Agha,” Dr Mulling said, turning to Anil, “you’re specialised in home adaptations, right?”
Anil nodded. “I’m two weeks off my certification.”
She nodded. “Then as far as I’m concerned, you’re the best person to advise Ms Owen and her grandson on some changes that may help prevent this in the future.”
I frowned. Changes? Like, to the house? Anil and I had worked hard to make sure the house was as safe as possible without making Ethel feel like a patient. I was worried anything else would make it start to feel like a hospital, which I knew she didn’t want. And frankly, neither did I.
But Anil nodded back. “I think there’s a lot we can do.”
* * *
I wasnothing if not a master compartmentaliser. And as hard as I’d worked to let Amy build little doors between my compartments, as much as I’d invited her into each one, I knew I’d have to go through and lock those doors one by one. There would be too much to keep track of: changes to Ethel’s medication, new physio routines to implement, adaptations to discuss with Anil; hell, the binder would need a complete overhaul. And if I thought too much about Amy, if I left those doors open, I was afraid the whole thing would crumble.
So I tried my best not to think of her as we discussed referrals, went through the discharge process, and loaded Ethel and her new wheelchair into Anil’s big van.
But as we pulled up to the house and I saw Amy on the bench beside the hawthorn tree, it was clear my compartmentalisation was doomed to fail because of one crucial thing I’d failed to consider: just how persistent my girlfriend was.
She snapped her head up as soon as we’d pulled onto the street, watching us as we pulled up at the end of the drive.
