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“Harriet?”
“Rachel!” Her sister sounded both tearful and panicked.
The nurse at the station gave Rachel a rather stern look, and mouthing an apology, she hurried to the visitors’ lounge where she could take the call in private, without disturbing anyone.
“Rachel—”
“I’m here.”
“Where?”
“At the hospital in Middlesbrough.”
“Is Dad okay? What happened? My phone died at the ceilidh so I didn’t see your text until I got home, and I saw you and Dad weren’t here…” Harriet trailed off, sniffing.
“Sorry,” Rachel said, knowing that must have been a frightening moment for her sister. “He’s okay, at the moment. I think he must have fallen and bashed his head, but they said it’s not a serious injury.”
“Oh, thank—”
“But,” Rachel cut her off, just as the doctor had done to her, “they’re keeping him in overnight for observation, and for the MRI tomorrow. And the doctor thinks he might…he might have a brain tumour.”
“What…” The word rushed out of Harriet in a whispered breath.
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Rachel replied quietly. “With his symptoms, and it not seeming entirely like dementia? I mean, nothing is for certain yet.”
“I know, but…” Harriet was silent for a moment. “I don’t know why,” she said finally, “but I didn’t think about something like this.”
“No, I didn’t either, not really.”
They were both silent for a moment, absorbing the possibility. “Do you want me to come?” Harriet finally asked. “I could drive over right now—”
“No, don’t, it’s late. I told Dad I’d stay with him here and take him to the MRI tomorrow. There’s no need for both of us to be there.” Harriet didn’t speak, but Rachel felt a suddenly frosty silence from her all the same. “I mean, come if you want to,” she added, and realised that she’d just made it—whateveritwas—even worse.
“I’m sure you can handle it,” Harriet replied stiffly. “Will Dad be coming back tomorrow, do you think?”
“I hope so.”
“All right.”
Another silence, this one only very marginally less frosty. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Harriet said, and hung up.
Chapter Fifteen
By eight o’clockthe next morning, Rachel was gritty-eyed, her body stiff and aching with fatigue. She’d managed to snatch a few hours of sleep, but it had been no more than dozing, broken by the constant interruptions of nurses coming to check her father’s stats, or someone else’s on the ward, squeaky doors or wheels of trolleys, the sudden beeps or buzzes of various machines. She hadn’t realised how little sleep could be got in a hospital, never mind while curled up in a chair.
The nurse was kind enough to give her a toothbrush and mini tube of toothpaste, and while her father was still sleeping, Rachel went to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth, trying to feel a little less like the walking dead. She went down to the foyer to get a lovely strong Americano from the coffee shop, and a cup of tea for her dad, strong and sugary just as he liked it.
As she stood by the counter, waiting for the barista to make her coffee, feeling tired and achy and longing for a shower and a change of clothes, she wondered how much of her life would be spent in hospitals. Was this the beginning of a new normal, days and even nights spent with her dad while he awaited some kind of treatment? The future yawned in front of her, uncertain, potentially awful. And yet…she was glad she was here, she realised. She wasgladshe’d come home. This, she thought, even though it was hard and painful and sad, was something she did not want to miss.
“Americano and tea for Rachel?”
Rachel blinked the world back into focus. “That’s me,” she said. “Thanks.”
Back up on the first floor, the neurology ward was coming to life, after the quiet of the night shift, when the lights had been dimmed and interruptions kept to a minimum—although, Rachel had found, that was a matter of opinion.
Now, however, visitors were arriving, some looking shell-shocked like her and others seeming like old hands. A care assistant was pushing a trolley with breakfast trays on it, and someone else was mopping the bathroom. The curtains of most of the cubicles had been pulled back so Rachel could see the other patients—some of them seeming like her dad, older but without too much seeming wrong with them, while others were clearly experiencing more difficulty. She averted her eyes from a man who looked only to be in his forties or so, but was paralysed all down his left side, probably after a stroke, his face frozen in a sort of rictus grimace.
Her dad was awake as she came into the cubicle, looking as tired as she felt. “I got you a tea, Dad,” she said, and put the cup on the table by his bed.
