the life-jacket whistle although there’s nothing there. It was hard to concentrate. She was panicking.
‘I’ll just go and get Nathan,’ Dot said, ‘can you please, please wait.’ Standing up had brought her body back to her; the muscles that were stiff and creaky, Play-Doh left out overnight. As she left to find the family room she heard, ‘Another scan.’
The family room was smaller than she’d imagined, with an aluminium window frame and a pile of pamphlets on the table. Brain injury, a child’s guide to bereavement. No thanks. Nathan lay on his side on the pink velour couch, his face stuffed into a cushion. She shook him. He followed her back into the HDU, his entire self folds of hanging grey fabric.
The curtains were pulled around Evelyn’s bed and a smiling nurse emerged. ‘Just changing the drip,’ she said. Evelyn lay there alone, still asleep, the space around her bed empty. The surgeon and his entourage had moved on to the next patient, the next case.
Nathan sat and took Evelyn’s pliant hand in his. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Come on.’ Her chest rose and fell. He stroked the side of her damaged face. Another nurse came in and noted saturation levels from the oximeter.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ Nathan said. ‘I need the air.’
The nurse directed Dorothy to a mini-kitchen down the hall. ‘Cereal, toast. Wee coffee maker. You may as well have a little walk too. We’ll find you if anything happens, but I think she’s going to rest a weeny bit longer.’
‘I might get something,’ said Dorothy. She had eaten a yellow pie from the hospital café at some stage, but had lost track of time. Maybe low blood sugar was why the nurse’s little wee talk of weeny wee things, probably designed to shrink the fear, instead made her want to scream. ‘I won’t be long.’
The wall in the hospital corridor was just clean enough to lean against while she waited for the toast to pop. If Evelyn’s head resembled a throbbing hammered thumb, the head on the guy waiting with her looked like a sliced-off finger.
‘I’ve had fourteen operations,’ he said, yes, to her, she must have been staring. That he could talk was astounding, that he had any brain function with that steep slope of his forehead, the near non-existence of his skull.
‘Really?’
‘This will be my fifteenth.’
An older woman stood pulling at her hands, possibly his mother. Dot wanted to stare at her too. She wanted to laugh at the impossibility of the man’s head and tell him how totally incredible he was. She left the toast and walked to the stairwell and rang Tania, the friend of Eve’s who’d come round to look after Lou. In the background was the sound of a television cartoon.
‘Lou won’t go to bed. She doesn’t want to go to school tomorrow either.’ How could you know what was best – to cosset the child or make her go on as normal, when normal – no. Dorothy knew that the classroom was good when things were wrong at home. But then there was the jolt of the present moment, when you found yourself alone without distraction, unable to control your thoughts.
‘How’s Eve?’ Tania asked.
‘It went well. Longer in recovery than we expected.’
‘Nathan’s got five casseroles here. It’s a bit on the much side. Shall I freeze them?’
‘Thanks. Keep one out for yourself.’
‘No it’s all right. You’ll need them.’
When she tried the number she had for Michael the line connected to a pre-recording, a bloodless approximation of a human voice that said sorry but this number was no longer available. ‘Oh fuck you,’ she said into the phone, and people in the contemplation garden outside the glass doors turned their heads. She raised a palm in apology.
Nathan was still out. The nurse who came in to check the catheter bag said Eve had been awake for a little minute and Dot felt cheated, sorry that her sister hadn’t seen her there. She picked up the crossword she’d left on the side table.
‘Hi.’ Evelyn’s eyes were open, tiny slits through the swelling, and Dorothy stood to see them, to gaze at this sign of life, the sheeny curve of eyeball so wet and the colour deep inside, a golden frog at the bottom of a well. The eyelids closed again, a gesture that felt mammoth in weight. Dorothy knelt on the grey lino beside the bed and reached a hand between the safety bars to stroke her sister’s arm.