we waited for Hugo to smile, tell us all the things he’d hidden from Oliver and where to look for them.
You should go home and get some sleep someone said to me but that seemed way too complicated; instead I dozed on the plastic chairs, woke bleary-eyed with a hard crick in my neck. Susanna was texting, thumbs flying. There was one nurse who was the image of the pretty brunette who had eyed me in the pub that night, scrubs instead of tight red dress now and face bare of makeup but I would have sworn it was her; her eyes passed over me and I couldn’t tell if she had recognized me, I wanted to catch her arm as she went by and ask her but somehow she was always too far away.
On one of Hugo’s machines an alarm started up, loud urgent beeping. I fumbled for the call button, heart pounding, my dad shouting beside me, but before I could find it a nurse came in—casual and brisk as a waitress, surely she should have been rushing?—and turned the alarm off. Let’s just turn this up a bit fiddling with some dial, standing back to watch the incomprehensible colored lines run across the screen, and then with a small reassuring smile to us: Now. That’s better.
The light at the windows came and went in unnatural fitful flickers, bright one moment and night the next. Hugo you have to tell me what to say to Mrs. Wozniak, remember? How to break it to her? Should I, I mean, what should I . . .
And always Rafferty, silent in the corner, waiting. Rafferty still in his overcoat like the heat didn’t touch him, its rucked-up folds patterning him with deep shadows at strange angles. One time Oliver was giving out to him, belly puffed and finger pointing, ridiculous accusations, the decency to give the family some privacy for God’s sake. Rafferty nodded, understanding, sympathetic, in complete agreement, but then Oliver was gone and he was still there, head leaned back against the wall, at ease.
Hugo. Squeeze my hand or something.
Somewhere an old woman sang “Roses of Picardy,” quietly, in a rusty quaver. The alarm went off again, a different nurse bustled in. What is it? Phil asked, gesturing at the machines with a hand rigid with tension, what’s happening? The nurse made mysterious adjustments and notes: We’re just having a little trouble keeping his blood pressure under control. Doctor will talk to you when he comes round.
Only just as she turned to leave another alarm started going frantically and suddenly things changed, the nurse spinning back to Hugo’s bed with her mouth open, Rafferty sitting up straight— Out the nurse said sharply, hitting a button, everyone out, now— Then we were in the corridor and Rafferty had a hand on my back and one on Phil’s, steering us quickly towards the waiting area—me stumbling, my leg had gone to sleep—and as he pulled open the door a voice snapped behind us, just like on TV, Clear!
The waiting area, all my family standing up in unison, white-faced, What what what happened, Phil explaining in a dead-level voice while Rafferty melted off to some corner. I couldn’t look at them. The dumpy woman and the teenager were gone and instead there was an old guy with droopy bloodshot eyes and a suit worn shiny at the knees, who didn’t even look up from stirring his Styrofoam cup of tea.
For a long long time nothing happened. My father and Phil and Oliver were shoulder to shoulder, a tight pack, pale and somehow all looking alike for once. I wanted to go to my father but I couldn’t, not knowing what I did. I wished my mother was there. Leon leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, chewing ferociously at his thumbnail. There was blood on it.
When the white-haired doctor finally came out we leaped to cluster around him, at a respectful distance and keeping our mouths shut till he deigned to speak, like good little petitioners. “Mr. Hennessy’s stable,” he said—even, weighted voice, carefully pitched to let us know long before he said the words. “But I’m afraid it’s not good news. We were hoping his hemorrhage would resolve, but instead of improving he’s going the other way. He’s needing escalating amounts of support.”
“Why?” my father asked, calm and focused, his lawyer voice. “What’s happening, exactly?”
“The brain damage from the hemorrhage is making his blood pressure unstable. We’re giving him drugs