a scraggly beard, and his leg was in some sort of brace. Yes, he was definitely beckoning her over. Mrs Dixit stepped forward hesitantly. She was wary – there was something about his face that spoke of hard drinking and worse.
As she moved towards him, the old man stopped beckoning her and started pointing frantically at Naveem’s empty bed.
‘Do you know where he’s gone?’ asked Mrs Dixit, her voice shrill with panic.
The man nodded frantically.
‘Gone… gone…’ he said in the croakiest of whispers.
‘Where did he go?’
‘Gone…’
‘Yes, but where?’
‘Woman.’
‘There was a woman? What woman? The nurse?’
He shook his head.
‘Woman… woman…’
‘Yes…?’
‘Woman took him.’
And then message communicated, he fell back into his pillows, and let out a long uncensored rasping fart.
She ran. There was no nurse at the first station, so she sprinted to the next.
‘My husband’s disappeared,’ Mrs Dixit cried when she finally found a nurse.
‘Don’t panic, he can’t have gone far,’ the nurse replied breezily, as if this sort of thing happened every day, which of course, it probably did. Tapping at her computer, she asked: ‘What’s his name?’
‘Naveem Dixit. He was in a coma. Please tell me he’s awake and in another ward somewhere…’
‘You’re going to have to calm down,’ the nurse said, her fingers paused over the keyboard contritely, ‘you’re no help to anyone like this.’
‘It’s my husband!’ Mrs Dixit’s voice was guttural, the animal urgency of it would normally have shocked her. ‘He’s been unconscious for two weeks. If he’s awake…’ A large sob released itself from her throat, making her gasp. ‘Please,’ she managed to whisper.
The nurse frowned at her screen.
‘It says here Mr Dixit is in a stable but unchanged condition.’
‘Where’s he gone, then?’
‘They may have moved him to another ward. Or perhaps he’s being given a bath. Or in a physical therapy session. There’s really nothing to worry about. They always turn up.’
Mrs Dixit felt her anguish turn to foolishness, giving her a modicum of relief. Of course – there were a whole host of logical reasons for him not being there! She was extra panicky because of not coming to see him yesterday – she’d been too tired after Henry’s visit. But there was something else, too: guilt. Deep down, Mrs Dixit had been pleased to have an excuse not to come…
‘This is odd,’ said the nurse, scowling. ‘You’re his wife?’ Mrs Dixit nodded. ‘It says here that arrangements were made to take him into long-term care at a domestic address. Have the doctors not talked to you about this?’
‘Do you mean, taking Naveem home?’
‘Apparently, he was discharged yesterday.’
‘But he can’t have…?’ Mrs Dixit felt slightly crazed. ‘He hasn’t. I would know!’ But what did she really know for sure? Clare, whoever Clare was, popped into her mind again.
‘According to his notes, Naveem Dixit is at his home. The person who authorised it was Mrs Dixit.’
‘His mother!’ the other – younger – Mrs Dixit said, clamping her teeth shut. She squeezed her jaw as hard as she could. So hard, in fact, one of her upper left canines popped out of her skull and skittered across the hospital linoleum.
Part II
35 days since the accident
The drugs… the zopiclone… had worked at last. She had finally fallen asleep.
Mrs Dixit lifted her head. It was as heavy as a bowling ball. She dropped it again, her face flomping back into the pillow, where she gave a muffled groan. As a teenager, she’d felt this groggy, unable to get up, her mother aggressively vacuuming her bedroom in an attempt to rouse her. It was the eighties, and teenagers were supposed to be lazy, but the change was so sudden, it was like a personality transplant – one second, she was a child, quietly waking at seven each morning without an alarm clock, the next, she was burying her head under the covers. ‘Come on, Wendy,’ her mother would call, turning off the vacuum, ‘What man will want you, if you can’t even get out of bed?’
There was commotion above – Mrs Rampersad was awake, which meant it was late morning. For the briefest of moments, Mrs Dixit considered crawling back under the covers to hide, but she knew this was childish. Instead, she manoeuvred her legs over the side of the mattress and let herself slide off.
It began again.
She was eating toast in the kitchen and wondering where all her saliva had gone, when Mrs Rampersad rapped at her door.
‘You’re not dressed,’ her neighbour noted disapprovingly. ‘Didn’t you sleep again?’