he liked – smart black ones, with a modest 31mm heel so she didn’t complain about her feet hurting. Fortunately, though, the flickering subsided, and Mr Dixit continued on with his coma.
He was still handsome – his forty-eight years had been kind to him. There was his full head of hair, and his Romanesque nose. Yes, he was as short as Mrs Dixit – something he’d always been sensitive of – but really, everyone was the same height lying down.
She had never been conventionally attractive herself, but Mrs Dixit had good bone structure – even if her nose was slightly too pointy – and a naturally slender figure. She wasn’t overly imaginative when it came to clothing, favouring warmth (she was usually cold, especially in her extremities) and natural, breathable, comfortable fabric over style. In her younger days, she’d often given people the impression she was more in control than she felt. In department stores, other shoppers would randomly ask her the location of things, and when she worked at the florist, people assumed she was the owner (so had Mr Dixit, initially). When she opened her mouth to speak, however, they seemed to quickly revise their estimation of her (except for Mr Dixit).
A new nurse arrived.
‘Have you spoken to him?’ she asked cheerily.
Mrs Dixit shook her head.
‘There’s not much to say,’ she explained.
‘I’m sure he’d like to hear it anyway.’ The nurse made a note on her chart and left.
With a resigned sigh, Mrs Dixit looked around the room for inspiration. She found none. She glanced at the doorway, where she knew Mrs Rampersad was sitting in the hallway, in earshot, calculating numbers. It added to the pressure.
She opened her handbag, looking for something to read aloud, and found a packet of heartburn tablets.
‘Indigestion relief,’ she whispered quietly enough so she wouldn’t be overheard, ‘Peppermint flavour. Do not give to children under twelve years…’
In the car again, Mrs Rampersad was unusually silent. Maybe this has been an inconvenience for her, Mrs Dixit thought. I must offer to pay for petrol.
‘How do you know he’s not faking?’ asked Mrs Rampersad finally. ‘It’s happened before.’
Mrs Dixit felt her jaw clench. Ignore, she thought.
‘In Trinidad, a man was riding a motorcycle when he hit a school. No one was hurt, but he didn’t want to pay the damage, so he lay in a fake coma for six weeks before escaping on a German cruise liner.’
‘They have tests,’ Mrs Dixit replied crisply.
‘When do they say he’ll wake up?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Don’t they have tests for that too?’
They sat in a heavy silence all the way home.
The flat was so quiet, it seemed to be absorbing noise. Even the hum from the fridge was lessened. Mrs Dixit wandered through each room, looking for something to occupy her. In the bathroom, she scrubbed the toilet bowl with the brush. After washing her hands, she wiped down the place mats in the kitchen. She took a chair to stand on and dusted a spiderweb off the living-room ceiling. When that was done, she went down the basement stairs, vacuuming outside Mr Dixit’s study, but not daring to go in.
Now everything was clean and tidy, she felt like buying fresh-cut flowers and placing them in each room. This impulse was met with a twinge of disloyalty to her husband. Mr Dixit disliked flowers in the house. It wasn’t that he was allergic, he simply didn’t appreciate them aesthetically. ‘If I want to watch something slowly die, I can always look in a mirror,’ he’d sniff. ‘Save money too.’ If it was up to Mr Dixit, even the painting in the living room would be less floral – bouquets of sprockets growing in the garden, instead.
Besides, she didn’t have enough vases.
Three things unnerved her that night. A dreamt image of the study door very slowly opening. The real sound of a dog barking. The thought, as she lay, unable to get back to sleep, that Mr Dixit might return to the house without her knowing. In his hospital gown, his arms outstretched, as if he were a zombie. Walk slowly into the bedroom. Lie next to her. Why was that so frightening?
2 days since the accident
When she woke, a memory came to her, as if it had been waiting for its moment. A policeman explaining to her that Mr Dixit was not alone at the time of the accident. The ‘not alone’ had jangled in her ears.