Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [91]
Natalie sat down on the arm of the sofa. Christ. She didn’t know what to do. Then the receiver was in her hand and she was calling Tom.
‘Missing me already?’ He sounded sleepy, but not angry.
‘Dad’s had a massive stroke, Tom. They think he might die.’
‘I’ll be there. Sit tight. Give me twenty minutes.’
He was there in fifteen. She opened the door to his insistent knock, and collapsed against him. ‘I thought he was okay. He seemed okay.’
‘And he still might be. Why aren’t you dressed? We can go straight away.’
She wasn’t dressed because from the moment she had put down the phone to when she had opened the door to him she had been sitting on the floor behind the sofa, rocking back and forth with her arms round her knees. She hadn’t known what to do with herself.
Tom led her upstairs, and found her jeans and a sweater. He practically dressed her, raising her arms above her head to put on the jumper, and making her lean on him while he fed the denim over her feet. She didn’t say a word.
Then he led her downstairs and out to his car.
‘Thanks, Tom,’ she muttered, as he opened the passenger door.
Briefly, he kissed the top of her head, then went round to the driver’s side and climbed in beside her.
They made her take off her bracelet and rings, and the shiny new Cartier watch, and wash her hands in a special sink outside ITU. Tom took the jewellery from her, and squeezed her hand. ‘I’m right here.’
Her mum was by her dad’s bed. Natalie stretched out her hand to Anna but never took her eyes off her father as she approached him. There were machines, like on television, beeping and flashing their strange techno beat. Her father was intubated – she knew that from ER – where they have to stick this metal tube down your throat, ‘Careful of the vocal cords’ and then ‘I’m in,’ and ‘Bag him.’ They’d done that to her dad. He was asleep but it wasn’t a peaceful sleep. One side of his face was all dragged down, like something powerful was sucking at it. The corner of his eye, the corner of his mouth, all the flesh of his cheek. And the arm on that side looked weird somehow, just wrong, like a broken leg is wrong-looking.
‘How is he?’ she asked. She wanted to touch him, but she wasn’t sure where was okay so one of her hands just hovered above him.
‘They can’t say.’
‘Anything?’
‘Tonight is critical. If he survives the night…’ Her mother’s voice broke, and Natalie turned to her. She was ashen. Her hair was messy, as if her hands had been pushed through it a hundred times, and her lips were dry and chapped.
Natalie put both her arms round her, and the two of them stayed like that for a long time.
‘Bridget’s been,’ Natalie said eventually.
‘Yes. She’s telephoned Susannah. I hated making her do that, call you both, but…’
‘Is Susannah coming?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose she will if she can.’
‘Of course.’
They both turned to Nicholas.
It seemed inconceivable to Natalie that he wasn’t about to open his eyes and say something pithy about Paris, or goad her about Tom. She almost wanted to shake him. She wanted them to put a curtain across the part of his face that was unrecognisable. She only wanted to see the familiar part.
‘Can we stay?’
‘They think I should go and get some sleep. They have a room… out there somewhere.’
‘Can I stay with you?’
‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘He’s my dad, Mum, and you’re my mum. I want to stay with you.’
‘You’re a good girl.’
‘Have you eaten anything, Mum, at all, this evening?’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Would you come with me, have