Cath Staincliffe - Split Second

It was Ruby’s audition soon; Louise must make time to watch her practise. Like Deanne said, they’d be mad not to take her, but then who knew how tough the competition was. And if there was any problem with the bursary, she simply wouldn’t be able to go. Louise wondered if she should raise the prospect of disappointment, to prepare Ruby just in case, or if that would undermine her confidence.

In the car, she reached to get the mints, catching sight of herself in the rear-view mirror: washed out, dark hollows beneath her eyes. Ten years older. More.

At the hospital, the nurse on reception recognized her and said that Dr Liu would like to see her before she left. A spurt of hope leapt in Louise’s chest. Her pulse began to race. ‘Has there been any change?’ Ready to run to see Luke, to talk to him, revel in his response, gaze into his eyes, see sense there, emotion, life.

‘No,’ the nurse said. ‘We’d always get in touch straight away if that was the case.’

‘Of course.’ The hope sputtered, guttered out, leaving an ache inside. ‘Is she free now?’ Louise asked.

‘On her break, but I can tell her you’re with Luke when she gets back.’

Louise greeted him as she always did: ‘Hello, Luke, it’s Mum.’ And kissed him, then held her palms against his cheeks. ‘Ruby’s not coming tonight, she’s making tea, well, sticking some pasties in the oven. I don’t know about you, love, but I’m knackered.’

She got herself settled in the chair by the bed but didn’t bother getting her patchwork out. Her eyes felt scratchy and dry and she preferred to take his hand, and close her eyes as she stroked his arm and talked. ‘I saw Angie last night,’ she said. ‘She’s doing all right. And Declan sends his love. And I know you’re probably lying there thinking, “What do I care and why’s she wittering on like this?” but if you don’t like it, you’ll have to wake up and tell me.’ She talked on, dipping into memories too, hoping that they might reach the parts the trivial gossip didn’t.

She was back in the present, passing on Deanne’s news, when she heard the shush of the door and Dr Liu came in.

‘Hello, Luke,’ said the doctor. She always made a point of speaking to him, and Louise liked that. ‘Shall we talk next door?’ she asked Louise.

In the little side room they sat down. Dr Liu had Luke’s notes, a huge folder of charts and reports and records that had accumulated in the three weeks since he’d been admitted.

‘How are you?’ Dr Liu asked.

‘Okay,’ said Louise.

‘I wanted to have a little chat with you. I’ve been reviewing Luke’s condition and assessing his treatment plan.’

Louise tensed; she could sense something coming, something bad.

‘We’ve talked before about the Glasgow Coma Scale and Luke’s score.’

Louise nodded; knew that it rated his responses or lack of them to a range of stimuli. Knew Luke’s score was low.

Unbidden, she remembered his baby book, how the midwives, then the health visitors, had marked his weight and height on the charts, ensuring that he was thriving. Recalled her anxiety, as a young mother, that they might find fault, that he’d fall below the desired percentile line.

‘We’ve repeated the tests today,’ the doctor said, ‘and got the same results. I must stress that every patient is different and that we still know very, very little about the working of the brain and its capacity for healing.’

But … Louise could hear the word looming large.

‘But,’ said Dr Liu, ‘we’ve not seen any alteration in Luke’s condition. And although there are no hard and fast rules, the likelihood that there will be any recovery reduces sharply after the first few days. It’s been three weeks now.’

Louise hardened herself, stony, impermeable, unwilling to absorb any of this. She sat still and stiff, neither nodding or smiling.

‘Luke is therefore facing the prospect of continuing in the same state for the foreseeable future.’ The doctor paused.

Louise remained unbending.

‘You understand?’

Louise gave the smallest of nods; she could feel the pulse in her temple, the beat and swish of blood in her head. An acidic taste in her mouth.

‘In the longer term, because he is unable to make decisions about his treatment, that will fall to you. I’m talking about very difficult decisions about his quality of life, about whether to maintain life support in the form of food and drink.’

Louise ground her teeth together. She could not think about that. How dare the woman sit here and say those things? She stared down at her hands, at the skin around her nails, red and angry, her nails dull and scratched.

‘But those are decisions for the future. In the shorter term, we need to consider where Luke can best be cared for. Given that there is no medical imperative to keep him in the hospital-’

‘You’re giving up on him.’ Her head was swimming. Everything crooked.

‘Not at all. But everything we are doing for Luke here can be done equally well in a residential care facility.’

Louise thought of some of the homes she’d worked in, those residents able to leave their rooms plonked in chairs in front of the television, the wanderers drugged up and befuddled, the smell of urine.

The doctor went on, ‘What we are proposing to do is to refer Luke on, with a view to moving him in the next couple of months.’

Louise stared at her.

‘I want to assure you that if there was anything else I could suggest in terms of other treatment options for Luke I’d explore it, but we may have to accept that the trauma was so severe that recovery, even on the most basic level, is not a realistic prognosis. I am sorry. Is there anything you’d like to ask, anything you don’t understand?’

Why Luke? Why? Shrieking inside her mind. A lament. Louise shook her head once, biting her cheek. She did not speak. She went back to sit with her son.

Andrew

They drove to Durham on the Saturday to collect Jason’s things. Term hadn’t started. Andrew borrowed Colin’s estate car, which had more space in the back than theirs.

The drive up took longer than they’d expected. Heavy rain had caused flooding on some sections of the M1, then they got caught up in a tailback where a lorry had shed its load of pallets. He suggested they leave the motorway at the next exit, but Val argued it would take even longer using the back roads.

He loved the look of Durham as they approached, the Norman cathedral and the castle dominating the skyline, the whole place compact and dripping with history. At street level there was a malevolent one-way system and an acute shortage of parking places in the narrow lanes. The place had been built for people and horses, not vehicles.

They found their way to the halls of residence and parked there. Val shivered as they got out of the car, and he suggested they go get a bite of something to eat and a cuppa before making a start. It was partly consideration for her, but also a desire to delay the chore that faced them.

The café they found was a traditional place, steamed-up windows and the scent of frying bacon and wet clothes. Andrew had an all-day breakfast, suddenly ravenous, and Val chose egg on toast but didn’t clear her plate. He should talk to her about it, he thought; he would talk to her about it, but not now, not yet. He didn’t want to put any more pressure on her.

He still hadn’t told her about Garrington, about knowing the identity of one of the thugs, and the more time passed, the less he wanted to confide in her. It would mean explaining about Louise Murray and how he had visited Luke, and that would feel disloyal. And if he felt it was disloyal, then it surely would read like that to Val. Keeping it from her thus far would be seen as something worse than it was, as a betrayal at a time when she was vulnerable.