Anne Bennett - To Have and To Hold

‘Please stay a little longer,’ Paul pleaded. ‘My parents too would like to thank you.’

‘I can only stay a minute or two,’ Carmel said. ‘You know there are only two allowed at the bedside and if Matron was to see me breaking yet another hospital rule, she really would haul me over the coals.’

Emma knew she had much to thank this girl for because she had saved her son’s life, but she hoped Paul’s gratitude didn’t run to him fancying himself in love with her. She was just a nurse and not the right companion for Paul, even if she was a friend of her niece’s. Emma had set her sights for Paul a little higher than that. However, she knew she had to keep these thoughts to herself and so she thanked the girl.

Carmel accepted her thanks graciously, although she had noticed Emma’s cold eyes and knew the woman was just going through the motions.

Jeff was as different again. Always naturally effusive and swayed by a pretty face, he was busy pumping Carmel’s hand up and down as if he never intended to let it go, while he told her over and over how grateful he was.

‘We don’t know how to thank you. Indeed, we are all indebted to you,’ he went on. ‘When I think of how the outcome could have been so different…Well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. If it hadn’t been for your intervention and with you knowing what to do as well…Lois has done nothing but sing your praises. You really are a remarkable and very brave young lady. And don’t you try and pass it off as if it was nothing,’ he said, wagging his finger at her in mock severity. ‘You were brave. Those doctors told me how it was—the dark entry you ventured into when you heard Paul groan, when many would have passed by, just kept on walking and told themselves it was none of their business. But you are made of sterner stuff. As I say, without you, this son of mine might not be lying in a hospital bed today, getting the best of treatment and being waited on hand and foot, and let me tell you—;’

‘Dad,’ Paul interjected, ‘you have told enough. You haven’t let Carmel get a word in edgeways and you have embarrassed the life out of her, so that her face is the colour of beetroot at the moment. Leave her alone now. I think she has established just how grateful you are.’

Jeff took his son’s rebuke and said sheepishly, ‘I do get carried away. Sorry, lass.’

The apology made Carmel feel worse. ‘Please don’t apologise,’ she said. ‘I do understand how you feel, but truly, anyone would have done what I did and I’m just thankful that Paul has made such a remarkable recovery. And now I must leave you, because out of the corner of my eye, I can see Matron making her way towards me with all guns blazing.’

Paul knew she would get into trouble if she lingered further and so instead he said, ‘Will you come again?’ And when she hesitated he went on, ‘Please? Come tomorrow.’

‘All right then,’ Carmel said. ‘I am on days this week. I’ll come tomorrow evening. Now I really must dash. Lovely to meet you again,’ she said to Paul’s parents before beating a hasty retreat.

‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ Lois said, when Carmel got back to their room.

‘I don’t suppose so. Now everyone has got their thanks out of the way, maybe I can have a normal sort of visit next time.’

‘And mop his fevered brow, like?’

‘Do you know you are just about the most aggravating person to know?’ Carmel said. She lobbed a pillow at Lois’s head and the two collapsed in giggles.

Carmel wasn’t the only one to visit Paul—in fact, he often had a plethora of visitors. His friends went usually in the morning, the rules relaxed somewhat with Paul being a doctor. His parents also went frequently and Paul told Carmel one evening that even his brother had made a flying visit from Paris. Lois wanted to see Paul too, of course, and her parents, and yet if he was asked, Paul would have requested they all stay home for it was Carmel’s visits he longed for. But of course he never said this.

Carmel too looked forward to seeing Paul, taking joy in the fact that he was improving slowly. His mouth had been so damaged he had had to have his food puréed at first, and he was ecstatic the day the stitches were removed from his lip and he could start to enjoy normal food again. Other milestones were when they said he no longer needed the drips, and when the foam pads were removed and he was able to move his head from side to side. The bandage encircling his head was removed a little later and Carmel saw where his head had been shaved for the large wound to be stitched, although hair like soft down was already beginning to cover it.

Just days after this, the nurses began propping him up in the bed, for short periods at first, but these would be extended. Paul couldn’t help but be excited about that and Carmel understood, knowing how frustrated he often was. She visited him every day and they talked about everything under the sun, but never about anything that mattered, the confines of the public ward, which Paul had now been moved to, making that impossible.

Then one day, when Carmel had been visiting Paul for over five weeks, she found him propped up in the armchair by his bed, with a rug tucked around him. ‘I’ll try and get a wheelchair for when you come in tomorrow,’ he told her excitedly.

Carmel was as pleased as he was, but she commented drily, ‘You are very sure of yourself, aren’t you? What makes you so certain I will visit tomorrow?’

‘Because I command it and you must do what a poor, sickly patient asks.’

‘Since when?’ Carmel asked with a smile and added sarcastically, ‘What hospital did you say you trained at?’

‘This one,’ Paul said. ‘But I’ll not be at it much longer. As soon as they discharge me, I am away out of this.’

Carmel felt a stab of disappointment. ‘Where will you go?’

‘Queen’s,’ he said.

‘Queen’s?’ Carmel repeated, puzzled for a moment, and then she cried out, ‘You have had your exam results?’

Paul’s grin nearly split his face in two. ‘Yes, and I passed everything so I have accepted the post at Queen’s that they offered to me provisionally, dependent on my grades.’

‘Oh, Paul!’ Spontaneously Carmel threw her arms around him and felt the beat of her heart match his. She melted against him as he held her fast and wished the moment could go on and on.

‘Carmel, I—;’

‘Hush,’ Carmel said, putting a finger to his lips. ‘Not here and not now.’

She pulled away reluctantly and wondered if her face was as flushed as Paul’s was. She knew soon she and Paul would have to talk seriously and this time she wouldn’t back out of it or try to dodge the issue.

When Carmel went into the hospital the following evening, it was to see Paul sitting up in a wheelchair with a broad and triumphant grin on his face.

‘I had to fight for this,’ he said, pointing to the wheelchair. ‘But I won in the end. I thought we might sit in the day room for a change.’

The day room was at the end of the ward and usually virtually deserted as most patients were still unable to leave their beds. Without a word of protest, Carmel took hold of the handles of the wheelchair.

She had never been in the room before and thought it a very unwelcoming place. The bare walls were a dull dirty beige colour, while the paintwork was dark brown, and rigid and uncompromising chairs were grouped before the wireless, or beside one of the tables, which had magazines and papers scattered across it.

The drabness didn’t help Carmel’s mood or help her form the words she had to say if she and Paul were to move forward, have any sort of future together. She sat down beside him in one of the uncomfortable chairs, aware that her heart was hammering against her ribs and her mouth was so dry she wondered how she would be able to speak at all.