The Affair (17 page)

James sat on the edge of the bed, his hands hanging limply over the ends of his knees. Nina sat watching him from the swivel chair at his desk. They were in his old bedroom and except for the recent addition of a new double bed, it was exactly as it had been when he lived at home. The bookshelves were filled with school textbooks.
Trigonometry for Year 10. Web of Life. The Oxford
Companion to Macbeth.
Photos were pinned to the wall with Blu Tack. Groups of boys in rugby uniform. In one posed photo Nina recognised James and a very young Felix with uncharacteristically long hair reaching almost to his shoulders.

The old house sighed around them.

It made Nina’s heart turn over to see James so beaten. She sat beside him on the bed and wrapped
her arms around him. His hands stayed limp on his legs, but he let his head fall on her shoulder. Then his body started to shake. He sobbed, without tears. Nina held him, stroking his back, gently scratching that spot beneath his shoulder blades that always seemed to be itchy.

It would be dawn in an hour or so. An end to this awful night. The pitiful sight of Patty Wilde lying very still and pale on the floor was seared onto Nina’s brain. It made everything else seem trite. Conversation was clumsy. So they sat together in silence, their exhausted minds still trying to make sense of what had happened.

Nina kept going over and over that moment when Patty had slid to the floor. In her life she had had little experience with illness or death and she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Frederick had cried out Patty’s name but she hadn’t moved. And then everyone else had. They had rushed to her. Frederick was bending over her, calling her name in a panicked voice. Mark was taking her wrist to feel a pulse. James was on the phone calling an ambulance. It was like a surge of energy with everyone suddenly moving at once. There was a sense of unreality about it all.

The ambulance seemed to take forever to arrive. And when it did two young men came quickly into the room, moving everybody aside with their quiet authority. They took her pulse, lifted back her eyelids and asked a few questions of the family. As they started to roll Patty onto the stretcher, she began to come round, moaning and talking incoherently.

One of the two ambulance drivers positioned
his face in her line of vision and spoke slowly and loudly. ‘Can you tell us your name?’

Patty’s eyes swivelled around in her head as she continued to make meaningless sounds. She didn’t seem able to hold her focus still or respond to what was going on around her.

‘It’s going to be okay, Mrs Wilde, we’re just going to roll you onto this stretcher and take you in the ambulance to the hospital.’

Patty didn’t seem distressed. She kept mumbling but appeared completely unaware of what was going on around her.

The men had carried the stretcher out to the ambulance and driven up the driveway with the red light flashing but no siren. Frederick travelled in the back of the ambulance with Patty. They drove to Singleton Hospital, then Patty was flown by emergency helicopter to the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle.

Amanda had taken the boys home while James, Nina and Mark had followed the ambulance, then driven the 35 minutes to Newcastle. James took the wheel with Mark sitting tersely in the front seat and Nina in the back. Very little was said by any of them. There hadn’t been anything to say. They were all numb.

Dr Barnes, the new young resident doctor, was asleep at his home nearby when the call came in. He arrived at John Hunter Hospital at the same time as Patty. After examining her he came out to talk to the family. He told them he thought she had suffered a stroke.

‘What was she like beforehand?’ he asked. ‘In the hours preceding the collapse?’

They all thought back to dinner. It seemed such a long time ago. Patty had been so happy to have all her family around her.

‘Did she show any signs of blurred speech or complain of a headache or tingling in her fingers? Did she complain of feeling unwell? Anything like that?’

They all shook their heads.

‘She was pretty happy,’ said Mark. ‘But then we had some rather … er … bad news.’ He searched for the right words. ‘It was some bad family news. It came as a bit of a shock.’

He said it evenly, looking straight at the doctor and not at James. No-one looked at James. They didn’t have to. James felt the knife twist in his stomach.

The doctor pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Why I am asking about any other physical symptoms is that it could tell me whether she suffered the stroke earlier and this was a secondary attack or a worsening of the original symptoms.’

The family looked at each other, remembering their own version of the dinner. They had all been consumed with their own thoughts and realised how unaware they had been of Patty.

‘I didn’t notice anything,’ said Frederick. ‘Did any of you?’

The three shook their heads.

‘She seemed bright and relaxed,’ said Nina. ‘As far as I could tell.’

James and Mark both agreed.

‘She cooked dinner, seemed happy. She didn’t give any indication there was anything wrong,’ said Mark.

The doctor seemed satisfied. ‘Well, that’s a good sign. You got her here pretty quickly. The long-term damage could be minimal. We’ll know soon enough.’ He suggested they go home and come back in the morning. Frederick preferred to stay, planting himself in a chair pulled up to Patty’s bedside. The night nurses hadn’t minded, bringing him a cup of tea, pillows and a blanket, without Frederick really being aware they were there.

When James, Nina and Mark said goodbye to Patty, she had looked pale and small against the white hospital linen with an intravenous drip taped to her arm. James had stood awkwardly by his father, wanting to express some of the tumultuous feelings in his heart, but Frederick had been almost oblivious to his presence. Nina took James by the hand and gently led him away. They dropped Mark at his home in Broke and pulled into the driveway of Wilde Wines Estate just after 3 am.

It felt like they had been gone for days.

When finally they lay together under the hand-crocheted bedspread in James’s old bedroom they didn’t sleep. Nina spooned her body around James’s, stroking his arms and his hair. He didn’t respond. He was almost catatonic, his breath coming in shallow bursts. He lay in the bed, absorbing her warmth, but with one thought reverberating around his frozen brain. ‘Oh my God, I’ve killed my mother.’

The words spun around in time with the rhythm of Nina’s caresses.

It wasn’t long till light started to creep through the curtains and the new day dawned.

The family met Dr Barnes and his boss Dr Wilson, the consultant neuro-registrar, in the reception area of the hospital. Dr Wilson was a no-nonsense kind of man in his early fifties. He had an efficient manner that seemed to forestall any emotion. He was here to give the facts as he saw them and that was it. He looked around at each of them, Mark and Amanda, James and Nina and, standing slightly apart and looking like he had slept in his clothes, Frederick.

Dr Wilson addressed himself directly to Frederick, looking him straight in the eye. Frederick took to him immediately.

‘Your wife has suffered a stroke,’ he said without preamble. ‘A blood clot has blocked the blood flow somewhere in her brain. We will know the exact region after a CAT scan. A stroke is like an assault on the brain. The attack is over, has passed, but we can’t tell what damage has been done until the associated swelling of the brain has gone down. The first 24 to 48 hours are crucial but it will be six to eight weeks before we know exactly how much residual damage there will be.’

The family absorbed this information. It sounded to them like confusing jargon and didn’t really tell them what they needed to know.

Mark voiced their thoughts. ‘Is she going to be okay?’

Dr Wilson tried to explain complicated medical information as simply and easily as he could but it was always hard for people to understand, particularly when they were upset and non-medically trained, like the five people looking at him.

He was a patient man. He tried again.

‘A stroke can cause instant death or pass by leaving no residual damage. If you put that on a scale, you would have to say that Mrs Wilde is at the good end. She is conscious. Her blood pressure is stable. All her vital signs are good. She is however a little disoriented with some slurring of her speech. This may or may not improve with time. We will be looking for some improvement of that over the next 48 hours, though it will take six to eight weeks for the swelling to reduce completely and only then will we really know the full extent of damage. A CAT scan will tell us more. She is scheduled to have that later today.’

Dr Wilson paused. He thought it was best if the family asked the questions. Providing lots of medical detail usually just confused and further distressed them. In his experience they would ask as and when they needed to know.

‘Can we see her?’ asked James.

‘Of course. But she needs lots of rest so please keep it to a minimum. Don’t stay too long and please try not to get her excited.’ Dr Wilson sensed his role was finished for the minute and excused himself.

As soon as he had gone Dr Barnes assumed charge and repeated his boss’s instructions. ‘Please don’t tire her or get her overexcited,’ he said, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose out of nervous habit. It was his way of reasserting his authority.

The family ignored him. Amanda and Nina took a seat in the waiting room while the men went in. The two women sat in plastic stackable chairs staring at each other.

‘What was James thinking …?’ started Amanda.

Nina cut her off. ‘Don’t! Now is not the time,’ she said coldly.

‘No,’ agreed Amanda and burst into tears. She looked completely bereft, like a little girl. Nina really didn’t like her but found it impossible to ignore someone so clearly in anguish. Almost in spite of herself she leaned over to comfort her.

‘I couldn’t bear it if she … Patty … if she …’ sobbed Amanda. She couldn’t finish the thought. It was too horrific to put into words. She clung to Nina, tears splashing down her face and onto Nina’s bare legs. Nina watched them slide down her calf.

She was surprised by the other woman’s concern for her mother-in-law. This was a side to Amanda she had not seen before. Nina found a clean tissue in her handbag and passed it to her.

‘She looked so still lying there on the floor,’ sobbed Amanda.

Nina’s own eyes filled with tears.

Patty was dozing as the men filed silently into her room. Frederick returned to his spot in the armchair pulled up beside Patty’s head and his sons stood around the bed. No-one spoke. Patty’s skin looked grey against the white sheets. Frederick took her hand, stroking her wrist and she stirred, her eyes flickering open. She looked up at Frederick and smiled.

‘How are you, my darling?’ Frederick spoke softly and tenderly to his wife.

When Patty tried to speak unintelligible sounds came out and she looked surprised.

Frederick put his fingers to her lips. ‘Ssssh, my darling. You need to sleep.’

Patty seemed to think about this, her eyes blinking. She looked confused and worried, then her face relaxed. She looked slowly around the bed, smiling with recognition at each son.

James gave a little wave. ‘Hi Mum,’ he said.

Patty reached her hand out to him and he took it. Then she closed her eyes again, clearly exhausted by the effort.

They stood there watching her and looking at each other. No-one seemed to want to make a move to leave.

‘Go home, Dad,’ said Mark. ‘Have a shower. I’ll stay.’

Frederick’s face crumpled. James didn’t think he had ever seen him look so old. He put his arm under his elbow.

‘Mark’s right. Come on, Dad. We’ll take you home.’

Frederick didn’t put up a fight. He felt numb. He allowed James to lead him out of the room.

The world outside the hospital seemed surreal. To everybody else it was Monday morning and there was business to be done, lives to be organised. James, Frederick and Nina moved through the bustling community feeling a world apart. They spoke little on the drive home. James kept checking his father in the rear vision mirror, wondering what he was thinking and whether there was something he could say. Frederick just looked out the window. Once inside the house he turned to his son.

‘We need to talk.’ He stared at James for a moment, then, with a sigh, lowered his eyes. ‘But not right now.’ He looked drained. The fire and passion of the previous evening was gone. Frederick Wilde didn’t have a spark of life in him. He walked slowly up the stairs, as if every step pained him.

Nina and James sat together in the kitchen.

‘Do you want to tell me about this Lloyd’s business?’ asked Nina.

James shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘No.’

They sat silently for a moment.

James reached for Nina’s hand. ‘Just don’t leave me,’ he whispered, grasping her fingers. His face showed his panic.

Nina felt the tears slide down her cheeks. They
were part pity, part empathy and part jolting recognition.

She felt her life recently had been like a hologram, or one of those tricky three-dimensional images she remembered from fun fair postcards as a child. If she tilted the image it showed a completely different picture – the eye that was open would wink if she shifted it ever so slightly. As a child she had marvelled that another picture was there, hidden, like some kind of parallel universe.

The moment that James reached out for her, so humble and vulnerable, needing her in the midst of the calamity, and clearly scared he would lose her, the picture Nina had of her life shifted. In that moment she saw everything differently. James, herself, their marriage.

At that moment the bond between Nina and Leo snapped, although she was unaware of it at the time. She was all consumed with worry for James. She sat herself sideways on his lap, wrapped her arms around his slumped shoulders and gently rocked him.