Before I Die aka Now is Good

Twelve

I know I’m in a hospital as soon as I open my eyes. They all smell the same, and the line hooked into my arm is achingly familiar. I try to sit up in bed, but my head crashes and bile rises in my throat.

A nurse rushes over with a cardboard bowl, but she’s too late. Most of it goes over me and the sheets.

‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘We’ll soon have that cleaned up.’

She wipes my mouth, then helps me roll onto my side so that she can untie my nightgown.

‘Doctor’ll be here soon,’ she says.

Nurses never tell you what they know. They’re hired for their cheeriness and the thickness of their hair. They need to look alive and healthy, to give the patients something to aim for.

She chats as she helps me on with a fresh gown, tells me she used to live near the ocean in South Africa, says, ‘The sun is closer to the earth there, and it’s always hot.’

She whisks the bed sheets from under me and conjures up fresh ones. ‘I get such cold feet in England,’ she says. ‘Now, let’s roll you back again. Ready? That’s it, all done. Ah, and what good timing – the doctor’s here.’

He’s bald and white and middle-aged. He greets me politely and drags a chair over from under the window to sit by the bed. I keep hoping that in some hospital somewhere in this country I’ll bump into the perfect doctor, but none of them are ever right. I want a magician with a cloak and wand, or a knight with a sword, someone fearless. This one is as bland and polite as a salesman.

‘Tessa,’ he says, ‘do you know what hypercalcaemia is?’

‘If I say no, can I have something else?’

He looks bemused, and that’s the trouble – they never quite get the joke. I wish he had an assistant. A jester would be good, someone to tickle him with feathers while he delivers his medical opinion.

He flips through the chart on his lap. ‘Hypercalcaemia is a condition where your calcium levels become very high. We’re giving you bisphosphonates, which will bring those levels down. You should be feeling much less confused and nauseous already.’

‘I’m always confused,’ I tell him.

‘Do you have any questions?’

He looks expectantly at me and I hate to disappoint him, but what could I possibly ask this ordinary little man?

He tells me the nurse will give me something to help me sleep. He stands up and gives a nod goodbye. This is the point where the jester would lay a trail of banana skins to the door, then come and sit with me on the bed. Together we’d laugh at the doctor’s backside as he scurries away.

It’s dark when I wake up and I can’t remember anything. It freaks me out. For maybe ten seconds I struggle with it, kicking against the twisted sheets, convinced I’ve been kidnapped or worse.

It’s Dad who rushes to my side, smooths my head, whispers my name over and over like a magic spell.

And then I remember. I jumped in a river, I persuaded Cal to join me on a ridiculous spending spree and now I’m in hospital. But the moment of forgetting makes my heart beat fast as a rabbit’s, because I actually forgot who I was for a minute. I became no one, and I know it’ll happen again.

Dad smiles down at me. ‘Do you want some water?’ he says. ‘Are you thirsty?’

He pours me a glass from the jug, but I shake my head at it and he sets it back down on the table.

‘Does Zoey know I’m here?’

He fumbles in his jacket and takes out a packet of cigarettes. He goes over to the window and opens it. Cold air edges in.

‘You can’t smoke in here, Dad.’

He shuts the window and puts the cigarettes back in his pocket. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I suppose not.’ He comes back to sit down, reaches for my hand. I wonder if he too has forgotten who he is.

‘I spent a lot of money, Dad.’

‘I know. It doesn’t matter.’

‘I didn’t think my card would actually do all that. In every shop I thought they’d refuse it, but they never did. I got receipts though, so we can take it all back.’

‘Hush,’ he says. ‘It’s OK.’

‘Is Cal all right? Did I freak him out?’

‘He’ll survive. Do you want to see him? He’s out in the corridor with your mother.’

Never, in the last four years, have all three of them visited me at the same time. I feel suddenly frightened.

They walk in so seriously, Cal clutching Mum’s hand, Mum looking out of place, Dad holding open the door. All three of them stand by the bed gazing down at me. It feels like a premonition of a day that will come. Later. Not now. A day when I won’t be able to see them looking, to smile, or to tell them to stop freaking me out and sit themselves down.

Mum pulls a chair close, leans over and kisses me. The familiar smell of her – the washing powder she uses, the orange oil she sprays at her throat – makes me want to cry.

‘You had me scared!’ she says, and she shakes her head as if she simply can’t believe it.

‘I was scared too,’ Cal whispers. ‘You collapsed in the taxi and the man thought you were drunk.’

‘Did he?’

‘I didn’t know what to do. He said we’d have to pay extra if you puked.’

‘Did I puke?’

‘No.’

‘So did you tell him to piss off?’

Cal smiles, but it wavers at the edges. ‘No.’

‘Do you want to come and sit on the bed?’

He shakes his head.

‘Hey, Cal, don’t cry! Come and sit on the bed with me, come on. We’ll try and remember all the things we bought.’

But he sits on Mum’s lap instead. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do this. I’m not sure Dad has either. Even Cal seems surprised. He turns into her shoulder and sobs for real. She strokes his back, sweeping circles with her hand. Dad looks out of the window. And I spread my fingers out on the sheet in front of me. They’re very thin and white, like vampire hands that could suck everyone’s heat away.

‘I always wanted a velvet dress when I was a kid,’ Mum says. ‘A green one with a lacy collar. My sister had one and I never did, so I understand about wanting lovely things. If you ever want to go shopping again, Tessa, I’ll go with you.’ She waves her hand at the room extravagantly. ‘We’ll all go!’

Cal pulls away from her shoulder to look at her. ‘Really? Me as well?’

‘You as well.’

‘I wonder who’ll be paying!’ Dad says wryly from his perch on the window ledge.

Mum smiles, dries Cal’s tears with the back of her hand, then kisses his cheek. ‘Salty,’ she says. ‘Salty as the sea.’

Dad watches her do this. I wonder if she knows he’s looking.

She launches into a story about her spoiled sister Sarah and a pony called Tango. Dad laughs and tells her she can hardly complain of a deprived childhood. She teases him then, telling us how she turned her back on a wealthy family in order to slum it by marrying Dad. And Cal practises a coin trick, palming a pound from one hand to the other, then opening his fist to show us it’s vanished.

It’s lovely listening to them talk, their words gliding into each other. My bones don’t ache so much with the three of them so close. Perhaps if I keep really still, they won’t notice the pale moon outside the window, or hear the meds trolley come rattling down the corridor. They could stay the night. We could be rowdy, telling jokes and stories until the sun comes up.

But eventually Mum says, ‘Cal’s tired. I’ll take him home now and put him to bed.’ She turns to Dad. ‘I’ll see you there.’

She kisses me goodbye, then blows another kiss from the door. I actually feel it land on my cheek.

‘Smell you later,’ Cal says.

And then they’re gone.

‘Is she staying at ours?’ I ask Dad.

‘It seems to make sense just for tonight.’

He comes over, sits on the chair and takes my hand. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘when you were a baby, me and Mum used to lie awake at night watching you breathe. We were convinced you’d forget how to do it if we stopped looking.’ There’s a shift in his hand, a softening of the contours of his fingers. ‘You can laugh at me, but it’s true. It gets easier as your children get older, but it never goes away. I worry about you all the time.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

He sighs. ‘I know you’re up to something. Cal told me about some list you’ve made. I need to know about it, not because I want to stop you, but because I want to keep you safe.’

‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

‘No, I don’t think so. It’s like you’re giving the best of yourself away, Tess. To be left out of that hurts so much.’

His voice trails off. Is that really all he wants? To be included? But how can I tell him about Jake and his narrow single bed? How can I tell him it was Zoey who told me to jump, and that I had to say yes? Drugs are next. And after drugs, there are still seven things left to do. If I tell him, he’ll take it away. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life huddled in a blanket on the sofa with my head on Dad’s shoulder. The list is the only thing keeping me going.