‘Arthur...’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Lay the ghost. To the man who made possible both our successes this evening. Harry Nathan, RIP.’
‘RIP,’ Sonja echoed. ‘I never want to say his name again.’
‘Well, then, that’s a second toast,’ he said. ‘To us.’
She raised her half-empty glass, and he saw that she closed her eyes as she drained it, as though holding her nose to jump into a new and strange sea.
‘To us.’
Lorraine’s head was swathed in bandages to just above her eyes, and her face was grossly bruised and discoloured. Drips for fluid, plasma and blood fed into her arm, while others had been inserted in her mouth. Her arm was encircled with a blood-pressure cuff, and she was connected to a cardiac monitor. The rhythmic hiss of the ventilator, pumping air into Lorraine’s lungs, and the dreadful bubbling noise of her breathing were the only sounds. A probe-like clip to measure the levels of oxygen in her blood was attached to her finger, and she lay perfectly still, unaware, in some limbo between life and death.
‘Oh, God,’ whispered Rosie, her hands pressed against the glass partition.
‘There’s nothing we can do here,’ Jake said quietly.
‘Come on, Rosie, let’s go home,’ Rooney said, taking his wife’s arm.
‘No,’ she whimpered.
‘We’ll come back tomorrow, and we’ve got to take care of Tiger.’
They left, unable to speak. Seeing Lorraine so isolated, so vulnerable, so distant from them, frightened them. Having seen with their own eyes the terrible punishment she had taken, it was hard to believe she could ever be the same Lorraine again.
‘She’s a fighter,’ Rosie said hopefully, as she got in beside Rooney and slammed the car door shut.
‘This is one fight she might not win, Rosie. We got to face up to that.’
Rosie wouldn’t look at him. She clenched her fists. ‘Well, maybe I know her better than you, Bill, and I’m telling you she’s as strong as an ox. She’ll beat this, I know it.’
‘I hope so, darlin’. I sincerely hope so.’
Lorraine was closely monitored through the night: she remained in a deep coma, her pulse low. She showed no sign of movement in any of her limbs, and as yet they had been unable to establish the extent of the brain damage she had sustained. When the surgeons and staff reconvened the following morning, it was suggested that Lorraine’s close relatives be told to be ready to come. There had been no progress; if anything she had regressed, and there was little hope of recovery.
Rosie had stayed with Tiger at Lorraine’s apartment. She packed nightdresses and toiletries ready to take to Lorraine as soon as she was allowed to have visitors, but she knew when Rooney called at eight thirty in the morning, it was bad news. At nine o’clock she and Rooney called Lorraine’s ex-husband to inform him of the situation. Mike Page was shocked, asked which hospital Lorraine was in, and if he would be allowed to visit. Rooney suggested he call the hospital himself, saying only that he had been asked to inform Lorraine’s immediate family and that she remained on the critical list.
Mike replaced the receiver, shaken. Although he had not seen or spoken to his ex-wife in over two years, he was still affected emotionally by the news of what had happened to her. He immediately saw in his mind the Lorraine with whom he had fallen in love, the Lorraine who had worked day and night to allow him to gain his law degree, the Lorraine who had given birth to his two beautiful daughters. All memory of the violent drunkard, the pain-racked woman he had been forced to divorce for his own survival, was gone.
Sissy, his wife, walked into his study with the morning’s mail. ‘You’re going to be late, darling, and the girls are waiting for you to take them to school.’ She stopped, and took a good look at him. ‘What’s happened?’
He took a deep breath. ‘It’s Lorraine, she’s...’
‘Is she dead?’ Sissy asked.
‘No — on the critical list. It didn’t sound very hopeful. Not that they’d tell me much over the phone.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, putting her arms around him.
‘I’ll go and see her this afternoon.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you think I should take the girls with me?’ Sissy shrugged her shoulders, and began to tidy his desk. He took her hand. ‘Just stop that. I mean, she is their mother.’
‘Well, she hasn’t been one for a long time, Mike, and they’re so settled. I just don’t want them upset. The last time she visited — the only time — Sally was in a terrible state, and Julia... Look, it’s not up to me, but I’d think twice about it. Maybe see her first and then decide.’
‘Okay, I’ll go straight to the hospital after lunch.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know. As I said, they weren’t too forthcoming over the phone. They just said the outlook wasn’t good.’
Was she drinking again?’
‘I don’t know, Sissy. I’ll find out, and I’ll call you.’
As he left, Sissy could hear the girls, waiting outside by the car, calling him to hurry up. She crossed to the window and watched them drive away, then went back to his desk, covered with family photographs — their son, away at camp, and the two girls. No one could believe they weren’t Sissy’s daughters: they were as blonde as she was, both tall for their age, both pretty, but so like their mother, Lorraine... It made Sissy feel sad just thinking about what Lorraine had lost, their growing up, their first prizes at school, their first tennis matches, their first time swimming without water-wings, the trill of their voices calling, ‘Mommy,’ because they both now called Sissy by that name — had done so from almost the start of her relationship with Mike.
She picked up one photograph after another — herself with the girls, Mike with them, the family all linking arms on a forest trail when they had been on a camper trip. Lorraine had never been any part of the girls’ lives, and now she had appeared again. Sissy was fearful of what it would do to them, and to Mike especially. She knew Sally and Julia would have to be told and, if Lorraine was as ill as Mike had implied, they should at least have the opportunity to get to know her before it was too late. Sissy had no idea that it was already too late: that Lorraine was dying.
‘I found these,’ Rosie said, producing two gift-wrapped packages, one marked ‘Julia’, the other marked ‘Sally’.
‘She must have bought them for her daughters. Maybe she was planning what Jake suggested, getting in contact with them again.’ Rooney sniffed, and turned away. ‘Maybe we should call him, give him an update.’
‘Yes, we should,’ Rosie said sadly, then forced a smile. ‘She’s going to pull through this, Bill, I know it. Do you feel it too?’
He didn’t say anything — he couldn’t, because deep down he didn’t believe what Rosie had said.
‘We’ll take that goddamned dog with us then, shall we?’ he said.
Rosie’s face puckered, and she went into the bedroom. Tiger lay stretched full-length on his mistress’s bed, with her nightgown, dragged from beneath her pillow, in his mouth. He didn’t know what was going on, but when Rosie tried to get him off the bed he flatly refused to move, and when she tried to take the nightgown out of his mouth he gave a low growl.
Rooney and Rosie left Lorraine’s apartment, dragging Tiger by his lead. Neither had been able to prise open his jaws to remove the nightdress, and it trailed on the floor, clamped in his teeth. They packed the car with everything they thought Lorraine might need, and then drove off. Rosie turned to look back at the apartment.
‘Don’t look back, darlin’, it’s unlucky,’ he said quietly, and suddenly Rosie had a terrible premonition that Lorraine would never come home. She started to cry, and he patted her knee, near to tears himself, but the sight of Tiger’s grizzled head on the back seat, still with Lorraine’s nightdress between his jaws, touched him more than anything else. It was as if some sixth sense had told the dog, too, that Lorraine wasn’t coming back.