Walter looked like he was stifling bile; the old man must have been staying alive by the skin of his teeth. But his sunken eyes were alight with something that was tricky to place at first. I was standing at a distance, but Walter told me later that at that instant he realized what he could see in the old man’s eyes.
Lust.
Walter called to a nurse who was passing through the ward.
“My wife, Florence Watts, where is she?” His voice wavered with anxiety and concern.
“She’s in that bed there, Mr. Watts,” said the nurse. “She’s in the bathroom at the moment.”
“How’s she doing?”
“As well as can be expected after such a fall.” The nurse uttered the well-worn hospital cliché as she guided Walter to a chair next to Floss’s empty bed.
“I understand my wife had a stroke of some kind?”
“I believe it was quite a minor one.” The nurse made to walk away but then turned back to face Walter. “The surgeon will explain, but she is having trouble with her balance at the moment, and that may go on for a while. She was a keen rider, I understand?”
“She is a professional horsewoman,” corrected Walter, who never knew quite how to describe Floss’s job.
“She may not be able to ride again,” said the nurse rather curtly. “But she is quite well. You’ll see.”
Walter shuddered and I knew he must be wondering whether Floss herself knew that she might never be able to ride her favorite horse, Dragon, again.
“There was a baby, I believe,” Walter mumbled. “My wife, will she…” He couldn’t complete the sentence, but the nurse understood.
“She’s a healthy young woman. We shall see. It’s looking good.” She smiled.
Then she was gone, walking away so quietly and quickly that Walter hardly seemed to notice her disappear. He slumped into the chair by the empty bed. I know he had never thought much about children before. Floss had never seemed to bother about starting a family; she had always been happy with her horses. Now there was a miscarried child. What would their life have been like had the baby survived? Then I saw him look over at Old Nik, who was glaring at him. It was obvious he didn’t remember Walter.
“You,” he growled. “Young fellah!”
The old man was calling him over to his bed. Walter went to his side. Nik was whispering. As Walter lowered his head he must have smelled the combined fetid odors of tumors and morphine. The old man grabbed his arm, then suddenly gasped and fell back on his pillow, asleep again.
Chapter 19
Suddenly, there she stood beside him.
Floss. Leaning on a walker, with a drip taped to her left arm, the plastic bag hanging from a stand on casters so that she had to walk in short stages—carefully and tenderly, in great pain, still feeling dizzy.
Walter looked at her; I could see what my godson must have been thinking. She was so beautiful. His wife had always glowed; she was a “shining girl,” literally speaking. A strand of blond hair fell over one side of her face, and the white nightie she wore was crumpled. Over it she had on an open blue linen dressing gown that set off a sparkle in her blue eyes. A dark purple-blue bruise on her right temple extended down to her cheekbone. She had recently put on some bright red lipstick, perhaps to cheer herself up, so Walter was confronted with a strange blaze of mixed hues: yellow, blue, purple, and red. Floss smiled, beaming at him.
“Floss!” Walter almost shouted her name.
At this, Old Nik in the opposite bed woke up and was pumping at his morphine line.
“Floss,” he exclaimed triumphantly. “That was her name. I think. I do think.” Nik was starting to yell.
Oh fuck, I thought. It was clear from his expression that Walter really didn’t like the old man using his wife’s nickname.
“Her name is Florence,” he corrected.
Maud ran into the room to Nik’s bed and tried to calm him, looking at Floss and Walter reproachfully. But Old Nik carried on, in a reverie of memory, or perhaps fantasy.
“Florence! Flo! Flossie! Floss!” He was laughing now as he tried out all the variations of her name. “I used to walk you to school!”
He was trying to rise from his bed, his face pale, drained of blood, taking on a slightly green pallor.
He started to sing wildly. Then fell back.
Walter took Floss in his arms as best he could and led her to her bed, where she sat, grateful.
Nik was still raising hell, and Maud looked over again.
Suddenly, her mood changed. It was almost as though she relented, accepting Nik’s delusions. But also, at last, she was able to make the connection between Floss, Walter, and me. The pieces were falling together, and she began to see that meeting Walter in the hospital reception area was in fact a much larger and happier coincidence than she had thought. Floss was not the enemy.
She smiled.
Floss smiled back.
Old Nik slumped briefly, appearing to be unconscious for a moment, but then recovered. He reached out, arms outstretched, to Floss in the opposite bed, while Maud tried to restrain the absurdly lustful old man.
His wild eyes moved from Floss to Maud, back and forth.
“Too old to live, too dead to love,” the old man was almost singing now. “Both you women…”
He paused for a moment as if in revelation.
“Both you women are the same.”
Nik’s heart monitor alarm emitted a continuous sound—his heart had stopped. He slumped back, his mouth open, his eyes tightly closed. Maud threw herself onto the old man’s body and held him. She did not weep, nor cry out.
Walter looked as though he might shout for help, make some kind of fuss; maybe shout “Cart!” as we had seen on hospital television series. But before he could do anything the nurse was there and pulled the curtains quickly around the bed.
We could hear Maud speaking to her dead husband, asking him a final question as he ascended from this life to the next.
“You said you loved her,” she said. “Who is she? Who was she to you? Who does she remind you of? You swore to me there had been no one. You swore!”
Obviously uncomfortable to be hearing this, Walter held Floss tightly.
“Poor, poor you!” He was ashamed at how badly he had behaved, how long he had delayed rushing to her side. “Do you feel OK? Will you be OK? Was the journey here terrible? I’m so, so sorry it took me so long to get here to be with you. I feel like a complete cunt… This is all very strange—with Maud and Nik.”
Floss looked up at him and shook her head.
Walter whispered to her. “The old man had obviously fallen in love with you,” he said. “Maud was right—he was hanging on to life, refusing to die, almost as if he saw in you someone he had once loved.”
Floss clutched at Walter. This was not her fault, and not a drama she wanted any part of, but Walter was carried away by the unfolding story.
“Maybe you reminded him of someone he had loved before Maud? Or someone he’d had an affair with?” This was clearly what Maud believed. “Someone called Florence? Could that be why she’s so angry with you?”