‘Will that help, Dad?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘Okay. Let’s just lie still, then.’
Some time passed, perhaps three, four minutes, and though I tried to remain calm I could not help considering that my own father had probably found himself in this position too, alone in that flat without anyone to lie there or make silly jokes. Without anyone? Without me. ‘His heart basically exploded,’ the doctor had said with inappropriate relish. I felt another spasm in my chest and winced.
‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Keep breathing, Dad.’
‘I intend to.’
Time passed, but barely.
‘What happens if you lose consciousness?’
‘Perhaps we should talk about something else, Egg.’
‘Sorry.’
‘If I lose consciousness, that will be cardiac arrest. You’ll have to do CPR.’
‘The kiss-of-life thing?’
‘I think so.’
‘Oh, Christ. Don’t lose consciousness, will you?’
‘I’m trying hard not to.’
‘Good.’
‘Do you know how to do CPR, Egg?’
‘No. I’ll Google it. Perhaps I should do that now.’
I laughed again. If anything was going to kill me, it would be the sight of Albie desperately reading up on CPR. ‘No. Just lie here with me. I’m going to be fine. This is all going to be fine.’ Albie exhaled slowly, squeezed my hand and rubbed my knuckles with his thumb. A shame, I thought, to regain this intimacy at such a cost.
‘Albie—’
‘Dad, you shouldn’t really talk, you know.’
‘I know—’
‘It’s all going to be fine.’
‘I know, but if I’m not fine. If I’m not …’
Some people, I imagine, would have welcomed this opportunity to make some definitive, final statement to the world, and various formulations ran through my head. But they all seemed rather fraught and melodramatic, and so instead we lay there, still and silent, wedged between the beds, holding hands and waiting for the ambulance to arrive.
I can’t speak highly enough of the Spanish health system. The paramedics were no-nonsense and rather ‘macho’ in a reassuring way, and I was scooped up in their hairy arms and taken a short distance to the local hospital where, after tests and X-rays and the administering of blood-thinning medication, it was explained by a Dr Yolanda Jimenez, in good, clear English, that I would be subject to an operation. Immediately I imagined the buzzing of surgical saws and my rib-cage being cracked open like a lobster shell, but the doctor explained that the procedure would be much more localised than that. A tube would be inserted into my thigh under local anaesthetic, passing, somewhat improbably, all the way up into my heart, allowing the artery to be widened and a stent to be left in its place. I pictured pipe-cleaners, dental floss, an unravelled wire coat hanger. The operation would take place the next morning.
‘Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,’ I said cheerily after the doctor had left. In truth, I did not relish the prospect of a catheter being inserted into my thigh and probing its way past my internal organs, but I did not want Albie to worry. ‘If they go too far, presumably it comes out of my ear!’ I said and he forced a smile.
Albie returned to the hotel to bring me a change of clothes. The obscene trunks were discarded and we were transferred to a ward to spend the night. I wish I could report some unique Barcelona atmosphere, with everyone promenading down the corridors and eating octopus off cocktail sticks until dawn. It was as anxious and depressing as any hospital ward in the world, but with the oaths, groans and sobbing cries in a different accent. Albie, who had never been inside a hospital since his birth, looked shaken. ‘Dad, if this is all some elaborate ruse to stop me smoking, then it’s worked.’
‘Well, that’s something, I suppose. Albie, you can leave me here if you want.’
‘What, and go and party?’
‘At least go back to the hotel. You can’t sleep in a chair.’
‘I’ll go later. Now we need to phone Mum.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you want to do it, or shall I?’
‘I’ll talk to her, then pass her on to you.’
So I called her and next day, by the time the procedure was complete and I was waking from a sedative-assisted sleep, my wife was by my side.
Connie lay, somewhat awkwardly, half on, half off the hospital bed, her fantastic face close to mine.
‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine! A little sore, a little bruised.’
‘I thought it was keyhole surgery.’
‘More Chubb than Yale.’
‘Are you in pain? Shall I get off you?’
‘No, no, I like having you here. Don’t move. I’m sorry if I stink.’ I had not bathed properly since the Mediterranean and was painfully aware of staleness of both breath and body.
‘Christ, I don’t care. Shows you’re alive. How was the …?’
‘A little uncomfortable. A pressure in the chest, as if someone’s got their finger inside you somehow—’
‘Bloody hell, Douglas!’
‘I’m fine. I’m sorry you had to come all this way.’
‘Well, I was thinking maybe just let it go, let him go through surgery by himself, but there was nothing on TV, so — here I am.’ Her hand was on my cheek now. ‘Look at this crazy beard. You look like you’ve been shipwrecked or something.’
‘I’ve missed you.’
‘Oh God, I’ve missed you too.’ She was crying now, and perhaps I was too. ‘Let’s do exactly this same holiday next year, shall we?’
‘Exactly like this. Don’t change a thing. I want it to be exactly like this every year.’
‘Holiday of a lifetime.’
‘Holiday of a lifetime.’
After the angiogram, and with the angioplasty considered a success, it was decided that the heart attack was ‘not serious’. It had certainly felt serious enough as I’d lain sprawled on the floor between those beds, but I did not quibble because the good news was that I could leave the hospital after one more night and, with the correct medication, would be allowed on a plane back to England in ten days or so.
Taking control with admirable efficiency, Connie and Albie found an apartment. This would be more comfortable and less claustrophobic than a hotel and so we filled in medical forms, scheduled various tests, and then took a taxi to Eixample, a bourgeois residential area full of rather grand apartment blocks. Ours was a pleasant, quiet, book-lined place on the first floor — not too many stairs — the home of an absent academic, with a balcony at the rear and places to walk nearby. There were Gaudí buildings and restaurants, the Sagrada Família was seven blocks away; all very civilised and ruinously expensive, too, but, perhaps for the first time in my life, I was able to point out the value of comprehensive travel insurance. We would not worry about expense. It was important that I did not worry about anything at all.
There’s a kind of luxury in convalescence, and I was carried from place to place with great care and attention like an old vase. Albie in particular was terrifically attentive and interested as if, up until now, he’d thought mortality was a myth. Some months later I discovered that my admission into hospital had been the subject of a series of verité-style photographs; stark, black-and-white high-contrast images of my gawping face while sleeping, extreme close-ups of the various heart monitors affixed to my chest, the cannula piercing my skin. To the teenager all disasters are a rite of passage, but I was happy, at long last, to have provided him with some inspiration. At least he had some photos of me now.