A Voice in the Distance (9 page)

'Benzodiazepines,' Rami barks. 'Tell her he's taken a
massive overdose of benzos and ADs.'

I repeat it into the phone. I can feel the sweat
running down my back.

'What dose does it say on the packet?' the woman
asks.

'Two milligrams. No, I think it's ten . . .' I am seeing
double as I try desperately to read the faint type on the
sticky label. 'Yes, ten of diza—'

Rami snatches the mobile away from me. 'Four
hundred milligrams of diazepam,' he barks down the
phone. 'And six hundred milligrams of fluoxetine.
Maybe more. When will the ambulance be here?'

Sophie appears in the doorway. She waits until Rami
hangs up. Then she asks, 'Is he stable?' Her voice is
eerily calm.

'Pulse fifty, pupils non-responsive,' Rami replies. 'Oh
Jesus, Sophie!'

'He's still breathing on his own, Rami. Shall we try
and get him downstairs ready for the paramedics?'

'No, it's better not to move him.'

'Right. Just keep tabs on his airways and his pulse.
That's all you can do for now.'

The wail of a siren suddenly blasts up from the street
below. Sophie disappears. Moments later the bedroom
is full of people with walkie-talkies and green overalls,
crowding round the bed. Everyone is talking very fast.
Flynn's nose and mouth are covered with an oxygen
mask and a needle is inserted into his arm and taped
down. A blood-pressure cuff is attached to his other arm
and a thick white neck brace is fitted around him. Then
he is lifted onto some kind of chair and covered with a
salmon-pink blanket and strapped into it. On the count
of three, they lift the chair and manoeuvre it through
the bedroom door, jolting it against the door frame.
The chair disappears and the room is suddenly empty. I
can hear the paramedics grunting and giving
instructions to each other on the staircase outside.

I will myself to move, to run downstairs after them
and follow Flynn into the ambulance, but nothing
happens. I don't seem to be able to get up from the
floor. A few minutes later, the sound of the siren wails
into life again, sending blue waves of light crashing
through the empty room.

Sophie comes in carrying the crying baby, and sits down
on the edge of the bed. Her face is pale. 'Jennah, listen.
Rami's gone in the ambulance with Flynn, and I'm
going to arrange for Maria and Matias to be driven to
the hospital by a neighbour. Do you want to go with
them? I've got to stay here because of Aurora. Rami says
he'll call the moment he has news.'

I shake my head dully. I'm afraid that if I try to stand
up, my legs will collapse. I still haven't moved from my
position on the floor next to the window. The mobile
phone is still at my feet.

'Are you sure?'

I nod.

'OK. I'm just going to pop downstairs and go round
to the neighbours. Can you watch Aurora for five
minutes while I do that?'

hold out my arms for the crying baby.

'Jennah, speak to me first – can you watch Aurora
while I run next door?'

I force my mouth into motion. 'Yes,' I mumble.
'Yes, I'll look after Aurora. She'll be fine with me.'

Sophie looks at me doubtfully, then lowers Aurora
down onto my lap. 'Five minutes,' she says.

She gives my shoulder a squeeze and leaves the room.
Moments later I hear the sound of raised voices in the
street, slamming car doors and the sound of the engine
starting up. I jiggle Aurora against my shoulder as she
continues to whimper, and bury my face against her soft,
warm body. 'Oh baby, baby, baby,' I chant softly. 'Baby,
baby, don't cry. Baby, baby, baby, baby. He's going to be
all right, he's going to be all right.'

After a few moments Aurora stops crying and starts
pulling my hair, demanding to be played with. I force
myself up onto my feet, my knees still shaking, and take
her downstairs to the toys in the living room. I can't stop
trembling. She chews on the ear of her talking teddy,
slavering away happily, jiggling her arms and legs up
and down, babbling to herself, unperturbed by the
silence of her carer.

Sophie returns, pale and breathless.

I look up at her from the carpet. 'He's going to be
OK, isn't he?' My voice sounds strange.

Sophie gives me a dazed look. 'I don't know,' she
says.

Aurora starts to whine and the sound sets my teeth
on edge. I get up off the floor. 'I'm going upstairs to call
my mum,' I say.

The bed is still warm. I pull the duvet over my knees
and open my mobile. When I blurt out what has
happened, there is a moment of shocked silence. 'You
mean he tried to kill himself?' Her voice is shrill with
horror. She wants to drive down from Manchester to
fetch me. I tell her I'm not going anywhere until I know
what's happening to Flynn. She sounds angry although
I can't figure out why. I try and explain the situation to
her but she doesn't seem to want to understand. 'Who
are
these people?' she keeps on asking. 'What's
wrong
with Flynn?' I know it's only out of concern for me, but
she makes me want to scream.

Later, Sophie comes upstairs to tell me that Rami called.
There is no news. Flynn is still unconscious. He is in
intensive care. She asks me if I want some company,
whether I want to come downstairs and have something
to eat. I decline and she leaves.

The hours pass. I lose track of time. Eventually I
wander downstairs and play listlessly with Aurora while
Sophie prepares a meal in the kitchen. I try to keep my
mind a blank. Sometime in the afternoon, as dusk
creeps across the windows, the phone suddenly starts to
ring. Sophie has the blender on and cannot hear from
the kitchen. I am playing roll-the-ball with Aurora, and
for a moment I sit paralysed, unable to move.

'Hello?'

'Jennah, it's Rami. Flynn's OK. He's in intensive care
but he's OK. He's breathing on his own and his heart is
strong but they're not expecting him to come round for
quite a while. I'm going to bring my parents home now
and then I'll take you back to the hospital to see him.'

When they come in, Matias is leaning on Rami's arm.
Their faces look ashen. Maria's eyes are glazed. Sophie
relieves me of Aurora and puts the kettle on, baby on
hip. Rami helps his father into a chair and looks across
at me. 'Shall I take you over?'

'Wait.' Sophie puts her hand on his arm. 'Sit down
and have a sandwich and a cup of tea before you go anywhere.'
She pushes him into a chair and puts the baby
on his lap. Then she takes the turkey leftovers out of the
fridge and starts carving. 'Everyone must eat,' she says
firmly.

I force myself upright and join her at the counter to
help. We make a sandwich for each person and then sit
round the table, trying to consume them. The silence is
deafening. Nobody seems to have the strength to talk.

'Right,' Rami says finally, draining his cup. 'Jennah?'

I get up, grab my bag and follow him to the door.
'Drive carefully,' Sophie calls after us.

We drive to the hospital in silence. Rami's thumbs
drum against the steering wheel whenever we stop at a
red light. We enter the hospital through the car park
and take a lift to the very top floor. As the doors ping
closed behind us, Rami looks at me and says, 'There are
a lot of wires and monitors, Jen.'

'OK. But he's breathing on his own, right?'

Rami nods.

We follow a long, brightly lit corridor till we reach
some double doors at the end. Rami presses a buzzer
and a nurse in surgical clothes comes to greet us. We
leave our coats and bags in a small room and wash our
hands with antiseptic soap before being led down a ward
filled with a strong medicinal smell. It is very warm. I try
not to look to my left or right. From the edge of my
vision I am aware of rows of beds, each surrounded by a
plethora of bleeping, sucking, humming machines. And
at the centre of each, a human being, hovering on the
brink of life.

The nurse breaks away from us and veers off towards
a bed on the right. 'Here we are,' Rami says softly. I am
vaguely aware of his hand reaching for mine, holding it
tight. We approach a bed. The first thing I notice is a
shock of blond hair. Flynn's skin is completely white. His
lips are stretched out to accommodate a large plastic
contraption in his mouth. There are tubes up his nose.
Both arms are attached to drips, a crisscrossing of
surgical tape securing the plastic tubes in the crook of
each elbow. A white sheet is pulled up to his middle. His
bare chest is covered with red and blue stickers with
wires coming out of them, leading to more bleeping
machines.

'You can sit down on the side of the bed,' Rami says
to me. 'You can talk to him if you want. He might be
able to hear you.'

I perch myself gingerly, muscles clenched, terrified of
hurting Flynn or somehow dislodging one of the tubes.
Rami moves away to talk to the nurse. I stare at Flynn's
lifeless face. His eyelids look as if they have been stuck
down. There are purple bruises beneath them. The
plastic tube in his mouth makes him look like he is
pulling a face. For one crazy moment I expect him to
open his eyes and say, 'Ha ha, got you!'

His chest rises and falls steadily. The machines pip
and bleep. I reach out slowly and touch his hand. I am
relieved to find it warm. I uncurl his fingers gently and
close my hand round his. His fingers curl back and for
an instant I think he is squeezing my hand. Then I
realize it is just the natural position of his fingers. I lean
forwards. 'Flynn,' I whisper.

Not a flicker.

'Please wake up,' I say softly. 'We all need you. We're
all so worried. We all love you. I love you, Flynn. I don't
want—' My eyes fill up. 'I don't want to live without you.'

I don't see how he can possibly hear me. His face is
like a waxwork, and I realize suddenly with startling
clarity that the body and the person are two different
things. Two different entities, somehow fused. The body
is the one I am looking at now, attached to all these
machines, the heart still struggling to pump, the lungs
still struggling to breathe, valiantly fighting to stay alive.
The person is another being entirely, the perpetrator of
this crime, the one who ruthlessly swallowed forty tablets
sometime in the middle of the night, then lay down
beside his girlfriend to die. The person tried to kill
itself, tried to kill its own body. I understand for the first
time why attempted suicide used to be an imprisonable
offence. It is, after all, attempted murder. The person
against the body.
Look what you've done to yourself!
I want
to shout.
How could you be so cruel? Your body didn't deserve
to be harmed like this – flooded with poison then stuck with
needles and fed with tubes!
The words 'mental illness'
suddenly take on a whole new dimension. What kind of
illness makes life want to bring about its end? It goes
against every natural instinct!

I get up unsteadily and look around for Rami. He is
by my side in an instant, his arm round my shoulders.
'It's been a long day,' he says. 'Let's go home and get
some rest. We'll come back and see him in the
morning.'

'Shouldn't someone stay with him?' I blurt out.
'What if he comes round in the night?'

'We need to get some sleep,' Rami says. 'There's no
point in us going under too. The doctor says he'll be out
for twenty-four hours at least. All they can do now is
monitor him carefully until the drugs work their way
through his body.'

Rami goes over to speak to one of the nurses. I hear
him ask her to call him on his mobile if there is any
change in the night. We leave.

'Why?' I say in the car. 'Why would anyone want to do
that to themselves?'

'Mum was asking the same thing,' Rami says, starting
the engine. 'Depression is a strange thing. It's
dehumanizing, somehow.'

'Is he definitely going to come round?' I ask. 'Are the
doctors absolutely sure about that?'

'Once the drugs work their way through his body,
they think he'll probably just wake up,' Rami says.

'Probably?' I say.

'Well, there are three possibilities. One is that he'll
just wake up feeling groggy but fine,' he explains. 'The
other possibility is that he'll need a liver transplant,
although so far tests show that his liver is labouring, but
coping.'

'And the third possibility?' I ask, my heart in my
mouth.

Rami exhales slowly. 'With any prolonged state of
unconsciousness, there is always the risk of braindamage,'
he says. 'But there's no way of knowing until
he wakes up.'

I stare straight ahead. A fine rain begins to fall. The
lights of passing cars are refracted through the pattern
of raindrops across the windscreen. Rami switches on
the wipers. It is Boxing Day and the streets are still
empty.

I sleep in fits and starts in the squeaky, empty bed,
haunted by fragments of dreams. Finally I emerge hot
and sweaty from the duvet and sit cross-legged in the
middle of the bed, the window open, a mini-gale buffeting
around me, my body aching from the cold. I watch
a weak dawn rise above the rooftops and I wonder
whether Flynn is still breathing. I imagine the doctor
coming down the long hospital corridor towards us to
tell us that Flynn has died in the night. I imagine Maria
collapsing. I try to think of what to say – of what to say
to Rami, to Matias, to Maria. I fail.

Rami takes Maria and Matias to the hospital after
breakfast. I stay with Sophie and the baby since there is
no point in us all being there at once. I have hardly seen
Matias and Maria since all this happened. They look
broken, like ghosts of their previous selves. I feel like
running into the hospital and shaking Flynn awake –
Look what you have done to your parents!
I want to
shout.
Look what you have done to us all!

I feed Aurora while Sophie makes the coffee. As I am
scooping up dribbles of food from Aurora's chin,
Sophie passes behind me and rubs my arm. I say
nothing and continue to feed the baby, breathing
deeply against the threat of tears.

Rami brings Matias and Maria back late morning.
They look totally spent. I help Sophie make lunch. In
the afternoon, Sophie insists Rami stays at home with
Aurora while she drives me to the hospital. Again I sit on
the edge of Flynn's hospital bed and reach for his inert
hand. His face is still sealed shut. There is a different
nurse hovering nearby, and bright winter sunlight
streams through the windows. 'It's a beautiful day,' I tell
him. 'The sun is really strong and the sky is bright blue.'
I tentatively squeeze his hand. His eyelashes do not
move.

That evening, Rami goes back to the hospital with his
parents. We seem to have fallen into some kind of a
routine. Harry calls me on my mobile. He wants to know
where Flynn is – they were supposed to meet this
evening to practise their composition piece, but he
hasn't shown up. I tell him what has happened.

'God, no!' Harry breathes. 'Do you want me to come
down, Jen? Is – is he allowed visitors?'

I tell him there is no point, that Flynn is unconscious.
Harry sounds deeply shocked. I promise to call him as
soon as there is more news. Sophie and I spend the
afternoon watching re-runs of
Friends
. Neither of us
smile, but the sound of canned laughter reminds me
that life somehow goes on.

The following day, a similar routine unfolds. Rami takes
his parents to the hospital first thing, while Sophie,
Aurora and I go to the supermarket. It is a relief to be
doing something useful. After picking at our lunch,
Sophie and I drive over to the hospital. Flynn still looks
exactly the same. Sophie leans over him and strokes his
cheek and says some words in his ear. I just want to
leave.

In the car on the way home, I am jolted out of my
stupor by Sophie lifting her hand off the steering wheel
to wipe her eyes. I turn to her in panic. 'Soph—'

Her cheeks flush slightly and she sniffs hard and
shakes her head with a smile. 'I'm just being silly. I know
he's going to be fine,' she says quickly.