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Ted battled on. ‘Would she have had these palpitations all the time, Doctor? Or could they be triggered by something?’
Jem looked just as surprised by Ted’s obliviousness. Alex frowned. Why hadn’t her mum shared this with him? She deserved his support, why forfeit that and hide a fluttering sodding time-bomb, waiting to go off in St Cuthbert’s churchyard?
‘The symptoms might have been present day to day, Mr Foster,’ said Doctor Okafor, ‘or just here and there for no particular reason. There can be triggers. Stress, for example, can be a factor. There are many aspects we should consider.’
The burning in Alex’s neck was sweeping up through her head. Stress can be a factor. Stress. Define stress, Doctor. How about, say, the drowning of your only son? The years robbed of celebrating his birthdays like a normal family. The thought of him gasping his last desperate breaths while the daughter you’d entrusted him to was making goo-goo eyes at her boyfriend in the bushes. Would that be an aspect worth considering? Would that affect the rhythm of a mother’s heart?
Jem was looking over. In through the nose, out through the mouth … Alex could feel her heart thudding in her chest. Was arrhythmia contagious? Like an infectious yawn, jumping from one person to the next? She hoped so. She deserved it, she bloody well deserved it.
A bleep began pulling Alex from the internal disaster gathering pace inside her ribcage.
‘I’m terribly sorry. Would you excuse me? I’ll come and find you all again as soon as I’m back on the ward,’ Dr Okafor said apologetically.
Ted offered the doctor his hand, his acceptance of the younger man’s competence – his gratitude for it. Somewhere on the periphery, Alex heard Jem utter her thanks to the doctor too, then Jem’s voice grew louder beside Alex’s ear. ‘Come on, let’s go and give her a kiss.’
They filed into Room 2. Alex went in last, Blythe’s tired eyes dodging Ted and Jem, finding their way straight to her. Alex felt the muscles in her face ready themselves for a full on explosion of something unsightly. No. She wouldn’t. She had no right to cry so she swallowed it all down and let her throat close around it like a drawstring.
‘Hey, Mum,’ Jem said softly. Alex watched Jem sweep the hair from their mother’s face so it framed her equally on both sides of her pillow. Jem dove straight in for a kiss. ‘Mum? Alex is here,’ she declared, as if presenting their mother with the magic tincture that would save her.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Alex croaked. She needed to learn to swallow before she spoke, like her dad. Alex nudged herself forwards to the edge of her mother’s bed. It felt like nudging herself towards the edge of the pool at the leisure centre, her breathing elevating with each tentative step forwards. Blythe’s eyes slid shut as if she were drifting off to sleep again but Alex knew it was her invitation to nuzzle in all that paleness. Her mother’s cheek was warm, Alex laid a kiss there and held her face over it for a few seconds, to be sure it stuck. ‘Hi, Mum.’ she whispered again, her voice steadier now. ‘Didn’t see about those butterflies then?’ Alex pulled back to see her mother attempt a smile but one side of Blythe’s mouth remained slackened, unwilling.
Blythe mumbled. Alex tried to make it out but it was like trying to pick out a familiar face on the other side of mottled glass, the outline of her mum’s words there but the detail obscured. Alex took a steadying breath. That awful sound couldn’t have just come from her mum, from the same place those beautiful arias used to reach from on Sunday mornings when Alex was still lazing in bed and her mum was trying to keep pace with her favourite sopranos.
‘How are you feeling, Mum?’ Something had happened to Jem’s voice too. Ted’s face was grave, his oil-stained hands hanging at his sides, both thumbs rubbing relentlessly against their neighbouring fingers. He was clearing his throat again, over and over, trying to ready his voice like an engine on one of his cars, it was turning over but not quite ready to fire up like it should.
Blythe murmured again, more decipherable this time, as if she were simply drunk or groggy from the dentist. ‘Hell-lo. My darl—’ Blythe stopped.
‘Oh, Mum.’ Jem whispered.
Ted still wasn’t ready, his thumb still rubbing back and forth. Alex felt that drawstring in her throat tighten again. Her mum’s eyes shone with effort. Somebody had to return her pitiful attempt; someone had to validate it. It came from nowhere, an eruption of fortitude.
‘It’s all right, Mum. Everything’s going to be all right.’ Alex smiled, forcing her facial muscles to do what her mother’s couldn’t and bluff through this new horror that had descended on them. ‘We’re going to help you get back on your feet, Mum. You’re going to be OK.’ Alex felt herself default to work mode, it was like an outer body experience. She knew this role, the gentle encouragement, the championing of small steps back to something more familiar, more bearable. For a few sweet seconds Alex was galvanised, and then she caught sight of the small glistening trace of saliva escaping from one side of her mum’s mouth. Something began crumbling inside her. Blythe didn’t need a square meal and a few shopping bags of emergency food. It wasn’t Blythe’s financial situation that was broken. It was her self.
CHAPTER 13
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