The Girlfriend by Michelle Frances

Author:Michelle Frances [Frances, Michelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509821518
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

TWENTY-SIX

Tuesday 24 February

Almost two weeks later, Laura got a phone call from the nursing home. Her heart was hammering, desperate to be let out of its miserable prison, but the doctor’s update was not the one she’d been waiting for.

‘Mrs Cavendish, I’m afraid I have some bad news.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘I’m afraid Daniel’s no longer able to breathe unaided. He’s been readmitted to hospital and they’ve had to put him on the ventilator.’

Her world crashed yet again.

She was first to the hospital. The consultant came to speak to her immediately and explained that at nine twenty in the morning, Daniel had stopped breathing and as a consequence suffered a cardiac arrest. The team had successfully resuscitated him, but he was now back on a ventilator. Howard arrived in the middle of it all and she listened to it again, the words digging like knives into her heart. It was as if Daniel, after all this time, was slipping away, but she couldn’t understand why.

‘What caused it?’ she asked the consultant, desperate to make sense of the change.

‘He’s contracted pneumonia. I’m afraid that patients who are in his condition are highly susceptible to it.’

Laura lashed out from distress and frustration. ‘He can’t be perfectly fine one day and the next get pneumonia and have a heart attack – it doesn’t make sense!’

The consultant remained patient. ‘Mrs Cavendish, he’s not perfectly fine; he’s in a coma. It’s often difficult, or impossible, to predict the outcome of such an injury.’

It didn’t satisfy her. She felt as if she’d taken her eye off the ball, just routinely visiting and waiting, hoping. She should have been doing something.

‘We have to wait and see if he can regain the full use of his lungs,’ continued the consultant. ‘We’ll try taking him off the ventilator again later today, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll adjust it to encourage him to make more effort to breathe, but the machine will still support him.’

‘What if he has another arrest?’

The consultant paused. ‘He’s been in a coma for a long time. We have to think about what’s in his best interests.’

A growing horror took hold of Laura. ‘You mean, you might not . . . you might just let him die?’ she said incredulously.

‘Not necessarily. If it’s still your wish, we’ll do our best to resuscitate him.’

‘Yes, it is my wish!’ said Laura, tears springing.

When they were left alone, Howard and Laura sat in silence for a moment.

‘They’re doing their best,’ said Howard.

‘Are they?’

He was slightly shocked. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Oh, Howard, I don’t mean to say they’re negligent or anything, and I know there are some amazing doctors here – he’s one of the best, after all – but I just feel we’ve been blindly letting this go on when we should have been keeping an eye on things.’ She went to sit beside him and held her hands together in her lap. ‘We’ve been here before, remember. What if we’d . . . I’d taken Rose to a hospital the minute

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