Words unspoken

There was so much she wanted to say – like she loved him, and always would

Bella took her usual seat next to the hospital bed, pulling out the cushion she’d taken to bringing with her over the past few days because the chair was uncomfortable. She tried to block out the sound of the machine, beeping away, and the smell of antiseptic. Tried to ignore the horrible white sheets, the way the room, despite how light it was, always felt like it was closing in on her. Most of all, of course, she tried to ignore the way Eric’s face looked too pale, the way the lines that had deepened and stretched over the years now seemed even more pronounced. The way his eyelids, dark and purply, remained resolutely closed, no matter what she did.

Instead, she drew out the few things from home that she’d brought in her blue wicker bag – a present from Georgie last Christmas – and set them on the bedside table. A photo of her and Eric when they were still young – her, blonde and tanned, him, dark-haired and a little bit burnt, on safari in Africa. The silver vase that Eric’s sister had given to them before she had passed away, with flowers from their own garden, the one Eric liked to tend. And the book he’d been reading, just before he’d had the stroke.

“I’ve had quite the day since I saw you yesterday,” she said brightly. It was important, she knew, to keep her tone upbeat, not to let on to Eric how worried she was. “I went to see Marilyn – you remember Marilyn, don’t you? She runs the bookshop and she told me that they’re expanding to include a café there – isn’t that nice?”

She had to keep talking about the mundane, to pretend that she was just sitting with him in their living room, he on his armchair, she on hers. Because if she didn’t, she knew that she’d break, and she wasn’t sure there would be enough left of her to piece back together.

It was impossible, really, that he’d been there one moment, not the next. Not that he was gone, she told herself firmly. People recovered from strokes all the time. And OK, she didn’t know the statistics – and had shut the doctor down when he’d tried to tell her – but Eric was healthy, he’d always been healthy, and so she thought the odds were good.

Maybe she should have been more prepared for it, for the possibility that something like this would happen. He was 85, after all. But no matter what someone’s age, it was like you still didn’t really expect it. Not to happen like this, so suddenly. You thought you’d have time, still, to say what you wanted – needed – to say, before the end.

Things like you didn’t really care that he’d forgotten to pick up milk at the shops the other day. That it didn’t matter to you, really, that his slippers were grey and old and torn, or that he had to put the TV up so loud it meant she couldn’t concentrate on her Kindle. She wanted to take those things back now, and make sure she told him all the good things, instead. Wanted to tell him about the memories she held so dear, even now.

Such as the first time he’d said, “I love you,” on a holiday in Cornwall, when the sun had been setting over the cliffs, and they’d been sitting on a picnic blanket, glass of white wine in hand – too warm, because he’d forgotten to put it in the fridge, but still somehow perfect. Like when he’d proposed, a little sheepishly, unable to look her right in the eye because of nerves, in the middle of the Forest of Dean, on a walk with just the two of them.

She wanted to go back to that moment, just before everything changed,

and make sure she said the one and only thing that really mattered: “I love you.” She wanted to go back, and make sure she said it, over and over, until they were both sick of it.

“Because I do, you know,” she whispered, reaching out to take his hand. “And I always will, no matter what.” She felt her throat close, fought to keep the lump just where it was, and not allow it any further progress.

Her phone rang. Ignoring the rule not to answer it, she did just that. “Hello, love.” She blinked away the tears she hadn’t realised were there. “Mum. How is he?”

“He’s, well, much the same.”

“Do you want me to come to the hospital?” Georgie asked.

“No, love. I’m heading off soon anyway.”

“I’ll come with you tomorrow,” she said firmly, and Bella knew there would be no talking her out of it. She’d tried to put the moment off, hadn’t wanted Georgie to see her dad like this. But there was no stopping the inevitable, she supposed. “And I’m coming over tonight, OK?”

“OK,” she said automatically.

“I’ll…” Georgie broke off, blew out a breath. “It’ll be alright, Mum.”

“I know it will, love.” Because what else did you say, when the alternative was admitting how much your world would crumble? When the alternative was to scream, and demand something that no one ever had the right to, ultimately. Because no one got out of life scot-free, did they?

The doctor chose that moment to come into the room, his long white coat billowing, threateningly. He cleared his throat in that rasping way of his, the way

Bella was slowly beginning to hate.

“Mrs Wilson, I think it might be time for us to have a chat.”

“No,” she replied. “I’m on my way out, actually. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

She turned away from him, closing the subject off. There would be no “chats”, at least not with him. She knew what his advice was, and she didn’t want to hear it.

Not again. This was her decision to make. And until there was absolutely no chance, none at all, that Eric would recover, she would continue to have hope.

So she bent down, kissed his papery skin. “Until tomorrow, my love.”

She tried to block out the sound of the machine beeping