The Girl Who Cried Wolf(13)
‘Come here.’
He moves across the bed and holds his arms out to me. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to lie down beside him. This man I have known for a few hours holds me in his arms and tells me everything will be OK. And d’you know something? For the next hour and half everything is perfectly fine.
Sometime later I wake in my own bed, having crept back across the corridor in the very early hours of the morning; I can hear the nurses chatting quietly at the night station but no one seems to have noticed me. I still have butterflies in my stomach. Michael has changed everything, and all I can think of is him.
Does your mind ever race ahead of itself and create scenarios for the future? I had envisaged a thousand different roles. How we will both overcome our illnesses and spend our lives together riding horses and wearing cowboy hats.
Now the early morning light is creeping through my side room window, I am beginning to have my doubts. I feel sick again – Emotionally and physically drained. I reach for my diary and see it is Sunday already. I am going home in a little over a week.
So how can anything ever happen for us? We will be miles apart. Michael will recover from his operation and I have yet to face mine. I am truly disheartened and manage to convince myself that he will not care either way; he will focus on getting well again and finding a girlfriend with hair. I find this more depressing than my current life expectancy.
I close my eyes and relax my mind until I consciously will myself to fall asleep. It isn’t too hard, I don’t feel I have much to stay awake for. Maybe I imagined this connection with Michael to distract myself from the awful things I should have been trying to face. I have to contemplate what is left of my life, concentrate on how things should be handled with my family. Here I am thinking of how it will feel to be with a man I barely know, when something deep down tells me I am probably the farthest thing from his mind.
At least I have been honest, I think sadly. He can feel free to feel sorry for the poor girl he shared a few hours with once. I can see him in the pub with his friends in years to come, telling them about the girl in the room opposite his who didn’t make it. They tell him he was one of the lucky ones and he smiles and goes back to chatting up the barmaid.
A nurse with those damn stomach injections brings me round again, but she looks really young and nervous so I don’t shout at her. I even nearly smile a little.
‘Sorry, Anna,’ she says. ‘I’m Rebecca. This is to help prevent blood clots when you’re lying down so much. They told me to try and let you sleep.’
‘Did they say I was scary?’
She just laughs. ‘I’d shout at people too if they kept coming at me with needles.’
‘Have I had any visitors?’ I try to sound casual.
‘Yes, your mum and sister were here at little while ago, but you were fast asleep so they’re coming back in an hour.’
‘No-one else?’
‘I don’t think so. Were you expecting somebody?’
‘Not really, I just sleep so much I barely know where I am or who’s been to see me.’
She picked up my headscarf from where it had fallen by the bed.
‘You like horses then?’
I must have looked confused because she pointed to the scarf again. ‘Horseshoes, and the picture by your bed.’
I look to where she is pointing and my eyes fall on a picture of a pale blonde horse, with a flowing mane that shines like 24-carat gold, propped against my bedside lamp. I try to contain myself until she’s left the room, then fall off the bed in my haste to reach it. The picture shows an orangey red sky and a majestic horse reared defiantly up towards it, as though she knows even the sunset cannot compete against her beauty. It is called ‘The Palomino’. I look at it for a few moments then turn the card.
Meet me in Day Room One when you wake up, my beautiful Anna.
X
That is the moment I fall in love with Michael Torino.
***
We spent what was left of Sunday (six hours and forty-five minutes) sitting alone together in the day room – And every day for the next eight days. We talked about our childhoods. Though he didn’t want to talk much about his brother, he did say he was called Benjamin, or Benji.
‘I think he hated being called Benji, but it sort of stuck.’
He paused and took a sip of water.
‘What’s your sister like?’
He was nearly an expert subject changer as me.
‘Is she as charming as you?’ He gave the little laugh again.
‘Isabel is far more charming than I am and she hates her real name too. Everyone calls her Izzy.’ I look up and see two people walking towards us. ‘Actually, judge for yourself.’
As Isabel walked in with my mother, my heart crashed to the floor. She looked gorgeous in her irritatingly understated manner and much older than her almost fourteen years. She wore skinny jeans, ballet pumps and a T-shirt that shows off her slender brown arms and an unintentional touch of bare midriff. Her chestnut hair was tied back in a tight ponytail (I knew she was being sensitive because she never wears her hair up – it’s always cascading down her back and over her shoulders like mine used to be.) For weeks I’ve seen nothing but this damn ponytail and it annoyed the hell out of me. Maybe I want as many reasons for anger as possible, and her trying to take some of them away from me is making things worse. I forgot about trying to be nice in front of Michael and snapped at her.