When I Lost You: A Gripping, Heart Breaking Novel of Lost Love.
Kelly Rimmer
For Catie
Part 1
1
Molly – July 2015
I have realised that it is possible to love someone with your whole heart, but at the same time to hate them with an equal force of passion. These emotions can somehow balance each other out, leaving an exhausted sense of emptiness. In the ten days I’ve spent sitting by this hospital bed staring at my husband, I have wondered again and again how we got here. Not how he got here, into this ICU ward and in such a terrible state – that was almost inevitable. No, the surprising here to my current scenario is my ambiguity towards the man on the bed. Leo was – is – the love of my life. I will love him until I die. It still seems impossible that I can loathe him too, and yet here we are.
This comatose Leo is still handsome despite the uneven beard and the swathe of bandages he’s been left with after the injury. He is pale and unconscious but he still looks dangerous… he is dangerous. Leo has always treated his body and his life as if they were nothing more than sacrificial offerings to be made to his work. Beneath the sheets and the hospital gown his body is covered in scars – those from this current disaster, and an endless series of faded marks from so many earlier incidents.
My husband has a way of dragging people along on a journey with him – even, apparently, when the journey is to nowhere at all. In the days since his accident I’ve become a member of the living dead myself – leaving his side only to sleep when my body forces me to do so, passing through the days in a strange kind of coma of my own. Unlike Leo, I have of course been conscious, but every non-essential function of life has been put on hold.
All that I have really done during these awful days has been to feel the full gamut of emotions arising from our situation. In the last few years of my life I have thought of myself as something of an expert in loneliness but for all those days apart from Leo, I realise now that I’d only ever experienced a shadow of it. For the last four years, through ups and downs and rough patches and good times, Leo has been my ‘go-to’ person. More than once lately I have picked up my phone to tell him about how scared I am and how lost I feel – but right now, I realise that every one of the layers of lost and alone in my life is his fault.
I was stunned when the doctors said it was time to reduce the sedation that had induced Leo’s coma. In the first few hours I’d signed organ donation forms and discussed with his specialists at which point heroic measures would still be appropriate. I’d even made the awful call back to Leo’s parents and his editor in Sydney to discuss a potential funeral. Even when he’d stabilised his doctors were determined to keep my expectations realistic, and so any time I displayed my habitual optimistic streak, I was quickly corrected with a dose of reality. The chances of a full recovery had been slim to start with and they grew less likely with each passing day. Even if Leo woke up, they said, there was almost no chance he’d still be the man he once was.
But then they started turning the respirator off for trial periods and I got to watch him breathe on his own again for brief stretches of time. I’ve so loathed the sound of that damned machine – the incessant whoosh as it filled his lungs with air, and the matching hiss as it sucked it back out again. Twenty-four hours a day the respirator has been a soundtrack to the waiting and the fear, grating on my nerves at times, leaving me feeling strangely ungrateful whenever I reflected on the safety net it had provided him. One night I went to the hotel for a shower and a bit of sleep and when I came back early the next morning, the tubes had been removed from his throat. Watching him breathe so steadily on his own has filled me with a hope that I desperately needed. Despite everything that has happened between us in the last twelve months, and the ocean of despair of these past weeks, I still can’t bear to give up hope. I want people like Leo in the world, whether he’s in my world or not.
It’s late in the morning of day eleven after my arrival in Rome when I am woken by the sound of Leo coughing and grunting. I have been asleep in the chair under the window, my head on one armrest, my legs dangling over the other.
‘I’m here, Leo,’ I call. I’m not sure if he can move his neck, so I lean over the bed as I reach it. I see frustration in his wrinkled brow, so I fumble for his glasses. It’s a relief to finally slip them back onto his face. Now that the swelling and bruising are fading, he has looked so strange without his trademark tortoise-shell frames. I see his pupils shrink and expand as he adjusts to the lenses again and then his gaze fixes on mine. I offer a smile, but it’s weak and wobbly because I am too scared even to breathe. At first, Leo doesn’t react at all – and for a moment I feel the crushing swell of disappointment in my chest – what if this is as good as it gets? What if he is awake now, but will never speak or respond to my presence?
My hips and legs are stiff. I can’t stand over him forever, so I sink slowly into the chair beside his bed. Suddenly, my emotions swing again – now I’m excited because he turns his head to follow me. He stares at me – concentrating intently, but then his eyes narrow suddenly and I’m sure I see something of an accusation in them. I am instantly defensive – is he questioning my right to be here? What did he expect me to do – stay in Sydney and leave him here alone? Once again, he has no idea what he has put me through. The hide of the man is incomprehensible.