Beautiful(18)
They wished her luck when she said goodbye to them. She gave a box of chocolates to the young woman in the room next to her, who had lost both arms and a foot, and had three young children who were being cared for by her mother, waiting for her at home. Her husband had died in the blast of the bomb. It reminded Véronique again that in many ways, she had been lucky. And even without working, she was financially able to take care of herself. Many of the victims were in dire financial straits since they weren’t able to work, and government payments for the wounded had not kicked in yet. Victims of the attack in Paris four months earlier than the one in Brussels were still waiting for government funds too. The machinery of government did not move quickly. In many ways, Véronique was better off than her fellow victims.
The nurses gave her a cake and a little party the night before she left, and she thanked them for all the help they had given her. They were happy for her that she was leaving, and they said they were going to miss her.
After she went back to her room, one of the nurses said to another, “I used to look at her in magazines, and envy her, she was so beautiful, and now I wonder what will happen to her.”
“She’ll be all right,” the older nurse reassured her. “She’s young, she’ll come through it.” But they both knew that wasn’t always true. Victims of catastrophic events like the one she’d lived through often committed suicide, unable to adjust to the changes they had to face. At least Véronique had shown no sign of suicidal tendencies so far.
She had told them she’d be back for further surgeries. She intended to come back to the doctors she knew, and didn’t want to try and find new ones in Paris. She didn’t know anyone to recommend them to her, and didn’t want to ask, and she had had enough medical attention to last a lifetime. She had no complaints about the treatment she’d had at the military hospital, but couldn’t bear the thought of more operations.
She lay awake in bed that night, and only slept a few hours. She was torn about going home, both terrified and jubilant. In her heart of hearts she still magically believed that her mother would be there to greet her and tell her it was all a big mistake, she hadn’t died and had been waiting for her in Paris all along. She knew that wasn’t going to happen, but she kept hoping anyway.
She left quietly the next morning, with the nurses waving as she got into a taxi to take her to the train station. She had a small tote bag with her toiletries and her computer in it, some underwear they had given her at the hospital. She was wearing the clothes the nurse had bought for her, a pair of jeans and a gray sweater, a pair of navy blue sneakers, and she wore the surgical mask for the trip home. She felt as though she was returning to Paris as a stranger, not herself.
She bought her ticket for the TGV high-speed train to Paris, and watched the countryside rush past as she sat rigid in her seat, suddenly terrified that there would be an explosion on the train. She was shaking and she could easily imagine it happening. Images of the Zaventem attack kept flashing through her mind. There were beads of sweat on her face by the time the train slid into the station. She rushed from the train, and took great gulps of air to calm down the moment she got outside. Having survived the trip, it felt wonderful to be back in Paris. She hailed a cab, and on the drive to the seventeenth arrondissement, she saw all the familiar landmarks and nearly cried. She had thought she would never see her home again. So many times she had thought she would die in the hospital, and wished she had. She sat staring at her building when the cab stopped in front of it, and didn’t get out for a minute.
“Is this the right address?” the driver asked her, and she nodded. He was puzzled by why she didn’t get out. Most of his passengers were in a hurry, this one wasn’t. She seemed to hesitate, as though she wasn’t sure what to do next and was in a foreign land. She was savoring the moment and, at the same time, dreading having to enter the empty apartment.
Bernard had sent her a set of keys that Marie-Helene kept at the office for emergencies, since all of their keys had been lost at the airport. She held them now in a shaking hand, paid the driver, and finally got out. She entered the numbers for the outer door code, pushed the heavy iron doors open, and walked inside. She used an electronic badge for a second door, and slowly walked up the stairs to her mother’s apartment on the second floor. The building was silent and empty at that time of day. There was a guardian who must have been having lunch. Véronique slowly unlocked the front door with shaking hands, and turned off the alarm in the unlit entrance hall and looked around. Everything was as her mother had left it. There was a navy blue wool jacket sitting on a chair, an umbrella in a stand. All the familiar antiques that Marie-Helene had inherited from her parents and Véronique had grown up with.
The woman who came to clean had kept the apartment dusted and in good order. There was a stack of mail, which Bernard’s secretary came to pick up every week and went through, paying bills, opening correspondence, and throwing junk mail away. The door to her mother’s little study was open and there was no sign of activity. She could see the living room with all the familiar furniture. The shades were drawn throughout the apartment. It all had a dry, brittle feeling to it, like a fallen leaf. The dining room was empty, and her own girlhood bedroom was down a hallway next to her mother’s, with the kitchen at the end of the apartment. It was all there, but there was no sign of her mother, just as she had feared, and she had never felt so alone in her life. She sat down on a chair in the entrance hall, her legs were shaking hard, and she started to cry like the abandoned child she felt like. She pulled off the surgical mask, and her tears flooded her face and drenched her scars. She cried until she had no more tears to shed, and walked down the hall to her mother’s bedroom. The bed was made and her slippers were underneath the night table. They were pink satin with a little ball of fluff on them. Véronique had bought them for her for Mother’s Day the year before. It seemed like a lifetime ago.