When You Are Mine(64)

‘No. I’ll meet you there.’

I’m already scanning the street, looking for a cab. Two pass me, but both are occupied. I start to run. Traffic is backed up along High Holborn.

A black cab is coming towards me, but somebody has stepped onto the road to flag it down. I start sprinting towards them, arriving as the cab comes to a halt. My fingers are first to the door handle.

‘I’m sorry. It’s an emergency.’

I scramble into the back seat. The man protests.

‘Royal Brompton Hospital,’ I tell the driver, who is young and Asian. He is about to take sides, but my urgency and the destination seems to make up his mind. The man on the footpath hammers his hand on the roof of the cab as we pull away.

‘What’s happened?’ asks the driver.

‘My father had a heart attack.’

Reacting instantly, he swings into a side street, taking a shortcut that misses two sets of lights. Accelerating between intersections, he talks about how his grandad had a stroke in India, but he couldn’t get back in time to say goodbye. I’m only half listening. Instead, I am picturing my father – how frail he looked at his birthday party. He’ll be a terrible patient. He’ll ignore instructions and be rude to the doctors and flirt with the nurses and try to organise a mass escape of patients to the nearest pub.

I have spent ten years avoiding this man and trying to deny his existence, but I have never escaped his shadow. That was made clear to me by Drysdale. This should make me angry, but instead I’m clutching my phone and quietly praying to a God that I don’t believe in. Whispering, ‘Please don’t die. Please don’t die.’

A receptionist directs me to the ICU, on level 3 of the Sydney wing. Leaving the lift, I follow the signs along a brightly lit corridor. The counter at the ICU is unoccupied. I press the buzzer and a nursing sister appears, pulling a mask away from her face.

‘My father is here. Edward McCarthy.’

‘Only two people are allowed by his bedside,’ she explains. ‘The rest of your family are in the lounge.’ She points along the corridor. ‘The whole village.’

Two dozen people are crammed inside a space meant for half that number. My uncles and their wives, cousins and second cousins. There aren’t enough seats for everyone, so some are leaning against walls, or sitting on windowsills. Four teenagers are kneeling around a jigsaw puzzle on a coffee table.

‘She’s here!’ says Daragh, who lumbers towards me, almost tripping over a pair of outstretched legs in his eagerness to reach me first.

Heads turn but I glimpse them only briefly before Daragh smothers me in his arms.

‘How is he?’ I ask, as his chest hairs tickle my nose through the undone buttons of his shirt.

‘Poorly,’ says Daragh, stroking my hair. ‘But I’ll kill the fucker if he dies.’

‘He’s not going to die,’ says Finbar.

‘I know that,’ says Daragh, ‘I’m trying to lighten the mood.’

‘You’re a right comedian.’

Finbar has a grandchild sitting on his shoulders, a little boy, who has to duck his head to avoid hitting the ceiling.

I notice Henry, who is surrounded by my aunts. No doubt they are quizzing him on his religion, politics, parents and employment status.

‘What did the doctors say?’ I ask.

‘They’re going to operate in the morning,’ says Daragh.

‘If he’s strong enough,’ says Aunt Mary, his wife.

‘What sort of operation?’

‘A heart bypass.’

‘I knew something was wrong,’ says Daragh. ‘He had that turn at his party.’

‘Doc Carmichael is fuckin’ useless,’ says Finbar. ‘We should pay him a visit.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ I say.

His wife Poppy is hovering. ‘Constance did a wonderful thing. She gave Eddie CPR until the paramedics arrived. She was breathing into him and pumping his chest. She saved his life.’

‘Who knew she had it in her?’ says Daragh, speaking with a new respect.

‘Hid that light under a bushel,’ says Finbar.

‘What’s a bushel?’ asks Daragh.

‘Fuck knows,’ says Finbar. ‘Maybe it’s like the two birds?’

‘Nah, that’s a bush, not a bushel.’

Poppy ignores them. ‘I’ll tell Constance that you’re here.’

‘You don’t have to bother her.’

‘Eddie has been asking for you.’

As she moves towards the door I notice Tempe, who is standing alone between the wall and a vending machine. She waves briefly, pushing her hand down again, as though not wanting to attract attention.

‘You didn’t have to come,’ I say.

‘I wanted to … but I didn’t think it would be so …’

‘Busy?’

‘Hectic.’

Tempe isn’t good in crowded rooms. It’s not the number of people that bothers her – she’s fine in busy galleries and museums and on packed Tube trains. She has a problem when everybody else seems to know each other and she is the odd one out. Her normal bravado and confidence seem to desert her when there are too many potential conversations. With small gatherings, she can make eye contact and remember people’s names.