Seven Days of Us(81)

“Ah, he’s asleep,” she said, sounding like a new mother admiring her baby.

“That’s OK. I’d like to see him anyway,” she said.

“Y’grand, you take your time, love. He might wake up when he hears your voice,” she said, eyes creasing like Sean’s.

Olivia walked into the sterile room. There he was, propped against pale green sheets, deep in a jungle of drips and wires and monitors. Still Sean, but different. She couldn’t believe how much weight he’d lost. Even after Kathy’s warning, and seeing so many Haag patients, it caught her off guard. His face was hollow, and his arms, flopping out of the hospital gown, had shrunk so that his elbows looked too big. Bluish dots peppered his throat—the remnants of the Haag rash. Their size confirmed that he had been Haag-negative for over twenty-four hours. She studied the ICU screen beside him, relieved to see respiratory rate, pulse, oxygen, and temperature were all in the normal parameters. A clipboard at the end of the bed recorded his meals, sleep, urine. She considered summoning a nurse and asking to see his bloods before he woke up, and told herself to let go. She needed to stop—to be here as his girlfriend, not his doctor.

Clearly, not everyone shared the media’s negative view of Sean. Get Well cards crowded the bedside cupboard, and the floor was heaped with presents. She put her gifts from the hospital shop on top of the pile, and then took them back again. She wanted to give them to him properly. She’d chosen a new Robert Harris and a big box of Maltesers—which he’d craved in Liberia. She realized it was the first time she’d enjoyed picking a present for somebody.

Flat, regular beeps from the monitor punctuated the steady rasp of his breathing. She sat on the visitor’s chair, wondering if she should wake him up to make the most of her time here. Now that she was with him, at last, it felt cruel to have to leave again. She said “Sean” a couple of times, but he didn’t stir. He’d always been an enviably heavy sleeper. She had imagined, stupidly, that she’d hug him on sight, but he looked too prone—too battered. Instead, she took his fingers in hers, careful not to dislodge the IV by the knuckles. His hand was cold, and she remembered how much she’d wanted to touch it that first night at the beach bar. She was about to nudge his shoulder, to wake him, but stopped. She wanted to just look at him for a while longer. Your baby’s father, she thought, trying to absorb what it meant. The two of them, combined in a whole new person.

“Sean,” she said again, louder. He still didn’t stir. She felt suddenly shy. What if she’d got everything all wrong, what if he was horrified at the news? What if he said it was all too soon? He wouldn’t, would he? She’d just tell him now, she decided. At least this way she could try the words, out loud, before he woke up.

“Sean, I’ve got news,” she said. She paused, even though he was still asleep. “I’m pregnant. We’re having a baby.”

His eyelids flickered. She carried on.

“I’ve been feeling sick, but I never thought—we were always so careful. I’ve already had a scan because—”

His eyes half opened and closed. She held her breath.

“Anyway, it’s so different when it’s you, not a patient. It was just this little lozenge, this tiny heartbeat flashing.” She remembered the throb of new life with a thrill, the pulse sound they’d just picked up, like a bird’s beating wings.

“O-livia,” he said, and his thumb stroked her hand.

“Sean!” She squeezed his hand back, and leaned forward so that she could rest her cheek against his gaunt face.

“We’re having a baby. Fantastic,” he whispered, and grinned, with his eyes still shut.





Andrew


THE STUDY, 34 GLOUCESTER TERRACE, CAMDEN, 4:09 P.M.


FROM: Andrew Birch <[email protected]>

TO: Sarah Gibbs <[email protected]>; Ian Croft <[email protected]>

DATE: Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 4:09 p.m.

SUBJECT: copy Jan 10th

Hi both,

Copy below—decided on a Japanese place I visited before Christmas, over Hourani & Co, which was dreary.

I’ll let this one speak for itself, but suffice to say I think the time is right. Despite my occasional tantrums, some of which I blush to recall, it has been a pleasure to work with you both. Sarah, I owe you a good lunch. The Ivy?


Andrew

PS: Ian, would you humor me by leaving the deliberately split infinitive “having boldly fallen” in situ. It’s a Star Trek reference—this being a tale of The Next Generation (ho ho). Which, it so happens, was my daughter Olivia’s favorite childhood TV program.

Thanks.


YUKIKO’S TABLE, Belgravia

Food: 5/5 ? Atmosphere: 4/5

And how was your Christmas, New Year, all the rest of it? Unremarkable as ever, passing in a fog of bad TV, superfluous Stilton, and unwanted presents? Readers, I can only tell you that mine was life-changing. You may remember that Chez Birch was a no-go zone over the festive season. My heroic daughter Olivia spent the run-up to Christmas treating Haag in Liberia, obliging us to spend a week in quarantine in North Norfolk. Quite a shock for the modern family, as you can imagine. Not least because a son I fathered as a young man (and to whose existence I was hitherto oblivious) turned up on our doorstep. Or, to be precise, in our hall, having boldly fallen through the front door—plunging himself into our quarantine. If this sounds like an abysmal modern play, it gets better. On the final day of quarantine my older daughter fainted, and might have choked on her own vomit in the manner of Jimi Hendrix, had not said long-lost son tended to her. While the rest of us flapped like the proverbial decapitated poultry, he risked contracting Haag without hesitation. Don’t worry, the happy ending’s coming. Olivia tested negative for Haag, transpiring, in fact, to be suffering from morning sickness and thus redeeming herself, in spirit, from junkie legend to the Duchess of Cambridge. In a nutshell, I have not only gained a son, but am shortly to gain a grandchild. I know, now, that life is too short to sweat the small stuff. Because to sweat the small stuff, day in, day out, is the great quotidian tragedy of our cosseted Western world. When I was a young man, I wrote about the big stuff. Wars, famine, human suffering. I thought a freshly slaughtered Maasai goat the height of culinary élan. At Olivia’s age, I, too, would have been in Liberia, reporting on the crisis my daughter has been working so bravely to contain. But for nearly thirty years I have written about . . . new restaurants. New restaurants are not the big stuff. They are the ultimate small stuff. If this Christmas showed me anything, it is that my heart is no longer in this column. I would like to apologize to every chef whose efforts I may have lampooned for good copy. I would not like to apologize to the Michelin-starred hellhole that turned me away for wearing jeans.