The Things You Didn't See(14)
‘Is she in pain?’ I ask, still standing back.
Dad looks at me then, wide-eyed, as if he’d forgotten I was there, then he turns back to the nurse.
‘Well, is she?’ Dad demands, ignoring the nurse’s advice, his hand clenched.
Lauren hesitates. Her face is set in a forced half-smile. ‘The drip includes morphine, so she almost certainly isn’t. We really can’t be sure, when someone’s in a coma, how much they do feel. But she was lucky, Mr Hawke. If the bullet had travelled an inch to the right she’d have died.’
‘You call that luck?’ he growls. ‘This is a nightmare.’
We sit together in the hot room. Dad by the window, me by the door, you in the bed. I’m so exhausted by all that’s happened, I can’t fight it any more. I close my eyes and dip into sleep so quickly it’s as though I’ve been anaesthetised.
‘Cassandra? Sweetheart, wake up.’
I open my eyes, finally he’s here: Daniel. His dark hair falls into his brown eyes, he wraps me in his arms, and it feels like medicine. He’s wearing his usual outfit – loose navy joggers and a polo shirt with the Samphire Master logo. This is the man who cured you, then me. I’ve never needed him more than now.
‘Oh, darling, you poor thing. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier, but I’m here now. Everything’s going to be okay.’
I believe him: he cures diseases when doctors have given up hope. If anyone can help us through this, it’s him. I sink into him, his minty, freshly showered scent, give in to what is being offered. With his arms around me, the world feels safer.
‘Can you help her out of any pain, Dan? Maybe some reiki healing?’
He releases me gently and moves to the bed, reaches a hand and places it on your leg, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, he says, ‘I can feel her fighting to stay with us. There was a moment I thought we’d lose her.’
‘When?’ My question comes from nowhere conscious.
‘Hmm?’ He lifts his eyes to meet mine, and I repeat the question.
‘When did you think we’d lose her?’
‘When she was in the operating theatre, of course.’
‘But you weren’t even here!’
He frowns, reaches forward so his hand cups my chin and I feel weak at his proximity. God help me, I love this man.
‘Your mum and I have a connection, Cass. I’ve been with you in spirit the whole time. That’s why I called Clive and asked him to come – I knew you needed support. But I had things to sort out: I did a pre-record of the radio show so I can be with you without interruption.’
He studies the bruises on your neck, the dressings on your head and throat where blood has seeped through, but he doesn’t seem shocked, just curious. Daniel always keeps his demeanour. I’ve never seen him cry and I’ve never heard him shout – he has a quiet authority that people respond to instinctively. It’s one of the many reasons I fell in love with him: my dizzy admiration for a personality trait I so completely lack.
Finally, he turns his attention back to me. The warmth in his brown eyes is so soothing, it’s almost indecent.
‘So,’ I finally say, ‘what was the pre-record?’
‘I interviewed a woman who has a brain tumour. The doctors believe she’s only got weeks to live, but they’re wrong. She’s healing.’ He says this neutrally, as if it isn’t a miracle, but there are people in Suffolk who owe him their lives. Each Christmas, we get gift hampers from his patients. He gets stopped in the streets by grateful relatives wanting to shake his hand. One of the people he saved was the female track cyclist who won triple gold at the last Olympics, one of them was me. ‘Then I drove to Norfolk, to see Victoria and explain that she wouldn’t be coming home for half-term after all. I thought it best to keep everything as normal as possible, so I took her and Dawn to that American diner they like so much. I hated to think of you going through everything here on your own, but I knew I had to do what was best for the family.’
Even though I’m being unreasonable, given how busy he’s been, I still feel he should have been with me. I punish him by saying, ‘Clive gave me some Prozac and some other drug. I don’t know what.’
Daniel respects Clive, and understands the need for psychiatry alongside his holistic approach, but he doesn’t approve of drugs. His therapy includes meditation and herbal remedies – Suffolk recipes that use samphire and go back to the Iceni. He’s cured everything from infertility to cancer, that’s why he has a regular show on Radio Suffolk, why the Studio is doing so well, and why Samphire Health Spa is such a wonderful idea. You believed that too, Mum, until last night.
‘Have the tablets helped, love?’ he asks, doubtfully.
‘It’s too early to say.’ Though I’m not crying, so something worked – maybe some trazodone made it to my bloodstream before I purged. ‘I feel tired, a bit flattened.’
‘I’m going to take you home to get some sleep,’ he says with determination, ‘then from tomorrow I’m putting you on my Samphire Strength juice programme. You’ve been through a traumatic experience: you need to heal from the inside out.’
I feel like one of his clients again, swept up in his conviction that he knows exactly what’s right for me. His hand covers mine, and I feel steadied.