TODAY, WE ARE THRILLED TO WELCOME BACK OUR GUEST AUTHOR, LUCINDA HART, WHO IS SHARING AN EXCERPT FROM HER NOVEL, 'THE BEAUTIFUL BLUE' #RWRTeamBlog #ReadWriteRepeat

Heather’s had her shower and put her towel and swimsuit on the pile of laundry by the full washing machine. Jas is eating a sandwich in front of the TV. She looks tired. Heather knows she’s not giving Jas enough attention at the moment. She’s written the proposed date for Jas’s Caesarean in July on the calendar, but she’s not asking after her enough. Not about the pregnancy or Andrew or any of it.

“I’ll call the ward before I get some dinner,” Heather says.

Her fingers find the numbers by themselves. She sees in her mind the nurses’ station, the whiteboard, the thank-you cards, the telephone, which is ringing out and out and out. Eventually one of the nurses answers.

“I was going to call you,” she says. “Guy’s not so good tonight. He’s still got the chest infection and the urinary infection, but he’s very tachycardic, in atrial fibrillation at about 160. The doctors have given him some Digoxin and they’ll review him again in a couple of hours.”

“Should I come in?” Heather whispers, feels Jas nudging her arm.

“Come in if you’d like to,” the nurse says, “but until this AF has been sorted out I don’t think he’ll respond to you. I’ll call you when he’s been reviewed again.”

“Please do. And if anything changes.”

Jas finishes her sandwich, swallowing woodenly. Heather doesn’t eat anything. She checks her mobile for battery, and plugs it in to charge. Her own heart-rate feels fast and jagged in her chest. She stands by the phone, watching its single red light, waiting for it to flash and shriek. Nothing. She wanders into the utility room, unhooks the washing basket and opens the washing machine. Guy’s socks spill out – grey, black, navy. A set of his pyjamas. A hoodie she’d brought home covered in blood and phlegm. 

She carries the basket to the rack and starts hanging up the items. Happy memories. Can memories ever truly be happy? A memory is only a loss. Guy whisking eggs for an omelette

with a fork; Guy mowing the lawn, with the red cable thrown over his shoulder, half moons of sweat darkening the armpits of his shirt; Guy making up silly songs and poems for Jas; Guy leaning into an open car bonnet, wiping the oil dipstick carefully on a folded piece of kitchen paper; the damp smell of his shower gel drifting across the landing from the bathroom; the sweeping embrace of the capital G when he signs his name. Heather throws down a sock. All her memories are still in the present tense. Guy still has a present tense because his things are still in the house, his washing is still drying on the rack. His post still falls on the doormat. He’s here, but not here. He’s suspended, like Heather floating in the pool, caught between the worlds of air and water, held on the finest of membranes. He could breathe or he could drown.

The nurse rings back after two hours. Guy has been reviewed again and given more Digoxin. He is still in fast AF. There has been no change.

“We noticed there’s no DNR in his notes,” the nurse says. “Perhaps you should –”

“No,” Heather interrupts loudly. “You are right. There is no DNR. That’s how it should be.”

***

“I’m going to bed,” Jas says soon after. “Let me know anything.”

Alone downstairs Heather sits in the dark with the TV off. If she scrunches up her eyes she fancies she can see Guy sitting on his sofa, the way his legs crossed, the way his arm rested on the cushions.

He won’t ever sit there again. He won’t ever sleep in his bed again. He’ll never come home.

Heather’s stomach is raw. She finds a packet of Hula Hoops and eats them quickly. She makes tea. She’s frightened to ring the ward. They’ll start bullying her about the DNR again. They went over all this when Guy had his oesophagectomy. Guy believes his life is worth something. He wants to live it at all costs.

She lies back on the sofa and wraps a soft throw round herself. She’s too tired to walk upstairs. The salt from the Hula Hoops makes her throat dry. If only Guy’s throat could be dry, not that foaming, frothing gaping hole. Tracheostomy, she sounds the five syllables silently in her mind. A life-saving slash of the throat. That will kill Guy. 

She startles awake. The phone. Her neck’s on fire, jammed into the corner of the sofa. Grey dawn light in the room. She stumbles to pick up the handset before the answer machine kicks in.

“I think you should come in,” the nurse says. “He could arrest at any moment.”

When they arrive on the ward, they can see the curtains pulled tight around Guy’s cubicle. The shift has changed over, and a young male nurse leads them to an office. “The oncologist is coming to see you,” he says, offers them tea.

“No thanks,” Heather says. 

Jas is sucking fiercely on a mint. She was almost sick before they left the house. 

Heather cranes her neck back to see through the door. She winces at the tightness in her muscles after sleeping in a twisted ball on the sofa. Beyond the nurses’ station, beyond the metal breakfast trolley, she sees the curtains swish aside. Cassie and the oncologist step out of the cubicle, leaving the drapes half open. Heather can just see the trachy trolley at the end of Guy’s bed, the swabs, the bowls, the spare suction catheters.

“We seem to have the atrial fibrillation under control now,” the oncologist says when he comes in, “but the next forty-eight hours will be critical.”

“Should he be in Intensive Care?” Jas asks, unwrapping another mint.

“Not at present,” the oncologist says. “You realise, with Guy as he is, he won’t be able to have radio or chemo at the moment.”

They stand, one on each side of the bed, looking down at the husk of a man between them. Jas is crying, stroking her father’s thinning hair on his forehead. Heather can’t find tears. Here, in the very space where she is sure Guy will die, she cannot even summon her memories. All she can do is see, note facts. The thick dried sputum on Guy’s neck and chest. The navy hoodie draped over him, half pushed off. The damp bloodied gown. The mole on the side of his face. His hands, once bony, now swollen and dark. The rasp of his breath, the judder of his chest as he inhales. The thin blue lines of iris beneath his closed lids. 

Fluid froths in the tracheostomy hole. Jas reaches for the suction and clears it gently. Heather does not know which sound is worse: Guy’s gasping breath, or the wet gurgle of the suction catheter.

Heather and Jas travel together to see Guy for the next few days. As they walk across the asphalt, through the automatic doors, along the corridor, and up to the ward, Heather’s breathing falters, and nausea rushes at her. The walk along the short passage, past the abandoned wheelchairs, laundry trolleys, and tea trays, past the washbasin with the squirty soap, and into the ward itself. Heather’s eyes go first, as always, to the visible swathe of stained curtain around Guy’s bed. Sometimes the curtains are pulled closed, bulging with human shapes from inside – a nurse suctioning fluid from the trachy, a chest physio rattling Guy’s ribcage to loosen the phlegm, a healthcare assistant checking his vital signs on the flickering screen – and sometimes the curtains are pulled back, and Heather can see the metal trachy trolley at the foot of the bed. 

And he’s still here, she thinks, and the nausea judders and settles.

***

It’s just past midnight, and now it’s Saturday morning. Jas has gone to bed. Heather turns off the TV. It’s a programme about the weather. When she fell asleep on the sofa it was something about art history. She’s been sleeping for over an hour. The house is cold, even though summer is fast approaching. And with it, Guy’s birthday. 

Heather fills a glass with water at the sink, picks up her paperback where she left it on the kitchen table. There’s a dirty mug there too, and a plate, which she missed when she loaded the dishwasher. 

She walks out into the hall and time does something, speeds up or slows down, and she has a feeling, a bad feeling. She glances at the phone and its red light is still and steady. I’m tired, she thinks, that’s all, and takes a further step towards the stairs. The hall explodes with the shriek of the phone. Heather spins round. The red light is flashing, the handset lit up. She’s holding her glass and her book and, for a second, cannot think what to do with them. She drops her book to the floor and snatches the receiver, knowing that the next few seconds will change her life.

“Heather, it’s Cassie. You need to come in. Guy’s very unwell.”

“What d’you mean, unwell?” Heather thinks she may be shouting, but she’s not sure.

Movement at the top of the stairs. Jas. 

“He’s very poorly. His heart’s stopped.”

“There’s no DNR.”

“I know that. He’s having resus. But he’s really not good.”

Jas runs down the stairs.

“I must go,” Cassie says, and the line goes dead. Flatlines.

“I’ll get dressed,” Jas gabbles, and turns to go back up. She stumbles on Heather’s paperback.

Heather’s still holding her glass of water. She feels very cold. Her own heart is skipping.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Is he going to die?”

“I don’t know. He’s having resus, she said. Cassie. His heart stopped.” Heather gulps

her water. “I can’t drive.”

“I can. Let me get dressed.”

“Jas. Wait. There’s nothing we can do. It’ll be over before we get there. One way or another.”

They sit, opposite each other at the kitchen table. The dirty mug and plate are still there. Heather drains all her water and refills her glass. Jas is restless, holding in her tears. Heather knows Jas thinks they should be in the car, racing towards Guy, but she can’t do it. After all this time, she can’t. She has to know what she’ll find when she arrives.

Again, the phone fractures the night. Heather looks at Jas, and picks it up.

“Heather, we’ve got him back,” Cassie says.

***

Jas has gone up to bed. Heather has promised to wake her if there is any news. She sits downstairs in the hard light of the kitchen. When she goes to the sink to fill the kettle, she sees a huge brown and cream cockchafer on the sill. A spider scrabbles in a corner cobweb. Heather suddenly wants to stand out there in the garden, hearing the rustles and sighs of the night creatures, feeling the soft brush of a moth on her arm. 

Instead she makes tea and sits down again, rereads the same page she’s been reading over and over. At four, her eyes hardly focussing, she calls the ward. The healthcare worker answers and fetches Cassie.

“I’m watching him all night,” Cassie tells Heather. “Let me just go back to him a sec.”

A clang and a squeak, then quiet for a moment.

“I asked him if he had any messages for you, and he wrote on the board: why would I have messages? Why’s she ringing at this time?”

“That’s more awake than he’s been for ages,” Heather says.

“Get some rest. Come and see him tomorrow.”

***

“Do you know what happened last night?” Heather asks Guy.

He shakes his head. 

At least his eyes are open. In some ways he looks better than he has for a while, but he has no feeding tube in his nose or abdomen, and the food pump is once again pushed into the corner. The window is open a crack, and a cool slice of air hits Heather’s bare arm. The revolving fan on Guy’s bedside table whirrs softly as it turns. 

“You had a cardiac arrest,” Jas says.

Guy fumbles on the bed cover for his Boogie Board. The stylus has unclipped. Heather reaches for it.

Scared.

“Just another temporary setback.” Jas smiles at Guy.

He clears the screen. Could do with non-temp setback.

“No,” Heather and Jas say together, their eyes meeting over Guy’s bed.

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The Beautiful Blue: Amazon.co.uk: Hart, Lucinda: 9781839194955: Books

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Author Lucinda Hart

BIO

I’m a novelist from Cornwall. THE BEAUTIFUL BLUE is from my group of family dramas set close to where I live. This one is dedicated to my late father, who died from laryngeal cancer in 2017. The book combines the theme of that cancer with swimming, which was something I came to later in life.

I live in the house where I grew up, with my mother, my two daughters, and our guinea pigs. Apart from writing and reading, my interests are running, swimming and keeping fit, ju jitsu, art and history.

Please join me on my Facebook page Lucinda Hart – Author, or lucindahart1 on Instagram.

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COMING SOON: On Sunday, 2nd August, we are delighted to welcome back our guest author, R Janet Walraven, who is sharing an excerpt from her novel, 'LIAM: The Boy Who Saw The World Upside Down'.