Authors: Andrea Hughes
I squeezed his hand, “well, you’re no bloody help.”
“Just keep watching.”
I fell silent; watching, waiting. The seconds ticked by with no movement from the hospital room beneath (above?) me. The picture was still hazy when suddenly the door to the hospital room opened and a man walked in, stopping beside the bed.
“Bloody hell,” my fingers twitched in recognition and I felt Frank’s tighten in response. “What’s Will doing there? What’s going on?”
Frank sighed, “keep watching, Kate.”
Frustrated, I growled and stared at the ceiling where Will was standing by the bed, holding the hand of the person within, he seemed … sad? Angry? Confused?
“Frank …?”
“It’s you, Kate, in the bed.” Frank sounded resigned.
“I don’t understand,” I stared at him.
“Keep watching,” he ordered. “Kate, do you remember what happened before you came here?”
I frowned, watching as Will sat on a chair beside the bed. This was all getting way too weird. “I can’t remember anything about what I’ve been doing recently. I know who I am and the people in my life but I can’t recall specific details about what I’ve been doing. But this is a dream, right? Just a dream.”
Frank’s fingers twitched. “Not entirely. You’re dying, Kate.”
“What?” I sat up in bed, pulling my hand from his and turned to stare at the man beside me. Feeling suddenly exposed I pulled the sheet up to cover my breasts, holding the silk tight against my skin. “What the hell are you going on about? I’m not dying, I’m dreaming, that’s all.”
“Kate, lie down,” he turned onto his side leaning up on his elbow and patted the bed beside him.
“No! You’ve got to tell me what the hell is going on. What the bloody hell are you talking about?”
He sighed again, “Kate, do you remember I died?”
I frowned, suddenly feeling like a spectator in my own life, someone who had walked in half way through the performance.
“And the burglar, with the gun … he doesn’t jog your memory in the slightest?”
I flopped back down onto the bed. Will was still hanging around on the ceiling, giving me a bizarre perspective problem, making me feel giddy. I stared as my husband leaned over the immobile, bed-ridden figure and with gentle fingers pushed the hair back off her face.
“What about the baby, Kate? Do you remember her?”
“My baby,” I whispered, my hand automatically rubbing my belly. I shoved the covers down, exposing my naked body to below the waist. The bulge of advanced pregnancy had gone, disappearing as if it had never been there. I pummelled at my stomach with both hands, feeling the tears well up in my eyes. “Our baby. Where is it, Frank? Where’s our baby?”
Frank reached out, grasping my fists, “Kate, stop it. Look!”
He gestured with his chin towards the ceiling where Paula had entered the hospital room carrying blankets. She spoke to Will, who nodded and took the blankets carefully from her.
“Meet our daughter, Kate.” Frank’s voice was heavy with emotion.
I gasped as a tiny face came into view, wrapped securely in my husband’s arms, peeping out from behind a flap of the blanket. “Is she …” my voice cracked and I cleared my throat.
Frank pulled the sheet back over my body. “She’s perfect, Kate. Beautiful.”
“What about me?” I turned to Frank, “what happened?”
He was staring at the tiny body in Will’s arms. “So beautiful,” he whispered, “just like her mother.”
“Frank? What happened?”
Still gazing at the baby, Frank let out a heavy breath. “You disturbed a burglar when you came home yesterday. He panicked and shot you here.” He placed his fingers on my body, just above the swell of my breast. “When you fell you crashed into the stairs and started to bleed. You almost lost the baby, Kate.”
I rubbed absently at the spot Frank had just pointed out on my chest, feeling a shiver run the length of my spine. I reached out and grabbed his hand again.
“I was bleeding?”
Frank sniffed and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “The placenta had ripped away from the side of the uterus –”
“Placenta Abrupta?”
“The baby was distressed and needed to be born straight away. You were so lucky, Kate, both of you. If Martha had been any further away she might have ignored the gunshot thinking it was something else.”
“Martha?” My eyes strayed once more towards the ceiling where Will was still sitting silently beside the bed, my baby in his arms. Was he crying?
“When Martha heard the gunshot she turned around to see what was going on. She saw the man run out of your house and ran back to check it out.” He hesitated, “a few more seconds, Kate, she’d have been at her car, and unlikely to take any notice of the noise. You’d be dead.”
“Dead?”
“You and the baby. Anyway, you were rushed to hospital and stabilised, the baby was born by caesarean and now …”
“Now?”
“Now you need to return, Kate; you need to get back there and live. Your shell,” he pointed towards the ceiling in illustration, “can’t survive much longer without
you
, the life force, what some people call your soul. If you stay here your earth-bound body will die.”
“So if I stay here now, with you, I can stay with you forever?”
Frank shrugged, “in theory, maybe. But there’s someone else who needs you a lot more than I ever will. I’m dead, there’s nothing that anyone can do to change that but our baby is alive and she needs you. She’s lost me, don’t take away her mother as well.”
He hugged me suddenly, long and hard, his strong arms full of love and sorrow, passion and despair. “I love you so much, Kate, so much that it hurts.” He released me just enough so he could look deep into my eyes. “If I was alive and I had to live without you, I honestly don’t know that I could. I don’t think I’d want to.” I opened my mouth to answer but Frank’s finger on my lips silenced me. “Don’t say a word, please, just let me be with you, let me love you, one last time.”
I could feel the tears running unbidden down my face as Frank’s mouth came down onto mine. Our tears were mingling on my cheeks, running like a river into the hollows of my ears, soaking into the pillow beneath my head. I closed my eyes as his body slid on top of mine, his hardness between my legs asking, begging:
let me love you, Kate. Let me be with you one last time.
My legs opened, my hips thrusting gently towards him, the answer given with no reserves:
love me, Frank. Share yourself and let me share everything I have with you.
Gently he slid inside, his caresses making me gasp and moan, his hardness fitting into my moist softness as if we’d been cast from mirror images of the same mould. As the sexual release took over I shook and screamed, clinging to him, but his sobs were a long way away, his words incoherent and as the orgasm finally wiped out all reality, I understood what he was trying to tell me as I fell through the air, away from my lover.
Tell her I love her, Kate. Tell her …
… goodbye.
2
4 May
“Well, that looks great, Kate. All healing nicely.”
I smiled at the doctor and pulled my gown down over my stomach. The discomfort from my caesarean was more of a dull ache now, leaving me tired but relatively pain free.
Physically.
Emotionally and psychologically? Possibly scarred for life but who’s counting.
The doctor pulled my sheet back up and patted my shoulder reassuringly. “You know, I reckon we might just let you escape from this prison tomorrow.”
I nodded solemnly, wishing he would leave quickly. “If I promise not to ask for extra dessert tonight will you sign my way to freedom?”
The doctor grinned and made a note on my chart. “I’ll definitely consider it. Get some rest, I’ll be back later.” And with a jaunty wave he swept out.
I felt myself relax and for the thousandth time found myself staring at the ceiling, hoping for … what? A glimpse of Frank? A replay of our final moments together? Maybe even a view of the future, a future without him.
I knew it would never happen; things like that only happened in dreams, or death. Only my memories remained now; my memories and my beautiful baby. Tearing my eyes away I gazed instead onto the sleeping face of Frank’s daughter in the cradle beside the bed.
“She’s beautiful, Kate.”
The familiar voice was welcome and I smiled, dragging my eyes from the baby. “I’m getting my parole tomorrow. The doctor just told me.”
Martha grinned and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek in greeting. “I’m so pleased. You must have been going stir crazy stuck in here.” She peered into the cradle and touched the baby’s cheek gently with the tip of her finger. “She’s got Frank’s eyes, I think, Frank’s eyes and your chin, I’m sure of it.”
“Do you think so?” I peered intently into the cradle where the baby was beginning to stir. “I was never much good at working that out. I always thought Kensie looked like me then everyone else said she was the spitting image of Will. I still can’t see the resemblance.”
Martha laughed, “well, take it from me, love, this little one has picked up the best features from each parent.”
We fell silent, watching as the little body began to squirm madly, eyes still tightly closed. I sighed, “here we go again. She feeds little and often at the moment because she was premature. At least she sleeps a lot too. Could you …?” I gestured towards the cradle and Martha reached in, just as the first tiny cries started.
I shifted onto my side and guided the groping little mouth to my nipple. Silence descended again and we both heaved matching sighs of relief, making me giggle and Martha snort in amusement.
“She may be a beautiful wee thing but I sure has a good set of lungs,” Martha observed, sitting beside the bed and watching as the baby settled in for her feed.
I laughed, “you can say that again.”
“You seem a little happier than when I saw you yesterday. Not so sore?”
I nodded, “I’ve also done a lot of thinking, made a few decisions over the last couple of days and I feel … lighter, somehow, relieved of some of my burdens.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I looked apologetically at her. “I need to speak to Will first. I owe him that after everything he’s been through.”
Martha nodded agreement, “is it to do with … you know … what happened when you were unconscious?”
I shrugged, “a little, maybe.” Martha had been the only person I’d told about my out-of-body experience through bucket-fs of tears. I’d then promised myself never to discuss it again.
And I never would but in the darkest recesses of my mind, in my dreams, the experience still haunted me. I’d relived it time and time again. That the memory would fade with time, I had no doubt but for now the grief and anger was still so fresh and raw and the touch of Frank’s fingers so vital on my skin that just the thought of him brought unshed tears to my eyes.
I felt Martha’s hand on mine in support and glanced at my friend, smiling sadly. “Life goes on,” I whispered and placed a gentle kiss onto the head of my daughter.
*
Will sat down on the side of the bed, the baby cradled in his arms, “have you decided on a name yet?”
I touched the little girl’s foot fondly. “Not yet. Nothing seems to suit her.”
Will glanced at me self-consciously. “I did have one thought,” he hesitated then rushed out the second half of the sentence, “maybe you’d like to call her Frances. I mean, it’s a pretty name and she’s a very pretty baby and I’m sure … well, I’m sure
he
would approve.”
Frances
. The feminine version of Frank. A constant reminder to Will that he was not the baby’s biological father.
“Will –”
“I don’t mind, Kate. Not too much, anyway. It’s important she remembers her father.”
The pause before the word
father
was so tiny that I chose to ignore it, just as I chose to ignore his aversion to mentioning Frank’s name. Will had earned that right.
Will handed me the baby. “Kate, have you thought any more about moving back home? The doctor said you’d need help once you were discharged, at least until the wounds heal.” His eyes automatically glanced at the bandaged gunshot wound on my shoulder, his face going pale at the sight of it. “I’ve managed to twist Carl’s arm and he’s given me a months paid paternity leave, so I’ll be at your beck and call twenty four hours a day. You can’t cope on your own in
his
house –”
“Her
house,” I corrected gently, “it belongs to Frances now.”
Will waved the interruption away, “and it would be really nice to have you back again.” The embarrassment had returned and I raised my eyebrows encouragingly, waiting for him to finish. I’d already made up my mind, knew what I was going to do but it was nice seeing him beg, just this once. Might never get the chance again.
Will cleared his throat, “I’ve … um … made up the spare bedroom into a nursery for Frances. Just in case. There’s a bed in there for you and a cot and toys and Kensie and Tom helped paint it pretty girly colours and –”