Gabriel's Angel Read online

  ‘Ellie, can you please tell me what is going on, because I am going to have to manage this. I don’t think either of us want the consultant making this into an issue.’

  So Ellie told Sarah everything. How Izzy was going to take the sperm but couldn’t go through with it, and so Moira had volunteered, and that she could only assume Izzy had changed her mind and tried to do the business solo, so to speak. ‘What did the consultant say?’

  ‘He was angry. He immediately assumed it had something to do with the IVF. He called security and he made his registrar check that Izzy didn’t have any bottles of sperm on her person. He seemed quite satisfied when he found an empty pot in her bag and then he took her details, said this was a very serious matter and that he would be notifying the police and reporting an assault.’

  ‘Oh my God. What are we going to do? Sorry, it’s not your problem …’

  ‘Of course it is, this is my ward. Anyway, more importantly, how are you?’

  ‘I’m OK thanks. I had the eggs harvested today.’

  ‘Oh really? How many?’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘That’s good. I had six—still got three embryos in the freezer, we’re planning to try again next year, when Ira starts school.’

  ‘You … you had IVF? And … and you helped me …’

  Sarah smiled. ‘Are you phoning in the morning? I was so nervous making that phone call.’

  ‘Yes, they said there may be seven or eight embryos, but I keep thinking: what are the odds of that? You know, he’s not at his healthiest is he, and his sperm were never exactly award winners.’

  ‘They only need eight Ellie, they don’t even have to swim.’

  ‘I know.’ But Ellie had forgotten how not to worry.

  ‘Look, what are the chances of Izzy saying that she was simply trying to stimulate Gabe—a misguided, futile attempt to help her friend?’

  ‘How would she explain the pot?’

  ‘Good point. Oh hell, that’s circumstantial, she may have needed a small pot to carry her …’

  ‘ … peanuts?’ Ellie said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ellie looked at Sarah and giggled. She instantly felt guilty; she was in no position to laugh, certainly not here, not yet, not for a very long time. Fate—and by fate we mean luck, coincidence, an unplanned event that could have happened any time but just bumbled into being now—decided to prove it. Sarah’s door opened and a nurse put her head in. She saw Ellie but looked quickly at Sarah, ‘Crash, Mr Bell, crash team coming.’ Sarah stood up quickly, ‘You may want to stay here.’

  But Ellie didn’t. Sarah strode quickly to Gabriel’s room and Ellie ran after her. Numb legs stumbling down the corridor, she was choking on the words, ‘Not yet, not ready.’ When they got to Gabriel, one nurse was leaning on his chest pushing and counting slowly and loudly, when she got to five another nurse leaned over and started to breathe into a plastic tube in his mouth. All Ellie could see was Gabe’s pale lifeless body bending under the nurses.

  She might have squealed, she must have, Sarah turned and took her firmly by the arms and led her from the room. Ellie wanted to struggle, to go back in and help, but she couldn’t, she went where she was pointed. A few yards outside the room and Ellie was staring at the wall, the contours under the paint, the false light slightly flickering off the polished floor. She heard a trolley with two doctors and a nurse come running through the ward door toward her, turning quickly into Gabriel’s room. She heard: ‘For resuss?’ And Sarah shouted, ‘Yes.’

  And whatever invisible force had been holding Ellie together through the days since the accident, and the IVF, and the lack of sleep, and the fear, and the all-consuming loneliness, left her like stale breath, and she fell on to Sarah, sobbing so hard she couldn’t breathe.

  36

  James Buchan wasn’t stupid. OK, he was stupid, but that didn’t mean he was only stupid. He knew, for instance, that if he approached Michael at Julie’s bedside and asked him if now might be a good time to leave her with the dykey woman and come back to Norfolk to play bass guitar with a band he hadn’t thought about for fifteen years, that there was every chance Mikey would force-feed him a drip stand. It had finally dawned on James that Michael loved Julie, and that irritating—and given her coma, entirely pointless—state of affairs was likely to dominate Michael’s every thought until the bitter end.

  James wondered if the fact that Julie had until recently been his girlfriend might offer him a little leverage. Had they been having an affair? Behind his back? And if they had, would there be any mileage in trying to make Michael feel guilty about it … guilty enough to come to Norwich? It was unlikely. And if he were to try it and it didn’t work, there wouldn’t be a second chance. The key to persuading someone to do something they don’t want to do is to wear them down, and in order to wear them down you have to avoid strategies that prevent you from going back for more.

  James knew that even if he told Michael that he had managed to set Dog in a Tuba up in the X-ray department downstairs, and Matthew, Alice, Jimmy, and Bernie were there waiting for him, along with Richard bloody Branson and MTV, it would not move him away from Julie. Nothing would.

  He wondered, in a detached way, what would happen if Julie died. Michael couldn’t just stay there then. Not that James was wishing her dead. Far from it. But if she were going to die—and the doctors didn’t seem all that hopeful—wouldn’t it be better in a way if she just got on with it? Lingering wasn’t going to help anyone. But there again, if Julie died, how might Michael react? Unlikely that he would turn to Dog in a Tuba and an ‘80s reunion tour with Curiosity Killed the Cat for solace. Not straight away, anyway.

  James didn’t have a plan but he did have faith. If he saw Michael for long enough to talk to him, then a plan would emerge. It always did.

  Michael had taken to talking quietly to Julie. He told her the sorts of things he would be writing about if he were working. He thought that if she were awake she would smile and say something that would make the articles funnier than they would be otherwise or, better still, change the subject completely. Anyway he wanted to talk. Sometimes he told her about things he had thought about her in the past, about how she had looked or how sometimes, after an otherwise dull evening at James’ cottage, he would go home and think about something she had said, leaving out the fact that he was probably having sex with someone else while he thought it. Mostly he talked because it seemed a good way of treating her as if she were alive. Because she might not be for long.

  When James arrived, Michael was sitting close to Julie, murmuring something pointless and heartfelt about how his knees weren’t as good at doing what knees did as they used to be, and that this was a symbol of something important. ‘Yes’, he imagined her whispering back, ‘a lack of exercise.’ Hearing someone come in, he stopped.

  ‘Hello mate, how is she? Any change?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. Well, have the doctors said anything?’

  ‘Not really. When the nurses were washing her yesterday, they told Lynne that the doctors didn’t feel they could do anything more. Just wait and see.’

  ‘Well that’s a good sign, in a way,’ offered James. ‘I mean, if they’re still washing her and stuff, there must still be a chance.’

  Michael just looked at him.

  ‘Er, anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to get a bite to eat, or a coffee—you know, get you out of here for a while?’

  ‘I’m all right here, I don’t want to leave her alone.’

  ‘Right. Righto. Er, can I ask, Mikey, why?’

  Michael thought for a moment. Why? Wasn’t it obvious? Because he couldn’t think of anything but her, because despite the fact they hadn’t so much as kissed, he had decided that were she to wake up, he would ask her to spend the rest of her life with him. Not straight away, obviously, that would be rude, but eventually. And all this—the fact that he had fallen head over heels in love with a girl who had been funny and pretty and alive and no
t very far away only a few days ago—had only occurred to him since she had been in a coma. Which he thought made him a prat. ‘Because it’s Julie,’ he said.

  ‘Right, because it’s Julie. And that’s cool Mikey, it really is, it’s just that I was wondering, and I’m not being, you know, funny about it or anything, I was wondering if you two were, you know, seeing each other or anything … before. It’s just, this looks to me, all a bit … well, sudden.’

  ‘No James, we weren’t. Of course not,’ said Michael, finding himself thinking Why weren’t we? And then, perhaps because he was tired and loving someone in a coma, he thought: Why have I spent so much of my life waiting for my life?

  ‘Right, I just wondered, you know. Thanks.’ James paused. ‘Although in a way maybe that’s a shame, because, well you two were … are … were … better suited to each other than she and I. I mean we were just flatmates in the end. And most of the beginning, really.’

  Lynne arrived. It may have been that she had heard James, because she didn’t scowl at him quite so openly as she had every other time he had been in the same room as her. She just ignored him and looked at Michael. He gave a little shake of his head, and she said: ‘Do you want to get something to eat?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Maybe you should, you could come back afterwards if you like.’ She spoke softly.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind … me coming back for a while?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Michael smiled at Lynne and said to James, ‘Come on then, let’s go and grab a sandwich and a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Cool,’ said James.

  37

  Izzy was woken by the doorbell. It had been a fitful and short sleep. She had cried a little, after ranting about the unbearable humiliation of standing in a courtroom accused of ‘tampering’ with the willy of a comatose man she happened not to like very much. She would probably be struck off the nursing register and end up working in Pizza Hut. If it went to court she would find her picture in the local paper with a caption that might include the words ‘meddling’ and ‘testicles.’ Parents would not let their children play with her daughter. She would forever be known as ‘That really weird woman who touches men when they are unconscious’. She would have to move to New Zealand, except they probably wouldn’t have her. Not with her record.

  Of course Sam hadn’t understood. He even looked at one point as though he was going to smile, but Izzy threw a shoe at him and that put a stop to that. By midnight she had, helped by wine and constant reassurance from Sam, including ‘We could always move to America; they’ll have pretty much anyone,’ calmed down enough to contemplate bed. She hadn’t called Ellie. She had felt too embarrassed.

  It was after two now. Izzy lay still, waiting for the doorbell to sound again, just to be sure. It did, and she kicked Sam. ‘There’s someone at the door. See who it is before they wake Polly,’ she hissed. Sam, a man who knew how to ignore his wife, turned over and pulled the quilt over his head. ‘Fine!’ she hissed. ‘If it’s a drug-crazed killer I’ll send them right through, shall I?’

  Sam stirred slightly. ‘It’s probably Ellie, don’t you think?’ And he got out of bed, reached for his dressing gown, and went to the door.

  Izzy stared at the ceiling. It may be that Moira had succeeded where Izzy had so spectacularly failed. But what if she hadn’t? The thread of ridiculously frayed hope that Ellie had been hanging on to, the idea that somehow she could still go through with the IVF, probably snapped today. If it had been a bad day for Izzy, it had been a worse one for Ellie.

  Sam opened the door and a pale, gaunt Ellie walked in. She went to speak but couldn’t quite find the breath. The last thing Ellie could remember from the hospital, when the crash team had gone and all but one of the nurses had disappeared, was the look on the face of the young nurse who was taking down the drip, the one who’d burst into Sarah’s office. Ellie was sitting in the chair beside the bed. The same chair that she had sat in the day before, and the day before that. Sarah was standing behind her. The nurse came over and whispered something to Sarah, who walked over and looked at the drip stand and the empty bag that hung from it. The nurse and Sarah looked at each other.

  Ellie couldn’t make out what Sarah said, not at first. She heard the nurse answer: ‘I don’t know.’ And then, ‘What should I do with this?’

  And Sarah said, ‘Take it to my office, put it in there and do not let anyone touch it.’

  Now Ellie was sitting on Izzy and Sam’s sofa staring at the coffee table and trying, really trying, to say ‘Sorry for coming round so late.’ But all that came out was, ‘Sorry for …’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Sam. ‘Fancy a cup of tea? I’ll go and wake Izzy.’ Which was as good a cue as Izzy could expect. She had waited by the bedroom door, listening for tears or rage. The quiet had been a relief at first.

  ‘Sweetie, I’m so sorry, I tried … I went … well you probably know. But they caught me in the act. Did Moira … was Moira able to …’ Izzy walked quickly over to her friend and sat down beside her, taking her cold hand.

  Ellie looked at Izzy and nodded blankly. She could see Gabriel’s face. Grey and pained. And she could see Sarah, whose soft face had stiffened when the nurse had spoken to her. And she could see tomorrow like it had already happened.

  ‘She did? Oh thank goodness, well you should be resting Ellie, shouldn’t you? Shouldn’t you? Have they put them together? There will be some embryos, won’t there? Ellie … sweetie?’

  Ellie wanted to speak, she really did, but she had lost herself. Someone, a cruel god with a big kitchen implement, had cored her like an apple. But she found some words, from somewhere. Perhaps because she had to sleep, and she couldn’t before she had spoken. ‘He’s dead, Izzy. He died this evening. His heart stopped working and they tried to resuscitate him. I know they did ‘cos I was there. But he died. And I just didn’t want to go home just yet.’

  38

  When they first introduced the angels to this new way of working, they showed them lots of films of different types of therapists. There was one man, a very serious American, who measured the quality of his work by how little he had to say. He could do 50 minutes—$140 worth—without making a single sound. He would shrug, furrow the odd brow, or turn his hand over and over in order to encourage the patient to say more.

  Clemitius was transfixed, he considered him a genius; he said the man ‘created a neutral and safe space for the kind of deep exploration and understanding that changed lives.’ Christopher said he thought he was a thief. Clemitius said this illustrated that Christopher simply didn’t understand the nuance of therapy. Christopher replied that the genius could have been replaced by a sedated monkey. Perhaps, Christopher realised, he had never believed. Which, given his place in the universe, was probably criminal. But what was that saying, he asked himself? ‘You may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.’

  Christopher knocked on Gabriel’s door and waited. When Gabriel answered, he still looked ill—which Christopher understood—and somehow a little smaller, which made no sense. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I think there is something you should see.’

  Gabriel just looked at him. Any capacity he had had for surprise seemed to have long since left him. ‘What is it?’

  Christopher didn’t say anything, which was perhaps a mistake. He didn’t think of himself as much of a therapist; he didn’t know when to speak and when not to.

  ‘Is it Ellie?’

  ‘No, no, it’s you, Gabe.’

  Christopher turned and walked slowly down the corridor, knowing Gabriel would follow.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Viewing room.’

  ‘It must be Ellie.’

  ‘Not exactly Gabriel, I think you need to see something that has already happened.’

  ‘Does Clemitius know we are going?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was wondering, maybe I should be trying a bit harder to follow the rules?’

&nb
sp; Christopher stopped and turned, staring into Gabriel’s eyes for the very first time. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because … isn’t that the point?’

  ‘The point of what?’

  ‘Why I’m here? What I need to do to get back to Ellie.’ He stopped talking, and for the first time since this group business started, Christopher the angel looked someone in the eye. They stood and stared at each other, and perhaps Gabriel began to understand. He nodded, looked at the floor, and his shoulders sank down a little, the way they can on dead people. Christopher turned and carried on walking. Gabriel followed in silence.

  When they got to the viewing room, they sat down in the same chairs they had had before. Christopher said: ‘Actually, I have to rewind.’

  ‘Where are you rewinding to?’

  ‘To yesterday, while we were in the viewing room watching Yvonne’s son. This is what was happening.’

  They began to watch together. They saw Ellie enter Gabriel’s room and put down her bag, and the back of a nurse setting up an IV. Christopher glanced across at Gabriel, who was crying, already. He was watching Ellie, and as the nurse left he hardly noticed. Because he followed Ellie the screen followed her too, into Sarah’s office. He listened as they discussed Moira and Izzy, but he didn’t really hear what they were saying, not all of it. He was just looking at the woman he loved, maybe for the last time. He paid more attention when they talked about how many embryos Ellie had, and what was going to happen next: he sat forward then. But he leaned back when the nurse came in and shouted ‘Crash! Mr Bell.’

  Then the screen filled with Gabriel in his bed, a nurse pressing and counting on his chest, another nurse breathing through a tube into his mouth, and he saw Ellie come in and crumple a little more. He watched a crash team put two pads on his chest and shout “Clear!” He listened as a doctor said ‘Again,’ and an electronic voice said a number.

  ‘Clear.’

  ‘Nothing. Is he for resuss?’

  ‘Yes …’

  Gabriel stared at the screen, all the activity had slowed. The crash team was putting things carefully back on to a trolley, a doctor was writing something on a chart. All the ordered energy that had surrounded his fading body had slowed and stopped. He sat in silence for a long time. Finally, he asked, ‘Where’s Ellie?’