Page 58 of Unworthy
Iwantto be there for you
Yaz
“Bryn?” I rapped on the door again. Still no response. His hearing had deteriorated over the last year, but I had bought him one of those doorbells that echoed around the house like a foghorn a few months ago – even he couldn’t ignore that unless he’d unplugged the bloody thing. After a couple more minutes alternating between rapping on the door and leaning on the doorbell, I opened the keysafe to get my key. When I let myself in I was met with awful silence, and a terrible feeling of foreboding ran through me.
I found him in the living room. He was sitting in the same chair I’d left him in that morning when I’d brought him down a cup of tea, but now was slumped over to the side.
“Bryn?” I dropped onto my knees in front of him and shook his shoulder. He stirred slightly, his eyelids flickered, but otherwise there was no response. That was when I noticed one side of his mouth was downturned and lax. I grabbed both his hands in mine. “Bryn, honey, squeeze my hands.” One side gave a light squeeze, the other stayed completely limp.
“Okay, okay,” I muttered, withdrawing one of my hands, which was shaking and using it to draw out my mobile from my back pocket.
*****
My hands were still shaking as I stroked some of Bryn’s hair back from his forehead two hours later. He looked so small on the hospital bed. How could anyone with as much presence and personality as Bryn look small? He was pale and his eyes were closed now. He had stirred briefly in the ambulance on the way here and tried to speak to me, but half of his face wasn’t cooperating, and I couldn’t decipher what he was trying to say. He did manage to squeeze my hand again with his good one when I told him I’d stay with him. There had been so much going on since we’d arrived in A&E that this was the first opportunity I’d had to really look at him. An oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth, and he was hooked up to all manner of wires and tubing. I felt a tear slip down my cheek and swiped it away before it could drop. There was no use me falling apart – I had to be strong for Bryn.
“Yaz?” I turned to see Heath standing at the end of the bed. Where had he come from and how long had he been standing there? “Are you alright?”
I was staggered by the amount of relief I felt on just seeing him and hearing his deep, steady voice. All I wanted to do was run the few steps to get to him and melt into his arms so he could tell me that everything was going to be okay. But I stiffened my spine and forced myself to stay where I was. He wasn’t the one I should run to – he’d proved that more than once.
“I’m fine. It’s Bryn I want to know about.” After the initial flurry of activity and the CT scan, everyone seemed to have backed off now. Shouldn’t they be shoving tubes down his throat and getting him up to an intensive care unit? “His breathing sounds funny. Doesn’t he need–?”
“Midge, let’s talk outside a minute, okay?” He’d moved to stand next to me now, and I felt his large, warm hand on my back.
“No, I need to stay with him. I don’t–”
“Tim will stay with him a minute.”
I noticed a nurse had come into the cubicle now, his kind smile directed at me. My brows drew together. “He needs someone with him he knows. I should–”
“Five minutes, Midge.”
I gave Bryn’s hair one last stroke and then huffed out a sigh. “Okay, five minutes,” I conceded as I pulled back from the bed. Heath’s hand stayed on my back as he guided me out of the cubicle and into the centre of the emergency department. I barely registered all the activity going on around us, or the series of orders Heath was giving out to his juniors as we went past, deftly handing over control of the department and not breaking his stride to steer me out of the double doors and into the corridor. We made it to his office, and he guided me to a seat while he perched on his desk. I frowned.
“I don’t want to sit down, Heath. I need to get back to– ”
“Please, Midge,” his soft-spoken command broke through my determination. As I looked into his eyes and saw the concern there, I had another sick sense of foreboding. My legs felt stiff, but I forced myself to bend them enough to sit in the chair.
“Listen, Heath. You need to arrange some sort of intensive care for him or something. His breathing’s all funny and he’s so pale. I think he needs a ventilator or some sort of– ”
“Yaz, I’m so sorry, but Bryn really isn’t very well.”
I threw my hands up and then slapped them down on the arms of the stupid chair. “That’s what I’m saying. He’ssick. He needs to be sorted out. There must be some sort of–”
“He’s had a massive stroke, Yaz,” Heath continued in that same calm voice. “It’s taken out a large percentage of his left hemisphere.”
“Exactly! That’s why he needs to be–”
“You did everything right. Okay? His daughter’s very grateful that you were there.”
“You’ve spoken to Margot?” I blinked up at him, and he gave a slow nod. “Shit, I completely forgot to ring her. She must be frantic. I can’t–”
“Margot’s fine. She’s on her way down here, but with traffic, she doesn’t think she’ll make it for a couple of hours. Hopefully, she’ll be here before…” He trailed off and then cleared his throat.
“Before what?”
“Bryn’s very sick, Yaz.”
Suddenly, his gaze felt too intense. I had to close my eyes to shut it out.
