Three-And-A-Half Heartbeats (9 page)

When she woke, still in a dreamy stupor, it took a second for Grace to remember where she was and why she was on the sofa. She smiled at the sound of movement overhead. Tom was as good as his word, up every few hours with his unreliable bladder and checking on Chloe while he was at it.

They say life turns on a penny.

They say that things can change in a second.

They say that once life has changed, it is almost impossible to imagine what it was like before.

These were the seconds before.

One…

Two…

Three…

It was almost simultaneous. Grace looked at the digital display on her phone and read 9.15 at the exact moment that the deafening sound of a stranger in their house filled her head. It had to be a stranger; it was no voice she recognised, no sound that she had heard before. Was it a person? An animal? She couldn’t tell. Her heart raced and felt as if it was beating in her throat. Her bowels turned to ice.

It was a scream, a guttural yell, a primal noise that came from the pit of a stomach and was intended to travel up to the highest point in the sky and down to the deepest depths of the earth.

Grace jumped and shivered. Petrified, rooted for a second or two to the spot where she sat, unsure of what to do next, unsure of how to make her legs move or how to stop her body from shaking.

‘Tom?’ she called, but fear had turned her voice to a whisper.

‘Tom?’ she called again, trying to fathom what was happening. Who was screaming? Where was that noise coming from?
What should I do? I don’t know what to do.

As if waking from a trance, Grace finally managed to stand. Gingerly she made her way upstairs to the landing.

The first thing that hit her was the smell. Vomit. She could smell sick and this made her wretch and place her hand over her mouth. She inched forward and flicked on the hall light. Her eyes darted across the space at her feet as she tried to understand what she was seeing.

Tom was kneeling on the hall floor and he was leaning over a dolly, a teddy or something, a bundle of clothes possibly, with his face buried in it. She couldn’t quite make it out. He had been sick; it dripped in a stain down the front of his chest and in splashes on the wall and on the carpet.

‘You’ve been sick,’ she said, as if there was the smallest chance that he was unaware of the fact.

Grace looked more closely at the bundle and felt the strength leave her legs. She swayed. A knot of icy-cold fear gathered in her stomach and she could hear the blood racing in her head as the bile of realisation rushed into her mouth and down her T-shirt. Placing her hand on the wall, she slid down it and sat in a heap, staring not at a bundle of clothes or a dolly, but at her little girl, who was lying on the floor. She could see Chloe’s small, chubby feet sticking out of the bottom of her nightdress; they were flopping inward and were a little arched.

Tom was feverishly stroking the hair away from Chloe’s forehead. Chloe who was floppy. Sleeping.

‘What are you doing?’ Grace shouted. ‘Why is she on the floor, Tom?’ None of it made any sense.

‘Call… call an ambulance. Call an ambulance!’ he screamed in a voice she had never heard before, his tone like broken glass, spikey and painful to draw.

‘What’s wrong? You’ve been sick! What’s going on?’ she asked, her eyes wide.

‘Get the fucking ambulance, Grace, d’you hear me? Get them now! Right now! She’s not breathing, she’s not breathing!’ His voice got louder and louder.

Tom again placed his mouth over his little girl’s and tipped her head back, trying to breathe life into her silent form.

‘Call the fucking ambulance!’ His voice was now high-pitched, reedy, thin and tortured. He kicked out, catching Grace on the thigh with his bare foot, kicking her as hard as he could manage from the position he was in. ‘Now! For fuck’s sake, Grace, come on! Now!’ he shrieked.

Grace levered herself up, using her hands to steady herself against the wall as she made her way on legs that felt like sponge. She picked up the phone that Tom kept by the side of the bed and with fingers that shook she dialled 999, hoping that she would wake up from this nightmare soon.
Please, please, let me wake up now…

Tom continued to scream, loud and high pitched. It was an animal wail of distress that he couldn’t control. He stopped trying to breathe for Chloe and took his little girl into his arms, cradling her head against his front, trying not to notice the chill to her skin or the blue tinge to her beautiful, beautiful mouth. He rocked her into his chest and continued to scream her name.

‘Chloe! Chloe!’ he shouted. ‘Help us! Help! Someone! Chlo… Baby…’

He kissed her face, her hair, her fingers.

‘Please, Chloe!’ He was shouting now, sounding almost angry, as if her lack of response was because she couldn’t hear him or wasn’t doing as she was told. ‘Chloe, come on! Come on now! Chloe! Please!’

The siren snaked its way along the lane. Grace didn’t know how long it took to arrive; it could have been minutes or hours. Time wasn’t calibrated; it had stopped and simultaneously sped up. She managed to tread the stairs and open the front door, still shivering in her knickers and T-shirt.

The paramedic elbowed his way into the house. ‘Where is she, love?’

Grace pointed to the landing overhead. The man raced up the stairs and Grace followed him.

‘Hello? Hello?’ the man called ahead.

Tom stared at him from the corner where he sat.

‘What’s his name?’ he asked Grace. She looked at him uncomprehendingly. He tried again, his tone much softer. ‘What’s your husband’s name, love?’ He touched her arm, trying to get her to respond. It worked.

‘It’s Tom,’ she whispered.
Tom. Tom and Chloe. My husband and my daughter.

‘Thank you, love. I’m going to send you off with Kelly. She’ll take care of you now.’

His colleague Kelly stepped forward and took Grace by the elbow, guiding her into the bedroom, where she laid her on the bed and checked her over, making the decision that there was no treatment for a broken heart.

Kelly made her way back out to the landing to help her colleague, who was trying to remove Chloe from Tom’s embrace.

‘Get your hands off her!’ Tom’s reaction was swift and aggressive.

The paramedic spoke to Tom, bending down face to face, calm and rational, his speech controlled and slow. ‘Tom…’ Tom didn’t respond, so he tried again. ‘Tom, we need to look at your little girl. We need to look at Chloe, to see if we can help her. I need you to let her go now, Tom.’ He put his hands forward to receive the bundle, but Tom only twisted his body away and held her tighter.

The man’s voice was firm now. ‘I need to look at her, Tom, and I need you to let her go so that I can do that. I promise you that I won’t hurt her. I promise you.’

‘You are not going to touch her!’ His saliva ran from the corner of his mouth. ‘I can’t let her go. You don’t understand. She’s getting cold. I need to keep her warm. I woke up and tried to tuck her in, to check on her and get her a drink and she was cold. She hates being cold. I can’t let her go.’

Grace could hear the chatter and commotion on the landing. She leaned up on her elbows and looked straight ahead and there was Chloe standing at the end of the bed! She was waving and she was wearing her pink mackintosh.

‘Hey, Chlo…’ Grace raised her hand to wave and smiled. By the time Grace had blinked, Chloe had gone.

Climbing from the bed, Grace padded across the carpet. She staggered into the hallway and sank down onto the floor to be next to the shell of her family. She tried to breathe, tried to understand what was happening.

The paramedic shone a light into Chloe’s eyes, felt her wrist and touched his fingers to a small area above her breastbone. He looked at his colleague, who was now only feet away, and closed his eyes briefly for a second – their signal.

‘It’s all right, Tom.’ The man placed his hand on Tom’s bare arm. ‘You hold on to her for a bit.’ He too was a dad. He had a daughter. He knew.

Placing a blanket around the two of them, the paramedic sat back on his haunches, trying not to intrude as Tom held his little girl close, giving her a final hug as the last of the warmth slipped from her tiny form.

Tom rocked her back and forth. ‘Ssshh. It’s all right, Chlo. It’s all going to be all right. Your daddy’s got you.’

It was too late. Chloe’s spirit was already swirling upwards, dancing among the clouds on that cold, cold, winter’s morning.

People suffering from sepsis often say that they feel like they might die. They often use that phrase: “I feel like I’m dying”

It was as if the house in Nettlecombe had been enveloped in a thick, thick blanket that muffled the sounds of the outside world and prevented any of their sadness from escaping or becoming diluted. Grace would not have been surprised to find the red bricks and grey roof covered in decaying, dark, woody roots of Disney proportions, with the two of them entombed inside. Even opening a window and letting the cold wind whip round the walls did nothing to dissipate the dense fug of grief that they breathed.

They too were silent. There was nothing to say, no one they wanted to see and nothing they wanted to hear. Nothing that could in any way make them feel better. Grace and Tom were fragile; they had become delicate things, as if held together with aged sellotape. Each waited to see how and when they would disintegrate. For it was only a matter of time. In truth, they both looked forward to that day, the day they wouldn’t have to think any more, the day they would be released from this living hell.

Tom and Grace lurched from their bed or sofa to the bathroom and back to bed. Their days were punctuated with the taking of sleeping pills, the sipping of water and little else. They didn’t answer the phone or respond to knocks on the front door. They were unaware of the flowers that lay in parched bundles in the kitchen sink or the neat pile of white envelopes, handwritten in dark ink, each bearing a card whose images could do nothing to lift their misery. They weren’t aware of much.

It was as if they had entered a place above the earth and were no longer part of it. Grace existed in an altered state, where the world turned at a different pace to the one at which she operated. She was an observer, unable to participate. She and Tom had developed a bizarre dance of the macabre, waltzing around each other without talking or acknowledging each other. Sitting alone in darkened rooms, howling or muttering, falling into a wretched, unrewarding sleep, eating small amounts in silence, all without recognition of the other. No connection, no intimacy, each riven with tiny fractures; one bump and they would both have shattered.

Mac and Olive crept around them like creatures in the shadows, rinsing cups, writing and folding notes they would never read, propping them against casseroles they would never eat, before disappearing again with a yelled promise to return tomorrow.

It was after about a week that the hospital phoned. Previously, Grace’s parents had been there to lift the receiver and close their eyes and nod as they absorbed the heartfelt words issued through teary mouths by acquaintances who secretly gave thanks that this was not happening to them. This caller was persistent; Grace figured she had two options, either yank the phone from the wall or answer it. Without the strength to pull the wire, she raised the phone and held it against her sallow cheek.

‘Hello?’ Her voice sounded husky, unfamiliar, deeper than she remembered and grainy, weak.

‘Mrs Penderford…’ The man paused. ‘It’s Mr Portland.’

She nodded, forgetting that he couldn’t see her.

‘Mrs Penderford?’

‘Yes,’ she managed, quietly.

‘How are you?’ He sounded concerned.

Grace opened her mouth to form a response but realised there were no words to properly explain the ache of grief that consumed her. How could she describe being filled to the brim with utter emptiness? The sadness that weighed her down like lead tied to every muscle; the desolation; the overwhelming desire to simply disappear.

‘Okay,’ she lied.

‘I just wanted you to know that we have received the coroner’s initial report and I’m afraid it’s inconclusive. They’re going to conduct a second post-mortem and hopefully this will tell us more.’

Grace nodded.

‘I know this is the last thing you need – more delays. I just wanted to let you know and as soon as they have the results, I’ll call you again.’

‘Okay.’ Grace hung up the phone.

Death. Death. Dead. Dead. Gone. But we don’t know why.
The words sat like a bitter chant on her tongue.

Grace walked slowly across the kitchen floor and into the sitting room. She lay down on the sofa, pulled the throw over her body and folded her arms beneath it, wrapping herself in a cocoon from which she would have been happy never to emerge. Blinking her eyes, she saw the spine of a thin book,
The Gruffalo
, lying under the padded stool in front of her. Her tears came thick and fast, clogging her nose and throat, making it hard to breathe. She heard Chloe’s voice –
‘Gruffalo, Mummy!’
– and remembered the feel of her baby girl against her chest. She inhaled the scent of the blanket, which still held the faintest trace of Chloe. Pulling it over her head, she feigned sleep, hoping she could bring it on anyway, the escape she craved.

She and Tom had taken on the traits of injured animals, each retreating to the furthest, darkest corner of their physical space, wanting only solitude. Their contact was minimal. They were only vaguely aware of the other’s presence from the telltale signs of cohabitation: the still warm kettle, the occasional sound of the loo flushing, the wailing and unfettered sobbing in the wee small hours of the morning. Normal routines of hygiene, sustenance and human interaction had long been abandoned; if they encountered each other, it was with the acute embarrassment of having been discovered lurking, out of place and filthy. Grace knew she smelt bad, but it didn’t matter; nothing did. Her teeth hurt, her gut ached and her eyes were swollen, but these physical pains helped her focus, gave her something to concentrate on other than the madness that was swallowing her whole.