Nathan was crosser than I’d ever seen him. He was no longer really even talking to me.
I ran for the fan.
It took almost forty minutes for Will’s temperature to return to an acceptable level. While we waited for the extra-strong fever medication to take effect, I placed a towel over his forehead and another around his neck, as Nathan instructed. We stripped him down, covered his chest with a fine cotton sheet, and set the fan to play over it. Without sleeves, the scars on his arms were clearly exposed. We all pretended I couldn’t see them.
Will endured all this attention in near silence, answering Nathan’s questions with a yes or no, so indistinct sometimes that I wasn’t sure if he knew what he was saying. I realized, now I could see him in the light, that he looked really, properly ill and I felt terrible for having failed to grasp it. I said sorry until Nathan told me it had become irritating.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘You need to watch what I’m doing. It’s possible you may need to do this alone later.’
I didn’t feel I could protest. But I found it hard not to feel squeamish as Nathan peeled down the waist of Will’s pyjama bottoms, revealing a pale strip of bare stomach, and carefully removed the gauze dressing around the little tube in his abdomen, cleaning it gently and replacing the dressing. He showed me how to change the bag on the bed, explained why it must always be lower than Will’s body, and I was surprised at how matter-of-fact I was about walking out of the room with the pouch of warm fluid. I was glad that Will wasn’t really watching me – not just because he would have made some sharp comment, but because I felt that me witnessing some part of this intimate routine would in some way have embarrassed him too.
‘And that’s it,’ Nathan said. Finally, an hour later, Will lay dozing, lying on fresh cotton sheets and looking, if not exactly well, then not scarily ill.
‘Let him sleep. But wake him after a couple of hours and make sure you get the best part of a beaker of fluids into him. More fever meds at five, okay? His temperature will probably shoot up again in the last hour, but nothing more before five.’
I scribbled everything down on a notepad. I was afraid of getting anything wrong.
‘Now you’re going to need to repeat what we just did, this evening. You’re okay with that?’ Nathan wrapped himself up like an Inuit and headed out into the snow. ‘Just read the folder. And don’t panic. Any problems, you just call me. I’ll talk you through it all. I’ll get back here again if I really have to.’
I stayed in Will’s room after Nathan left. I was too afraid not to. In the corner was an old leather armchair with a reading light, perhaps dating from Will’s previous life, and I curled up on it with a book of short stories that I had pulled from the bookcase.
It was strangely peaceful in that room. Through the crack in the curtains I could see the outside world, blanketed in white, still and beautiful. Inside it was warm and silent, only the odd tick and hiss of the central heating to interrupt my thoughts. I read, and occasionally I glanced up and checked Will sleeping peacefully and I realized that there had never been a point in my life before where I had just sat in silence and done nothing. You don’t grow up used to silence in a house like mine, with its never-ending vacuuming, television blaring, and shrieking. During the rare moments that the television was off, Dad would put on his old Elvis records and play them at full blast. A cafe too is a constant buzz of noise and clatter.
Here, I could hear my thoughts. I could almost hear my heartbeat. I realized, to my surprise, that I quite liked it.
At five, my mobile phone signalled a text message. Will stirred, and I leapt out of the chair, anxious to get it before it disturbed him.
No trains. Is there any chance you could stay over tonight?
Nathan cannot do it. Camilla Traynor.
I didn’t really think about it before I typed back.
No problem.
I rang my parents and told them that I would stay over. My mother sounded relieved. When I told her I was going to get paid for sleeping over, she sounded overjoyed.
‘Did you hear that, Bernard?’ she said, her hand half over the phone. ‘They’re paying her to sleep now.’
I could hear my father’s exclamation. ‘Praise the Lord. She’s found her dream career.’
I sent a text message to Patrick, telling him that I had been asked to stay at work and I would ring him later. The message came back within seconds.
Going cross-country snow running tonight.
Good practice for Norway! X P.
I wondered how it was possible for someone to get so excited at the thought of jogging through sub-zero temperatures in a vest and pants.
Will slept. I cooked myself some food, and defrosted some soup in case he wanted some later. I got the log fire going in case he felt well enough to go into the living room. I read another of the short stories and wondered how long it was since I had bought myself a book. I had loved reading as a child, but I couldn’t remember reading anything except magazines since. Treen was the reader. It was almost as if by picking up a book I felt like I was invading her patch. I thought about her and Thomas disappearing to university and realized I still didn’t know whether it made me feel happy or sad – or something a bit complicated in between.
Nathan rang at seven. He seemed relieved that I was staying over.
‘I couldn’t raise Mr Traynor. I even rang their landline number, but it went straight through to answerphone.’
‘Yeah. Well. He’ll be gone.’
‘Gone?’
I felt a sudden instinctive panic at the idea that it would be just Will and me in the house all night. I was afraid of getting something fundamental wrong again, of jeopardizing Will’s health. ‘Should I call Mrs Traynor, then?’
There was a short silence on the other end of the phone. ‘No. Best not.’
‘But –’
‘Look, Lou, he often … he often goes somewhere else when Mrs T stays over in town.’
It took me a minute or two to grasp what he was saying.
‘Oh.’
‘It’s just good that you’re there, that’s all. If you’re sure Will’s looking better, I’ll be back first thing in the morning.’
There are normal hours, and then there are invalid hours, where time stalls and slips, where life – real life – seems to exist at one remove. I watched some television, ate, and cleared up the kitchen, drifting around the annexe in silence. Finally, I let myself back into Will’s room.