“I know, darling. I’m sorry.”
Josie shook her head. No. You only said sorry when someone was already dead. She moved her phone away slightly, checked the time. Not quite six p.m. yet. “I’ll get the train now,” she said to Helen. Surely there would still be one.
“Well, we won’t be allowed in to see her overnight—we have to wait for visiting hours in the morning.”
“I still want to be there, with you and Grandad. What time is visitors’ hours?”
“Nine a.m. tomorrow morning.”
“Well, we’ll all go together then, from the cottage,” Josie said firmly.
“All right, darling. I’ll see you there. You call me if you get stuck.”
“I will do.” She got to her feet, needing to move, to do something immediately. Heart attack. The words reverberated round her brain and her throat tightened in response.
“And Josie? Try not to panic just yet.” Helen had control of her voice back, Josie noticed. “Your grandad and I, we just wanted to let you know, just…just so that you know.” Just in case. The unsaid words hung in the space between them.
They said goodbye to each other, and when Josie hung up she just stared at Bia, who was still sitting on the bed. “It’s my grandmother,” she said.
“Oh, Josie.” Bia leaped to her feet.
“She’s in hospital. She’s had a heart attack. I have to go.”
“Shit, what?”
Josie didn’t know if Bia was referring to the hospital or the leaving, but it didn’t matter. She walked out of Bia’s room to the living room, where she’d left her suitcase—thankfully she hadn’t taken anything out yet. She quickly checked the train times on her phone—she could make the last train home if she left now; that way she could look after her grandad tonight and be there ready in the morning.
“Josie?”
Josie looked back at Bia. “She’s had a heart attack, B, I have to go. I have to get to the hospital.”
“I’ll come with you,” Bia said immediately.
“No.” Josie took a step toward her, took her hands, and squeezed them. “We can’t both miss the plane.”
“Shit, the plane.” Bia grimaced.
“Precisely. Look, you go. I’ll ring the airline to see if I can catch a later flight if…” But she didn’t want to finish that sentence, didn’t want to say an “if,” because she wasn’t sure what the end of it would be.
Bia shook her head. “I can’t let you go alone, Jose.”
“I won’t be alone. I have Helen, and my grandad.” Where all this calm was coming from, Josie had no idea.
“But—”
“I forbid you to come, OK? Go to Budapest, start having fun. Meet some hot guy and get ready to introduce me.” She tried for a smile. “You can’t do anything anyway, and in all likelihood she’ll be fine.” But despite her words, she was desperately trying to quash the gnawing in her belly that was hidden beneath her cool exterior.
She turned, grabbed her suitcase, and wheeled it to the front door, closing the matter simply by the fact that she was ready to leave and Bia wasn’t. She hugged Bia, who gripped her tightly back. “Call me, please,” Bia whispered.
“I will,” Josie promised. “It’ll be fine,” she said again. And she really, really tried to believe it as she ran down the stairs, out of the building, and toward the station.
After a thirty-minute drive from Josie’s grandparents’ place, Helen parked in the car park of the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford and the three of them got out of her car, Josie reliving her teenage years by hopping out of the backseat. She and Helen had both stayed overnight with her grandad in her grandparents’ cottage, Helen insisting that Josie sleep in her old room while she took the sofa. Not that any of them had had much sleep, each of them waiting for a call, waiting to be told something worse had happened.
Josie hadn’t cried yet. She felt like she’d been in a constant fight to control the tears from the start of the three-hour journey—a train then tube from Streatham to Marylebone, waiting at the station, a train to Oxford, and then a taxi. Even after she got to the cottage, she hadn’t given in to the urge to cry and the result was that she was fluctuating between a calm stillness and an intense burning behind her eyes.
They arrived at five to nine, all of them having been up since the early hours, filling the morning with small talk until it was late enough to leave the cottage. Now they walked in relative silence, across the car park and through the glass doors of the hospital. She was in the cardiology ward, according to Josie’s grandad, so they followed signs through the hospital and ended up in a small waiting room.