The nurse at the reception desk there smiled, putting on big round glasses when Helen asked where Cecelia Morgan was. She glanced briefly at something behind the desk. “She’s just through the doors to your right, then take the first left and you should see her. I can only let two of you through at a time though,” she added. “Hospital rules, I’m afraid.” She slipped off those glasses, smiled benignly at them.
“You two go first,” said Helen. “I need to pop to the loo anyway.”
So Josie followed her grandad through the doors, trying to keep her stride relaxed for his sake. They knew nothing, she reminded herself, and people didn’t always die from a heart attack. Some did, though, a dark voice in the back of her mind said.
Memo was propped up against two cushions in the ward where they found her, the two beds on either side of her also occupied. She smiled as Josie and her grandad approached, and though her face looked a little paler and more lined than usual, her grey bob unnaturally unkempt, she seemed OK at first glance. In all honesty, her grandad looked worse than Memo, dark purple circles under his brown eyes, like he hadn’t slept for days.
Memo held out a hand for her husband, who went to her side immediately, stroking back her hair in a tender gesture of the kind he never usually liked to perform in public. She held the other hand out to Josie, who went to her, making sure to keep her smile in place. Neither of her grandparents needed to see her cry right now.
“How are you?” croaked Josie’s grandad.
“Oh, I’m fine, like I told you,” Memo said reassuringly. “It’s a bit odd, what with all these doctors and nurses prodding about, and they want to keep me here awhile to observe, and really this gown does nothing for my complexion, but apart from that…” She smiled at each of them in turn, though Josie felt her own smile falter. Because the thing was, even if she was in a lot of pain, there was no way she would say anything—this was the woman who had once brushed off a broken arm as “just a minor inconvenience when you’re trying to do the shopping.”
“Have they said anything about how long you have to be here? Or what happens next?” Josie asked, glancing around to take in all the other patients here. It was quite a big room and had that peculiar smell—disinfectant mixed with hidden body odor—and Josie found it strange how a room so bright and white could feel so incredibly claustrophobic.
“Well, they drew me a diagram this morning, and said something about eighty-five-percent blockage, but, really, they just need to run some tests and scans and the like so they can tell us what to do.” This time when Memo smiled, it seemed a little more strained. Josie caught sight of a nurse across the other side of the room—blond, with creamy skin, and younger than Josie—bending over one of the patients. She had the strongest urge to go up to her, to tell her, tell someone, that her grandmother wasn’t usually like this—she wasn’t old and sick, she still went for bike rides on the weekends, she baked terrible biscuits and hosted a book club every month, even though she failed to finish the damn book every single time. She was a person, not just an old, sick lady. She took a slow breath, returned her attention to her grandmother, and tried to join in the idle small talk—it was clear that Memo wanted to be distracted, that she didn’t want to go over and over what had happened or what might be about to happen.
After thirty minutes, Josie went to switch with Helen, who jumped to her feet in the little cardiology waiting room, having been staring at a magazine on her lap. “She seems OK,” Josie said before Helen could ask, and Helen let out a slow breath, nodded.
Then Helen looked Josie up and down. “You should go back to the cottage,” she said. Josie shook her head, opened her mouth to protest, but Helen cut her off. “Darling, I know there is absolutely no way I’m going to get your grandfather to leave once visiting hours are over, and there’s no point in us all waiting around here, so you should go home—one of us should, at least. I need to be here with him,” Helen added, when Josie started to try to say that Helen should go, in that case. Helen gave Josie’s arm a little rub. “You’ll only be thirty minutes away, so you can come right back. You can take my car if you like.”
Josie hesitated. Thirty minutes seemed like a long time to her right then, and it felt wrong, leaving them here. But she was reading between the lines and knew Helen wanted the rest of the hour to be with her parents, and, in truth, Josie wanted the chance to break down a little herself, out of sight.