I lay down to support the facade that I was tired, and opened my eyes to find that it was somehow morning. A morning where Margot had made her way to my ward and was standing nervously by my half-open curtain. ‘Lenni,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s my heart.’
‘What is?’ I whispered, still blurry from sleep.
‘The reason I’m here, it’s my heart.’
I sat up in bed. Out of the context of the Rose Room, she seemed tiny.
‘Oh. I’m sorry. I like your heart. I think you’ve got the nicest heart.’
‘I just thought that since we tell each other everything, I should tell you what’s wrong with me.’
I beckoned for her to come closer, and she crept in and sat on the bed beside me.
‘Can they make it better?’ I asked, relieved to see that she wasn’t crying. In fact, she was calm.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said, ‘but they’re trying, bless them.’ She smiled, and it was like sunlight coming to rest on her face for a moment.
Lenni and the Car
‘WHERE IS YOUR father, Lenni?’
‘Where is your father, Lenni?’
‘Where is your father, Lenni?’
Margot has asked me three times, and three times I haven’t answered. So, I think she was surprised when I started talking, midway through painting a row of cars, small and like dots. Red, silver, blue, white.
‘I think Meena was right,’ I told Margot.
‘About what?’
‘About not giving chase.’
Margot furrowed her brow.
‘What she said to you when you were looking for Johnny, about waving someone off into their new life but not feeling the need to follow. Letting the people who need to leave, leave. Allowing them to be free.’
Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital, November 2013
Lenni Pettersson is Sixteen Years Old
The consultant’s office was very dark, but behind his desk was a wide window. In the top half you could see the grey sky and in the bottom half you could look down on the hospital car park. The cars were shining like berries. It made me feel very far away from the world, and I supposed that the consultant had had to arrange his office so his desk faced away from the window, so he didn’t spend all day mesmerized by the car park.
‘My apologies it’s so dark in here,’ he said. ‘They’ve installed new motion sensor lights in an effort to be more environmentally friendly, but mine don’t seem to be working. I’ve waved my hand in front of the damned sensor at least twenty times, but nothing’s happened.’
The darkness made the window all the more alluring.
My father and I sat on the plastic chairs in front of the doctor’s desk. My father’s new girlfriend Agnieszka was outside in the waiting room, looking terrified. I liked her for my father – she was rational but soft, and she made him laugh which was something he rarely did unsupervised. I liked the idea that they could have a life together.
‘So, Miss Pettersson, is it okay if I call you Linnea?’ the consultant asked.
My father said, ‘She goes by “Lenni”，’ at the exact time that I said, ‘Everyone calls me “Lenni”。’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Lenni it is. Well, we have all of your test results back, Lenni.’ He clicked a few times on his computer mouse, and as the screen sprang to life, it emitted a green glow that lit up his face.
He clicked and scrolled and then stared for a few moments at the screen, probably trying to summon up the courage to say what he said next. The doctor took a deep breath and said, ‘It’s as we feared.’ And I tried to imagine him at home, tucked up in bed with his wife and a good book and a mug of Bovril – fearing for me, a sixteen-year-old he had met once who must have been one of hundreds of patients he saw each week. I imagined him playing squash and stopping, missing a shot, as he feared for my test results. I imagined him gnawing on his thumbnail as he drove out of the hospital car park every day for the two weeks that we had waited for the test results. Fearing for me.
He seemed unafraid now, as he began explaining terminology and procedures and limitations and time.
While all of that was happening, I was looking out of the window, watching a red car reverse backwards into a parking space. I watched the lights dim as the driver turned off the engine and I watched her get out, holding a heavy bag and something white. I watched her lock the door and walk slowly across the car park and towards the hospital. Then I watched the blue car next to hers reverse carefully and a white car stop in its path to allow the blue car the space to get out.