A single tear fell from Amelia’s eye, making the torrent running down my own cheeks look excessive.
‘It’ll never be “just you”,’ she said, reaching for my hands and winding our fingers together so tightly it was impossible to tell which were hers and which were mine. ‘As long as there’s one of us, there’ll always be two of us.’
*
Time is a cruel trickster; racing away when you want it to linger and dragging its feet when you want it to hurry. It felt like hours before Nick finally messaged to say he was on his way to the hospital.
‘Is that Nick?’ Mum whispered, anxious not to wake Amelia, who’d been drifting into pockets of sleep that seemed to grow increasingly longer. Each time she woke, she seemed a little less present.
I nodded and ran a shaky hand through my hair, realising how off kilter I felt without him; I needed him here with me.
It was hard not to count Amelia’s breaths as she slept, especially as there were worryingly long periods when she seemed to stop taking them altogether. And yet, even though it was an effort, she doggedly refused to switch from the nasal cannula to a full face mask. ‘I want to be able to talk to you and see you all properly, and I can’t do that through a fucking mask.’ She’d paused then and turned to Mum, waiting to see if she was going to pick up on the blasphemy. ‘Going to let that one go, eh?’ she asked.
‘Fuck, yes,’ Mum replied. I hadn’t thought anything could possibly make us laugh on that day, but we did then.
*
We took it in turns to go on coffee runs, and when I got to my feet for the next cafeteria trip, Amelia’s hand reached out to grab my wrist.
‘I want…’ She paused to trap the next breath before it escaped from her. ‘I want you to do something for me.’
I ran my fingers gently down her cheek. ‘Anything,’ I said.
‘Get me out of here. Take me home. I don’t want to be here… at the end.’
The room echoed with dissenting comments.
‘I don’t think you can do that,’ from Tom’s corner.
‘That won’t be allowed, darling,’ was Mum’s response.
I ignored them, looking deep into my sister’s eyes, and felt the longing in them as though it was my own.
‘Okay. Leave it to me,’ I said.
*
I met the resistance I knew I would. What I was asking to do was apparently ‘unreasonable’, ‘foolish’, and possibly even ‘dangerous’. I stood firm under the steely gaze of a senior charge nurse who I’d never met before.
‘It’s my sister’s wish to go home and I’m going to take her there. I’m not asking you to approve or condone her decision, I just need you to sort out whatever discharge paperwork she has to sign to make it happen.’
‘This is highly unorthodox and irregular,’ the woman standing before me said. ‘I shall have to get Dr Vaughan to come down and discuss this with you.’
‘By all means, call him, but there really is nothing to discuss. I’m taking Amelia home.’
I saw the charge nurse draw breath to begin a new onslaught of objections but then her eyes flickered, and the words stilled in her throat. Warm fingers wound through mine.
‘Whatever you can do to help my wife honour her sister’s wishes would be really appreciated,’ Nick said with quiet authority.
I didn’t get emotional, not even when I saw the woman reluctantly back down in the face of thedon’t-make-this-any-harder-than-it-already-islook in Nick’s eyes. It had been a long time since I’d thought of him as a superhero, but I did in that moment as the nurse reached for the phone to summon Dr Vaughan. The consultant joined us less than ten minutes later.
Nick didn’t once let go of my hand, but he was silent in his support, never speaking for me. Even so, I felt his strength as though it was surging through both of us. It made my voice as steady as my resolve.
‘You do realise she’ll be discharging herself AMA – against medical advice?’ Dr Vaughan questioned. ‘I wouldn’t be doing my job correctly if I didn’t advise you against this course of action.’ It sounded like he was reciting lines from a script. He was required to say those words, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in them.
‘I understand,’ I said solemnly.
‘I’ll expedite the paperwork,’ Dr Vaughan said, before breaking all sorts of protocols by stepping forward and laying a gentle hand on my shoulder.