Apart from a solitary cleaner who was leaning idly on his cart while checking his phone, we had the entire place to ourselves.
‘Please, Lexi,’ she said, and that was when I heard the tremor in her voice.
I dropped on to the hard plastic chair so fast it jarred my spine. Mum lowered herself on to the one beside me, with an elderly person’s caution. It was a troubling observation that I stored away for another time.
She reached again for my hand. Hers were hot and dry, while mine felt cold and clammy with fear.
‘Things… things are a little more serious than I told you on the phone.’
My heart dropped as though every anchoring artery had been severed. My sister had been found on a beach in the middle of the night, lost, confused and hypothermic. How much more serious could it get? I had no idea.
‘Amelia wasn’t awake when they found her.’
‘What do you mean? She was asleep?’
Mum shook her head as though frustrated. I wasn’t sure if it was with me or herself.
‘I mean, she wasn’t conscious.’
The words hit me like a slap. ‘She’d passed out? Was it from the cold?’
Mum sighed and the words she’d been trying so hard not to say were finally set free.
‘She wasn’t breathing, Lexi. When the people found her on the beach, she’d stopped breathing. They don’t know how long for.’
I blinked, like an animal caught in headlights. I kept trying to think of something more articulate to say than ‘Oh my God’, but in the end that was all I could manage.
‘Technically she was… she was…’ Mum couldn’t finish that sentence. What parent could? I did it for her.
‘Dead?’
Mum gave a single nod.
‘Why didn’t I know this?’ Our eyes met. Hers light grey, mine – like Amelia’s – a deep cerulean blue.
‘I didn’t want to tell you any of this before you got on a plane. I didn’t want you to have that thought in your mind for all those hours in the air.’
I shook my head, because that hadn’t been my question. I repeated it with more emphasis.
‘Why didn’t Iknowthis? I should have known it… here.’ I brought my fist up to my heart. Beneath my curled fingers, I could feel it racing alarmingly.
Mum’s eyes fell to her lap. She had no answer. But then no one had ever been able to explain the curious connection Amelia and I shared. It was something we all took for granted.
‘The men who found her were doctors. It’s a miracle really,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper as she fumbled for the tissue tucked into her sleeve. ‘They gave her mouth-to-mouth and then shocked her with one of those machine things. They got her heart beating again.’
‘Do you know how long she was like that?’
Mum shook her head. ‘It could have just happened before they found her, or it might have been much longer.’
My thoughts were spinning as I tried to formulate a sentence that didn’t include the words ‘brain damage’. I’m not sure if it was Mum I was trying to protect, or me. I might edit romantic fiction for a living, but I was a big fan of thrillers. And somewhere in the vaults of my subconscious I probably knew exactly how long before irreparable damage was sustained when a heart stopped beating. I stopped searching for the answer because I really didn’t want to know.
‘Can I see her?’
‘Of course. The nurses have been so kind, explaining everything they’re doing. But you need to prepare yourself, Lexi. She’s hooked up to machines and monitors and has wires and tubes going everywhere—’ She broke off with a cry and I drew her against me. Wordlessly, we rocked back and forth on the hard plastic chairs while a tsunami of fear crashed down upon us.
We rode the lift back up to the ICU floor in silence. Our footsteps echoed hollowly on the linoleum corridor, and unconsciously our voices dropped to church-like whispers.
‘Have you been able to speak to her at all?’ I asked, my feet faltering as I spotted the double doors to the ward.