“Sam?”
“I spoke to him yesterday. He’s desperate to see you.” Fern leans a little closer to me, whispering, “You didn’t hear it from me but he calls the hospital every day to see how you are. He pretends to be your cousin.”
“He’s got form for that.” I laugh, despite the way it sends sparks of pain into my damaged jaw.
“He feels terrible about what happened. He blames himself. I think once he saw Bert fall into the fire, he…”
Fern trails off. She doesn’t finish the sentence but she doesn’t need to. I know what happened. The spell broke. That’s why he’dcome into the water to save me. I think of how I last saw Sam only moments before, blank-eyed, wistful. That shoe, scarred and scuffed and tiny in his hands. I don’t blame him. We were both lost, both unglued. The witch had got under our skin, just like she had with Alice.
“Tell him to come and see me when I’m better.” I manage a small, exhausted smile. “I’d like that.”
I close my eyes and feel my body, cushioned by painkillers. It’s like being suspended in a cradle of stars. When I open my eyes again, Fern is still looking at me and I know there is something else and that I won’t like it. The morphine will be wearing off soon and the edges of the pain will start to show through the thin blanket of protection and it’s going to hurt. I hold my fingers up to her,wait.I have something to say, first.
“Oscar left me.”
“I know, Mina, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was coming. He told me right after they brought me in.”
I was half-conscious when Oscar walked in and took a seat in the chair beside the bed, the one Fern now occupies. He tugged at the knees of his trousers as he sat, an old Oscar affectation, one I still find warm and comforting. I suppose one day that will fade.
“I can’t marry you,” he said stiffly. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
It might have been the morphine but I like to think there was some relief for both of us. He went on to tell me he had already canceled the venue and rescinded invites.
“I called to cancel the caterers and they told me you’d never even made the appointment.”
“I’m sorry, Oscar. I should have told you.”
“My mother is furious.”
“Oh.”
As he walked out, I said, “Tell Lucy I said ‘hi’.” Perhaps he didn’t understand me, with my tongue fat and heavy. He paused, but only for a moment. Then he kept right on going. Safe. Careful. A man who knew all about the heavens and nothing about love.
“It’s for the best,” I tell Fern, yawning.Ish fordabesh.
She nods, lacing her hands around her knees and looking at me steadily.
“I’m going to leave you to get some sleep, Mina. They think you’ll be out on the ward tomorrow and discharged maybe the day after—and at some point the police will want to talk. Do you have someone to support you?”
I think about it for so long my chest tightens with sadness.
Fern notices, and nods. “Then I’ll come. Every day if I have to.”
“No, you don’t have—”
“I do, Mina. For my own sanity, I do.”
This reply is so funny to me in my dreamy, zoned-out way that I burst out laughing. Fern waits politely for it to fade away before saying, “I should tell you about Bert.”
I stiffen, suddenly cold. From somewhere down the corridor, I can hear the hush of the nurse’s footsteps, the beeping of a distant alarm.
“What about him?”
“He’s here.”
I immediately try to sit up, gasping at the flare of pain in my ribs.