You Don't Own Me(56)

She tells me they met at a dance in the 1960s. The memory makes her smile. ‘He was joie de vivre in human form’ she says wistfully.

Now her husband feels, smells, hears and jumps when a dog barks, but he cannot see, crack a joke, laugh, or dance.

Her day starts before seven. After a solitary breakfast it becomes a mix of changing clothes, shaving, preparing and blending food, feeding him, helping him go to the toilet. Sometimes when he has a bad night she spends the night with him too.

She takes me to his room and something inside me dies. He has hardly aged but for a few white hairs. However, he is a shell of the vibrant joie de vivre man in the photographs she showed me. He lies there as still as a breathing corpse. I simply cannot imagine this life for Dahlia and me.

‘He can recognize the sound of my voice,’ she says looking at my aghast face.

I turn towards her in surprise. ‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ she confirms.

‘How can you tell?’

‘When you love someone you can tell,’ she says with conviction.

‘I see,’ I say politely.

‘Yes, that is why you must keep talking to her. It is love that heals beyond all else.’

At the end of my visit I take her hand in mine to thank her for agreeing to see me, and she grasps my hand with both of hers and says, ‘It is worth keeping her alive, Zane. Medical science evolves. If one day they know what to do with her, you will be ready. One day she will come out of it.’



In two hours I am back in England and I go straight to the hospital. I walk in on a nurse washing Dahlia and it is almost too painful to watch. To see those beautiful limbs that had been so full of life and vitality handled as if they belonged to an inert puppet. The nurse looks up at me and smiles in an encouraging fashion.

‘I’m going to clean her face now. Often it will stimulate them to open their eyes when we perform intimate things like brushing their teeth or shaving for the men.’

I move closer and stare at the nurse as she squeezes water out of a piece of yellow sponge and gently starts to clean around the life support machine tube. I hold my breath as she lays her thumb on Dahlia’s temple and wipes her closed eyes. My heart clenches with hope.

This is it. She is going to open her eyes.

But of course, she does not.

The nurse looks at me, her expression both disappointed and reassuring. ‘It can happen anytime. You know, the best thing you can do by the bedside of a loved one in a coma is to talk to them. They can hear you. Tell them you love them. Let them know you’re going to stay with them. You’re not giving up on them. Offer them hope.’



The next day I begin to make the necessary arrangements to move Dahlia back to the house.

I hire two twenty-four hour nurses to take turns to watch her and to move her every hour so she doesn’t have bedsore or skin problems. I also contact a kinesiologist recommended by Dr. Medhi to ensure her lungs are clear and her muscles exercised to avoid choking and atrophying.

I also hire a professional to come to the house and make a list of everything that needs to be done before a patient with Dahlia’s needs can be catered to. He gives us a long list. It runs from a bathroom for the nurses with hot and cold water to a reputable back-up generator for the life support machine in the event there is any kind of disruption to the electrical supply, to the best carbon based air filters on the market.

Going on his recommendation I decide to house Dahlia on the ground floor in the living room with the French doors. Once the location is decided, my secretary organizes a team of workers to come in and build a bathroom in there. They are also told to move the piano from its present location to Dahlia’s new room. She wanted to hear me play. She’s going to hear me play.

Because I am prepared to pay whatever it takes for quicker service and fly in everything that is needed from any part of the world, the house is ready for Dahlia in five days’ time.

Tomorrow my little fox comes home.





Thirty-four


Stella

For a long second I stand outside the door to Dahlia’s new living quarters, close my eyes, and take a deep breath. Then I open the door and sail into the room.

‘Hello, Sleepyhead,’ I call cheerfully.

The nurse stands and smiles. I return the smile. ‘You must be Corrine,’ I say.

‘And you must be Stella,’ she says pleasantly.

‘At your service.’

‘I’ll be outside,’ she says, and heads for the door.

‘You might as well take a break and go to the gym or something. I’ll be at least an hour,’ I tell her.

‘Thank you. I might have a quick swim.’

She leaves and I go up to the bed and give a loud smack on Dahlia’s cheek. I run my eyes over her face. Her hair is starting to grow and it has been neatly combed. I pick up her hand and her fingernails are short and nicely filed, but bare, like a child’s. The sight stirs me. She used to love her nail polish.