Page 65 of The Love of Our Lives
After a moment Sven nods. ‘OK,’ he says, putting up no further fight.
Light, corridor walls, the clattering of plates, the scent of toast. I look blearily around when I wake the next morning, feel something soft against my cheek – Adam’s fleecy shoulder. I lift my head up to see we’re in another part of the hospital, having slept on a couple of stiff plastic chairs through the night. It’s dimly lit, though doctors and nurses are still rushing by. An alarm is going somewhere. My heart beats faster and, just like that, I’m back there again.
The day my whole world collapsed.
It was me who suggested we come up to the cottage for the weekend, at the tail-end of that balmy summer – for ‘old times’ sake’. Cat was now living with Fraser in Edinburgh, and I would be off to art school soon. Already I felt like there was something precious about this moment in time, like it was a hazy peak that we would never get back again. Maybe because of that, I allowedmyself to relax a little, be the ‘doer’ for once. I remember Cat smiling across at me in the car as she drove: ‘What’s come over you, sis? Is this the new Maggie?’
I laughed, but perhaps it was? Perhaps I could start doing more – living more. So, we bought a tonne of stuff from the supermarket: wine, crisps, pizzas, sweets and everything we could think of for our final hurrah together. Stuff I would never normally be allowed but on this occasion, I thought I could relax a little – after all, Mum wasn’t going to be there. And we weren’t going to go completely nuts – just enjoy ourselves. I knew how happy it made Cat, seeing me let go of the reins slightly. Stop worrying quite so much for everyone.
That first night we ate crap and drank wine and watched brat-pack movies until the wee hours of the morning –Pretty In Pink,The Breakfast Cluband our favourite,Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That was always our thing: watching eighties movies and escaping to that safe, fun-only era where the hardest thing you had to deal with was getting a great dress for the prom. The next morning, groggy but happy, we went for a long walk around the loch together, ambling our way under the tall pine trees, the sun glinting down through the branches at us.
The water on the loch was calm that day, inviting in the clammy summer heat, and we paused when we found the high bit we used to jump off as kids. Mum had banned it years ago due to my condition but it probably wasn’t a good idea anyway, given the lower water level in recent years. We laughed about how we used to do synchronised dives, and I said we should do it again. Cat laughed (at the idea of me doing it clearly) and, in a moment of defensiveness, I smilingly suggested that perhapsshewas the one not brave enough to try it. Then we walked on, talking about all the things I would do when I got up to Aberdeen, all the art I would create and the experiences I would have. And it felt lovely for a time, to feel like I would get a few years of normality: atsome point, we agreed, I would get a new heart, and everything would just work itself out.
She told me her plans too, that she was applying to do nursing – it had been her secret dream apparently, after seeing how much they did for me in the hospitals, and when she said it, it made absolute sense. Of course she would be a fantastic nurse. Of course she would make everyone feel better, with her cheer and spark, just like she’d always done for me. Then she admitted she and Fraser had had a fight, and suddenly I realised why she was only too happy to disappear off with me. It was over something stupid, she said, but she’d gotten angry and walked out. And I felt awful for her, knowing how much Fraser meant to her, how serious they’d become. ‘It will be OK,’ I said gently, ‘just speak to him when you get back,’ and she nodded; said she would do that.
Said she loved him so much.
That evening, we had dinner together again, some chilli I cooked up for us over the course of a lazy afternoon, then we just lay on the sofa together, reading magazines and scrolling through my fresher’s week itinerary. We had a few too many glasses of wine and I fell asleep on the sofa.
When I woke, she was gone, and even though I felt a twinge of worry, I just put it down to the alcohol; after all, Cat disappeared off to do stuff all the time. In the end, it took me an hour to fully realise something was wrong, and I will regret that hour for the rest of my life. I will forever regret falling into an alcohol-induced sleep on the sofa and not trusting that kick of worry when I woke. Because, instead, I went upstairs and had a shower. I took a while drying my hair, sent a message to Mum saying we were having a great time and not to worry. And then I headed back downstairs and waited for her to reappear.
But she never did. My darling, wonderful sister, the person who made me tick, the person I was supposed to grow old with.
My other half.
I will never forget that image of her floating face down out on the water, below the high bit we used to dive from –for old times’ sake, I could imagine her saying as she leapt up high, eyes shining. But now, her usually bright-red hair was splayed dark, and my gut twisted when I realised what she’d done; what I’d done, by goading her like that before. I ran in screaming, pulled her limp body out, then I shouted as loud as I could for someone, anyone to help. But there was no one was there.
No one heard me.
I went into some sort of auto mode next – called emergency services, administered the CPR we’d both been taught until they got there, and then when the ambulance finally arrived, I rode with her all the way to the hospital just praying that it could all be taken away; that this was all an awful, awful dream.
But it wasn’t a dream, and they couldn’t revive her.
And it was me who had to call home and hear my mother’s wails down the line when I told her what had happened.
Just a simple trip, just a moment of fun was all it took to destroy everything.
And I knew in that moment that it was all my fault – despite what anyone said later on about her knowing the water levels were shallow and it being a reckless move. If I had never suggested that trip, if I had never encouraged her to jump, my sister would still be here. If I had simply stayed being careful, stayed being grateful for the small life I had, nothing bad would have happened to her big one.
But it did.
I took her life.
And she’ll never get it back.
A stirring beside me, and Adam wakes.
‘Is that an alarm?’ he says, looking around. Then before I know it, he’s jumped to his feet, and he’s walking away downthe corridor. Dazed and tearful, like I’m coming out of a watery dream, I follow behind.
Sven is in the corridor outside the room when we get there, and he is hunched over himself, head in his hands. My heart stops.
Oh god, oh god.
Not again.
Not Charlie and the baby. I’ll stop doing my list, I won’t push it any more than I already have. Because if I really think about it – this list was never about Emily; it was about me and all the thingsIalways wanted to do. I went around her flat and made blind assumptions based on some flyers she probably thought nothing of, some hiking boots she maybe had no intention of ever actually using – an atlas she likely never looked at and one solitary chat with a dance instructor. But this is what happens when I take chances.
Everything goes wrong.
