The Forrests

10. Masculinity Studies





The High Dependency Unit smelled like an old folks’ home, which smelled like stale flower water, which smelled stagnant, like unmoving curtains onto a double-glazed aluminium-framed window through which there was a manicured rock garden, koi carp drifting in a pool. Dorothy stood at the reception desk waiting for the nurse to get off the phone. This was the next stage, after the long waiting while Eve was in surgery, and it was good to have a place to be. The flowers she had bought from the shop downstairs had to stay outside the ward’s double doors, in the nothing space by the lifts, stems set in an old ice-cream container on the floor, the flowers balancing tenuously against the wall. It was inevitable that a small human movement would make the flowers slide down, the bases of their stems emerging dripping from the water, so that who knew what state they would be in later. She had already decided to take them to Nathan and Eve’s, where she was going to stay, Andrew holding the fort at home with the kids. The flowers would make a good payment in kind for one of the casseroles Nathan would be brought that night. There hadn’t been time to make casseroles at home, or do anything but get here.

The nurse got off the phone and pointed Dot in the direction of Evelyn’s room. ‘You’re her sister?’ Usually this wouldn’t have to be asked. Usually there would be the resemblance. ‘Hubby’s in the family room. Think he’s having a wee rest. Long day.’

Evelyn was asleep, her head encased in a giant white turban of bandages so that she looked like she had encephalitis, which she did not, or like her head was an enormous cartoon thumb. ‘What’s the worst that could happen,’ she’d said once when Dorothy felt guilty over the children watching Tom & Jerry, ‘they grow up with a sense of comic timing?’ Her face was swollen, streaked with purplish and yellow bruises. Between the lacerations her skin shone greasily in the light that came from the window. Dorothy took a tissue from the bedside table – it came out of the box with a long, pulling hoosh – and gently, hardly touching at all, patted her sister’s nose and the grazed cheekbones and chin. A heavier breath escaped Evelyn but she didn’t wake. Dorothy sat down and took the newspaper out of her bag and dug her fingernails into her palms when an image rose up of sitting in the hospital beside Amy’s incubator, the tubes and lines going into her baby.

Before long a little clutch of people crowded towards Evelyn’s bed, the surgeon’s walk-through, and Dorothy rose from the chair to greet them and to make space. ‘I’ll get her husband,’ she said, but was rooted to the spot; she wanted to see her sister conscious. Someone shook Evelyn awake and Dot tried to poke her head in between the shoulders of the doctors and interns so that Eve would know she was there. Evelyn’s gaze rolled over Dot the way it rolled over everyone else surrounding her, and her eyes clammed shut again. A brief exchange agreed that this drowsiness was fine.

‘Been breathing on her own, good girl. So there’s head injury here,’ the surgeon said to a – what, a student? – using the sort of elegant hand gestures people made when selling jewellery on late-night infomercials. ‘Broke the left arm here and here, and the shoulder here.’ He examined his folder. ‘There was another fracture here, the ulna, but that’s old, probably a childhood break.’ He looked at Dorothy.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘When she was nine. Or ten.’ She couldn’t remember how Eve had done it, only that their parents had brushed off her complaints of a sore arm and it wasn’t till a fortnight later when she got bumped at school, rebroke it, that the secretary had called Lee and said, Your daughter needs an X-ray.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I think she was ten.’

A girl in a white coat said, ‘The hip?’

‘No, she was lucky. Internal bleeding, ribs. She was on a bicycle?’ A question, to Dorothy.

‘Yes, she, the driver just opened the car door, it threw her off. She hit the road.’ Unnecessary to add no helmet. Enough people had remarked on that.

‘Thank you.’ He addressed the others, again, telling them the serious issue was brain swelling, ‘but we’ve gone in here – and here – to relieve pressure.’

Perhaps these were the hand movements of a weather presenter, or an air hostess in a safety demonstration, the hand that mimes pulling down the oxygen mask and gripping the life-jacket whistle although there’s nothing there. It was hard to concentrate. She was panicking.

‘I’ll just go and get Nathan,’ Dot said, ‘can you please, please wait.’ Standing up had brought her body back to her; the muscles that were stiff and creaky, Play-Doh left out overnight. As she left to find the family room she heard, ‘Another scan.’

The family room was smaller than she’d imagined, with an aluminium window frame and a pile of pamphlets on the table. Brain injury, a child’s guide to bereavement. No thanks. Nathan lay on his side on the pink velour couch, his face stuffed into a cushion. She shook him. He followed her back into the HDU, his entire self folds of hanging grey fabric.

The curtains were pulled around Evelyn’s bed and a smiling nurse emerged. ‘Just changing the drip,’ she said. Evelyn lay there alone, still asleep, the space around her bed empty. The surgeon and his entourage had moved on to the next patient, the next case.

Nathan sat and took Evelyn’s pliant hand in his. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Come on.’ Her chest rose and fell. He stroked the side of her damaged face. Another nurse came in and noted saturation levels from the oximeter.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ Nathan said. ‘I need the air.’

The nurse directed Dorothy to a mini-kitchen down the hall. ‘Cereal, toast. Wee coffee maker. You may as well have a little walk too. We’ll find you if anything happens, but I think she’s going to rest a weeny bit longer.’

‘I might get something,’ said Dorothy. She had eaten a yellow pie from the hospital café at some stage, but had lost track of time. Maybe low blood sugar was why the nurse’s little wee talk of weeny wee things, probably designed to shrink the fear, instead made her want to scream. ‘I won’t be long.’

The wall in the hospital corridor was just clean enough to lean against while she waited for the toast to pop. If Evelyn’s head resembled a throbbing hammered thumb, the head on the guy waiting with her looked like a sliced-off finger.

‘I’ve had fourteen operations,’ he said, yes, to her, she must have been staring. That he could talk was astounding, that he had any brain function with that steep slope of his forehead, the near non-existence of his skull.

‘Really?’

‘This will be my fifteenth.’

An older woman stood pulling at her hands, possibly his mother. Dot wanted to stare at her too. She wanted to laugh at the impossibility of the man’s head and tell him how totally incredible he was. She left the toast and walked to the stairwell and rang Tania, the friend of Eve’s who’d come round to look after Lou. In the background was the sound of a television cartoon.

‘Lou won’t go to bed. She doesn’t want to go to school tomorrow either.’ How could you know what was best – to cosset the child or make her go on as normal, when normal – no. Dorothy knew that the classroom was good when things were wrong at home. But then there was the jolt of the present moment, when you found yourself alone without distraction, unable to control your thoughts.

‘How’s Eve?’ Tania asked.

‘It went well. Longer in recovery than we expected.’

‘Nathan’s got five casseroles here. It’s a bit on the much side. Shall I freeze them?’

‘Thanks. Keep one out for yourself.’

‘No it’s all right. You’ll need them.’

When she tried the number she had for Michael the line connected to a pre-recording, a bloodless approximation of a human voice that said sorry but this number was no longer available. ‘Oh f*ck you,’ she said into the phone, and people in the contemplation garden outside the glass doors turned their heads. She raised a palm in apology.

Nathan was still out. The nurse who came in to check the catheter bag said Eve had been awake for a little minute and Dot felt cheated, sorry that her sister hadn’t seen her there. She picked up the crossword she’d left on the side table.

‘Hi.’ Evelyn’s eyes were open, tiny slits through the swelling, and Dorothy stood to see them, to gaze at this sign of life, the sheeny curve of eyeball so wet and the colour deep inside, a golden frog at the bottom of a well. The eyelids closed again, a gesture that felt mammoth in weight. Dorothy knelt on the grey lino beside the bed and reached a hand between the safety bars to stroke her sister’s arm.

There was a denim jacket on the floor between the visitor’s chair and the bed. Instinctively Dot glanced at the end of the cubicle to make sure Nathan wasn’t there. This was not his jacket, not the tobacco pouch in the pocket, the thin paper strip of a bus ticket, the scuffed, faded cuffs and collar, the loose threads coming off the stitches around the metal buttons. The fabric still held the coldness of outside. She smelled it. She clutched it to her, buried her face in it, dark spots on the fabric where it touched her eyes. Was it Daniel’s, or did she just want to believe it was Daniel’s? Could that smell be what created, now, a blooming of leaves, shade, underneathness, the smallness of being a child? And everything, the green leaves, the stippled grass, Daniel cross-legged in their hiding place, all of it belonging to her and to time, time that went so slowly, marked by the long silence that came before the small clean cluck of the second hand on a stolen watch, and the silence that came after it. The cells of her body just the same as the cells of the air, the grass blades, the sunlight and the cells of Daniel’s skin.

The nurse behind the desk knew nothing about the jacket or a random visitor. Blood thumped in Dorothy as she strode the corridor, circled the area by the lifts, the jacket over her arm. It was a fantasy. He was in another country, with someone. The last postcard long ago, Met a girl. Clowning El Salvador. Then nothing. She had got on with mothering children and being married and teaching, absorbed by the dense volume of things to do in her day, as though this was where her life belonged. Or that was an illusion. She had mistaken being busy for being involved. No, that wasn’t fair. Where else could her attention go? She rounded a corner and came upon a woman sobbing against a wall. ‘Sorry,’ Dot said, before backing away.

She should have known if Daniel was back. Should have been told, but should also have just felt it, like knowing bodily where Eve was, that she was all right. Until this. Their connection had told her nothing about this.

Leaving the hospital into the chilly night, she thought she saw him in a wheelchair outside the main entrance, the wind tunnel where the smokers went, but when she went up and opened her mouth to speak it was another man. Dorothy hid the denim jacket in her bag and much later, when everything had happened, she took it home and hung it on a hook in the hallway, where after a time it was covered by a torn, child-sized anorak to be taken for repair, a yoga-mat carrier and a rope-handled beach bag, sand collected like a wiggly line of handwriting in the bottom of the white lining.



Dot sat with Lou, stroking the hair back from her forehead and humming a lullaby until she fell asleep. Her own kids were fine. She’d cried on the phone to Andrew, the sound of his voice. The folders on Eve’s desktop computer were named Home, Lou, Finance. Blood in her ears pounded as Dorothy typed in a document search for Daniel. A subfolder appeared, and in that a word document contained text that looked to have been cut and pasted from emails. F*ck. She closed the file before she could read too much. So, there it was. Daniel and Eve. Of course.

She had f*cking known it.



Nathan decided not to take Lou to the hospital while Eve looked like she did. In the morning Dot ran her a bubble bath, which she was still in when Tania came to the door with a Tupperware dish of pumpkin soup. The laundry was all done, the floors vacuumed and the windows cleaned. Dorothy held her at the threshold, a spray bottle of vinegar and a scrunched sheet of newspaper in her hands, and asked point blank if Eve had ever told her about Daniel.

‘Is Nate home?’

‘Of course not.’

Tania glanced back to her car, where her husband waited in the driver’s seat. He passed a wave towards Dorothy, who nodded back. Quickly Tania walked through to the kitchen and placed the sloshy container of soup on the bench top. Dorothy marked her progress, breathing hard.

‘Yes,’ Tania said. ‘It’s over, but I think they’re still in touch.’

‘Does he know what happened?’

‘I called him. He knows.’

‘He’s in town.’

‘Yes.’

‘OK. Thanks.’

‘Do you want his number?’

‘No.’ She kicked the door shut with a foot, pulled the trigger on the cleaning bottle and squirted vinegar all over the wall.



Their parents flew in from the States accompanied by Ruth, who despite having left her twin girls at home was definitely a mom, in her pale-pink polar fleece and easy-wash layered hair. Dorothy waited at the airport barricade amongst uniformed men holding name boards, as matted backpackers, men and women in business suits, stunned families and countless senior citizens ambled through the electronic doors, their faces expectant, uncertain. Her family came near the end of a large tour group, her mother and father disguised as old people holding hands, Ruth just behind with the teetering trolley. Frank wore the sashed camel trench coat and round tortoiseshell glasses of an Anglophile American. Lee’s pearl earrings looked real. Bless Ruth, she had a photo of her twins right there in her wallet, and Dorothy pored over it while her parents buckled themselves into the back seat, taking their time, older.

‘Gorgeous girls,’ she said, handing the photo back to Ruth.

‘They are.’ Ruth started to cry.

‘It’s OK,’ said Dorothy, patting her hand. ‘You’ll feel better when you see her. Eve’s going to be fine.’

As Dot drove them into town to shower and ‘freshen up’ at their hotel before the hospital, Lee murmured from the back seat in a fully American accent about the changes to the motorway, the new bridges, the buildings in the hazily approaching city that had never been there before. The rear-view mirror presented a slim rectangle of her swept-back ash-blonde hair, the sensitive indents at her temples more pronounced with age.

‘Oh look,’ she pointed at the new Sky Tower when they reached the city. ‘It’s like something from the future.’



Hospital quickly became ordinary, the place where their days happened. There was the institutionalised gravy smell, and the man with half a head and the kindness of every single person, even the friend who said ‘Boxing on’ each time they spoke, which made Dorothy want to punch her. The hierarchy in a corridor. People going to the shop in their pyjamas. ‘Slippery slope,’ Nathan finger-wagged, laughing at Dorothy when he saw what she had taken to wearing. ‘It’s a slippery slope once you start wandering the halls in your slippers. You’re not even a patient.’

And the peeling paint over the plaster walls in the hospital corridors, psoriasis on an industrial scale. Scurf tide in the shower. The male orderly who all night was trying to kill Evelyn, sending a signal to his murderous colleagues by the clicking of his pen. The one time Eve lost it, crying at Nathan and Dot, ‘Would you just go? Would you go, please, so that I can start waiting for you, so that I can start counting the f*cking paint-drying hours until you come back?’ Toast on a tray. Sleeping in the afternoons, her head shaved and stapled, a cannula plug sticking out of her hand. Taking the anti-fitting pills, the steroids that made her paranoid. The move to a general ward, the visitors and flowers and boxes of home baking, Evelyn’s friends sitting on the end of the bed, women in their thirties cross-legged like schoolgirls still.

Across the café Dorothy saw her mother’s back, the age in the hump of her upper spine. She was perched on the end of a table that another family occupied, big kids eating burgers and parents with chips and soda, the paper on the chip bag soggy, streaked red with ketchup. ‘Hi, Mum,’ Dorothy said, and Lee startled. She folded the newspaper into her handbag, put away the pen.

‘How is she?’

‘Sleeping. Shall we go and sit over there?’

They moved to an empty table by the floor-length windows. A bird had gotten in and hopped along the wainscot, pecking at crumbs. ‘Where’s Dad?’

Lee shook her head. ‘Don’t ask.’

‘What does that mean? Where is he?’

A one-shouldered shrug. ‘Out somewhere.’

‘Do you not care?’

‘Of course I care.’ The words snapped out of her. She sighed, and regained control. ‘I just do not know where he is.’

Now Dorothy looked away, exasperated. ‘He should be here. Or he can always visit my kids again if he doesn’t like the hospital. Go and spend some time, get to know them a bit.’

‘I know, darling. And we will,’ Lee said, a bony hand patting her daughter’s wrist. ‘Of course we will, but we’re thinking about Eve right now.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ This was infuriating, that Lee had become frail and tremulous in direct relation to Dorothy’s growth in perspective, her strength. The rage of teenagehood swelled biliously inside her, but she could not let it out. She was afraid of this power she felt, that she might kill her mother.



One day Eve came home. She slept for a long time getting over the discomfort of the car journey, and when she woke, Lou and Dot sat on the bed and dealt her into a game of gin. Lou was being shy with her mother.

‘Wow,’ Eve said. ‘I’ve got a great hand.’ After a minute she shut her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured through a face that looked close to sleep again. ‘Hurts to look at the cards.’

‘Lee’s managed to get hold of Michael,’ Dot said. ‘He sends his love. Can you believe it, of all of us she’s the one he keeps in touch with?’

‘Why is that strange?’ asked Lou, and Dot said, ‘Your grandmother is a strange woman.’

‘I think she’s nice.’

‘Well, that’s because you’re nice.’ She split the deck and arched the halves into a bridge and shuffled them together, like Daniel had taught her to do. ‘Come on, we’ll just sit here and play quietly while your mum has a rest.’



The Forrest seniors announced that now Eve was home they were going to leave. ‘End of the week,’ Frank said. It was Thursday. What were they racing back to, their golf handicaps, their lunches? But that was how it was with them. The thread count of Frank’s shirts and the sheen of Lee’s gold fob chain revised the past, as though the years they lived here and had children and were broke were their wilderness, an interlude. They’d reverted to type, and Ruth was the only child who’d had it in her to adapt. Dorothy stepped into the cold garden to take it out on the weeds.

‘Dorothy.’ Frank stood by the back door.

She rocked back on her haunches, balanced with her dirt-smeared hands on the trowel. ‘Hi, Dad.’ Breath briefly visible in the air.

‘You might recall that trouble from the traffic fines. From . . .’

‘God, from like twenty years ago. Yeah.’ A snail crawled up the trunk of a broccoli plant and she picked it off, tossed it into the hedge.

‘Something I meant to deal with at the time, but . . . It slipped my mind. Just to let you know, in case they call, looking for you.’

‘The who, the Ministry of Justice?’

‘Yes. I’m sure they’ve forgotten all about it.’

‘But why me?’

‘You were the driver. Weren’t you? Anyway I’m sure they won’t track you down.’

‘But, Frank . . .’ He’d told her he would deal with it. Hadn’t he? Had the fines been forgotten? Or was she some kind of unknowing fugitive? ‘I can’t worry about that shit now.’ A small satisfaction, watching him flinch at the language. She dug the fork into a root system and raked it out.

The water, running warm in the kitchen sink, felt delicious over her hands. Dot squirted a perfect green jet of detergent onto her palms and rubbed them vigorously. Movement caught her eye; a neighbour’s cat trotting through the vege garden, and she clapped her hands and hissed through the window. Its back twitched and it slunk quickly through a hole in the bushes. Ruth spoke from the fridge, her head inside it, reorganising. ‘Did Dad tell you we’re going home? I feel bad but I really miss my girls.’

‘It’s OK. Eve’s going to be fine.’

‘Even though they don’t really need me.’ Her delicate pink nails caught the light as she lifted a bowl to her nose, removed the cling film, sniffed it and put it back.

‘Who, your girls? I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘You know. Twins.’

‘Oh but they still need their mom.’

Ruth smiled, unconvinced.

‘Ruth. They do.’

‘They’re very close.’

‘Well. That’s lovely. Anyway, I envy you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Living somewhere else. I hate being this age. I’d like to turn back on the past with a flame-thrower. One of those hoses that sprays fire. But I bet you don’t even feel it, the weight, dragging around behind you. I mean you’re American now, and your life – is it like our childhood was another planet?’

Ruth said, ‘Isn’t everyone’s?’

A call came from upstairs. ‘I’ll go,’ said Dot.

‘Anyway,’ said Ruth. ‘Getting older is a lot better than the alternative.’



Later she borrowed Nathan’s car to explore their old neighbourhood, look at the family house, a thing that Dorothy never did. ‘Visiting Mars,’ Dot said, and Ruth nodded, tucking a house key into the back pocket of her dark-blue jeans.

‘Evelyn and Lou are coming. Change of scene. Are you sure you won’t?’

‘I’m good, thanks. Bring me a souvenir.’

The medication prohibited Eve from driving, so she sat in the back like a foreign dignitary, Lou beside her and Ruth the chauffeur. ‘Six months,’ Eve had said that morning, not griping but bewildered, the way she sounded about everything now. ‘I can’t drive for six whole months.’ The street was fresh with the feel of coming rain. Dorothy gave Ruth a jaunty wave and said, ‘Take ’em down memory lane, thanks, driver,’ in a silly voice. Ruth fired her the finger as she shifted the car into gear, and Dorothy burst out laughing. They drove off, Evelyn’s profile still and serious like a child’s, Lou snuggled into her shoulder.

Dot spun right into her mother who had been standing behind her in silence. Lee took her glasses off and clung to them, twisting the stems. It was odd to see tears appear in her eyes. Her mouth jerked and she said, ‘What if we’d lost her.’

‘Oh Mum.’ Dorothy leaned in and hugged her awkward, starchy body. ‘We didn’t,’ Dorothy said, and stroked Lee’s arm as she drew a shuddering breath. ‘She’s going to be fine. Come on. You ready to come inside?’

‘I’d like to head back to the hotel. Start packing.’

‘It’s great you’ve been here,’ Dorothy said. ‘We needed you.’

‘Really?’ She was wiping her nose with a white handkerchief, her eyes searching Dot’s face.

Dot hugged her again. ‘Yes, Mum.’



Upstairs, the tray with crumbs, the soup bowl with its tidemarks were evidence of Evelyn’s health. In the tangle of jewellery on the dresser were the earrings they’d both been given, all those years ago. Dorothy held them to her ears, looked in the mirror, her own pair lost to house moves, carelessness and time. Lee would be pleased to see those, if she remembered. There was a small crater in the pillow where Eve’s head had lain. What did she think about up here? Kneeling on the floor beside the bed, Dot leaned her forehead on the blue sheets. The pillow smelled of her sister’s perfume. Light came through the window and she was second base on the field at the commune, followed Michael’s gaze from the batter’s mound to see Eve and Daniel plough towards her through the long grass. Michael thwacked the bat into his palm. Gold lit the grasses. Daniel’s steady stride, Eve behind him, a shadow. She woke up to the front door slamming shut, the sound of voices. Dot’s knees cracked as she stood too quickly. Blood drained from her head, the corners of the room rocked.

‘Who made this?’ Evelyn was sitting at the table, eating dinner with Louisa. ‘It’s delicious.’ There was deep peace in the repetitive motion of her hand as it glided between the plate and her patient mouth. Dorothy touched her sister’s shoulder, settled the tray from her room on the bench, put the soup bowl in the sink and ran the tap on it. ‘How’s the old neighbourhood?’ she asked.

‘Smaller,’ Ruth said. ‘Eve got a bit antsy. Wanted to come home.’ The smile that followed this was meant to be relaxed, but a current ran between Ruth and Louisa, the discomfort they must have felt in the confined space of the car while Evelyn’s voice got louder.

Later Dorothy tucked Lou into bed and brought Evelyn a cup of camomile tea on the couch. She turned the music down and sat below her sister on the floor. ‘Has it been good having them here?’ she asked. ‘Mum and Dad?’

Eve nodded. ‘Mum’s hair looks nice. Dad’s older.’

‘Of course it took you nearly dying to get them back.’

‘Yeah,’ Eve laughed. ‘Should have done it sooner.’ Rain started, pattered the window. ‘Isn’t that lovely.’ She stroked Dorothy’s hair. ‘Did they come when Amy was sick?’

‘No. It was all over fast, and she’s so fine now.’

‘Mmm,’ Evelyn said. ‘But still.’ The rain came in earnest now, enveloping the house. ‘Where’s Nate?’

‘Upstairs. I think he’s on the phone.’ She and Nathan were allies now; he told her things. ‘You’ve got a good man there.’

Eve’s hand stopped stroking. Dorothy felt it leave her hair. ‘Has Daniel phoned?’

‘I don’t know.’ Breathing seemed to require thought, volition. ‘Not while I’ve been here.’

‘I just wondered.’ Eve’s voice was dreamy. ‘I thought someone might have told him, seeing as he’s family.’

‘Tania has spoken to him.’

‘Tania?’

‘Yes.’

Evelyn moved her arm. ‘Oh, OK.’

‘I don’t know how to get hold of him,’ Dorothy said. ‘Ask Tania.’

Eve began stroking her hair again.

‘You’re my family.’ Dot leaned her head back into the sofa seat and looked at Evelyn’s upside-down face. ‘I mean, thank god we’ve got each other. I love Ruth, but she’s from outer space.’

‘I feel like the one who’s a Martian. Changed.’

Dorothy squeezed the hand that Evelyn had rested by her shoulder. ‘We all are.’



That same night the fever came, vomiting and delirium. Eve mangled her words. Nate drove her back in to the hospital. The doctors couldn’t tell them. Maybe an infection they couldn’t locate. Scans revealed nothing, nobody knew why, meningitis from an infected bone, the blood/brain barrier, quarantine Louisa, visit in a surgical mask, we’ve only got room in the chemo ward, no high risk on the chemo ward and we’ve had some results, it might not be meningitis, let’s get her into the chemo ward where beds come free regularly, where there’s always a guy in trouble for smoking in his bed and how do you enforce that ban, how do you discipline a person who’s got nothing to lose, could you roll over, darling, we’ve got to do another LP, let’s get you on your side, can you hold her hand, Nathan, that’s it dear just look into your husband’s eyes, hold on, we’re going to be gentle as we, yes, there it goes, yes, it’s in, not long now, good girl. The syringe came back – still cloudy. They’d try the other kind of antibiotics. Wait.

Tania appeared in the doorway with Lou. ‘Thank you,’ said Dorothy, hugging this very good woman, holding the sides of her worried face and nodding. ‘Thank you.’ Nathan clutched the girl’s shoulders and she walked over to her mum and stroked her arm, then ran into her father’s arms.

Her parents were called at their hotel. A chest X-ray and a cranial scan revealed nothing. An MRI showed the abscess. Another drug was tried. They waited, again, but the infection had her in its grip. ‘We’re going to operate,’ the surgeon said. Dorothy heard drainage, shunt, bone flap.

In the flurry of medical preparation, nurses adjusting drip bags and the catheter, the machines started telling a different story. ‘Are we getting her into theatre or not?’ said a nurse.

‘Wait.’

‘Right,’ the nurse said. ‘Time for theatre.’

But there, at the last minute, it all stopped.

‘This looks like stroke. I’ll get the specialist,’ an orderly said. ‘Wait.’

‘Should we leave?’ Lee gestured to the door.

Nate and Lou approached the bed. Lou climbed up and lay next to her mother. The nurses backed off.

‘But she was fine,’ their father said. ‘She was fine.’

Dorothy nodded. OK. There was the click of relief that the worst was arrived at, the tension and fear floating away. For a second. Straight after that, she knew the fear had been the only thing that held her together.

Afterwards, she drove Nate and Lou home. Andrew and the kids would be there now; she’d rung them from the hospital. Her husband had said, disbelievingly, ‘No.’ She parked away from the lights of the house and the three of them sat there in the dark and clutched each other’s hands across the handbrake. Louisa passed her dad the box of tissues from the pocket in the back of the passenger seat and said, ‘Come on,’ and they waited a minute longer until he was ready to face the house.

Near dawn Dorothy found him in the garden, looking at the council block behind the house, the high walls covered in scaffolding. Rusty metal rods rattled and the wooden platforms creaked. Blue tarpaulins sheeted in the wind.

‘Looks like the whole thing’s going to take off,’ Nathan said.

‘It might. Tania brought another lasagne.’

‘People are amazing.’

The morning was cold. He blew on his hands to warm them and put them over his ears. Inside his head it would be stifled, there would be the seashell sound of his blood. This was what Dorothy was thinking about, so that it was a surprise when Nathan said with perfect clarity, ‘Looks like the whole thing’s going to take off and fly away.’

The music from the stereo inside flared across the garden; one of the kids must have gotten hold of the remote control.