Numbered Read online

  And he had never known, or loved, anyone like her.

  And he never wanted to again.

  A soft noise from behind startled him and he pulled his head up from Poppy’s palm. The squeeze at his shoulder belonged to Julia; it was her usual brisk touch, part pat, part crippling pinch.

  ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘The same.’ His voice was low and flat.

  ‘You been talking to her?’

  Quentin had watched Julia through all of her phases of grief over Poppy and he had to admit that her current coping approach was the toughest to take. She was so damn fake-jovial that he wanted to stand up and wring her neck.

  ‘Of course,’ he bit out.

  ‘Because you know they said she can hear us. Even though she’s slipping in and out of it. So she knows we’re here for her.’

  ‘I know,’ he snapped. ‘I was also there when they said it. Remember?’

  ‘Okay, pet,’ Julia soothed him. ‘Keep your knickers on.’

  Quentin stood and pushed back his chair, hooking his thumb towards the door of the small room. Julia followed him outside, looking over her shoulder at Poppy as she did.

  Quentin leaned against the external wall of the room, facing away from Poppy. He still had enough respect for his wife’s awesome, almost magical, powers to suspect she may well know, in some subconscious part of her brain, that he was about to blow his lid at Julia. So he wanted to minimise the chances of her somehow knowing what was going on. As he faced up to the tall redhead, his eyes swept the central corridor of the hospice they had been living in for the last two days, since things had become too arduous for Poppy at home. Initially, they had been in one of the rooms in the central grouping. Now they had been moved to one at the other end, with more frequent monitoring.

  They all knew what it meant.

  Quentin had worked in a hospital for two years, but he had never been in a hospice before this week. It was a place of intense dedication and abject fucking misery. The jury was still out for him as to whether he wanted to punch or kiss the two doctors who worked every twelve-hour shift with such honest precision. All he knew for sure was that he scowled at them a lot. He couldn’t help it. His face just seemed to crease into a pissed-off crump every time one of them said something about pain relief, comfort management, progress of the disease, the treatment plan, or Poppy’s bloody fucking organs shutting down.

  It wasn’t rational, it wasn’t fair. He could see how seriously the two men took their jobs, and how good they were. But none of that mattered. They spoke, he scowled, and his fingers coiled into a fist, desperate with the urge to beat the shit out of something. Or, at the very least, scream and curse.

  Right now, the object of his rage was Julia.

  He scowled at her. ‘Just stop with the bonhomie crap, okay?’

  She frowned at him and pursed her lips. ‘Sorry, Sunshine. You tell me how you would have me handle The End. What kind of approach would be acceptable to you? Should I be crying and gnashing my teeth, making sure Poppy knows, all the way through her fucking coma, that she’s letting me down so badly by going and dying when that upsets me so terribly?’

  It was a long monologue, and Julia delivered it without drawing breath. When she finished, a flush darkened her cheeks and her eyes were bright. Her lips were still pursed and her hands were on her hips.

  Quentin ran his hands through his hair. ‘No,’ he snapped, placing his hands on the cool wall behind him so he wouldn’t reach across and strangle her with them. ‘I don’t give a shit what you do. Just don’t act like she’s some child who doesn’t know she’s dying and we’re all on some fucking kindergarten picnic and isn’t it so damn neat?’ His voice was rising and he noticed the nice young nurse who always spoke so gently to Poppy flicked a concerned glance in their direction. He lowered his voice to a hiss. ‘And I don’t want you to ask me if I’m talking to her, right? Of course I’m fucking talking to her. Just not all the time. I’m not a talker, you know that. I’m not some damn girl.’

  He said the last word with such intensity that he realised as he said it that this was part of the issue. He was surrounded by women, had been for so long now.

  Poppy, Julia, bloody Scarlett.

  Quentin got women, loved them, always had. In all the right and sometimes very wrong ways. And they usually loved him right back. But right now he wanted permission to be himself, not some girly-approved version of the good guy/rocker husband. He wanted to sit and process, and think, and smash shit and just be with her. These fucking women might not get that, but he knew one thing for sure: Poppy would.

  ‘Poppy would understand.’ The words were a snarl, poison from his mouth.

  It was a low blow.

  Julia’s face crumpled as he said it, but she wasn’t going down without a fight.

  ‘Don’t you fucking tell me what Poppy would understand. I know better than anyone what Poppy would understand. I’ve known her since forever.’ Julia advanced on him, one long finger extended, and he just knew it was for the purpose of poking him in the chest to underline her point. ‘Sorry I’m too cheerful for you. Sorry I don’t want her to be lonely. Sorry I want to make sure you’re not sitting there while I’m off getting coffee, self-indulgently brooding about how sad poor little Quentin is going to be when his beloved Poppy is gone.’

  She poked him in the chest on the last sentence and it was a bridge too far.

  He grasped her finger in his fist and growled at her. ‘You have no idea what I’m feeling or how I’m choosing to manage it. Why don’t you just fuck off?’ He said the last two words like bullets, wanting them to hit their mark right in the centre of the superior redhead’s chest, and wound her the way her words had wounded him. Because she was right, damn her. He was feeling self-piteous. He was sitting there, not knowing what to say, not knowing how to feel, being angry with anyone who came near Poppy, wanting to rip the balls from the doctors, wanting to do anything that would mean he wasn’t just waiting around for Poppy to die.

  He wanted something to happen. He wanted the waiting over.

  He wanted them to take those damn nasal prongs out and wake her up so he could talk to her properly. It had happened so fast when she had started slipping in and out of consciousness. She had been crashing and there had been a buzz of activity and panic. There had been no time for ‘goodbye’ or ‘we’re here’ or anything else. He wanted the prongs gone, the drip gone, and Poppy awake.

  But he also didn’t.

  Because they’d been pretty clear – that would only happen now once she was gone.

  As Quentin clocked the hurt in Julia’s eyes, he pushed off the wall, released her finger and made for the door.

  ‘Where the fuck do you think you’re going?’ Julia was a tower of redhead goddess fury, blocking his path. ‘Don’t you dare leave. Don’t you dare.’

  He pushed past her. ‘Don’t you tell me what to do,’ he growled, slamming his palms against the swing doors.

  * * *

  When he got back, he crept quietly to the door of Poppy’s room. Julia was talking softly to Poppy, and Scarlett was knitting on the other side of the bed. The creation in her hands was hideous, some kind of scarf being fashioned from multi-coloured vomit. Scarlett sure liked bright things.

  ‘Ten’s just gone to get supplies,’ Julia was assuring Poppy, and Quentin smiled to himself. Julia was a crap liar and Poppy would be able to discern the bullshit through a hundred layers of coma. But the lie made him feel softer towards Julia, even if he hadn’t already been beating himself black and blue over his harshness at her an hour before. Julia was bossy, and a giant pain in his arse, but she was good.

  And she loved Poppy as much as he did. Just differently.

  He edged into the room.

  To her credit, Julia didn’t scream at him, or knee him in the balls. Either of which would have been a completely reasonable response to his boorish fury.

  But he felt better now. And it was because of the thing he was carryi
ng in his arms. It was time to face the music.

  ‘I’m sorry, Julia,’ he said, moving to take a seat and pull it close to Poppy’s bed. He turned to his wife. ‘I’ve been a dick, Poppy,’ he explained, taking her hand. ‘I wanted to be here and I’ve fucked it all up. I wanted to kill the doctors, and I was a shit to Julia, and then I pissed off for an hour.’

  Scarlett looked at him across the bed, nodding approvingly, and he wondered if there was anything he could say that would shock this woman. He supposed if you ran an orphanage in India you’d seen more of the shitty side of life than most.

  A thought landed prickly and terrifying in his brain: what if Poppy had died while he’d been gone? It made him breathless, and he rubbed at his chest.

  From the chair beside him, Julia picked up his hand and squeezed it. ‘He’s right, Pop,’ she agreed. ‘He has been a dick. I really never got what you see in him.’

  Then she squeezed Quentin’s hand again and smiled at him. He could see the relief and forgiveness in it as Julia turned back to Poppy. ‘I don’t know how you could have married such a fucking prima donna. Fucking performers. I tell you what. Take some advice from me. In your next life, marry a nice safe lawyer.’ She paused, as though pondering. ‘Or an accountant.’ She paused again, as if wondering how far to push it. ‘With a big dick.’ She paused a third time and then tapped the guitar in Quentin’s arms. ‘Someone who doesn’t feel the need to make such a show of everything.’

  Quentin squeezed Julia’s hand in return, and then dropped it so he could focus on what he wanted to do. The moment the thought had formed in his head he had known it was right. All this uncertainty – what to do, how to be. He knew the cure for that. And the moment he had dashed home to pick up Jerry Hall all the uncertainty had faded away. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Why had he been here for two whole days without the other love of his life to keep him company in these darkest hours? It really was a sign of what a complete mess he was in.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sure it was the man himself who said something about the good thing about music being that when it hits you, you feel no pain.’

  Julia wrinkled her nose. ‘Who? Which movie is that from?’

  Quentin smiled. ‘Not a movie. The man himself. Bob Marley.’ He frowned. ‘I think.’

  Julia smiled back at him, and Scarlett put down her knitting and looked at him expectantly as he fiddled experimentally to tune Jerry and then pulled his chair closer to Poppy, brushing his fringe out of his eyes.

  He started the familiar, dark and broody chords, and peace flooded through him. He knew it was right. He knew, wherever Poppy was at this instant and whatever she was feeling, it would have the same effect on her. As he played the introductory chords, he had a thought, which was unusual for him. Usually when he focused in on playing, all conscious thought scattered and he became more and less than human, some tuning fork for a message from a more beautiful place. But maybe because of what he was playing, the thought came to him fully formed, perfect. It was about how he had always imagined that monogamy would stifle you, kill the passion that had made you go there. But how instead it had made him more passionate. His devotion to Poppy had been the ultimate turn-on for him.

  He loved this woman. And only she could light him up.

  Nothing had ever felt as completely sexy as the woman on this bed looking at him like he was the only one she ever wanted, telling him she loved him, that he was her only one.

  He wanted her to know, now and forever, wherever forever may take her, that it was the same for him. That she was perfect, just as she was, even in her wasted state, even hovering on the brink between this world and some other place. He would always love her, desire her, wish for one more second with her.

  As the introductory chords wound up, he cleared his throat.

  And then he sang the sweetest song he knew, words about coming as you are, as someone wants you to be. Even though, as much as he loved them, they burned his throat like acid.

  No-one would ever do the unplugged version like Kurt, live in New York, sitting on that stool and croaking the most romantic lyrics Quentin had ever heard. But he was damned if he would not give it a red-hot go, here, in this tiny hospice room, singing to his love.

  Into the words he injected all the things this woman had given him – a comfort in his own skin, a sense of something better and more beautiful, an absolute connection he had never imagined possible. He looked at her face, and looked through it to see the woman who’d made him jump out of that damned plane, the woman who had arched above him on his bed making that gurgly squeal that drove him mad, the woman with the stupid list that had taken them halfway around the world. He kept going – singing to her about coming as a friend, like an old memory.

  Tears pricked at his eyes and he couldn’t look at Julia or Scarlett.

  He finished the song and put the guitar gently on the floor, picking up Poppy’s hand again. ‘I’m here, baby,’ he whispered. ‘To the end. I’m not going anywhere.’

  Just as he said it, one of the doctors appeared at the door. The long, lean one who bore the look of the constantly worried. ‘It’s time,’ he said.

  * * *

  His name was Jean-Paul, Quentin read now on his name tag. He was sure Jean-Paul had probably told him that at least a dozen times over the last two days, but Quentin had been unable to take it in. Only now could he focus on this doctor as a person; now that he had them huddled in a small consulting area, two sympathetic-looking nurses on standby lest any of them start to froth at the mouth. Yep, this doctor was a person. A tired, overworked person. A person who must, Quentin assumed, go through this same, strange, sorry ritual all the time.

  The doctor was tall and thin – elegant, Quentin corrected himself. There was something about his neat moustache and sweet, sad brown eyes that was almost feminine. French-Moroccan, Quentin surmised from his brown skin and his name tag, but he spoke with a very proper English accent as he asked them if they were ready.

  Scarlett occupied the chair closest to the doctor. She was pale and seemed to be murmuring to herself. She glanced up at his words. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Julia groaned, scraping her chair across the tiled floor in a way that made them all wince. ‘Leave the poor bastard alone, Scarlett, let’s get on with it.’

  Julia had gone from perky-cheerful to maudlin in one nimble manoeuvre once the doctor had come in to make his announcement. Quentin grasped one of her hands and enfolded it in his. He found Scarlett as irritating as she did, but this was not the time.

  ‘Sorry, Scarlett,’ Julia relented.

  Scarlett just bowed her head.

  ‘We’re ready,’ Quentin confirmed.

  ‘Algiers.’ The doctor smiled at Scarlett. ‘Now.’ He opened his palms. ‘We’ve talked about this briefly already, but this is the time to go through it all, explain how it’s going to work. I’m going to go as slow as you need me to. Okay?’

  They all nodded, and Julia clung to Quentin’s hand so tightly it went numb.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now, you know Poppy has an Advance Health Directive in place, yes?’

  They all nodded again, except Scarlett. ‘I never knew,’ she said. ‘Not until Julia said so a couple of days ago.’

  The doctor nodded and made a shape with his mouth that expressed quiet sympathy. ‘It can be very surprising, to find out.’

  Scarlett shook her head. ‘No, I mean, I think it’s good, that she did. I just …’

  Quentin was sitting between Julia and Scarlett and he reached across and grabbed her hand with his spare one to comfort her.

  ‘Go on,’ Scarlett said weakly to the doctor.

  ‘This is not about the three of you making any kind of decision,’ the doctor assured them. ‘This will always be our call, as the medical team. And …’ He paused delicately. ‘Poppy’s wishes are very clear. That’s why she is here, for the end time, and not the hospital.’

  He looked around to check
they were all following, and Quentin found himself riveted to the man’s thin mouth. He didn’t want to hurt the guy anymore. He just felt helpless, and mesmerised by the words coming from him.

  ‘At this stage,’ the doctor continued, ‘there is no remaining medical intervention that can do anything for her. We can offer her pain relief, and make sure she’s comfortable. That’s what Poppy wanted.’

  Quentin knew it. He had heard it from Poppy, over and over, and he had heard it again from the doctors over the last two days. He understood how it worked, and he ­understood that this conversation was a critical last step on the path Poppy had wanted. It was the path she had chosen, and he would do his best to see that it was honoured.

  The three of them murmured unintelligible, horrified agreement.

  ‘Are there any questions any of you have about the treatment options?’

  Quentin cleared his throat. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t assume the worst just yet? Maybe she can come out this slump?’

  The doctor shook his head. ‘She will not come out of this slump, Mr Carmody. This is Poppy’s time. Sometime, in the next day or so, her body will give up.’

  This time Quentin felt both Julia and Scarlett squeeze his hands. He felt an unbreakable bond form between the three of them as they sat there, bewildered, terrified, clinging to each other.

  ‘Okay,’ he croaked.

  The doctor cleared his throat. ‘We will give her extra oxygen and pain meds now, and she may have some time where she is more lucid, for a while. There are some drugs we can use to help with that.’

  ‘Will she feel pain?’ Julia’s voice was small and high.

  ‘No,’ Jean-Paul said empathically. ‘Her pain and her anxiety will be completely managed. Even if she rouses a bit more, she will be at peace until she goes.’

  ‘But you don’t know?’ Scarlett’s voice was whiny. ‘You don’t know if she will wake up, or if she’ll just …’

  Her voice broke and Julia stepped into the breach. ‘If she’ll just slip away?’