I’m hoping I’ll get a good night’s sleep when you burst into the bedroom, scared-looking and staggering, to tell me you can’t breathe, that you have terrible pain in your chest.
I hope you have indigestion. I hope you’re being over-cautious when you tell me to ring 999. I hope the emergency responder will tell me the ambulance will arrive quickly. I hope the paramedic is wrong when he says he thinks you’re having a heart attack. Hope, at that point, becomes something bigger than a wish for nice weather or quick queues in the supermarket. Hope becomes the biggest thing in the world.
I hope we get to the hospital quickly. I don’t drive, so I have no concept of how long the journey will take. From the back of the ambulance, there is a tiny bit of window I can see out of. I see a hotel. Trees whizzing past. Cars stopping at roundabouts. But really, I don’t know where we are. I just hope we get there soon. Hoping to be at a place I don’t want us to be but willing us to be there immediately.
As we arrive at the hospital, I hope we’ll have the chance to laugh with our friends when I tell them about the ridiculous things the morphine is making you say. I hope the fact you’re being ridiculous is a good sign. Not willing to put it down to the drugs, but the hope that you’re well enough to joke and laugh.
And then we’re in the coronary unit, and you’re taken away and every bit of hope I have is passed into the hands of someone whose importance makes him a Dr, not a Mr. Along with his instruments and equipment, his calm and qualified hands hold all my hope for our future, and I think about the Michael Rosen poem, ‘These Are the Hands.’ Weird, the things that go round our heads at times.
I’m sitting in the relatives’ room, which seems to have been decorated with the sole purpose of sucking the energy from the air. Shades of lilac and dread fill the space. Our friend Louise arrives. She’s like light coming into the room. Just her being here doubles the hope and brings some semblance of calm, even though I know it’s not real. The dread is keeping me quiet. Louise chats away to me. I’m aware of her words but all I can hear now are my own fears. The loudest being that you have died, and no one has come to tell me. I’m so fearful now that I’ve become still and silent. I’m willing the hope to return, pushing away thoughts of what I’m going to do next. How I will cope without you. Just when I think the hope might have left me, you appear. Nurses are wheeling your bed down the corridor, saying, ‘Wave to your wife!’ And there you are. Smiling and looking ridiculous in your morphine-induced haze.
And then, for the first time since you came into the bedroom looking scared, I break. Tears and relief spill out of me and, just like that, the hope is back. You haven’t died. You’re alive and you’re breathing and you’re ridiculous, and I’m so, so grateful, and overwhelmed, and scared, and hopeful.
**
How quickly what was strange becomes normal. Within less than 24 hours, I know my way through the maze of corridors to your room. I recognise the lady serving at the coffee bar. I know the names of the nurses who are caring for you. You, the strong one who makes me feel safe every day, look so small and vulnerable in the hospital bed with wires, monitors and all manner of bleeping things around you. But you’re smiling. There’s colour in your cheeks. You’re alive. The dread still hovers in the corner of the room like some unwanted guest at a party, but the hope is stronger. Bigger. Way more powerful.
The clever medical staff with their knowledge and machinery have saved you. But hope has played its part. Hope has made me believe you’ll pull through this. Hope has stopped me from giving in to the dread. Hope, it seems, is strong medicine. It is as important and vital as the air we breathe. Its power and magic are not just the reserve of on-time buses and sunny beach days. It is the stuff of life. It has filled my heart. It has helped yours heal.