Ghost at Your Shoulder

An Ordinary Emergency ‘The red one’s mine,’ Sam said. He had been leaning over the kitchen table for five minutes, separating cables into little loops, and was now watching Rachel with the patience he reserved for people who refused to learn something perfectly obvious. Rachel looked at the two cables on the kitchen table. One was red at both ends. The other had a strip of red tape round a black plug. She had brought them down from his room because they had been lying on top of a pile of clean towels she wanted to put away. ‘Which red one?’ Rachel lifted the cable she had taken off the towels and tried to find the identifying mark he had mentioned. ‘The one you’re holding.’ ‘Then why are you pointing at that one?’ She put the first cable down beside the cold toast she had meant to eat ten minutes ago. ‘Because that one belongs to the centre.’ He took the cable gently out of her hand and began coiling it around his elbow. ‘I said this yesterday.’ ‘Yesterday you said not to move anything on your desk.’ She glanced towards the stairs. From the state of his room, he appeared to regard every horizontal surface in the house as an extension of that desk. ‘Exactly.’ ‘Your desk being the airing cupboard, apparently.’ Rachel took the folded towels out of his reach before he could put anything else on them. He grinned despite himself. At sixteen he could set up a decent microphone arrangement, adjust levels by ear and talk for ten minutes about the difference between two connectors, but he still appeared unable to locate his own shoes without a search party. It was the fifth week of the summer holidays. They had run out of the ambitious things they had talked about doing and were now operating a less demanding system of keeping everybody fed and making sure Sam remembered where he was meant to be. The washing machine was on its third load of the day. A school letter about September sat underneath a supermarket receipt. Rachel had a half-finished coffee and twenty minutes before she needed to leave. ‘What time are you going to the centre?’ she asked, sorting the receipts from the school letter so she could find her car keys underneath. ‘Eleven. I’m meeting Maya at the library first.’ Sam moved the coiled cable to the bag at his feet, where it immediately began to come undone. ‘To record?’ ‘To pick up something. She’s doing her own stuff this morning.’ He pushed the back of his hand through his hair without looking up from the bag. ‘What stuff?’ ‘An interview. I think.’ Sam checked the message that had arrived beside the bread bin. ‘She’s got questions for this woman who used to run the community paper. Then she’s going to the library because apparently you can’t just email people who are sixty.’ ‘You can. Sometimes they even email back.’ She had been pleased, once, when Maya asked her about records and permissions; since then Maya had started asking rather difficult follow-up questions. ‘Tell Maya.’ ‘You tell Maya.’ ‘She’s already got a plan.’ He spoke with a trace of admiration that made Rachel keep her own reply to herself. Rachel knew this to be true. Maya had plans for days on which nobody else knew what time they were getting up. She also had the useful habit of bringing her own sandwiches, though Rachel suspected that was less a matter of consideration than an unwillingness to trust other people's arrangements. Sam put the cables in a canvas bag and went to the sink for a glass of water. On the fridge, the August contact calendar was held in place by four different magnets. His father had amended Thursday in neat blue writing. Rachel had added an arrow with a question mark because Sam had told each of them a different story about where he wanted to sleep after his Thursday shift at the youth studio. ‘Have you settled Thursday with your dad?’ Rachel stood in front of the fridge with one hand on the door, reading the question mark she had added beside his change of plans. ‘He says I can stay there.’ ‘That’s not what I asked.’ She shut the fridge and waited. She had no wish to ring his father at lunchtime and discover they had been given two more conflicting arrangements. ‘Yes. I’ve settled it.’ ‘Fine.’ ‘Are you annoyed?’ ‘No. I’d rather know where you are than have to do an inquiry.’ The phrase came out in her work voice, as it sometimes did when she was tired. ‘You could just ask me.’ ‘An inquiry is what it becomes when I ask you four times and get three answers.’ Sam laughed, though he was cross with her as well. Rachel carried on folding the tea towel because it gave her something to finish. She had meant to ask one uncomplicated question about Thursday; within two minutes she had made it sound like a failure to comply with an agreed plan. The doorbell sounded. Sam looked up from his glass. ‘Dad,’ he said, already moving towards the hall. ‘He’s bringing the stand. I told him he could drop it in.’ ‘What stand?’ ‘The microphone stand. I left it in his boot.’ ‘Naturally.’ Rachel followed slowly enough to give herself a second to check that she was dressed for an unexpected visitor. Chris, Sam’s father, let himself in with the key Rachel had insisted he keep when they first separated. He had asked whether that would make things more awkward; she had said it would make things less awkward when somebody had forgotten their school bag. Both predictions had proved true at different times. He came in carrying a folded black stand and a small paper bag of peaches. The fruit was almost certainly an apology for arriving without texting. It was his usual method of smoothing out minor infringements of the agreed system: produce, rather than debate. ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘I was passing the market.’ He raised the bag of peaches before she had said anything about the early visit. ‘With a microphone stand?’ ‘It was a coincidence.’ His father angled the stand upright and gave it back to Sam. ‘And peaches?’ ‘They were reduced.’ He put them on the worktop, near a place Sam had cleared by moving everything else into a single heap. Sam took the stand and immediately opened the fastenings to check them. His father moved the receipt out of the way and glanced at Rachel’s coffee, which she had let go cold. ‘You look tired,’ Chris said, taking a proper look at her now that his hands were free. ‘I’m at the end of an exciting half hour involving cables.’ ‘I know. He gave me the same lecture on the drive over.’ They exchanged the small, familiar smile that belonged to their shared experience of parenting Sam. The marriage had not survived the accumulation of other things, but the arrangements mostly worked. His father would take Sam to appointments, remember a prescription and call before making a decision that affected her week. Rachel would keep spare uniforms and remind him when the car needed taxing. They could sit at a school meeting together without making people wonder which side of the room to put them on. ‘I can collect him tonight if you’re late,’ he offered. He picked up the contact calendar, checked the times written in two different inks, and put it down again. ‘I shouldn’t be.’ ‘You said that on Friday.’ ‘Friday was an emergency.’ Her voice sounded sharper than the offer deserved. ‘Of course it was. I’m only offering.’ Rachel acknowledged him with a small lift of her hand. She would probably need him to do the collection, and accepting it now would save them both a later telephone call. She still found it irritating that he could be right without appearing especially pleased about it. By ten, the boys had gone: Sam with his bag, his father with the empty carrier from the peaches. Rachel wiped a smear of butter from the table, put the school letter in her bag and left a note reminding Sam to take the rubbish out before he went to his father's. She wrote it knowing he would see it and knowing she would probably still have to remind him. Her first appointment was not until midday. She had some office work to clear and had planned to stop at a small shopping precinct to collect a repaired watch for her mother. The repair shop opened at half past ten. She parked in the short-stay spaces, checked the ticket machine, then went back to the car because she'd left the repair receipt on the passenger seat. There were people queuing at the pharmacy and a man trying to assemble a buggy with his phone trapped between shoulder and ear. Someone had left a box of broken plastic toys beside the charity shop bin. Rachel found herself counting the children she still needed to see before the end of the holidays and wondering whether a missed visit on Thursday could reasonably wait until the following week. At the watch shop, the man behind the counter found the repair under the wrong surname and charged her less than she'd expected. She stepped outside with the small padded envelope in her hand. There was a bench opposite the chemist. She had been meaning to sit down and send a message to her mother, who would worry if the watch was not back by Wednesday. Halfway across the paved square she became abruptly hot. She stopped, expecting the rush to pass. Her scalp prickled, and the skin on her neck felt too tight against the collar of her shirt. She looked down at the paving, thinking at first that she had caught the edge of an uneven slab. The squares lay flat beneath her shoes, but she could not quite tell where she was standing in relation to them. She moved towards the bench. The padded envelope slipped from under her arm. When she bent to pick it up her breath caught somewhere high in her throat, a rough sound she had never heard herself make. A woman carrying a pharmacy bag said, ‘Are you all right?’ Rachel tried to say that she only needed a minute. The words came out badly. Her tongue felt thick and the air refused to go where it ought to. She put a hand to the bench and missed the edge. The woman caught her at the elbow. ‘Can someone call an ambulance?’ Rachel heard a man's voice asking whether she was diabetic. Another person told her to sit down. She wanted to ask them to stop speaking at once, to give her enough room to think, but there was no useful air for the request. A terrible urge to lie flat swept through her. She was frightened by how little she could do about it. Someone eased her to the ground. Her cheek brushed the coarse fabric of a shopping bag. Above her the pharmacy sign had a cracked blue letter which she had never noticed before. A voice, closer now, was asking about medication and allergies. ‘I don’t—’ she managed. She was trying to say she had no allergies, but by the time she had found the words they were no longer useful. ‘Stay with us. Help’s coming.’ The woman kept her hand on Rachel’s shoulder while she spoke to someone else over her head. She thought of Sam's number. She could picture it, the digits on her phone, but not how to tell anybody. The effort of holding one thought in place had become very expensive. There was a weight on her chest and a noisy rushing in her ears. The person kneeling next to her kept talking; Rachel could hear kindness in the voice without being able to understand every word. When the paramedics arrived, events became practical. A cuff tightened on her arm. Somebody asked the same questions more slowly and did not look offended when she couldn't answer. Her sleeve was pushed up, a monitor was fitted, and she felt the sharp pressure of an injection through the fabric of her trousers. There was an oxygen mask. A paramedic said something about a severe reaction and her blood pressure. Another held her hand briefly while a trolley was brought across the paving. She remembered the ambulance doors being closed. She remembered trying to tell the woman beside her that she had a son, as though that would change the treatment required. The woman said they would contact someone, and asked Rachel to concentrate on breathing. Afterwards there were gaps large enough to make her uneasy. She was able to remember a curved scratch in the ambulance ceiling and a faint smell of disinfectant on a disposable blanket, but not which hospital entrance they had used. She recalled somebody saying her name in the emergency department and the surprise of hearing it, as if for a moment she had been unsure it still belonged to her. By the time she could speak properly, she was in a cubicle with a blood-pressure cuff around her arm and a doctor asking whether she had eaten anything unusual. Rachel listed breakfast, then the coffee, then had to start again because she had forgotten the peaches sitting untouched on her kitchen counter. ‘We have treated you for a severe suspected allergic reaction,’ the doctor said. ‘The important thing just now is that you're responding. We'd like to keep you under observation and do some further checks. We may not establish the trigger today.’ ‘I’ve never been allergic to anything.’ Rachel searched the doctor’s face for any indication that he had heard something unusual in her answer. ‘That does happen.’ ‘Is it going to happen again?’ Her hands had begun to shake, which annoyed her because she was no longer struggling to breathe. ‘We’ll talk through what we can do to reduce the risk before you leave. I'd rather not pretend we can answer everything yet.’ He was a young man with a frayed cuff on his scrub top. She appreciated the directness. She also wanted him to say that there had been a clerical error and she could go home. Her phone had been placed in a clear property bag with her keys and watch receipt. There were six missed calls. When she tried Sam, he picked up almost at once. ‘Mum? Dad said you're in hospital.’ ‘I am. They've sorted the worst of it.’ ‘What happened?’ She heard him turn away from somebody and shut a door. ‘I became ill in town. It was frightening, but I'm being looked after.’ ‘Dad says he's coming to get me.’ ‘He knows where I am?’ ‘Yes. He spoke to them.’ Sam hesitated, then asked, ‘Are you going to die?’ Rachel tightened her fingers around the phone. She could give the sort of answer she had used with frightened parents in hospital corridors, or she could say something Sam would recognise as hers. Neither came easily. ‘I'm much better than I was an hour ago,’ she said. ‘They’re keeping a close watch on me. I want you to come when your dad can bring you, all right?’ ‘You didn't answer.’ ‘I don’t think I’m going to die today, Sam.’ She heard at once how inadequate the word today sounded. ‘That's a horrible way to answer.’ ‘I know. I'm sorry.’ There was a scraping noise, then his voice again, smaller. ‘Okay. We’ll come.’ Chris arrived first, looking as if he'd dressed in the clothes he had found nearest the door. He listened to the nurse's account and asked which things they were sure about and which they weren't. Rachel had never been so relieved to have somebody else ask the questions. Sam came behind him with the canvas equipment bag still over his shoulder. He set it down by the chair without taking out the microphone stand, which Rachel took as a measure of how frightened he was. He stood beside her bed and looked carefully at the tubing and the monitor, then at her face. ‘Can I touch you?’ he asked, looking at the cannula taped to the back of her hand. ‘Of course.’ He leaned over awkwardly and hugged her. She could feel how hard he was trying not to hurt her arm. His father drew the curtain across part of the cubicle to give them some privacy, although the curtain was too short and left a gap beside the door. Later, while Sam had gone to find a drink, his father sat with his elbows on his knees. ‘I'll take him tonight and tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You tell me what needs doing. Don't argue.’ ‘I wasn't going to.’ ‘You were considering it.’ ‘Only briefly.’ He stood and went to find the nurse because Rachel's glass was empty. She watched him leave and felt suddenly tired enough to sleep through the next six hours. The hospital kept her for observation, took blood, asked more questions and gave her written advice that she read twice without retaining much. They arranged follow-up to investigate the possible trigger and made sure she understood the emergency treatment plan before discharge. She went home with medication, instructions and a temporary fear of every ordinary thing she had eaten that morning. The next few days passed in a reduced version of her life. Sam's father brought food and handled the lifts. Her manager reassigned visits without asking Rachel to solve the rota from her sofa. Sam made tea too strong because he believed more tea bags would make it more restorative. Maya sent a message asking whether Rachel wanted any shopping and then, characteristically, included a photograph of an extraordinary misspelling on a shop sign, in case Rachel needed entertaining. Sam hovered during the first afternoon. On the second he asked whether he could go to the studio for two hours. On the third he went without asking quite so anxiously, leaving a note about where he would be. Rachel found the note under a plate. It said, Back by six. Phone charged. Yes, actually charged. She put the note on the fridge beside the contact calendar, where it remained even after he had come home and complained that she was keeping it as evidence. When she was well enough to stand at the cooker for half an hour, she made pasta and allowed Sam to grate the cheese badly. His father came to collect some washing and stayed to eat because there was plenty. Sam complained about the centre's booking system, Maya's enthusiasm for interviewing people who answered every question with a story about somebody else, and the sound made by the neighbour's new lawnmower. She argued that the lawnmower could hardly be heard from his room with the windows closed. Sam offered to bring a recording down, and his father asked whether they really needed another item on the list of things that could be proved with a microphone. ‘You’re going back to work too soon,’ his father said as he carried the plates to the sink. He had taken to leaving a little food for her in the fridge, covered with a saucer rather than cling film. ‘I'm not going back yet.’ ‘You're checking your messages.’ ‘Checking them isn’t working.’ She reached for the phone anyway, then put it face down beside her plate. Sam made a sceptical noise. Rachel threw the tea towel towards him; it fell short and he retrieved it with exaggerated difficulty before carrying it, obediently, to the drying rail. When the others had gone, Rachel straightened the calendar on the fridge, put the leftover pasta away and read the discharge advice again. She was still frightened by the unexplained reaction, especially at meals, and she had checked the emergency instructions more than once. But she knew what the doctors had asked her to do, which appointments had been arranged, and whom to call if the symptoms returned. Before bed she checked Sam’s Thursday plans one last time and left his latest answer written where both households could see it.