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Chapter 3
Clara was only half aware of the crowds and all the people trying to push past her even though she was in a hurry herself. And had the Tube always been that slow? It felt slow today and she had the vague impression that they had added a few more stops as well. When she finally stepped back out into the fresh air, she felt as if a century had passed. The hospital was just across the street and Clara darted inside as quickly as her feet would allow until she eventually came to a half in front of the reception desk.
"My husband has been admitted to this hospital earlier," she blurted out without even greeting the woman first, "His name is John Smith."
The receptionist looked bored and lazily raised an eyebrow while she opened a folder. "That's gonna take a while."
"His middle name is Basil," Clara said impatiently, "Though he probably left that one out."
"Ah," the woman said, "John Basil Smith. You'll have to go to ward C and ask someone from the staff there."
Clara nodded, taking a deep breath for the first time. John was here. Everything was going to be fine. She found ward C easily enough, just following the signs plastered all over the hospital walls, but once she had reached the doors, Clara came to an abrupt halt.
Intensive Care Unit
She read the sign on the door over and over again. ICU. That was bad. That was really bad. But he couldn't be dead, Clara determined. If he was, they would have told her at the reception desk.
Unless the woman there didn't know.
Clara inhaled sharply and stepped inside, promptly crashing into a young woman wearing a lab coat.
"Oh my God, I'm sorry," she apologized instantly, "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," the doctor reassured her in a friendly manner, "Nothing happened. Can I help you with anything?"
"Yeah," Clara breathed, "I, uhm, I'm looking for my husband. I got a call that he's been admitted to the hospital, to this ward. John Smith."
The young doctor's features changed in an instant and Clara felt her heart sink. She knew that look. She had seen it before.
"Your husband is alive," the woman reassured her. The shock must have been so plain on her face. "I'm the person who called you, Dr Martha Jones."
Clara sighed in relief. Alive. John was alive. It was going to be okay.
"How is he? Can I see him?" she asked immediately.
Dr Jones hesitated for an awfully long moment. "Your husband was in a car accident this morning. A driver hit him when he was crossing the road and he was injured."
"Injured? What kind of injuries?!" Clara demanded to know.
"Mrs Smith, I want you to know that we're doing everything we can to help your husband and so far it's looking quite good," Martha Jones granted her a soft smile, "He's responding to the treatment as expected."
"Can you please stop beating about the bush and tell me what in God's name happened to my husband?! What's wrong with him?!" Clara yelled at the doctor and instantly bit down on her lip, surprised at the volume of her own voice. She felt panic. Pure panic. John was hurt and she had no idea what was happening.
"A fracture to the femur, the thigh bone," Dr Jones explained, "We will have to fix that surgically at some point, but that's not what worries us. He suffered a traumatic brain injury from the impact and his brain started to swell, so, for the moment, we decided to put him into a medically induced coma."
"A coma?!"
"It's just what it's called, Mrs Smith," the doctor said in an infuriatingly calm manner, "What we really did was that we gave him an anaesthetic and he's asleep for the moment. A swelling of the brain can result in long-term damage and we're trying to avoid that by shutting it off and giving it time to heal properly. Mr Smith is responding as we had hoped. His brain has stopped to swell any further. Now we're waiting for the swelling to recede."
Clara needed a moment to take in everything the doctor had just told her and she knew enough about the subject to tell that John was not out of the woods yet, that Martha Jones was trying to put it as nicely as possible, but he was still in danger.
She swallowed hard. She couldn't think about that now. He was going to be fine. He had to be. "How long do you think that's gonna take?"
Dr Jones gave a light shrug. "That's hard to say at the moment. I think tomorrow we'll be able to tell you a bit more after observing him for a while. He might respond immediately and the swelling could be gone in a day or two. Or it might take longer. We're doing our best, Mrs Smith. Do you want to see him?"
"Am I allowed?" Clara asked in surprise.
Martha Jones smiled sincerely. "Of course. He needs rest now above all, but a few minutes won't hurt. Follow me."
After she had been handed a light, sterile paper gown, Clara threw it over her jacket and followed the young doctor through the corridors, not knowing whether she should be relieved or scared. John was alive, but he was critical. She had no idea what to expect.
Martha Jones opened the door to one of the rooms, but hesitated to step inside. She turned around to look at Clara, still smiling softly. Clara thought that John was probably very lucky to be in the hands of someone like Dr Jones. She was young, but she seemed to know what she was doing and she was compassionate. Many doctors forgot all about compassion the longer they worked in a place like this.
"Before you go in I'd like to ask you some more questions, if that's okay? Don't worry, it's just the standard stuff."
Clara nodded in reply.
"Does your husband have any allergies that you know of?"
"No, none." She shook her head.
Martha Jones took the pen out of her coat pocket and scribbled something on the little board she was holding in her hands. "And is he on any medication?"
Again Clara shook her head, but then she thought of something. "Well, he used to take something for his blood pressure, but he's been off them for two years now."
A small frown appeared on the doctor's face. "Was there a specific cause for his hypertension?"
"Stress mostly," Clara shrugged. She thought back to the days when she had first met John and how tired he had always seemed, how she had scolded him for his 4th cup of coffee, how he had been working himself into an early grave. Things had changed a lot in the past five years.
"Hypertension doesn't normally go away on its own," Martha Jones noted.
"He switched jobs, opened his own practice. I made him cut down on the coffee and forced him to eat his veggies," Clara let out a short laugh, "It got better over the years. And then he didn't the meds anymore."
"I'll make a note of this just in case," Dr Jones told her, "That would be all for now. You can go on and see him."
Nervously Clara stepped into the room and only heard Dr Jones close the door behind her. Her eyes, however, were fixed on John. Clara had a hard time believing that the man on the bed was actually her husband. He looked smaller than he normally did, there was a bandage wrapped around his head and he had cables attached to him all over his body, leading to an array of beeping, whirring machines. Clara pulled up a chair and sat down next to him and for the longest moment she just looked at his face. John had some cuts and bruises, but if it hadn't been for the cables, she might have believed that he was merely asleep. He looked peaceful.
"Didn't they teach you to look right and left before crossing the road?" Clara asked him with a sigh and reached for his hand. It was cool. Not cold, but very much unlike the warm, soft hands that had touched her just hours ago.
Of course there was no answer from John. He didn't even flinch when she took his hand.
"You know," she giggled nervously, "I've been meaning to confess this for a while now. I guess this is the perfect moment, huh? You can't get mad at me. But when we first met, that wasn't exactly bad luck on my part. I helped make it happen. I asked Artie to tamper with the router so I would have a reason to call you again. There, I said it."
Yet John showed no reaction. He simply lay there, unmoving, and the only sound Clara could hear was the beeping from the machines they had hooked him up to. She let her head sink and even though she tried to fight it, a tear rolled down her cheek. And then another.
When Martha Jones entered the room Clara was sobbing mercilessly until she felt a soft hand on her shoulder. She was told to go home, to rest and to come back tomorrow when they could tell her more about his condition. Dr Jones remained calm and friendly the entire time while she told her that they were doing everything to help John and that all she could do was wait. They would call as soon if there was any change and Clara knew that if the phone should ring in the middle of the night, it couldn't be anything but bad news. She went home and braced herself for a long, sleepless night, praying that the phone would stay silent.