me before you, 06.1

me before you, 06
6


The snow came so suddenly that I left home under a bright blue sky and not half
an hour later I was headed past a castle that looked like a cake decoration,
surrounded by a layer of thick white icing.

I trudged up the drive, my footsteps muffled and my toes already numb,
shivering under my too-thin Chinese silk coat. A whirl of thick white flakes
emerged from an iron-grey infinity, almost obscuring Granta House, blotting out
sound, and slowing the world to an unnatural pace. Beyond the neatly trimmed
hedge cars drove past with a newfound caution, pedestrians slipped and squealed
on the pavements. I pulled my scarf up over my nose and wished I had worn
something more suitable than ballet pumps and a velvet minidress.

To my surprise it wasn’t Nathan who opened the door, but Will’s father.

‘He’s in bed,’ he said, glancing up from under the porch. ‘He’s not too good. I
was just wondering whether to call the doctor.’

‘Where’s Nathan?’

‘Morning off. Of course, it would be today. Bloody agency nurse came and
went in six seconds flat. If this snow keeps on I’m not sure what we’ll do later.’
He shrugged, as if these things couldn’t be helped, and disappeared back down
the corridor, apparently relieved that he no longer had to be responsible. ‘You
know what he needs, yes?’ he called over his shoulder.

I took off my coat and shoes and, as I knew Mrs Traynor was in court (she
marked her dates on a diary in Will’s kitchen), I put my wet socks over a radiator
to dry. A pair of Will’s were in the clean-washing basket, so I put them on. They
looked comically large on me but it was heaven to have warm, dry feet. Will
didn’t respond when I called out, so after a while I made him up a drink,
knocked quietly and poked my head round the door. In the dim light I could just
make out the shape under the duvet. He was fast asleep.



I took a step backwards, closed the door behind me, and began working my
way through the morning’s tasks.

My mother seemed to glean an almost physical satisfaction from a well-
ordered house. I had been vacuuming and cleaning daily for a month now, and I
still couldn’t see the attraction. I suspected there would never be a point in my
life when I wouldn’t prefer somebody else to do it.

But on a day like today, when Will was confined to bed, and the world seemed
to have stilled outside, I could also see there was a kind of meditative pleasure in
working my way from one end of the annexe to the other. While I dusted and
polished, I took the radio from room to room with me, keeping the volume low
so that I didn’t disturb Will. Periodically I poked my head round the door, just to
see that he was breathing, and it was only when we got to one o’clock and he
still hadn’t woken up that I started to feel a little anxious.

I filled the log basket, noting that several inches of snow had now settled. I
made Will a fresh drink, and then knocked. When I knocked again, I did so
loudly.

‘Yes?’ His voice was hoarse, as if I had woken him.

‘It’s me.’ When he didn’t respond, I said, ‘Louisa. Am I okay to come in?’

‘I’m hardly doing the Dance of the Seven Veils.’

The room was shadowed, the curtains still drawn. I walked in, letting my eyes
adjust to the light. Will was on one side, one arm bent in front of him as if to
prop himself up, as he had been before when I looked in. Sometimes it was easy
to forget he would not be able to turn over by himself. His hair stuck up on one
side, and a duvet was tucked neatly around him. The smell of warm, unwashed
male filled the room - not unpleasant, but still a little startling as part of a
working day.

‘What can I do? Do you want your drink?’

‘I need to change position.’

I put the drink down on a chest of drawers, and walked over to the bed.

‘What... what do you want me to do?’

He swallowed carefully, as if it were painful. ‘Lift and turn me, then raise the
back of the bed. Here ... ’He nodded for me to come closer. ‘Put your arms
under mine, link your hands behind my back and then pull back. Keep your
backside on the bed and that way you shouldn’t strain your lower back.’



I couldn’t pretend this wasn’t a bit weird. I reached around him, the scent of
him filling my nostrils, his skin warm against mine. I could not have been in any
closer unless I had begun nibbling on his ear. The thought made me mildly
hysterical, and I struggled to keep myself together.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ I took a breath, linked my hands, and adjusted my position until I
felt I had him securely. He was broader than I had expected, somehow heavier.
And then, on a count of three, I pulled back.

‘Jesus,’ he exclaimed, into my shoulder.

‘What?’ I nearly dropped him.

‘Your hands are bloody freezing.’

‘Yes. Well, if you bothered to get out of bed, you’d know that it’s actually
snowing outside.’

I was half joking, but now I realized his skin was hot under his T-shirt - an
intense heat that seemed to come from deep within him. He groaned slightly as I
adjusted him against the pillow, and I tried to make my movements as slow and
gentle as possible. He pointed out the remote control device that would bring his
head and shoulders up. ‘Not too much, though,’ he murmured. ‘Abit dizzy.’

I turned on the bedside light, ignoring his vague protest, so that I could see his
face. ‘Will - are you okay?’ I had to say it twice before he answered me.

‘Not my best day.’

‘Do you need painkillers?’

‘Yes ... strong ones.’

‘Maybe some paracetamol?’

He lay back against the cool pillow with a sigh.

I gave him the beaker, watched him swallow.

‘Thank you,’ he said afterwards, and I felt suddenly uneasy.

Will never thanked me for anything.

He closed his eyes, and for a while I just stood in the doorway and watched
him, his chest rising and falling under his T-shirt, his mouth slightly open. His
breathing was shallow, and perhaps a little more laboured than on other days.

But I had never seen him out of his chair, and I wasn’t sure whether it was
something to do with the pressure of lying down.

‘Go,’ he muttered.



I left.


I read my magazine, lifting my head only to watch the snow settle thickly around
the house, creeping up the window sills in powdery landscapes. Mum sent me a
text message at 12.30pm, telling me that my father couldn’t get the car down the
road. 'Don’t set out for home without ringing us first,’ she instructed. I wasn’t
sure what she thought she was going to do - send Dad out with a sledge and a St
Bernard?

I listened to the local news on the radio, the motorway snarl-ups, train
stoppages and temporary school closures that the unexpected blizzard had
brought with it. I went back into Will’s room, and looked at him again. I didn’t
like his colour. He was pale, high points of something bright on each cheek.

‘Will?’ I said softly.

He didn’t stir.

‘Will?’

I began to feel the faint stirrings of panic. I said his name twice more, loudly.
There was no response. Finally, I leant over him. There was no obvious
movement in his face, nothing I could see in his chest. His breath. I should be
able to feel his breath. I put my face down close to his, trying to detect an out
breath. When I couldn’t, I reached out a hand and touched his face gently.

He flinched, his eyes snapping open, just inches from my own.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, jumping back.

He blinked, glancing around the room, as if he had been somewhere far from
home.

‘It’s Lou,’ I said, when I wasn’t sure if he had recognized me.

His expression was one of mild exasperation. ‘I know.’

‘Do you want some soup?’

‘No. Thank you.’ He closed his eyes.

‘More painkillers?’

There was a faint sheen of sweat on his cheekbone. I put my hand out, his
duvet felt vaguely hot and sweaty. It made me nervous.

‘Is there something I should be doing? I mean, if Nathan can’t get here?’

‘No ... I’m fine,’ he murmured, and closed his eyes again.



I went through the folder, trying to work out if I was missing something. I
opened the medical cabinet, the boxes of rubber gloves and gauze dressings, and
realized I had no idea at all what I should do with any of it. I rang the intercom
to speak to Will’s father, but the ringing sound disappeared into an empty house.
I could hear it echoing beyond the annexe door.

I was about to ring Mrs Traynor when the back door opened, and Nathan
stepped in, wrapped in layers of bulky clothing, a woollen scarf and hat almost
obscuring his head. He brought with him a whoosh of cold air and a light flurry
of snow.

‘Hey,’ he said, shaking the snow off his boots and slamming the door behind
him.

It felt like the house had suddenly woken from a dreamlike state.

‘Oh, thank God you’re here,’ I said. ‘He’s not well. He’s been asleep most of
the morning and he’s hardly drunk anything. I didn’t know what to do.’

Nathan shrugged off his coat. ‘Had to walk all the way here. The buses have
stopped running.’

I set about making him some tea, as he went to check on Will.

He reappeared before the kettle had even finished boiling. ‘He’s burning up,’
he said. ‘How long has he been like this?’

‘All morning. I did think he was hot, but he said he just wanted to sleep.’

‘Jesus. All morning? Didn’t you know he can’t regulate his own temperature?’
He pushed past me and began rummaging around in the medicine cabinet.
‘Antibiotics. The strong ones.’ He held up ajar and emptied one into the pestle
and mortar, grinding it furiously.

I hovered behind him. ‘I gave him a paracetamol.’

‘Might as well have given him an Opal Fruit.’

‘I didn’t know. Nobody said. I’ve been wrapping him up.’

‘It’s in the bloody folder. Look, Will doesn’t sweat like we do. In fact he
doesn’t sweat at all from the point of his injury downwards. It means if he gets a
slight chill his temperature gauge goes haywire. Go find the fan. We’ll move that
in there until he cools down. And a damp towel, to put around the back of his
neck. We won’t be able to get him to a doctor until the snow stops. Bloody
agency nurse. They should have picked this up in the morning.’



Nathan was crasser than I’d ever seen him. He was no longer really even
talking to me.

I ran for the fan.

It took almost forty minutes for Will’s temperature to return to an acceptable
level. While we waited for the extra-strong fever medication to take effect, I
placed a towel over his forehead and another around his neck, as Nathan
instructed. We stripped him down, covered his chest with a fine cotton sheet, and
set the fan to play over it. Without sleeves, the scars on his arms were clearly
exposed. We all pretended I couldn’t see them.

Will endured all this attention in near silence, answering Nathan’s questions
with a yes or no, so indistinct sometimes that I wasn’t sure if he knew what he
was saying. I realized, now I could see him in the light, that he looked really,
properly ill and I felt terrible for having failed to grasp it. I said sorry until
Nathan told me it had become irritating.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘You need to watch what I’m doing. It’s possible you may
need to do this alone later.’

I didn’t feel I could protest. But I found it hard not to feel squeamish as
Nathan peeled down the waist of Will’s pyjama bottoms, revealing a pale strip of
bare stomach, and carefully removed the gauze dressing around the little tube in
his abdomen, cleaning it gently and replacing the dressing. He showed me how
to change the bag on the bed, explained why it must always be lower than Will’s
body, and I was surprised at how matter-of-fact I was about walking out of the
room with the pouch of warm fluid. I was glad that Will wasn’t really watching
me - not just because he would have made some sharp comment, but because I
felt that me witnessing some part of this intimate routine would in some way
have embarrassed him too.

‘And that’s it,’ Nathan said. Finally, an hour later, Will lay dozing, lying on
fresh cotton sheets and looking, if not exactly well, then not scarily ill.

‘Let him sleep. But wake him after a couple of hours and make sure you get
the best part of a beaker of fluids into him. More fever meds at five, okay? His
temperature will probably shoot up again in the last hour, but nothing more
before five.’

I scribbled everything down on a notepad. I was afraid of getting anything
wrong.



‘Now you’re going to need to repeat what we just did, this evening. You’re
okay with that?’ Nathan wrapped himself up like an Inuit and headed out into the
snow. ‘Just read the folder. And don’t panic. Any problems, you just call me. I’ll
talk you through it all. I’ll get back here again if I really have to.’

I stayed in Will’s room after Nathan left. I was too afraid not to. In the corner
was an old leather armchair with a reading light, perhaps dating from Will’s
previous life, and I curled up on it with a book of short stories that I had pulled
from the bookcase.

It was strangely peaceful in that room. Through the crack in the curtains I
could see the outside world, blanketed in white, still and beautiful. Inside it was
warm and silent, only the odd tick and hiss of the central heating to interrupt my
thoughts. I read, and occasionally I glanced up and checked Will sleeping
peacefully and I realized that there had never been a point in my life before
where I had just sat in silence and done nothing. You don’t grow up used to
silence in a house like mine, with its never-ending vacuuming, television blaring,
and shrieking. During the rare moments that the television was off, Dad would
put on his old Elvis records and play them at full blast. A cafe too is a constant
buzz of noise and clatter.

Here, I could hear my thoughts. I could almost hear my heartbeat. I realized,
to my surprise, that I quite liked it.

At five, my mobile phone signalled a text message. Will stirred, and I leapt
out of the chair, anxious to get it before it disturbed him.

No trains. Is there any chance you could stay over tonight?

Nathan cannot do it. Camilla Traynor.

I didn’t really think about it before I typed back.

No problem.

I rang my parents and told them that I would stay over. My mother sounded
relieved. When I told her I was going to get paid for sleeping over, she sounded
overjoyed.

‘Did you hear that, Bernard?’ she said, her hand half over the phone. ‘They’re
paying her to sleep now.’



I could hear my father’s exclamation. ‘Praise the Lord. She’s found her dream
career.’

I sent a text message to Patrick, telling him that I had been asked to stay at
work and I would ring him later. The message came back within seconds.

Going cross-country snow running tonight.

Good practice for Norway! X P.

I wondered how it was possible for someone to get so excited at the thought of
jogging through sub-zero temperatures in a vest and pants.

Will slept. I cooked myself some food, and defrosted some soup in case he
wanted some later. I got the log fire going in case he felt well enough to go into
the living room. I read another of the short stories and wondered how long it was
since I had bought myself a book. I had loved reading as a child, but I couldn’t
remember reading anything except magazines since. Treen was the reader. It was
almost as if by picking up a book I felt like I was invading her patch. I thought
about her and Thomas disappearing to university and realized I still didn’t know
whether it made me feel happy or sad - or something a bit complicated in
between.

Nathan rang at seven. He seemed relieved that I was staying over.

‘I couldn’t raise Mr Traynor. I even rang their landline number, but it went
straight through to answerphone.’

‘Yeah. Well. He’ll be gone.’

‘Gone?’