Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

propped him up, placing his legs over the side of the bed, and I changed his
tubes swiftly, watching him all the while.
‘AD?’
‘Yeah. Not your most sensible move, Will.’
Autonomic dysreflexia was pretty much our worst nightmare. It was Will’s
body’s massive overreaction against pain, discomfort – or, say, an un-emptied
catheter – his damaged nervous system’s vain and misguided attempt to stay in
control. It could come out of nowhere and send his body into meltdown. He
looked pale, his breathing laboured.
‘How’s your skin?’
‘Bit prickly.’
‘Sight?’
‘Fine.’
‘Aw, man. You think we need help?’
‘Give me ten minutes, Nathan. I’m sure you’ve done everything we need.
Give me ten minutes.’
He closed his eyes. I checked his blood pressure again, wondering how long I
should leave it before calling an ambulance. AD scared the hell out of me
because you never knew which way it was going to go. He had had it once
before, when I had first started working with him, and he had ended up in
hospital for two days.
‘Really, Nathan. I’ll tell you if I think we’re in trouble.’
He sighed, and I helped him backwards so that he was leaning against his
bedhead.
He told me Louisa had been so drunk he hadn’t wanted to risk letting her
loose on his equipment. ‘God knows where she might have stuck the ruddy
tubes.’ He half laughed as he said it. It had taken Louisa almost half an hour just
to get him out of his chair and into bed, he said. They had both ended up on the
floor twice. ‘Luckily we were both so drunk by then I don’t think either of us felt
a thing.’ She had had the presence of mind to call down to reception, and they
had asked a porter to help lift him. ‘Nice chap. I have a vague memory of
insisting Louisa give him a fifty-pound tip. I knew she was properly drunk
because she agreed to it.’