Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

22
I ran into Accident and Emergency. The sprawling layout of the hospital and my
natural lack of any kind of internal compass meant that the critical-care ward
took me forever to find. I had to ask three times before someone pointed me in
the right direction. I finally swung open the doors to Ward C12, breathless and
gasping, and there, in the corridor, was Nathan, sitting reading a newspaper. He
looked up as I approached him.
‘How is he?’
‘On oxygen. Stable.’
‘I don’t understand. He was fine on Friday night. He had a bit of a cough
Saturday morning, but … but this? What happened?’
My heart was racing. I sat down for a moment, trying to catch my breath. I
had been running pretty much since I received Nathan’s text message an hour
previously. He sat up, and folded his newspaper.
‘It’s not the first time, Lou. He gets a bit of bacteria in his lungs, his cough
mechanism doesn’t work like it should, he goes down pretty fast. I tried to do
some clearing techniques on him Saturday afternoon but he was in too much
pain. He got a fever out of nowhere, then he got a stabbing pain in his chest. We
had to call an ambulance Saturday night.’
‘Shit,’ I said, bending over. ‘Shit, shit, shit. Can I go in?’
‘He’s pretty groggy. Not sure you’ll get much out of him. And Mrs T is with
him.’
I left my bag with Nathan, cleaned my hands with antibacterial lotion, then
pushed at the door and entered.
Will was in the middle of the hospital bed, his body covered with a blue
blanket, wired up to a drip and surrounded by various intermittently bleeping
machines. His face was partially obscured by an oxygen mask and his eyes were