Room for Recovery
by Martin Westlake
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
Raffaella dozed. The media, already excited about the discovery of the cut, had now feverishly upped their analyses. Talking head after talking head was wheeled in to give a more-or-less learned opinion but, frankly, what could they possibly know? I was relieved when the doctor finally came on her evening round.
“I’m sorry about the excitement,” she said. “Basically, it was a false alarm. We had a worrying reading and had to take it seriously. In fact, your wife is making excellent progress. The incision is healing nicely, and she has experienced none of the negative symptoms that can sometimes occur after surgery of this sort. If she keeps this up, she should be home by the end of the week.”
I thanked her effusively and turned to Raffaella. Like everybody else in the room apart from me, Lara and the doctor, she had her eyes glued to the screen, which was showing images of the glowing “wound.”
“Do you hear that, love?” I said, “You’re healing very well.”
“Ssshhh!” said Raffaella.
The doctor smiled.
“Really!” I said. “I know it could be a ‘first encounter’ of a sort, and all that rubbish, but I can’t understand why everybody is quite so obsessed about an object which is doing absolutely nothing when there are far more important considerations in our lives.”
“Frankly,” the doctor said, “when you are in the operating theatre or treating your patients, you don’t think about it at all. It’s only when I come to the wards or go to the canteen that I realise there is quite so much excitement.”
* * *
I drove Lara back home as usual that evening. I would soon learn that the day’s excitement was not yet entirely over. We could see the visitor away over the rooftops, hanging low in the sky as usual and glowing faintly in its grey-green way. There had been a debate about whether to train floodlights on the object, but some scientists had argued that such a move might be misunderstood as an aggressive act. Even the scientists were anthropomorphists, it seemed! But the body was still visible at night, reflecting the lights of the now empty city below it. Lara asked me to turn on the car radio for the news bulletin at nine o’clock, and that was when we learned of the latest; the scientists observing the “cut” had realised that it was very slowly closing up.
“Oh! I wish I was still with Raffaella,” said Lara. “I wonder what the two ladies would make of it.”
“I daresay they’ll have a fully formed explanation by the time you get back there tomorrow,” I said, a little curtly.
I sensed Lara was looking at me quizzically but kept my eyes on the road.
“I know you’ve had a lot on your mind,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Lara,” I said. “I just keep thinking that I might have lost her. I don’t know what I would have done.”
“Of course, of course.”
The radio announcer droned on.
“I just... Well, don’t you think we’re all overdoing it a bit?” I asked. “I mean, OK, it’s a mystery, and it might be an alien object of some sort, but it’s not doing anything. It’s just hanging out up there, minding its own business.”
“But it’s hanging over the city,” said Lara. “I’m sure there wouldn’t have been quite the same excitement if it had appeared over a desert somewhere.”
“That’s a good point,” I acknowledged. “Anyway, I don’t feel at all under threat. Do you?”
“No,” she said, “it’s strange, but I can’t help sharing the sentiments of those two ladies. I feel almost affectionate towards the object.”
“What? You sympathise with it?” I asked.
“You know me, Tom,” she said. “I’m a scientist. I try to consider all phenomena rationally.”
“But?”
“But I’m also a human being and a woman and a daughter and a sister and a widow, and I would be the first to admit that I have feelings and sentiments, and that rationality doesn’t always win out.”
“So, you sympathise with it?”
“Empathise with it? Sort of, yes.”
“Mollie and Catty have got at you,” I said.
“You may well be right.”
By now I had parked the car and was letting us into the house. “I think I’ll go straight up to bed if you don’t mind,” I said, yawning.
“Of course, Tom,” said Lara. “Buona notte e sogni d’oro.”
* * *
I went straight to the office in the morning. Lara took a bus to the hospital and, as usual, promised she’d let me know if there were any important developments concerning Raffaella’s condition. She didn’t make contact, though, and I was able to get a lot of work done, making a clean run-through on two clients’ portfolios.
I was fed up with the sheer amount of silliness being generated by the presence of the so-called visitor and so I resolutely avoided the news bulletins and the Internet news sites. Still, when I got up to the ward at lunchtime, I wondered whether I might have missed some latest significant piece of news. I was not to be disappointed.
“How are you, love?” I greeted Raffaella, giving her a kiss on the top of her head.
“Have you heard, Ciccio?” she said impatiently. “The cut will have disappeared in two days’ time.”
Mollie and Catty were watching the screen avidly. “It will be completely healed, then,” Catty told me, with complete confidence. “I wonder what will happen next.”
“I don’t suppose it will have any reason to hang around anymore,” said Mollie.
I made a polite and no doubt inane comment and turned back to Raffaella.
“And how are you, my love?”
“Yes, yes, I’m OK,” she said gruffly.
“What does the doctor say? Will you be coming home soon?”
“Yes, yes,” Raffaella continued. “In a couple of days, that’s what she still says.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “I can’t wait to have you back home again.”
Lara had continued to watch the screen with the two ladies, discreetly leaving us a little time for some privacy.
“Thank goodness Lara will be there,” said Raffaella. I nodded though I couldn’t help feeling slightly wounded. I had been looking forward to having Raffaella home, to matching my feet to her small footprints on the shower mat and accompanying her joyous singing. I had forgotten Lara would be there with us. But Raffaella was understandably keen to spend time with her sister for as long as she was with us. Fair enough, I thought.
* * *
The two days passed rapidly. Together with Lara, I prepared the house for Raffaella’s homecoming. A couple of times I mentioned how much Lara must be looking forward to going home herself, and then felt guilty for trying to hurry her away. But really, I wasn’t sure we would need her there.
At first, we had been told, Raffaella would be visited every day by a nurse and a physiotherapist. I was given express instructions not to move her bed downstairs; going up and down the stairs would be welcome exercise in the process of getting her back to full fitness again.
Lara and I did a big shop and made sure that there was enough of everything Raffaella liked in the refrigerator. I was now contemplating going back to work more or less full time, though I could continue to work remotely when necessary. And all of this was squeezed in around my usual visits to the hospital.
The ward discussion group was meanwhile becoming increasingly excited. The “cut” on the underside of the object continued to diminish in size until, on the morning of Raffaella’s scheduled release, it had completely disappeared. When I arrived at lunchtime, Mollie and Catty were in full speculative mode. What would happen next, they wondered, and when? Raffaella and Lara tried to argue that nothing needed to happen next. But they didn’t sound entirely convinced by their own reasoning. Meanwhile, all the media speculation on the television screen considered the disappearance of the “cut” to be a significant development and expected something else to happen now.
I tried to ignore the speculation and got on with the preparations for Raffaella’s release. I had just about finished packing her affairs into the suitcase I had brought with me when I heard a collective sigh somewhere between relief, satisfaction and happiness.
“Look, Ciccio,” said Raffaella. She was pointing out of the window. “The lights have come back on.”
I looked out and there was the object just as I had first seen it, with its twinkling lights, a mixture of red, yellow, green and blue. We were all rapt. It was a beautiful sight to see. And somehow, I seemed to have got caught up in the old ladies’ speculative games, for I felt a sense of happiness that the thing, the visitor, was now back to its former “self.”
“It won’t be long now,” said Catty
“What do you mean?” said Raffaella.
“Well, it’s back to normal now, isn’t it? It has healed itself or repaired itself, if you prefer. I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes on its way now.”
Again, Raffaella and Lara pleaded for a more rational approach, but they were fighting a losing battle with the old ladies, and they knew it.
Once more, the big screen in the ward sported a breaking news rolling headline; “Mysterious object’s lights start flashing again.”
I grew impatient to get Raffaella away from the obsessive theories and increasingly claustrophobic atmosphere of the ward and the hospital, but it was a long time before we were able to leave. There were the various final check-ups and farewells to be said to the doctor and the nursing staff and then, of course, to Mollie and Catty, with contact addresses and telephone numbers being swapped. Finally, Lara helped Raffaella into the lift, with me following with her suitcase.
As we drove out of the underground carpark, Raffaella was already looking for the visitor.
“Where is it?” she asked.
I pointed to her right.
“It’s over there,” I said. “Just above the rooftops.”
“I can’t see it,” she said.
“Show her, Lara,” I asked.
“I can’t see it either,” said Lara.
“Turn the radio on, Tom, please,” said Raffaella, a hint of urgency in her voice.
That stupid object, I thought to myself. I turned on the radio and we caught the tail end of a local news bulletin.
“The mystery object that has been hovering over the city for over a week has disappeared just as strangely as it appeared. Scientists continue to be baffled. The government has issued the following statement...”
Raffaella mumbled something to her sister in Italian.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“It’s just a shame we didn’t see it disappear,” Lara explained.
“It would have been nice if we had still been with the ladies,” Raffaella added, and then she saw my face. “Don’t get me wrong, Ciccio. It’s lovely to be going home.”
I breathed deeply and resisted the urge to put a foot heavy with anger to the floor of the car. I drove steadily, strangely aware of all the streetlights streaking past.
As I pulled into our drive, I ignored Lara’s presence in the back seat. “We’re home, my love,” I said and leaned in and gave Raffaella a long kiss. Lara looked diplomatically out of the window.
We got the suitcase out of the car and fussed around, making sure she had everything she wanted. I couldn’t help but notice how Raffaella kept looking out to where she thought the thing might have been.
“Whatever it was, it’s gone, my darling,” I told her.
Raffaella sighed.
“You’re tired,” I said, leading her to the sofa.
She cheered up after her siesta. Lara, who would be catching her flight back the following day, got her interested in various domestic affairs, including meals for the next week or so. The medical staff had given us a recommended menu and, having studied it and the shopping we had done, Raffaella declared her confidence in my ability to look after that side of things for the next week.
* * *
That evening, I opened a bottle of prosecco and made a short, impromptu speech. I thanked Lara and explained to Raffaella something of my feelings, feelings that Lara could surely have understood from her own concern for her sister. And then I concluded, “It’s so good to have you home again, my love, and to know that you are going to make a complete recovery.” We clinked our glasses and toasted one another.
Raffaella took a sip and then put her glass back down. She looked out of the window and said, musingly, “I still can’t quite believe it’s gone.”
Copyright © 2024 by Martin Westlake
