Chapter 40

CHAPTER 40

The husband was standing up and moving, so presumably the injury can't be too bad. Toby reassures her in the cab, but she doesn't really need it, which is good because honestly it's hard for a man with a wet empty mug in one hand and an insulated jug in the other to reassure.

In the hospital, they go up to the counter. "My husband was brought in," she says, "by an ambulance. He fell out of the attic."

"Of course," the woman says. "What was his name?"

Very good question. "Give me a sec." She reaches for the wallet.

"Zac Efron," Toby seems to say, beside her, which seems unlikely.

But she opens the wallet, and: huh.

"Not like the actor," Toby says, confirming the bank card that she has pulled out of its place in the wallet. "Z-A-C-H E-P-H-R-O-N."

"Okay, he's just being seen," the counter lady says. "You should be able to head through soon. Take a seat."

"Tea?" Toby says as they wait, and pours it from the insulated jug into the mug. It has remained at precisely room temperature.

"Thanks. You can go if you like," she says. "I'll be fine. He'll be fine."

"I don't mind."

She has a quick google in the toilet after she finishes the cold tea, but it's difficult to search for a husband named Zach Ephron: the phone assumes she means the actor, and even when she insists that she doesn't, she bumps up against people who do mean the actor but are bad at spelling.

The waiting room is boring and horrifying at the same time: worried family members, a man crying gently, a teenage girl on her own with long dark hair and her head resting on her arms, which in turn are resting in her lap. Someone on the phone: "No, he's fine, he'll be fine, just some stitches."

Toby is pacing, goes round a corner and comes back with a packet of Fruit Pastilles. He opens them and sorts them by colour.

"How're you doing?" she says, and he starts making his way through the reds.

"Good. Maryam says it's under control."

Lauren is still trying to resolve her view of Maryam, constantly distracted Maryam, and get it to sit at peace with Maryam the actual doctor, who has always existed but who she has never before seen in action. She wonders if there's a version of the world where she has a job that impressive. Maybe one where she's a doctor herself? Or a scientist? Or a politician who unites the city against hunger?

Toby's on to the orange Fruit Pastilles when a nurse-or-doctor calls at the door: "Who's here with Zach Ephron?"

Toby scoops up the pastilles and shoves them in a pocket and they walk over. "We can let you in to see him now," the woman says. "We've moved him out of the emergency ward to spinal injuries."

Spinal injuries? Lauren has been imagining herself as a researcher who has discovered new and more efficient solar panels that can be made from apple peels. She is not prepared for spinal injuries.

"There's been a fracture," the woman says, "but I don't want you to panic, it's not as bad as you might think when you hear ‘broken back.' He's going to have to go in for surgery, probably in the morning, and he'll be here for a week or two after that. But it's a very clean break and it's likely that he'll make a full recovery."

A week or two! Just to get out of hospital!

"He's been given some painkillers and he's sleeping," the woman says. "So we'll take you in, but it's best not to wake him."

"Okay," Lauren says. Thinks; tries not to panic. "Maybe I don't think I need to see him yet. I might go and get some sleep and come back in the morning?"

"Sure," the woman says, and smiles, reassuring. "That sounds like a good idea."

○○

It's almost two before she's home. The three of them get a taxi back together. Toby asks if she needs a cup of tea, but Maryam, thank god, says, "Let her sleep, you can make me a cup of tea if you want."

On the landing, the ladder is still down, out of its place and twisted. She gives it a push, but it won't fold away.

She lies in the middle of their bed, which is definitely too big for the room. Things still aren't quite back to normal with Bohai, but who else is she going to talk to? After a few minutes she messages him: it must be his midday.

Married to a Zach Ephron , she says, which is perhaps not the most pertinent thing about the husband but she would rather not think about the injuries.

OH my god , he says. Any resemblance?

Nnnno , she sends back. I mean he's white and he has brown hair. He's in hospital so I don't think he's looking his best

Whattttt, have you drugged ANOTHER husband, Loz we talked about this

He fell out of the attic , she responds.

!!!! is he ok

I don't know , she sends back, and thinks about the question some more, and doesn't fall asleep, and still doesn't fall asleep, and then does.

○○

Zach is extremely popular. Over the next ten days his friends come and visit him in hospital, and her friends come and visit too, his mother comes and pats his head, boxed chocolates pile up by one side of his bed, her own mother sends a giant teddy bear to the hospital (it's yellow and the heart it holds is embroidered with the message Happy Easter , and her mother clarifies that it was on sale, but even so). Nat comes, holding Magda up to the bed so that she can wave her arms beseechingly and burble Zach's name. He has been moved into an individual room, after it became clear that he would be (a) constantly visited in a way that was bound to be annoying to other patients, (b) willing to share his chocolate supply with hospital staff and (c) not at risk of harming himself. A lot of serious spinal injuries are, it turns out, from suicide attempts, which Lauren tries not to think about every single time she walks past the door into the shared ward.

She is allowed to sit in on his medical briefings, and considers holding his hand in a wifely manner, but instead she takes notes.

Her work gives her a few days off, and her colleagues, who have also met and loved Zach, suggest things for her to take to him, ask about visiting hours. Zarah gives her a hat from her mum. "In case he gets cold in hospital."

"It's summer," Lauren says.

"The air-conditioning can be so intense."

Lauren doesn't get it. Zach seems perfectly nice, but this universal concern is out of all proportion.

How's your boy doing , Bohai messages. Even Bohai is worried about him, she thinks irritably, and closes the chat.

As far as she can tell, Zach has no internal life. Perhaps this is the effect of the painkillers. He blinks around the room, is delighted to see people, is pleased when she brings him things, tires easily. He responds to stimuli. He is bafflingly unconcerned about his broken back. "They say it's going to be okay!"

His family is as bright-eyed and well-meaning as he is, and as dull.

After ten days he comes home, and he's boring there too. He lies on the big sofa, and urinates into a bottle which he gives to her with an air of pathetic apology, and which she empties. He has to remain on his back as much as he can for at least a couple of weeks, so Toby helps set up an iPad above his head so that he can watch television without having to twist.

Why is he so beloved? He is a blank, a nothing, listening to podcasts and eating sandwiches that she makes for him. On days when she's working from the office she leaves the flat door unlocked so that Toby can come up to check on him and have a little chat over lunch, and she should be grateful that he's sharing the caretaking burden, but instead she is deeply irritated. Nat comes and visits again, a couple of days after Zach gets home; she brings Caleb this time, who is hushed and nervous and quieter than Lauren has ever seen him. He presents Zach with a "get well soon" card he has made, in which he has drawn several figures, each one labelled Uncle Zach in all caps: Zach in a hot-air balloon, Zach riding an elephant, Zach flying through the air with a red cape. And as if that wasn't enough, Nat's bursting with advice: how to support people healing from traumatic injury, foods to cook for recovery and bone strength.

For the first week Lauren wipes him down with a washcloth every night: her first experience with his naked body, sponging around the waterproof back brace, switching to another washcloth for the groin and then the butt crack, lifting the penis gently. One night it stirs, then subsides.

"Do you need, you know—?" and she gestures at it with a wanking motion.

"Nah," he says. "Haven't felt interested yet. But thanks for asking!"

He is so grateful. "Thank you so much for this," he says, almost constantly. "I love you, I can't believe how much you're doing, I can't believe I fell, I'm such an idiot."

She wishes he'd have a day of being grumpy and resentful. Instead he is pitifully appreciative of her attention, constantly urging her to go out and have fun, and, most annoying of all, besieged by guests for whom she has to make coffee and get biscuits; she has to find space for their thoughtful lasagnes in the fridge, she has to find pint glasses and jam jars for the flowers that are crowded on to every shelf.

She books a guy to come in and fix the attic ladder, and even he ends up sitting on the armchair in the living room, exchanging stories with Zach and demonstrating stretches for him to try once he's on the mend. Still, at least the ladder's working again. She pulls it down and it doesn't stick at the halfway point any more; climbs up and holds her hand above her, to check that the light still fuzzes on.

○○

Zach listens to audiobooks. He naps. He watches sitcoms, sometimes the same sitcom he's just finished. "It's soothing," he says.

Later, he starts working his way through the complete films of Zac Efron. "I never saw any of them before," he says, "but I feel like it might be time. This is amazing," and he gestures at the screen, freeze-framed in the middle of High School Musical2 , dancers on a baseball square. He is on extra-strength codeine, and will be for the next three months, or rather no, he won't because as soon as he's mobile enough to climb back into the attic she'll be sending him on his way.

It's not that he's a bad husband! He's cute enough now that he's not bathed in his own fluids, he's obviously got plenty of friends, his family seem to genuinely like each other. She continues to see more of Toby and Maryam than usual, even though they should be packing up their stuff, not laughing at Zach's indifferent jokes and updating him on their flat search. "We've applied for that place that's halfway to the hospital, and it's looking good," Toby tells him one afternoon. "So we should still be pretty close to you guys." She should be the one they're reassuring, she should be the one Toby is eager to stay near so he can pop up and say hello.

Elena usually refuses to come this far south but even she joins in and brings a big plate of almond biscuits. "Nightmare on the train," she says, "not carrying them, just people joking about whether they can have one, Oh, let me take those off your hands, Oh, did you bring enough for everyone? Fucking South London. You don't get people making conversation north of the river."

"If they wanted biscuits they should have broken their own backs," the husband says.

"Exactly! I should have told them that."

Zach is none of Lauren's types, neither gangly nor short and stocky, neither confident nor nervous, not even slightly into some arcane hobby. She spends more and more time in her bedroom, relinquishing the living room to him and his guests. For ten days she empties his piss bottles, before he's finally allowed to stand and move about delicately and he starts to empty them himself, or rather to say that he will but actually to tuck them under the sofa and apologise about them two days later when they're full and she has to empty them after all.

She goes into the office most days, and works late to have some time to herself, alone after five o'clock as the desks empty out. Or sometimes she heads up to Elena's part of town and they take terrible dance classes in old shipping containers, and she tries not to seethe when Elena asks after Zach, or hands over a book that Rob thinks he would like.

"This is your third time here this week," Elena says. "You should move. You can't live in Norwood Junction for ever just because your grandma did. The flat under us is for sale, you should have a look. Imagine being on the Victoria Line! Plus there's the Overground to Liverpool Street in fifteen minutes!"

This is the main thing people do in the suburbs, Lauren sometimes thinks: they list different ways to get into town. "Twelve minutes direct train to London Bridge," she says, the mandated Norwood Junction response.

Her trip home is pretty annoying for a journey between two places that are both supposedly so convenient for the centre of town. She thinks about Elena's suggestion. Selling the flat would be one way out of the infinite lives, at least if she could be sure that she wouldn't just drug another husband and force him to break into the old place with her.

But she's not stopping on Zach.

She's been trying to notice one true thing about each husband, to distinguish them, to accept that they are people that she has loved and who have loved her. But with Zach she keeps coming back to the bottles. Oh, and her unrelenting sense of guilt, of course. This is, she thinks, absolutely her own fault.