Hailstones struck the window pane like shot thrown down from up high and gathered on the sill and on the gravel path which passed beneath the window. She lay there propped up in a steel bed swathed in white sheets with only her pallid arms and her head exposed. He sat by her side in the small wooden chair, wrapped in his coat. It was a tiny room with a broken heater and they had already complained about the cold. Dust layered the inside ledge of the window and the rim of the huge ceramic pot which one time must have contained something. The doctor, with that matter-of-fact air that only doctors can pull off, walked in through the open door and spoke quietly to them while rubbing his eyelids with the palms of his hands. He told them that they would do what they could. There was a chance, he said, and that they should be hopeful but not over hopeful.
‘I’m working through the night and I’ll personally look in on him,’ he said. He also said that he had done all he could do for the moment. They should get some rest. He would be down the hall. When he left them a nurse came and the boy was taken to an even smaller room where the blinds were partly drawn.
‘You should rest’, said the man.
‘I can’t.’
‘But you should. You’ll get sick.’
She tried to sidle up the bed but could not.
‘You don’t understand. I can’t.’
She did not say that she was afraid to fall asleep because she believed that if she slept the boy would die. She felt this but did not allow herself to think of it.
The man's eyes stung. He wiped his hands on his jeans and rubbed his face, making a noise like sandpaper on a breeze block. He had been driving home after a ten hour shift when he got the call and he had driven straight to the hospital. It had been a long day and a long drive and he had not eaten since morning.
‘Hell I’ll watch him,' he said.
She said nothing. She was always beautiful and in the places where he had aged and weathered she had done alright. Her eyes were deep and grey and when she was angry all that was serene in them disappeared and looking at her was like looking into a storm.
She did not reply.
‘I said I’ll watch him,’ he said again.
He held her hand in his. Her stare was cold. She was tired.
And she gave in. She made him swear to watch the boy through the night, then they called on the doctor for something to help her sleep, and ten minutes later she was out.
He headed to the bathroom to wash up. He was a plasterer and worked on a site outside the city and his face was powdered here and there still with dust from a drywall. He washed his face and his hands, scrubbing his jaw where the pores were clogged. What a face, he thought. His nose was bent where it had been hit back when he used to box and his eyes were small and pale blue, and more red where they should be white. And a new line on it every day it seemed. Two kids already and medical bills for a third that probably won’t make it. If she knew I got three weeks left before they lay us all off. He cupped water from the tap and drank it, letting it warm before gulping it. He had small hands which were ugly and weak from the toil and the early bouts and training that was supposed to make them strong in the first place. He wore a red plaid shirt which had been soaked with sweat first at work then again during the birth. It stuck to his back. He dried his hands and walked the corridor back to where the boy was lying.
He bought coffee for a dollar from the vending machine outside the room, black because there was no creamer. He opened the door. Green lights on one side of the machine where the boy lay and on the other side a red light and a grey tube expanding and contracting in time with the rise and fall of his tiny chest. He looked at the boy and believed in his heart that he would not live. But he had promised his wife that he would watch over him so he would sit and he would wait. He picked the firmest chair and placed it in a well-lit spot so he would not fall asleep.
The window in the room faced south and was not struck by the hail in the same manner as the window in the other room was. It was still on the ground floor though, and through the window he could see the car park and the flurry of hail in the yellow of the streetlights, and beyond the car park the highway. With the blinds partly drawn narrow shafts of moonlight settled in lines on the carpet and caused a metal tray on the trolley beneath the window to glimmer. It dimmed and became an outline against the wall as a cloud moved overhead, and when it passed and the moon was open and the sky clear it shined again beneath the window. This went on for a while and kept the man occupied. He wanted to stay awake but he had worked long hours and the dark room was too comfortable, so he got up from the chair and walked to the window and opened the blinds completely.
The room was cold and with the shirt still damp on his back he wrapped himself in his jacket. The door was open and conversation spilled into the room as doctors and nurses passed the door. He remembered reading a short story set in a hospital once, and something about rooftops and the war. And a joke about friend or enema. There were no great snatches of conversation here, only murmurs about charts and patients. He entertained himself by trying to give meaning to half-heard sentences, but as before he grew annoyed with the noise and closed the door. His back hurt like hell and the cold was now in his bones, so he moved to the couch which was against a radiator.
Though determined to watch the boy he realized he was not well and began to feel drowsy. It got worse outside and lightening fell a few miles away, lighting for an instant the big pines which stood stolid in the wind a few hundred yards away beyond the car park. He had driven through them on the road into the hospital earlier. He listened for the clap of thunder to work out how far off it had fallen. His father had taught him that when he was a boy during a storm, to calm him. Five miles, he thought. The last one was four. Are you coming or going storm? He looked at the boy and thought it a shame that he would probably never teach him how to count between the flash and the thunderclap.
He was dozing and thinking of his father when the door opened and the doctor walked in. He carried two cups of coffee. He drank deeply from the cup in his right hand and offered him the second cup.
‘Coffee?’
‘Thanks.’
He accepted the offer but he made no effort to get up so the doctor put the coffee on the floor in front of him. Steam was rising from it. He looked in on the boy and took down readings from the screen. He marked his chart, the pen scribbling against the paper on the clipboard.
‘You gonna watch him all night?’ he said without looking at him.
‘Yeah.’
‘You should get some sleep.’
‘S’pose.’
He could hear the wind outside hard against the window now and against the walls which faced the wind, with no trees to act as a breaker, and it was cold and the room was queer in the moonlight and queerer still when the lightning fell. He was warm where he lay and he thought to ask the doctor how the boy was doing, but when he spoke he realized the doctor was no longer there. He was unsure if he had been there at all but on the floor by his feet was a cup of coffee with no steam rising from it. His eyes were heavy and his mind was sapped and sank without a fight.
Walking by the sea wall alone, the sky clear and the sea calm, the tide out. The riprap like behemoth coal in a giant's furnace beneath the curving sea wall. The sun low and the clouds grey and tinged red, the cool air more fresh than biting. Climbing the metal railing on the sea wall and leaning over the riprap pretending to fall then at the last moment clutching the railing. Going forward, carelessly while the water reaches onto the sand and seeps into it. Reaching the end of the beach by the station and seeing no way forward and turning knowing that he has to go back. And the way back seeming different somehow, barren now with the sun gone. Cupping his hands into circles and glassing the distance and seeing nothing, the horizon tenebrous. Conscious of the black sea slowly rising to his right. Great clouds gathering above and the breath of the wind no longer steady but fitful as though in an asthma attack. Walking quickly between the now immense wall of water on one side and the jagged rocks on the other. And up ahead coming into view the sea like a cliff stands and as though waiting for him to see begins to fall soundlessly towards him, polishing the rip-rap slick and black and marking the granite of the sea wall like oil. Forcing him up on the rocks. The sea no longer smelling of salt but of some foul miasma. He climbs the riprap in the dark holding onto the sharp rocks not letting go as the water continues to fall.
***
The doctor opened the door. In the room the machine droned gently and the boy lay still. He was small and pale as he had been before, but he had survived and looking at him the doctor knew that he would be okay. In the corner by the radiator wrapped in his jacket and facing the couch the man lay asleep. His shoulders were hunched and he was mumbling and the doctor decided to leave him. He opened the blinds slightly. Sunlight sheathed the floor beneath the window.
An hour later when the nurse came in the room the man was still asleep on the sofa in the corner. He had his back to the incubator and his jacket had fallen on the floor.
‘Sir? Mr Hyatt?’
She pressed his shoulder. He woke and turned, and as he did he kicked the polystyrene cup and spilled the cold coffee on the floor. He sat up and stared at her, his eyes red.
‘Don’t worry, someone will clean that. Mr. Hyatt your son is with your wife in the ward. We will need to keep him in for a few days, but the signs are that he will be healthy. Do you understand?’
He had expected to be told that his son had died in the night and that there was nothing anyone could do. He was blank for a moment then he began to think about selling the car or maybe renting out one of the rooms in the house. His face was haggard and the nurse waited for him.
‘Mr. Hyatt?’
‘Thank you. I was asleep.’
‘Yes, you must be tired. Would you like to see him? Mr Hayatt?’
He did not seem to hear. He shook her hand and thanked her quietly. She said she would give him a minute and she left.
He leaned forward on the sofa. The incubator was empty now and the pump was lifeless at its side. On the floor the coffee had seeped into the carpet like water into sand. He shuddered at the thought. Standing up, he rubbed his face with his palms to wake himself. They were rough and his skin was too, and he was glad to have slept because the day would be long.
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