3

       How to Recognise a Miracle and What to Do When You Have

      The room was still and quiet, the only sounds the steady beeping of Simon’s heart monitor and the whoosh of the ventilator as it assisted his breathing. Simon was the polar opposite of how I’d last seen him. Now he looked peaceful, the right side of his face and head bandaged, the left side serene and smooth as if nothing had happened. I chose to sit on his left side.

      ‘I saw him shoot himself,’ I whispered to Angela, the nurse on call. ‘He held a gun up right here,’ I gestured, ‘and pulled the trigger. I saw his – everything – go everywhere … How did he survive?’

      Angela smiled, a sad smile, not really a smile at all, just muscles working around her lips. ‘A miracle?’

      ‘What kind of a miracle is that?’ I continued to whisper, not wanting Simon to hear me. ‘I keep going over it, over and over in my head.’ I’d been reading books about suicide and what I should have said, and they say that if you can get a person threatening suicide to think rationally, if they actually think about the realities of suicide and its aftermath, then they could, they might abort the decision. What they’re looking for is a quick fix to end the emotional pain, not to end their lives, so if you can help them see another way to ease the pain then maybe you could help. ‘I think, considering I had no experience, that I did okay, I think I really got through to him. I think he really responded to me. For a moment, anyway. I mean, he put the gun down. He let me call the guards. I just don’t know what it was that sent him back into that head space.’

      Angela frowned as though hearing or seeing something she didn’t like. ‘You know this isn’t your fault, don’t you?’

      ‘Yeah, I know.’ I shrugged it off.

      She studied me, thoughtful, and I concentrated on the right wheel of the hospital bed, how it caused a black scuff mark when it was moved each time, lots of scuff marks back and forth, and I tried to count how many times it had been moved. Dozens, at least.

      ‘You know there are people you can talk to about this kind of thing. It would be a good idea to get your concerns out.’

      ‘Why does everyone keep saying that?’ I laughed, trying to sound carefree but deep down feeling the anger burning in my chest. I was tired of being analysed, tired of people treating me as though I was someone who needed to be handled. ‘I’m fine.’

      ‘I’ll leave you with him for a while.’ Angela stepped away, her white shoes silent on the floor as if she was floating.

      Now that I had come, I didn’t quite know what to do. I reached out for his hand but then stopped myself. If he was aware, perhaps he would not want me to touch him, maybe he blamed me for what had happened. It had been my job to stop him and I hadn’t. Perhaps he had wanted me to change his mind, he had been willing me to say the right words, but I’d failed him. I cleared my throat, looked around to make sure no one was listening and I leaned in closer to his left ear but not so close as to startle him.

      ‘Hi, Simon,’ I whispered.

      I watched him for a reaction. Nothing.

      ‘My name is Christine Rose, I’m the woman you spoke to on the night of … the incident. I hope you don’t mind my sitting with you for a while.’

      I listened for something, anything, and studied his face and hands for signs that he was upset by my presence. I didn’t want to cause him any more pain. When all on the surface remained as it was, calm and still, I sat back in the chair and got comfortable. I wasn’t waiting for him to wake up, I didn’t have anything I wanted to say to him, I just liked being there, in the silence, by his side. Because when I was by his side I wouldn’t be anywhere else, wondering about him.

      At nine p.m., after visiting hours, I still hadn’t been asked to leave. I guessed regular hours didn’t count for someone in a condition such as Simon’s. He was in a coma, on a life-support machine, and his condition wasn’t improving. I spent the time thinking about my life and Simon’s and how our coming together had irrevocably changed both of our lives. It had only been a few weeks since Simon’s attempted suicide, but it had sent my life spiralling in another direction. I wondered if it was pure coincidence or if me being in that random place had been fate.

      ‘What were you doing there?’ Barry had asked me, confused, sleepy, sitting up in bed with his scrunched-up face, his tiny eyes enormous after he’d reached for his black-rimmed glasses on the bedside chest and put them on. I hadn’t known how to answer him then; I wouldn’t know how to answer him now. To say it out loud would be embarrassing, it would highlight how ludicrously lost I had found myself – the irony of that statement not lost on me.

      Aside from what I was doing there, the fact I’d chosen to engage with a man with a gun in a deserted building was enough to cause me to question myself. I liked to help people but I wasn’t sure it was just about that. I saw myself as a problem-solver and I applied that thinking to most aspects of life. If something couldn’t be fixed, it could at least be changed, particularly behaviour. My belief system was born of having a father who was a fixer. It was in his nature to ask the problem and then set about fixing it as he did for his three girls growing up without their mother. Because he lacked Mum’s instinct to know if things were right with us or not and he had no one else to discuss it with, he would question us, listen to the answer, then seek out the solution. It was his way and it was what he felt he could do for us. Left with three children under the age of ten, the youngest only four years of age, a father does what he can to protect his children.

      I run my own recruitment agency, which sounds basic enough, only I prefer to think of myself as a matchmaker, finding the right person for the right job. It’s important to bring the right energy for the right company, and vice versa, what the company can do for a person. Sometimes it’s just mathematics, an available job for an available person with the appropriate skills; other times, when I get to know the person, like Oscar, I really go beyond the call of duty when it comes to placing them. The people I deal with have different emotions about their goals, some because they’ve lost their jobs and are under great stress, others simply fancy a career change and are anxious but full of happy expectation, and then there are the ones who are stepping into the workplace for the first time, excited about new beginnings. Regardless, everyone’s on a journey, and I’m in the middle of that. I’ve always felt the same responsibility for each of them – to help them find the right place in the world. And yet, using that philosophy, my words had landed Simon Conway in this room.

      I didn’t want to leave him alone, and returning to a borrowed flat with no television and nothing to do but stare at the four walls did