Me Before You

‘I’m here, mother. You don’t have to talk across me. My brain isn’t paralysed. Yet.’

‘Yes, well, if you’re going to be foul, Will, I think it’s best if Miss Clark does talk directly to Nathan.’ His mother wouldn’t look at him as she spoke, I noticed. She kept her gaze about ten feet away on the floor. ‘I’m working from home today. So I’ll pop in at lunchtime, Miss Clark.’

‘Okay.’ My voice emerged as a squawk.

Mrs Traynor disappeared. We were silent while we listened to her clipped footsteps disappearing down the hall towards the main house.

Then Nathan broke the silence. ‘You mind if I go and talk Miss Clark through your meds, Will? You want the television? Some music?’

‘Radio Four please, Nathan.’

‘Sure thing.’

We walked through to the kitchen.

‘You not had much experience with quadriplegics, Mrs T says?’

‘No.’

‘Okay. I’ll keep it fairly simple for today. There’s a folder here that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Will’s routines, and all his emergency numbers. I’d advise you to read it, if you get a spare moment. I’m guessing you’ll have a few.’

Nathan took a key from his belt and opened a locked cabinet, which was packed full of boxes and small plastic canisters of medication. ‘Right. This lot is mostly my bag, but you do need to know where everything is in case of emergencies. There’s a timetable there on the wall so you can see what he has when on a daily basis. Any extras you give him you mark in there –’ he pointed ‘– but you’re best to clear anything through Mrs T, at least at this stage.’

‘I didn’t realize I was going to have to handle drugs.’

‘It’s not hard. He mostly knows what he needs. But he might need a little help getting them down. We tend to use this beaker here. Or you can crush them with this pestle and mortar and put them in a drink.’

I picked up one of the labels. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen so many drugs outside a pharmacy.

‘Okay. So he has two meds for blood pressure, this to lower it at bedtime, this one to raise it when he gets out of bed. These he needs fairly often to control his muscular spasms – you will need to give him one mid-morning, and again at mid-afternoon. He doesn’t find those too hard to swallow, because they’re the little coated ones. These are for bladder spasms, and these here are for acid reflux. He sometimes needs these after eating if he gets uncomfortable. This is his antihistamine for the morning, and these are his nasal sprays, but I mostly do those last thing before I leave, so you shouldn’t have to worry. He can have paracetamol if he’s in pain, and he does have the odd sleeping pill, but these tend to make him more irritable in the daytime, so we try to restrict them.

‘These –’ he held up another bottle ‘– are the antibiotics he has every two weeks for his catheter change. I do those unless I’m away, in which case I’ll leave clear instructions. They’re pretty strong. There are the boxes of rubber gloves, if you need to clean him up at all. There’s also cream there if he gets sore, but he’s been pretty good since we got the air mattress.’

As I stood there, he reached into his pocket and handed another key to me. ‘This is the spare,’ he said. ‘Not to be given to anyone else. Not even Will, okay? Guard it with your life.’

‘It’s a lot to remember.’ I swallowed.

‘It’s all written down. All you need to remember for today are his anti-spasm meds. Those ones. There’s my mobile number if you need to call me. I’m studying when I’m not here, so I’d rather not be called too often but feel free till you feel confident.’

I stared at the folder in front of me. It felt like I was about to sit an exam I hadn’t prepared for. ‘What if he needs … to go to the loo?’ I thought of the hoist. ‘I’m not sure I could, you know, lift him.’ I tried not to let my face betray my panic.

Nathan shook his head. ‘You don’t need to do any of that. His catheter takes care of that. I’ll be in at lunchtime to change it all. You’re not here for the physical stuff.’

‘What am I here for?’

Nathan studied the floor before he looked at me. ‘Try to cheer him up a little? He’s … he’s a little cranky. Understandable, given … the circumstances. But you’re going to have to have a fairly thick skin. That little skit this morning is his way of getting you off balance.’

‘Is this why the pay is so good?’

‘Oh yes. No such thing as a free lunch, eh?’ Nathan clapped me on the shoulder. I felt my body reverberate with it. ‘Ah, he’s all right. You don’t have to pussyfoot around him.’ He hesitated. ‘I like him.’

He said it like he might be the only person who did.

I followed him back into the living room. Will Traynor’s chair had moved to the window, and he had his back to us and was staring out, listening to something on the radio.

‘That’s me done, Will. You want anything before I go?’

‘No. Thank you, Nathan.’

‘I’ll leave you in Miss Clark’s capable hands, then. See you lunchtime, mate.’

I watched the affable helper putting on his jacket with a rising sense of panic.