State We're In by Adele Parks Read Free Book Online Page A

Taylor. Then a chilly spring breeze had bitten the back of his neck. He’d turned up his collar and gone inside.
    The more Dean looked at this man, the more confused he became. There was nothing, nothing at all, about him that was familiar. For a moment Dean panicked and considered the idea that he might have been directed to the wrong bed. This might not be Eddie Taylor after all. He was probably in another ward. He would have a nurse sat on each knee and another giving him a head massage. Wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t that be the case? Because wasn’t that how he had always been, at least in Dean’s imagination and in his mother’s stories? The serial philanderer. The womaniser. The commitment-phobe.
    The bastard.
    Dean rushed to the end of the bed and snatched up the patient’s notes. There it was, typed up in black and white: Edward Charles Taylor. Proof. The other thing it said was that the patient has requested no more resuscitation, no life-prolonging drugs, nothing other than medication to ease the pain.
    â€˜I’m sorry, visiting hours don’t start until eleven a.m. I’m going to have to ask you to leave and come back then,’ said a nurse, with a polite efficiency that didn’t quite mask her exhaustion. ‘The patients need their rest.’
    â€˜He’s asleep,’ Dean pointed out. He felt a mix of relief and frustration about this. If his father slept he wouldn’t have to talk to him, but on the other hand, if his father slept he
couldn’t
talk to him. Which did he want? It was a deep sleep, but not restful. Eddie Taylor’s pupils darted left and right – the movement could be detected through his thin lids – and his chest rose and fell with a shuddering violence. This was not how Dean had imagined a death scene would be. It seemed wasteful to sleep through your last hours, but then maybe it was fitting. He and his father had wasted so much time, their entire lives. What did it matter if they wasted just a little bit more?
    â€˜Visiting hours are eleven until one and then three until five and seven until nine,’ the nurse replied firmly.
    â€˜A little longer. Please.’ Dean wasn’t sure why he’d asked for more time. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t think he should be here. He couldn’t remember when he’d last been inside a hospital. During his twenties he used to visit various A&Es on a fairly regular basis on a Saturday night; in fact, a stag weekend wasn’t really considered to be a total success unless someone broke a limb or needed stitches. His company had insisted he take a medical, for insurance purposes, but he hadn’t had to visit an actual hospital, rather a luxurious consultant’s practice on the second floor of a swanky Chicago office block. He couldn’t remember ever visiting anyone in hospital. Sitting by a bedside. Watching, waiting, festering. When his sister had her babies he’d been in the States and so he’d met the newborns once Zoe was safely back at home, surrounded by soft toys, piles of disposable nappies and welcoming flowers.
    The hospital was bleak, rammed with blatantly baffled patients who drifted through the wards and corridors. There appeared to be an infinite number of anguished or sorrowful souls propping up the walls or slumped on the bedside chairs. Some were no doubt anticipating news about their friends and families; others had already received it. Dean sighed. This was not his sort of place. He liked attractive, successful, resilient sorts. He liked to be cushioned by the lucky and the charismatic. He worked hard to surround himself with luxury, decadence and delights. Now he was surrounded by skinny hardback chairs, tubes, trolleys and a faint smell of disinfectant.
    Dean didn’t want to be sitting on one of the uncomfortable chairs by Eddie Taylor’s bed. Why didn’t he simply leave? It was true that he was anti-authority and