Beyond the High Blue Air Read Online Free Page B

there but not there, though a little part of me is certain he is listening and hearing me. I must hold on to this, my hope is tethered to it, a fragile skein of hope.
    At the end of the morning visit we have our first appointment to meet Miles’s doctors. We are back in the waiting room, waiting in silence, for fear that if we speak our dread will spill out. The fish continue to swim in their tank, the overhead strip light glares relentlessly. This room feels like an antechamber to horror, the air heavy with the distilled fear of all the people who have waited here before us.
    I need to clear my mind for this meeting, but it’s a scrambled mess of unfinished thoughts that keep sliding away, of questions I can’t frame. With grim relief I see through the glass wall two men in green surgical uniforms walking towards us. Neither is what I expected of a neurosurgeon, the older man with his ruddy jovial face and thick blond moustache, the younger man tall, tanned and athletic-looking, both more like men with outdoor pursuits than doctors. I suppose this is the Alps, I think, but Miles’s life is in their hands; I need to believe in them. When the older man introduces himself his voice is calm, authoritative, his expression no longer jovial as he looks around at each of us, one by one, taking us in. I am Dr Stizer, he says. I operated on Miles on Sunday evening. He had suffered a severe brain injury and was unconscious on arrival here. We removed a large piece of bone from his skull to relieve the pressure on his brain. He is now in an induced coma and breathing by means of a ventilator. We do not know at this stage what the outcome will be. He lifts his eyes to the ceiling and raises his arms, hands upturned, a gesture of supplication. It is in God’s hands, that gesture seems to say, and I think I don’t want it to be in God’s hands, look what’s already happened in God’s hands. He looks searchingly around at us once more and his expression is so concerned, so kind, that I can see he cares about the young man who is his new patient and he cares, too, about us. I understand the shock you are feeling, he says quietly. We will do our best for Miles. But now, please ask me any questions you may have.
    Dr Stizer is a good man. But what questions? All that matters is, will Miles live? He cannot answer that.
    Leaving the hospital together we walk in silence, each isolated in our need to comprehend what has happened. Below us the river Inn flows busily, people stroll past or sit at pavement cafés chatting in the sunshine, the mountains continue to sparkle under a cloudless Alpine sky. The serenity is monstrous. Claudia starts to walk fiercely ahead of us, then stops and turns to me, her face wet with tears: I’m going to take the cable car up the mountain, I need to be on my own. I’ll be back. She turns off to cross a bridge and disappears from sight. I look at Marina and her eyes are wide with pain as she says she will take a walk along the riverbank, giving me a quick kiss goodbye as she descends the steps leading down to the water’s edge.
    We all need to be on our own. The information just delivered to us by the two surgeons has become a broken jigsaw of meaning, splintered pieces that need to be reassembled somewhere, alone, in peace. Three of us are left behind standing on the edge of a bridge that leads into the cobbled streets of Innsbruck Old Town and I can see sunshine warming the ancient stone buildings. It looks peaceful; I want to go there. I turn to Will and he understands. He and his father will go back to the hotel and get some lunch.
    I have no plan. I probably should have lunch, but I’m not hungry. The world has been put on hold and I’m drifting out beyond the edges. The aimlessness is soothing, a kind of willed deferral of all the jagged thoughts; I will face them, but for now I want to keep drifting. Across the bridge the scene looks