by Eva Woods
‘I’m afraid we just don’t know. The point is that it’s not as simple as “waking up”.’ Dr Posh Spice did air quotes.
‘It was a very serious accident,’ said Dr Chill. ‘She cracked her skull on the road. One of her lungs collapsed and her leg is broken, as you know.’ Cracked. Collapsed. Rosie did not like these words. They were talking about her head, not an egg carelessly dropped on the floor. But she was conscious! That had to be a good sign, didn’t it? ‘The brain swelled inside the skull, and it’s a bit like …’
‘Imagine a sponge cake in a tin that’s too small,’ supplied Dr Posh Spice. ‘Rosie was very lucky it happened so near to the hospital.’
That word again: lucky. It was a strange choice in the circumstances.
Dr Chill consulted his clipboard. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us about Rosie’s health? Allergies, previous operations, that kind of thing?’
Her mother sounded close to tears. ‘She’s got a peanut allergy, she’s blood type A, she fell out of a tree once and broke her wrist, er …’
‘She cut off the top of her finger when she was a kid.’
‘Yes, thanks for bringing that up, Mike.’
‘I’m just telling them, Alison!’
‘Er, that’s OK, thank—’
‘And it was all my fault, wasn’t it? I was supposed to be looking after her, so blame me.’
‘Really, sir, madam, it’s—’
‘All I know is it didn’t happen on my watch.’
‘Because you never had a watch! You were never there!’
From the corridor was a sudden commotion, a woman’s voice shouting, ‘Darryl! Darryl! Where is he?’
The two doctors exchanged a quick glance. Rosie saw it as if they spoke. Your turn. I told them about the suicide thing.
Argh. OK.
‘Mr and Mrs Cooke,’ began Dr Posh Spice.
‘It’s not Mrs Cooke. Not any more.’
‘I’m sorry – we have to speak to the family of another patient.’
Thank God. Rosie wasn’t sure she could listen to much more of this dire forecast on her future. Tears were pricking her unresponsive eyes again, and as she couldn’t blink properly, they pooled and burned on her corneas, blurring out the world.
‘Hey, don’t cry,’ said a voice. A man was leaning against the wall, in motorbike leathers. He was very handsome, with floppy honey-blond hair and a full, sexy mouth, tattoos peeking out over his neckline. ‘Trust me, dying isn’t something to cry about. It’s living you have to worry about.’
‘Um … who are you?’ She knew him from somewhere, she was sure of it. Maybe he was her boyfriend. This could be Luke! Maybe she rode motorbikes too, her hair streaming out in the wind behind her as she laughed, carefree. Her poor shaved hair. But somehow, Rosie did not think this was true. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen you … Oh! You’re the guy from A and E?’ Someone who’d been even more of a mess than she was. His chest had literally been open on the bed. But now look at him! Walking about and everything. Maybe they were just very good in this hospital. Maybe they’d fix her too.
‘That’s right. Darryl, hiya.’
‘Rosie.’ She was pleased she remembered her own name. ‘I think your parents are looking for you. Are you OK?’
‘Came off my bike taking the Elephant and Castle roundabout too fast, didn’t I?’
‘Oh. But …’ He’d not looked so good when they’d been opening him up on the bed in A&E, but here he was, upright and intact, seemingly chipper. There wasn’t even blood on his white T-shirt. ‘You look all right now.’
He laughed. ‘I certainly feel like a new man.’
‘So they fixed you? They’re good?’
‘I’m sorry, mate. No one’s that good. I’ve gone, Rosie.’
A terrible thought was growing in her mind. ‘You mean …?’
‘It’s OK, you can say it. Yes, I’m dead. An ex-Darryl. I have ceased to exist!’
Rosie shuddered. Dead people certainly seemed pretty chilled about the fact of their own mortality. ‘Oh my God, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry.’ Another dead person, just hanging out in her room, chatting to her. Her head ached.
He sighed. ‘Terrible for my mum and dad, I guess. It’s weird, but now I’m dead, I just can’t feel anything, you know? Like, I know it must be crap, and they asked me a million times to get rid of the bike, and it kind of sucks I can’t tell them I’m sorry, like, but I don’t really feel it. I’m just glad the pain’s all over.’ Darryl’s parents. Rosie winced for them. To be called here in the middle of a normal day, told their son was gone, shown his waxy dead body, the shell of him when only that morning he’d been alive, handsome, young. Maybe they’d even texted or called him today before it happened, said goodbye with no idea that it would be the last time. Or maybe they didn’t talk much, just assumed there’d always be more time to say all the things that needed to be said.
‘Do you … can you tell me what’s going on? Why I can see you, and why I keep getting these memories? They’ve said … Darryl, they said that even if I wake up I might not be able to walk again, or talk, or … Is it true?’
‘Honestly, I don’t know, mate. I’m still adjusting to the whole “not being alive” thing. I just know I’m meant to come with you while you relive stuff. Close your eyes. It’ll help with the tears too.’
‘But your parents, they’re—’
‘Never mind about that, Rosie. Come on, time to go.’
She concentrated hard and eased her eyes fully shut, sealing up the crack where the world came in. The dial spun again, blurred and indistinct. 11 7 2005. Off she went.
11 July 2005 (Twelve years ago)
Rosie screwed her face up, and cautiously opened her eyes. The light was different again. Where was she? She peered around her at the beach she was on. White, warm sand, the water a deep green fading into navy. A faint cool breeze relieving the heat of the day, the sun just beginning to dissolve into the ocean in a puddle of Berocca orange. Of course, she remembered now – this was Crete. She’d come on holiday after uni, which meant she was twenty-one. It was late afternoon, her favourite time – having red hair and pale skin meant you had to avoid midday unless you wanted to crisp up like a roast potato. Grown-up Rosie watched her younger self as she came down the beach. ‘God, I was slim.’ She hadn’t known it at the time, of course, but her legs were endless, her stomach flat. Rosie knew she’d hated her body back then, the pale milky skin – it was a time when sunbeds were all the rage – the cluster of freckles on her shoulders and nose, the long curly red hair no conditioner could untangle. But she’d been beautiful. How sad that she couldn’t see it.
‘Not bad, eh?’ said Darryl’s ghostly voice in her ear. ‘I’d have probably chanced my arm with you. Course, I’d still have been sleeping off the hangover from the night before.’
‘I’m surprised I’m not.’ Rosie couldn’t quite remember who she’d come on this holiday with, but she did recall that for the entire duration of it she’d felt seized with a bone-shaking panic that could only be eased by those massive bucket-sized cocktails they all drank. Her uni friends had training contracts lined up in law firms, office jobs, civil service exams. She had no idea what she was going to do. So she’d taken to sneaking away every day, while the others (who were they?) napped ahead of the night out, or spent hours blow-drying their hair in the tiny bathroom, overloading the European sockets in their apartment so the power always went off and the elderly owner shuffled round muttering in Greek at their extravagance.
Past Rosie spread a towel out on the sand and sat down, folding up her long pale legs, hugging them to herself. She looked soulful, like a girl in a film having an important epiphany about her life. Not like someone lost and scared who hadn’t called their parents the whole time she’d been away. Not like someone who was seriously thinking of not travelling on with her friends (whoever they were), but instead just staying here on this beautiful island, listening to the waves every day, living off olives and salty
feta, avoiding her problems. Avoiding growing up. What would be so wrong with that?
She was musing over her future when the Frisbee hit her on the head. A man was running up the beach to her. A gap-year type, in combat shorts and a Radiohead T-shirt, as tanned as she was pale. Fair hair that was shaggy and needed cutting. Gap-year bracelets round his strong wrists. Shocking blue eyes in a brown face. ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry. I was throwing it for this dog, you see, and …’
‘What, the dog’s not got good aim?’ Dazed, 2005 Rosie had still managed to sound funny. A barking beach stray was gambolling around her.
The man – a boy, really – said, ‘I’m ashamed. To think I was even in the university Frisbee league.’
‘That exists?’ She was rubbing her head, sucking her stomach in under her shorts and bikini, though she hardly needed to.
‘Oh sure. I could have gone all the way. Olympic Frisbee. Pro Frisbee. Are you hurt?’
‘I’ll live.’
He was standing over her, casting his shadow, awkward. ‘Maybe I can buy you a drink to say sorry.’ There was a taverna behind them, painted in jolly white and blue, serving Greek salads and chilled Cokes and fries laced with balsamic vinegar and good olive oil.
Say yes, Rosie urged her past self. She had said yes, surely? Past Rosie stood up, brushing sand off her long legs. ‘That would be nice. Thank you. Um – I’m Rosie.’
He stuck out a hand, big and worn, warm from the sun. A traveller’s hand. She remembered now that, as she took it, an electric charge had run down her spine, and she’d almost gasped, experiencing naked attraction for the first time in her life. But more than that, the fall of his fair hair and the curve of his smile seemed deeply familiar. She knew him, she was sure of it. This had been the start of something important. What was his name? It was almost there, forming on her lips …
‘I’ll be having cider with Rosie then,’ he said, blushing slightly at his own bad joke. ‘Or rum and coke with Rosie, or whatever you’re drinking. I’m Luke.’
Daisy
She was running. Down five flights of stairs, barely pausing for breath, out through the crowded hospital lobby and into the cold autumn air. She didn’t even know where she was going, just that she had to get out of the hospital and away from what was happening around Rosie’s bed. Her parents together were never a good combination, and although her mother was rigidly polite to Scarlett, the little girl was always a reminder that she’d been ditched, left for a younger model. That was how she saw it, anyway. The reality wasn’t quite the cliché you’d imagine. When the doctors left, Daisy’s head had been reeling with words – Glasgow Coma Scale, neurological problems, suicide watch – but she couldn’t take them in. Her brain, normally so quick and efficient, processing facts and numbers, simply would not work.
‘What did they mean?’ she’d asked. It was as if she’d heard the words, loud and clear, but entirely failed to understand them.
Her mother had wrung her hands. ‘Darling, they’re saying … we have to be prepared for the worst.’
‘Alison, that’s not what they said at all! They said there was hope.’
‘Hope doesn’t mean the news is good, Mike. It just means they haven’t totally given up. But she has a very serious injury. They’re taking her for a scan soon, to see how much damage there is.’
‘I just think it wouldn’t hurt to be a bit positive …’
‘We have to take this seriously! They said … we might have to make some tough decisions. In the next few days.’
‘That’s typical of you, Alison, always doom and gloom …’
Daisy had looked between her parents, helpless. This was all so familiar. Her mother and father, sniping, fighting. She caught in the middle. Rosie nowhere to be seen. Usually the cause of it.
She’d felt it all pressing on her – the hospital buzzing like a hive, the frenetic energy of it around Rosie’s deathly stillness, and all the memories threatening to engulf her. The uselessness of just watching while the machines pumped fluids in and out of her sister, keeping her alive. She had to get away and do something to help. Try to find out what had happened, if Rosie had done this to herself. ‘I … I’m going out.’
Now she slowed to a halt, realising her muscles and lungs, normally so obedient and well trained – she ran to work three mornings a week, before showering diligently and changing out of her lycra into sensible office clothes – had also stopped working, and she was possibly going to pass out. She leaned against the window of a café, waiting for the dizziness to pass. Suicide watch. The doctors thought Rosie had tried to kill herself.
‘Hey, are you OK?’ A man had appeared beside her from the café, in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
‘I …’ Daisy opened her mouth to say yes yes I’m fine but instead, a large sob tore out of her. ‘It’s just … my sister!’ The rest of what she might have said was drowned in tears.
The man was very kind. He sat her down on the bench outside the café, brought her out a cup of sweet tea – Daisy hated sweet tea, and Gary had made her swear off sugar pre-wedding, but the simple kindness almost broke her heart – then hunkered down beside her, concerned. ‘From the hospital?’
‘How did you know?’ She sniffed, wiping her face on the back of her hand. She could hardly see his face through the blur of tears.
Tactfully, he passed her a napkin. ‘Oh, a lot of people come in here when their relatives are sick. You sort of have that look about you.’
Was it branded over her skin, the sadness, the worry? ‘It’s my sister,’ she sniffled, her breath hitching. ‘She’s had a bad accident.’ If it was even an accident. Suicide watch. Rosie had stepped in front of the bus by herself.
‘Shit, I’m so sorry. What have they said?’
‘They’re … hopeful, I think. I don’t know. She’s in a coma.’ Daisy felt the word in her mouth, like a small heavy stone.
The guy said, ‘Oh, that’s nothing to worry about. Comas are ten a penny in that hospital, seriously they are. A coma, that’s like … a normal Tuesday morning for them. Look, why don’t you come in? I’ll make you something to eat. On the house.’
Daisy looked at him properly. The swirl of a tattoo peeked out from under one shirtsleeve. Dark, straight glossy hair, slanting cheekbones. A kind face, she thought. It would have been lovely to follow him into the steamy-window warmth of the café and pour out all her worries, but she knew she couldn’t. There wasn’t time. ‘Thank you. I’m just … I need to … there’s something I have to do.’ What she had to do was try to save her sister. If that was even possible now. She remembered the doctor saying, If she doesn’t wake up in three days … Babbling her thanks to the man from the café, Daisy got up and continued on to the Tube station at a fast trot. She was going to Rosie’s flat, to see if she could find a clue, any clue at all, about her sister’s state of mind that morning.
Rosie
‘… she’s been unstable for years, Michael. Ever since you left. I just think you need to take some responsibility.’ Out in the corridor, her parents were still arguing. A familiar sound – Rosie sensed she had a lot of files in her memory marked ‘Mum and Dad, rowing’.
‘Oh, give me a break, Alison. She was always like this. You seem to forget the suspensions, that terrible boyfriend, the fiasco with the school show!’
In the bed, Rosie cringed. She wondered was she actually dead and Hell was listening to your parents discuss whether or not you might have tried to kill yourself. Had she really been as bad as all that? She wished she’d stayed in the last memory, on the beach, feeling the sun on her skin and smelling the Factor 50 she always slathered on herself. Finally, a good memory. Luke. That was Luke. Why did that name make her heart race and her stomach drop? Why didn’t her family know who he was? She remembered all the terrifying things the doctors had said. Three days. Suicide watch. What was going to happen?
‘I haven’t forgotten. How could I? I could hardly show my face at the Women’s Institute that year.’<
br />
‘Well then. Please don’t blame me! I feel bad enough as it is. I never thought she’d do something like … I mean, are things really so bad with her?’
‘I don’t know. I … Well, we had a bit of a falling-out. We hadn’t been speaking.’
‘She never speaks to me either.’
‘Mike. They’ve said that … in three days, if she hasn’t … if there’s no sign she’s aware of things, she might never wake up. And then we have to make a decision. About … what to do.’
Her dad’s voice was rough. ‘She’ll come round by then. I know she will. She has to.’
Her mother was crying again. ‘Where did we go wrong with her, that she’s ended up like this? Daisy seemed to cope.’
Their voices both softened at the mention of Daisy. Evidence, perhaps, that they weren’t terrible parents after all. ‘Hormones, maybe,’ said her father vaguely. ‘I don’t know. I could never get through to her.’
Rosie’s nose began to ache with tears. She looked around for another spiritual guide, or ghost, or dream, or whatever they were. Were any more dead people coming to give her wisdom? Darryl, Grandma, Mr Malcolm, Melissa … She tried to think if she knew anyone else who was dead. Both her granddads and her other grandma, but they were shadowy figures, gone when she was small. She couldn’t imagine even recognising them if they popped up.
The door to her room opened a fraction. Someone was coming! Rosie waited expectantly. In came an older woman in an orange tabard, wheezing with the effort of walking. The other ghosts had just kind of … appeared. Materialised. Was this person real then? ‘’Iya, darlin’.’
‘You can hear me?’
‘My name’s Dot. Rosie, isn’t it? How you feelin’, sweetheart?’
‘Not so good, to be honest. But can you …? Am I really talking to you? And who are you?’ Admittedly, her brain was kind of mangled right now, but Rosie had no memory of ever knowing a Dot.
