All the Fabulous Beasts

by Priya Sharma

  “What?”

  “Keep a door open here, for possibilities.” He tapped my forehead. “Don’t close your mind to the idea that beneath what we know there’s a whole world that we can only guess at. There are things in life that we know that we don’t understand. The real danger is the stuff in the blind spot that we don’t even know exists.”

  “That’s a riddle.”

  “It’s the long way of saying that what you don’t know about is what bites you in the butt.”

  *

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  I’d been seeing my GP for four months. I felt like she was sick of me. Or maybe I was sick of her. Or sick of still feeling the same.

  “How are you?”

  She was an expert in communication, having had special training. She knew exactly how to tell me that she didn’t have much time without saying it aloud. Her gaze kept darting to her computer screen.

  “Improved.” I cut things short, knowing it was what she wanted to hear.

  “Are you less tearful than last time?”

  “Yes.” That was true. I’d gone beyond crying.

  “Are you sleeping?”

  I nodded. I slept through afternoons, having spent the night lying awake. Two in the morning was the hardest time. The drowning hour where misery was at its deepest.

  “Any idea when the inquest will be?”

  “Not yet.”

  The thought was terrifying. I didn’t want to face the family’s anger and the Coroner’s inquisition.

  “Cariad,” her face softened, “I’m not trying to rush you back to work but the longer you’re off, the harder going back will be. When do you think you’ll be ready to get back in the saddle?”

  This from a woman who looked like she’d never fallen off the horse.

  “Soon. Just not yet. I need a bit more time.”

  Before I hadn’t wanted time off. Now I couldn’t face going back.

  “What will you do with yourself?”

  “I’ll go to my Dad’s.” I didn’t mention that Dad was dead.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Near Haverfordwest.”

  I wanted to be away. To leave Aberystwyth and drive along the blue of Cardigan Bay, past the painted houses of Aberaeron. I knew I was nearly at the Landsker line and home when I reached the Preseli Hills, whose blue stone made the inexplicable two hundred and fifty mile journey to the Salisbury Plain for the building of Stonehenge. The beautiful Preselis, whose hollows fill up with sun by day and at night the mist pours itself onto the road.

  My GP’s nails were bare but elegantly shaped, at the end of tapered fingers. I looked at her hands as she signed the sick note because I couldn’t bear to look her in the face.

  *

  I sat beside Maria at the workstation, both of us writing in patients’ records. She broke the silence. “You get upset easily, don’t you Cariad?”

  Any opportunity to undermine me.

  “Do I?”

  I tried not to sound defensive but I was strung out from self-doubt, stretched thin as an onion skin by the line of patients that never seemed to lessen. Sometimes I felt there was a whole wave of them about to crash down on me. Their fear made me fraught, as did their anger at being kept waiting. Waiting to be seen, waiting for test results, waiting for another doctor to come when a senior’s opinion was needed.

  “Yes, you should watch that,” Maria continued. “Being too emotional is how you make mistakes. And you’ll do no good trying to be everyone’s friend. The nurses all tell me how caring you are, which is all very well, but it’s only part of the job.”

  There was me, thinking it was the very essence of our vocation.

  “Cariad, I’m not saying this to be hurtful. I’m trying to be supportive.” Like all good bullies she knew how to couch her comments so as to avoid reprisal.

  “Hello, my beauties.” Glynn tapped the desk, the oily rag of a man eager for attention. “Which one of you is taking me out later?”

  Tom hung back. We shared a smile that contained all that had passed between us. I looked away, unable to contain myself, only to see Maria staring at me, unhappy with what she’d seen.

  *

  The cliffs at Newgale are covered in sporadic patches of gorse, some of it bearing yellow blooms. When gorse goes out of flower, love goes out of fashion. Another piece of Dad’s wisdom. The cliff face is spotted with pink thrift and white sea campion. The rock itself is layers of different coloured stripes, marking time’s strata. This is what we are. Layers of history, one event laid down upon another. We are less consequential than sediment.

  The tide has carved out caves. We imagine that we can do what stone can’t; that we can hold back the rising tide and remain whole and unaffected. So much for my grandiose plans of helping people. I can’t even help myself.

  I squat in one of the caves. It smells of rocks and salt. I’ve come armed with one of Dad’s empty whisky bottles. I half fill it with pebbles and then say her name over and over, Jessica, Jessica, into the bottle’s mouth. I pray her in and then screw the cap on. I’m not sure if I’ve recalled it as Dad taught me. This was his legacy, this knowledge that’s so at odds with everything else about me. I wish I’d listened more when Dad talked.

  The match flares in the cave’s cold shade and I hold a candle in the flame, letting wax drip around the bottle top to seal it.

  I’ll contain Jessica this way. I wade out into the cold water. The tide dragging at my thighs threatens to drag me down. I’ve not got a good throwing arm but I cast the bottle out as far as I can. It lands with a splash and then it’s gone.

  *

  I’d been working at Bronglais General for five months when I first met Jessica.

  Saturdays were the worst. Inebriated brawlers and the hopeless attempting suicide were heaped upon victims of heart attacks and strokes. They threatened to overwhelm me. No matter how much I studied, I never knew enough. No matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t keep up.

  The girl in the cubicle was wrapped in a blanket. Her dark curls were stiff with brine. The woman that fussed over her was striking too. Like the girl, she had a beaked nose and black eyes but her hair was unruly and streaked with grey. She was taller, scrawnier, and her long black coat flapped around her as she moved.

  “Hello Jessica.” I read her name from the casualty card. “I’m Dr Evans. Are you Jessica’s mum?”

  The tall woman nodded. She hovered over me in a mix of anxiety and threat that I read as Look after my girl.

  “What happened to you, Jessica?”

  “I nearly drowned.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “My dog went into the water. We were on the beach.” She smiled, rueful. “I went in after him and we got caught in a big wave.”

  “She was lucky,” her mother’s mouth became a thin line. “A group of lads were body boarding and one of them was close enough to reach her.”

  “How long were you in the water?”

  “I don’t know. It felt like forever.”

  “I’ll bet. Did you black out at all?”

  “No.”

  “Good. You must’ve been terrified.”

  Her mother started to cry. I envied Jessica that maternal love.

  “I’m okay, Mum. Don’t fuss.”

  I checked Jessica’s chart. Her pulse and blood pressure were normal and she wasn’t hypothermic.

  “Come on, Jessica. Let’s check you out.”

  She looked at me with admiring shyness, hesitating as if she wanted to say something. I paused, encouraging her to speak.

  “I’m going into lower sixth in September. I want to study Medicine when I finish.”

  “Then we might work together one day. What do you think about that?”

  I put my stethoscope to Jessica’s chest and listened to the steady lub-dub of her heart as her atria and ventricles contracted in turn. Her lungs inflated normally, a healthy pair of bellows.

  “Everything seems fine,” I
said. “How’s the dog?”

  “Damn the dog,” her mother spat. “Leave the bloody thing to drown next time.”

  “He swam to shore in the end. Mum’s friend took him to the vet.”

  The curtain twitched.

  “Excuse me.” Ellen pulled me from the cubicle. “Maria wants everyone in the resus bay now. There’s been a pile up.”

  “One second,” I told Ellen and went back in. “Sorry about that. Your chest X-ray is normal, Jessica. I think you’re okay to go home. If you feel short of breath or get chest pains, a cough or fever, then we need to see you again.”

  I remember thinking, at that moment, that I’d hit my stride. My confidence was growing. I was finally playing my part.

  “Are you sure?” her mother asked. “The vet’s keeping the dog in for observation.”

  To which I replied, “Don’t worry, Jessica will be fine.”

  *

  Painful thoughts. They gnaw.

  Everything’s magnified by the unflinching lens of two AM, my every defect, fuck up and misstep that obliterates any modest successes.

  Then, of course, there’s the one act that negates everything. Even when I close my eyes, it’s there.

  I get up, sliding from my sleeping bag. When I put my feet down, they land in a cold puddle on the floor. I’ll check that the roof’s sound in the morning. Not that it matters. Damp permeates everything. It’s in the walls. It’s gathered on the window. Everything smells dank.

  When I go outside the night’s misted and murky. A gusting wind makes the low mist twist and swirl around me. It softens and blurs the lights of the houses. I need to pee but can’t bear the idea of going to the ty-dach, the little house. The toilet drops into the neglected septic tank that’s now rank. I don’t want to be alone in there. Ivy has insinuated itself through the wall panels and crept up the inside. I walk out into the middle of the field instead.

  Wet grass brushes my legs as I squat and relieve myself. Steam rises. A chill goes up my back which makes me feel exposed. There’s a dense fog, blowing in fast over the hill. I’m vulnerable, unable to run and overcome by the idea that I’m going to die out here, knickers around my ankles, urine running down my leg.

  I glance over my shoulder, wondering at the fullness of my bladder. The fog eddies and whirls in the wind, making shapes too fleeting for me to focus on.

  My stream slows to a trickle. I hear something behind me, higher pitched than the hoot of an owl. I look back again, pulling up my pyjama bottoms. A black shadow is in the fog’s depths. Something’s coming out of the night.

  It’s taking shape, pulling itself together from pieces of darkness. It looks like a long-legged figure with straggly hair. A raven of a woman. Her long coat flaps around her. She’s covering the ground between us in great strides.

  It’s the Gwrach-y-Rhibyn. The Hag in the Mist. She’s a death omen.

  I run. As I near Arosfa I hear a shriek and I stumble. My mistake is looking back. The hag’s in flight, her coat transformed into great wings. I try and scramble to my feet but my trembling legs collapse and because of this she passes over me with a shrill scream of frustration that her clawed hands are empty.

  She’s circling but it’s enough time for me to get to Arosfa. I slam the door behind me, lock it and throw the bolts. The hag hits the door with a thud. I upturn the table and put it against the door and then sit on the opposite side of the room. There’s a strange fluttering sound outside, as if she’s hovering in wait.

  How long the night is. The wind picks up, rattling the roof. The hag taunts me. Just when I think she’s gone, there’s a sudden slapping sound against the door or one of the walls, followed by a flap, flap, flap as she prowls around Arosfa, trying to get in. I drag the bed to the centre of the room and sit with my legs drawn up and my arms wrapped around them.

  Around dawn the wind drops and everything’s quiet. I think the hag’s gone. I doze off for an hour and then wake with puffy, swollen eyes. I pull the curtains and the clarity of the morning light mocks me, as does the torn black bin liner lying on Arosfa’s step when I open the door.

  *

  Jessica was rushed in the night after I saw her. Glynn pushed the trolley. Tom worked on her as they went.

  “Bleep the crash team. Now.”

  Jessica’s skin was white, her lips cyanosis blue. The rhythms of resuscitation failed to rouse her. I stood trembling instead of piling in and helping. I couldn’t even muster the basic primer for survival. The ABC of airway, breathing and circulation.

  Her mother stood by, her gangly limbs impotent as they hung by her side. We looked at one another.

  “What’s happened to Jessica?”

  “She said she couldn’t breathe. By the time the ambulance arrived, she’d collapsed.”

  More doctors and nurses ran in, answering the call. Ellen pulled the curtain across the bay so that Jessica’s mother wouldn’t have to witness the indignities required to save a life.

  “We need to help Jessica now,” Ellen spoke to her mum. “Go with Jamie and he’ll get you a cup of tea. I’ll come and get you when there’s news.”

  “I want to stay.”

  “Let them help her.” Jamie put an arm around her, gentle and insistent. He was the best member of staff at calming relatives and breaking bad news. “We’ll only be around the corner when she needs you.”

  There were enough people with Jessica, I told myself. I’d just be in the way.

  Maria found me later, in the staff toilets. She stood beside me as I washed my hands, removing smudged mascara with her little finger. She watched me in the mirror.

  “You saw her yesterday, didn’t you?” She didn’t need to explain who she was talking about.

  “Yes. How is she?”

  “It doesn’t look good. She went into the sea, right?”

  “She was fine yesterday. Her chest x-ray was normal. I don’t understand.”

  “Secondary drowning.” She uncapped her lipstick and applied the coral bullet to her mouth. It was as though she was suddenly talking under water. I had to concentrate on the movements of her lips. I must’ve looked blank because she started to explain. “The surfactant that keeps the lungs open gets stripped off the lungs by sea water. Drowning follows within twenty-four hours.”

  Maria didn’t need to tell me. I’d read about it, briefly. Without surfactant, her lungs had collapsed and she’d starved of oxygen. So Jessica had drowned on dry land.

  “What were her blood gases like?” Maria tied her hair up in a knot. “That’s the crucial bit.”

  Blood gases. A special measurement to check the gas profile in the blood. As soon as she said it I knew the yawning truth was that I hadn’t done it. I didn’t know I should have. Like my dad said, the most dangerous kind of ignorance isn’t what we know that we don’t know but what we have no inkling of.

  Which is a long way of saying that what you don’t know about is what bites you in the butt.

  *

  I wake from fitful sleep with a start. It’s dark. The mattress is sodden with water that’s level with the bed. I turn on my camping lantern but it doesn’t reveal exactly where the water’s coming in.

  This isn’t a leak. It’s pouring down all four walls, flooding in faster than it can drain out.

  I wade through the water that’s up to my thighs, lighting the lanterns as I go. I unlock the door but the top bolt won’t budge. It looks clogged up with decades of rust, not shiny and clean as he had been when I fitted only a few days ago. I get down, soaking myself, trying to force the bottom bolt but this is stuck too. I shoulder the door in frustration but all I get for my efforts is a jarring pain from shoulder to elbow.

  I try and smash the window over the sink with a chair but it’s reinforced with wire mesh. Sodden, I haul myself up onto the narrow draining board which creaks under my weight. I try and kick the glass out, not caring about my bare feet, without success.

  Stop. Be calm. I find my mobile by the bed but it’s too wet to summ
on help. What else? Preserve the light, move the lanterns to higher places to keep them dry. My waterproof torch is in my bag. I put its loop around my wrist.

  The empty kettle floats. Plastic beakers and melamine plates bob past me. I’m flotsam and jetsam too. The room’s filling up fast. I have to tread water.

  Outside there’s a frenzied barking. I shout, a waterlogged sound, hoping some nocturnal dog walker will hear me, but no.

  The lanterns are submerged one by one. They glow momentarily making a ball of watery light, then they flicker and go out. Darkness magnifies the water’s sound, the rush that’s filling Arosfa up.

  I turn on the torch. The white arc swings about, illuminating choppy water and the pale face in the corner.

  Water’s treacherous. It’s brought Jessica to me. She’s been baptised and now reborn. Her hair’s plastered to her scalp. Her lips are dusky, her skin translucent and mottled from being submerged too long. Her neck and shoulders are bare. She glows, as if lit from within. Jessica opens her mouth and pebbles fall out. The bottle that I cast into the sea floats between us. The bottle top has been smashed off. Red wax still clings to the broken bottle’s neck.

  Jessica dips beneath the surface.

  Fear’s energising. I scream and thrash. Water slops into my mouth, drowning my shout. I taste brine, brine up here on Treffgarne hill.

  There’s churning, as if deep, vast undercurrents are about to pull me down. I feel a sharp tug at my pyjama leg. I kick out. Then Jessica yanks me down. I lose the torch in a panic. The beam of shrinking light descends.

  Jessica’s hand is clamped around my ankle as we follow the light into the depths. I might as well be out at open sea. Just when I think my chest will explode, she lets me go. I break the surface as if catapulted up, gasping and coughing. Waves buffet me about.

  It’s not mercy on Jessica’s part. She’s toying with me. This time I can feel her full weight, both arms around my calves like a clinging child. For someone so slight she’s like a plummeting anchor taking me to the ocean floor.

  This time we go further into the inky water. It doesn’t make sense; we’re too deep to be within Arosfa. It must be oxygen deprivation making me disorientated. I start to panic and struggle even more, desperate to inhale, even if it’s just saltwater.