by Anna Ellory
‘You may not have a choice soon anyway.’ His tone is playful. She imagines his smile. Frostbite. Her fingers hold on to the handset so hard the phone sounds like it’s cracking against her ear. Axel laughs.
‘I have to go, Mim. I’d call the doctors if I were you. You are accusing me of what? Stealing your father from an ambulance? I’m tired of all this erratic behaviour. You are paranoid.’ And she gets dial tone in her ear.
Hands still shaking she calls Hilda, but with no answer, she hangs up. She paces up and down, walking past her father’s empty room each time. Nothing.
She puts on her coat and shoes, but having no idea where she would go, she returns to the phone. She redials the hospice.
‘Do you know where else the ambulance may have taken my father?’ she asks, desperation bringing her voice out high.
‘The ambulance is attached to the hospital. Try there and ask for the paramedics. Ambulances do deliver patients into hospital, maybe your father is there?’
After about ten rings to the hospital emergency department, someone answers. After talking to three different people asking the same questions and being placed on hold again and again. After peeling back the skin on her fingernail with her teeth, and digging her nails deep down into the broken flesh of her wrist until her stomach feels like it’s spinning, she finally gets an answer.
‘Yes, Herr Winter was redirected to the emergency department after he deteriorated en route. He has since been transferred to ward 71, where he has stabilised.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘Visiting hours finish at eight thirty.’
‘Thank you.’
Miriam picks up her bag and leaves.
At the hospital, day or night, lights, hubbub and noise. She buzzes on ward 71 and is shown to her father’s side. He is as white as the sheet he lies on, an oxygen mask over his face, his mouth ajar, asleep. She sits, holds his hand and stays by his side, folding and refolding the pleats in her navy skirt.
Being back in the hospital again. She remembers the night she left Axel and feels a little better that she didn’t concede on the phone and say she’d return.
Over a month ago, she got off the bus and entered the hospital. She found herself sitting on a plastic-covered chair that crackled as she moved, with such a high back she was unable to look up without getting a stiff neck, dressed in only her nightie and coat. Awake and listening to what she thought were her father’s last breaths. The beeps on the monitors soothed her. Each wave of nurses offered hot drinks, food and blankets as they cared for her as much as for the man in the bed.
And now she is back: same green, plastic chair, same watchful eye on the monitors, but this time she knows that Axel is at her back. Before, she thought her father would die and then she would too. But now, she thinks maybe her father might be okay, but in that way, there is no escape for her. She will have to deal with Axel too. And she has no idea how to do that. It was stupid to call him. Her father’s heartbeat traces lines across the screen and she wonders what Axel has lined up next.
‘I need to be less crazy,’ she says out loud, and laughs at the irony.
She is shooed out of the ward at nine thirty, having overstayed her welcome with the nurse in charge. All her questions were answered with ‘tomorrow’.
‘Will he be okay?’
‘We’ll find out tomorrow.’
‘Will he go to the hospice?’
‘We can ask the consultant tomorrow.’
‘What time can I come back?’
‘We’ll call you tomorrow.’
But in the back of her mind, she isn’t sure he’ll make it to tomorrow and the relief and fear that come from that thought bring tears to her eyes and a pounding in her heart. She leaves the ward feeling like she’s just run a marathon.
In the hospital corridor, she sits on a bench placed within an alcove, a grey filing cabinet on both sides, she feels oddly safe, unwatched. And thinks about staying here until that elusive tomorrow has arrived.
But she hears footsteps and she smells him before she sees him.
‘So, you found him then?’ Miriam stands and tries to step around Axel, who seems to grow into the vacant spaces, no way around him.
Not looking up, focusing her eyes only on the floor. He places an arm out to stop her moving, but all she has done is shift her weight from foot to foot.
‘What antics, Miriam. I mean what will Dr Baum say?’ She makes to move in the other direction, but he catches her wrist and pulls her into him.
‘What am I going to do with you?’ He smooths her hair. ‘Because you really are not well, are you? Such a shame. Hilda called me, love, to say your father was here. Not one person believes in you.’ Her mind rushes as his words penetrate.
‘Hilda called you?’ she tries to say, but is abruptly stopped as he kisses her. She tries to fight, at least she thinks she tries to fight. But suddenly her limbs feel like jelly. What is the point, she thinks.
Axel guides her behind the bench and she realises what is happening. She is stuck, no one can see her.
There is a point, she thinks, and Eva believes her. Eva knows. Miriam pushes against his chest; her whole being pushing against him. Nothing. Like pushing a wall. He is still holding her wrist so tight that she cannot move under his hands.
He turns her around so that she is facing the wall, a picture hangs there, it’s of the sea at sunset and two people paddling along the shore. He presses himself into her and her cheek touches the cold wall, the picture hangs in a pine frame and the back of it is bowed so that it touches the wall too.
He breathes heavily into her ear, she feels his breath and shivers, a full-body revulsion, trying to tug her arm free, he places it in the small of her back.
‘Now then, this is a familiar sight,’ he says, kissing her cheek and moving her slightly to the right, away from the picture and closer to the corner. He touches her neck with his hand and runs a fingernail along the crevice of her throat. ‘Very familiar.’ He swiftly kisses her on the cheek. ‘I have missed you, Mim.’
She looks away, trying to turn her head, but he forces his body into her and she feels crushed between him and the wall; suffocated.
Then he pulls her skirt up and a ‘chink’ of metal chimes on the floor. She doesn’t notice it until he pauses, he pulls on her so that she almost topples backwards and collects the item that fell.
‘What’s this?’ He holds a glinting bit of gold in his hand, but it’s too close for Miriam to see clearly. He glides her down the wall to the floor. She is completely covered, by his body and the bench. He is right on top of her. She sees a ring, her wedding ring, at eyeline now.
‘What is this?’ he says and tugs at her wrist hard. Her ring, she must have forgotten to remove it from her skirt when she took it off days ago.
Miriam can feel the cool dampness of the floor on her cheek. He grabs at her underwear as she tries to turn to move him off her. He holds her chin and guides it to face him, pulling on the muscles in her neck until they tremor in pain.
‘You know how much I need you,’ he says and allows her chin to rest back on the ground. ‘My wife. I cannot live without you, my love.’
She looks at the floor, it is cut into squares all neatly in a row, flecks and tiny outlines that look like scattered daisies. At walking height, Miriam thinks, the floor is plain green. But it isn’t. She looks for patterns, she counts the flowers, tiny white blobs she can see. She struggles to move herself, to move away from him. He holds her hand against her pelvis, pinning her down, positioning himself over her.
‘Hush, hush,’ he says, breathing hard.
Then the pain.
It moves within her like a red-hot wave, again and again.
Not ceasing.
Each crash tumbling over the last.
Red. Black, then, finally, white hot.
A tiny scream escapes from her lips with spittle and she watches as the flowers all bleed into one another. The floor, after all, is just green. He leans
over her, pressing his entire body on hers and she, once again, feels unable to breathe. He is hot from the shower, fresh and clean.
‘I have missed you so much.’ He says and uses her to move himself up. He stands and she hears him rearrange his clothes before bending to her again. He picks up her hand and kisses her knuckles.
‘I will never hurt you, Mim. I love you.’
Then cold steel, a band, is forced on to her finger. Her wedding band, in its rightful place, back on her finger.
She lies alone for a moment, expecting his return. But he has gone, she hears his footsteps receding. She quickly pulls herself up on the bench, then leans on the cabinet.
The picture. The couple on the beach, the clearer-than-clear sea, has shifted on its hinge and now looks as if viewed from the cabin of a boat. She straightens it and, staying close to the wall, staggers away.
23
MIRIAM
A man dressed in blue scrubs sees her. She keeps walking, but he must ask her something, though she can’t quite hear him. She just knows she needs to put one foot ahead of the other. But the man is at her arm and with gentle pressure guides her through the empty hallway.
‘I’m Karl, a porter here, are you a patient?’
She shakes her head.
‘You look like you’ve had a bit of a fright.’
She realises her tights are ripped, her skirt is too high, she tries to pull it down, but her jacket hangs at a strange angle over her shoulder and she can’t make the angle with her arm, which feels heavy and numb, to pull her skirt lower. She leans into the man’s shoulder.
‘I need to go home,’ she says.
Many people speak to her. Touch her. Then they start speaking of her as if she were no longer there. When she can locate the voice to the person and the person to the location in the small cubicle space she says quietly to no one in particular:
‘I’d like to go home.’
‘We’d like to examine you, if we may, to see if you have any injuries. You’re obviously in shock,’ says a nurse, taking Miriam’s arm out of its jacket and attaching a cuff and a cold stethoscope to the flex of her arm.
Miriam watches the nurse look at the scars on her arms.
‘I’ll do some vitals and then get the doctor to come in and have a look at you,’ she says as the cuff deflates and Velcro snaps back into life.
‘Does anywhere hurt? Any pain?’ she asks and places a thermometer in Miriam’s mouth.
She shakes her head. And the thermometer knocks against her teeth.
‘Good. Doctor will be with you shortly.’ The nurse, a wide woman and short, takes the thermometer and walks away, closing the curtains around the bed once more.
Miriam looks around her and shivers. Her jacket is half off and she pulls it around her fully and buttons it up. She is sitting on the bed fully clothed, her tights hang like wrinkles against her skin. Her skirt is bunched. She gets off the bed, and although feeling light-headed stands steady and finds her underwear tucked into her skirt. Torn. She bends to remove her shoes and take off her tights and alongside her underwear she places them both into a brown paper bag, used for vomit, she presumes. She folds the top of the bag over, twice.
Miriam perches on the end of the bed and the plasters on her fingers are wonky and have collected blue dander. She takes each plaster off and stretches her fingers slowly. Pulling her wedding ring off, again, she places it in a yellow bin with a red lid on the table beside her. The ring gives a satisfying thump as it lands at the bottom of the bin.
She bends to tie her laces back up when the curtain springs open. A doctor of epic height and stance looks at a chart in front of him.
‘Miss, I am Dr Evellor.’ He turns and pulls the curtain closed behind him.
‘Do you have any injuries? Have you fallen? Hurt your head?’
‘No, no. I think I’m okay.’
‘How is it that you have found yourself in the emergency department then?’ His smile is wide and genuine, and he sits at the bottom of the bed, placing the chart down. He looks at her.
‘I would like to go home.’
‘Have you been visiting relatives? Some bad news, perhaps? It has been noted that articles of your clothing were torn?’
‘Yes, I took them off. I would like to go home now, I am feeling fine. I am sorry to waste your time.’ She stands.
‘Please sit. Let’s be thorough, shall we? What happened to you before you arrived in my department?’
Finding there are no words she smiles and meets the doctor’s eyes. They are bright blue, but red-rimmed. Tired.
‘My husband hurt me a little, that is all. I will be fine. I now need to go home to my dad.’ Then she realises, her father is on the ward, she doesn’t have anyone to return home for.
‘Hurt you? Where?’ He writes on the board in front of him.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Did he hurt you sexually?’ he asks in the same tone.
‘Yes,’ she says, thankful that someone could name it. ‘Yes, he did.’
‘Do you think he intended to do this?’
Miriam nods.
‘Thank you. Now, if you don’t mind, I am not going anywhere, but I would like you to feel a bit more comfortable and I am very aware that I am a man, and discussing injuries you may have sustained during intercourse may not feel appropriate for you. My colleague, Sarah, will be with you very shortly. Until that point, can I ask you to tell me if you need anything?’
‘I’d like to go home, please.’
‘To your husband?’
‘No, my parents’ house. I left my husband.’
‘I’ll leave these forms for you, can you complete them and Sarah will be with you shortly. If we can check you over, give you a clean bill of health, then you can get on your way.’
She completes the forms, leaving the majority blank. Her marital status – unknown. Her medical history – complicated. She feels in a moment of rare clarity that her medical history may just have been the consequence of her marital status.
Sarah arrives in a red-headed blur, she stammers and blushes. Miriam feels more uncomfortable than ever, so declines an examination, declines blood and swab tests and declines contraceptive advice.
‘I don’t need that,’ she says as kindly as she can.
‘Because you have been hurt and attended to today I’d like to ask if you would like to speak to a police officer, there is a female officer who can take a statement from you. Or at least discuss your options?’
‘I really don’t need anything, honestly. This is not unusual, Sarah. He just caught me off-guard, that is all.’
‘Don’t you think it wrong, though, that he can do this to you?’
Miriam looks at her askance.
‘I mean, if you spoke to the police there would be a record that he harmed you. If you let me look at you for injuries, they could press charges. He could be punished for hurting you in this way. Because it is not okay.’ Miriam says nothing. ‘I’ll get you a glass of water and a biscuit. Have a think and I’ll be back in a few minutes. Is there anyone you would like me to call for you?’
Miriam shakes her head, ‘No, thank you.’
Sarah pulls the curtains closed, cutting out the vision but not the sound of people all around her. She thinks about the consequences and she thinks about ‘on the record’. Maybe people would believe her.
When Sarah returns, she agrees to the examination and the talk with the police officer following that.
The wide and older nurse, perspiration on her top lip, with a name tag with ‘Dawn’ on it and a sticker of a yellow sun, stays throughout the process. Miriam thinks Dawn looks like she needs to see some sun herself. Almost grey from head to toe, uniform, pallor and hair. Only her black shoes shine.
Cold instruments prod with as much care as stainless steel can command. Miriam is numb all over, so although it smarts, she finds the humiliation worse. She thinks of the rabbit girls, the stainless-steel scalpel making cuts to their legs.
Dawn stays with her while her genital injuries are catalogued meticulously by the doctor on a diagram of the female anatomy. Miriam has never seen it so bold and vivid on the page before, almost like a flower.
Once Sarah has completed her findings, she turns the clipboard. Miriam looks at what she has found and wants to tear the page out. Remove every line, every red mark, all the hatched lines depicting what, she didn’t know. When Sarah asks if she can talk through the injuries, new and old, so Miriam understands what all the red markings are, Miriam averts her gaze.
‘So, the hatched lines are scar tissue,’ Sarah starts. ‘And the thicker lines are the tears that are recent. Miriam, how often has your husband done this to you?’
‘A while,’ is all she says as Sarah recommends a course of antibiotics to prevent infection which Miriam agrees to. Her head feels full, her mind imprinted with the diagram of genitalia in black, covered with the doctor’s drawings, marking out all her imperfections in red.
When the female officer arrives, she has no idea what to say.
She speaks the truth. All of it. Dawn at her side speaks quietly, gently telling Miriam to slow down or rewind a step. She is calm yet firm and Miriam listens and explains the best she can, feeling more and more that everything should make sense, yet nothing does. Every question judging her further.
Finally, the police officer gives her a card – Officer Müller.
She says, ‘You have been very brave.’ Like a dentist would say after a long procedure in the chair.
When Sarah gives her the tablets and calls for a taxi, Dawn helps Miriam to the door.
‘I hope you get home safely,’ she says as they wait for the cars to move along and the taxi to come around to the entrance. A plume of blue smoke settles low as patients litter close to the entrance, in their wheelchairs, holding drip stands, dressed in hospital gowns with cigarettes in hand.
