by Jason Ayres
My Tomorrow,
Your Yesterday
By Jason Ayres
Text copyright © 2015 Jason Ayres
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover art by
SelfPubBookCovers.com/Daniela
For my parents
Contents
Epilogue: Death
Cancer
Fire
Sex
Lauren
Horses
Indulgence
Work
Sarah
Stacey
London
Ibiza
Josh
Youth
Prologue: Birth
Epilogue: Death
January 2025
I awoke slowly, not knowing where I was, or even who I was. There was a dull, aching pain in my chest and I felt incredibly woozy. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was from the large dosage of morphine coursing through the veins of my weak and failing body.
As I struggled to open my eyes, I heard a female voice. “He’s coming round,” it said.
My heavy eyelids opened and I saw the light blue overall of a nurse leaning over me. Looking around me I could see at once that I was in a hospital room. The walls were pale and looked grubby, despite being scrubbed down on a regular basis.
I could hear the regular beep of a machine next to me which I realised was the sound of my heartbeat. In fact, there were several machines all around me.
To my right was a small bedside table upon which there was a glass vase full of fresh, red roses. A clock with a black LCD display on a dark background read 10.36am.
I tried to move but it only caused me pain. As I did so, I became aware that I had all sorts of wires and tubes sticking into me, restricting my movement.
There was tinsel draped across the window frame. The curtains were drawn with only a small gap between them: just enough for me to see that it was night-time.
A cheap-looking, plastic Christmas tree stood in the far left corner of the room, its small points of white light blinking on and off, almost in time with my heartbeat from the machine. There was a large gold star sitting slightly lopsided on top.
I felt a hand holding mine, and looked up to see the face of a beautiful, young, blonde woman looking down at me. There was no disguising the sadness in her pretty blue eyes. “Happy New Year, Dad,” she said.
“It won’t be long now,” said the nurse, an older, Hispanic-looking woman with olive skin and her hair tied up in a bun. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
I struggled to gather my thoughts. The blonde woman had called me Dad, so she must be my daughter, but I couldn’t recall her name. I didn’t even recognise her. I couldn’t remember anything about anything.
I knew that I was in a hospital, and I knew that the nurse was Spanish in origin. I knew it must be the festive season. So I knew what things were, but none of the detail.
It was like joining a movie halfway through where I could see what was happening but didn’t know what was happening or who any of the characters were. It was all very confusing.
Perhaps it was the painkilling drugs they had given me. Clearly I was very ill. Was this it, then? Was I destined to die without even any comforting thoughts and memories from my life to ease my passage out of this world?
What had the nurse said? “It won’t be long now”? That didn’t bode well. I struggled weakly to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. There was pain in my throat. The blonde woman saw me struggling to speak and squeezed my hand tighter.
“It’s OK, Dad,” she said.
I gazed into her wide, blue eyes, tinged with the tears she was struggling to hold back as she spoke again. I was finding it difficult to stay awake.
I had no idea what was happening and all I wanted to do was drift off to sleep. I felt my eyelids begin to droop.
“I love you, Dad,” said the blonde woman. The last thing I saw was a single tear roll down her cheek and drip onto my hand, as my eyes closed for the final time.
I heard the beep-beep-beep from the machine change to one continuous long beep as darkness descended in front of me. My final thought was: this isn’t so bad, it’s just like going to sleep.
Cancer
December 2024
I awoke with a start. The same nurse I had seen the day before was drawing back the curtains, letting shafts of bright sunlight pour into the room.
Little points of dust twinkled in the sunbeams coming through the window in front of a piercingly bright blue sky beyond, unbroken except for a flock of starlings circling back and forth in the distance. The light was so bright, it hurt my eyes.
So, I wasn’t dead then. That wasn’t difficult to work out. I didn’t feel as bad as I had the previous morning. I could still feel the dull ache in my chest, and all the wires and tubes were still there, but I felt a little more with it than I had the last time I had woken up. Was I getting better?
The nurse turned towards me and spoke: “How are you feeling this morning, Mr Scott?” she asked.
I managed to croak a reply “A little better, thank-you,” struggling to remember her name. As she came towards me to plump up my pillows, I caught sight of the badge on her uniform and quickly added, “Carmen.”
“That’s good,” she said. “Your daughter’s coming in to see you later. It looks like it’s going to be a lovely sunny day.”
As the nurse left the room, I managed to sit up a little, which wasn’t easy with all the bits attached to me, and pondered my situation.
I still felt very weak, but my mind was a little clearer now. My eyesight was a little blurry, but I could see enough to make out my general surroundings.
It was a private room, with its own bathroom in the corner, a flat-screen television embedded in one wall, and a cosy-looking sofa and chairs in the far left-hand corner. Pretty good by NHS standards, assuming this was an NHS hospital. There was no obvious way of knowing.
So, I knew what the NHS was, that I was in a hospital, and that I was clearly very ill. I knew my name was Mr Scott, but that was only because the nurse had addressed me as such. I had no idea what my first name was.
I also knew I had a daughter, about whom I knew nothing other than what I had learnt during our brief interaction the previous day, and that was not a lot.
The nurse came back into the room and helped me to sit up. “Do you feel up to any breakfast?” she asked. “The trolley’s here.”
“I’ll try,” I replied, but I didn’t feel very hungry. With her assistance I sat up and managed to take a few sips of orange juice but I didn’t fancy any food. I was feeling pretty nauseous and felt sure I would bring anything up that I might try to eat.
“Would you like to watch television?” asked Carmen.
“Please,” I croaked, weakly. I didn’t think the TV was going to shed any more light on my situation, but it would be a distraction at least.
The nurse propped up my pillows behind me, allowing me to sit up, and flicked on the TV. It was showing the rolling news channel which was reporting on some conflict in the Middle East I knew nothing about. The country names were familiar to me, but that was all.
The screen switched to an image of London, showing a scene I instantly recognised, the familiar backdrop of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. I listened intently to what was being said.
“Preparations are underway in London for tonight’s New Year’s Eve spectacular, which promises to be the biggest and the best ever. Th
e Mayor said that the increased sales from tickets this year meant that an additional quarter of a million pounds was being spent on the fireworks display, which he boldly claimed would be the best in the world.”
Now I was starting to feel a little confused. What was wrong with my memory? I was sure that my daughter had wished me a Happy New Year the previous day, so how could today be New Year’s Eve? Whatever my illness was, it was playing tricks with my mind.
Perhaps I had dementia. The effort of thinking about it all was making me tired, and I lay back down on the bed.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I can remember is that my daughter was sitting once again by the bed. I was feeling pretty awful now, a gnawing, agonising pain eating away at the inside of my chest.
The clear sky beyond the window had turned a darker shade of blue as night began to fall. The clock on the bedside table read 3.58pm.
“How are you feeling, Dad?” she asked.
I struggled to speak through the pain: “not too good, my love” was about all I could muster. I couldn’t call her by her name, because I still didn’t know what it was.
“Do you want me to call the nurse?” she asked.
“Please,” I croaked. “I’m in pain.”
She pressed a red button on the wall behind me, and Carmen returned to the room. “He’s really suffering,” said my daughter. “Is there anything you can do?”
“I’ll have to get the doctor,” replied Carmen.
While she was gone, I decided it was time to try and find out what was happening.
“Honey, I’m struggling with my memory. I can’t seem to remember anything. Why am I here?” I asked, hoping that “honey” was an OK word to use.
“Oh, Dad,” she said, fighting back the tears. “You’re very poorly. But it’s OK, don’t worry, I’m here for you, I won’t leave you.”
“Am I going to die?” I asked.
She didn’t reply, but just squeezed my hand. The pain in my chest was becoming unbearable, so it was just as well that Carmen returned with the doctor, a slim, young man with curly black hair wearing the white coat that instantly identified his profession.
The three of them consulted between them. I felt my eyelids growing heavy once again.
“Mr Scott, I’m going to increase your medication again,” said the doctor. “It’s important that we manage your pain as best we can at this stage.”
I nodded weakly in agreement, and he adjusted a dial on the side of one of the clear plastic pouches that was suspended from one of the many pieces of equipment wired into me.
Relief gradually came to me, but with it I became increasingly drowsy. I could hear my daughter whispering words of comfort to me, but she sounded very far away. Before long I drifted away into a morphine-induced slumber.
The next time I awoke, I felt a little better. The pain still lingered in my chest and I remained tired, but I didn’t feel at all woozy from the additional medication that the doctor had given me. I also became aware that I was no longer attached to the machines, and managed to sit up properly this time.
There was no one in the room, and in my upright position I could get a proper look around the room for the first time.
It was daylight outside and a steady drizzle was falling against leaden grey skies. I turned to the bedside cabinet upon which sat the digital clock I had seen before. It was showing not just the time, but various other bits of information, too.
From this I was able to ascertain that it was 9.12am on the 30th of December 2024, and that the temperature in the room was 21.7 degrees Celsius.
The figures looked blurry, but next to the clock was a blue glasses case which I opened to find a pair of expensive, designer-looking glasses, presumably mine. They must have been, because when I put them on, my vision improved considerably.
The clock must be wrong. How could it be December 30th when it had been New Year’s Eve yesterday?
Leaving aside the confusion over the date for the moment, I sat up and opened the top of two drawers in the cabinet. Inside I found a wallet and a mobile phone. The glasses had been mine, so it was fair to assume these were, too, even though I couldn’t recall ever seeing either before.
This was distinctly weird. I felt as if I was rooting through a stranger’s possessions, but clearly they could only be my own. I still couldn’t remember anything else about my life. Whatever was causing this amnesia, it wasn’t getting any better.
I picked up the wallet. It was a light tan colour of leather, held together by a button which I popped open to look inside. There were cards stuffed into both sides of the wallet. The left-hand side had a clear plastic panel displaying a small pink card that I instinctively knew was my driving licence.
As I looked at the face of the stranger on the front, I realised with a shock that I didn’t even know what I looked like. Looking back at me was the picture of a middle-aged, slightly overweight man with glasses and a mop of untidy, thinning, dark hair on top.
I pulled the licence out of the sleeve and looked for more details. From this I learnt that my name was Thomas Scott and I had been born on 21st of October 1970. So that made me 54 years old, presuming the date on the clock was correct.
It didn’t seem like much of an age to be in hospital at death’s door. What had I done to myself to get into this state?
The licence also held my address, which informed me that I lived in Oxford. I had some general concept of Oxford in my mind. I could picture it on a map and envisage the town centre, but the address meant nothing to me.
It was odd that I could remember fairly generic things, but nothing personal to myself.
I flicked through the rest of the wallet, but I didn’t learn a lot more about myself other than that I banked with Barclays, had a Nectar card, an Oyster card, two credit cards and about £80 in cash.
I also found an intriguing picture of a woman who reminded me of my daughter, but she looked older, perhaps late-thirties. Whoever she was, I had no recollection of her.
Next I picked up the smartphone. It was a highly technological piece of kit no more than about four inches long and as slim as a credit card. It looked incredibly flimsy but was made of some incredible strong and light material.
Unfortunately my attempts to find out more information got no further than the front screen which demanded a four-number PIN. I had no idea what it was. I tried 2110 and 1970, going by the date of birth on my driving licence, but neither of those was right, so I gave up and put it back in the drawer.
I felt desperate for a wee, so I decided to get out of bed and walk across to the bathroom. I felt extremely unsteady and weak on my feet, like a frail old man.
When I got to the bathroom, I managed to urinate with some discomfort, and then hobbled across to the sink above which there was a large, rectangular mirror. For the second time that morning I was shocked by my appearance. I looked nothing like the man in the photograph on my driving licence.
My hair was all but gone, other than a few grey wisps. My gaunt and drawn appearance looked back at me from a pair of bloodshot eyes, heavy with dark circles beneath them. To say I looked at death’s door would have been an understatement.
I needed some answers and, almost on cue, a nurse came into the room. It wasn’t Carmen this time, but a younger woman, blonde and to my eye, weak with illness though I was, quite attractive.
“Good morning, Thomas,” she said, “it’s good to see you up and about.” She spoke in a gorgeous, sexy, Liverpool accent. Had I not been feeling so dismal, I could have quite fancied her, but there were well and truly no stirrings down below.
I looked at her name badge, trying not to make it look as if I was ogling her quite ample breasts, and saw that her name was Amy.
“Well at least I’m not wired up to all those machines anymore,” I replied.
“You never were,” she said. “Well, you weren’t yesterday, anyway.” She had a friendly, bubbly way about her to which I instantly warmed.
; This was the opportunity I had been looking for to try and shed a little more light on the situation. I headed back into the room and sat down on the bed. “Yes, well, now you come to mention it,” I began, “I seem to be suffering from a bit of memory loss. I can’t really remember much about why I’m here, or what’s wrong with me,” I said.
“That’s odd,” she said. “Amnesia isn’t something that we normally get with cancer patients. The doctor will be round in a bit. Perhaps you should mention it to him.”
When she said the C word it was as if someone had plunged a dagger right into my chest. So that was why I was here. Deep down, I had already suspected as much, but it still hit home with devastating force.
“What type of cancer is it?” I asked, full of trepidation. There was no good kind, but the answer that came back was the worst possible one it could have been.
“It’s lung cancer,” she said, her jovial tone becoming more serious for a moment. “I’m so sorry, you really don’t remember, do you?”
So, that was that: the most fatal cancer of them all. I was pretty sure that few people survived it. What had I done to get lung cancer? Was it down to smoking? I had no idea.
Perhaps I could find out more from my daughter. I really needed to find out more about her: her name would be a good start.
“Listen, Amy,” I said, “can you help me out a little here? My daughter was here yesterday and I think she might be coming in again today. This is really embarrassing, and I don’t want to upset her, but I can’t even remember her name. Do you know it?”
“It’s Stacey,” replied the nurse. “You were telling me all about her yesterday.”
Yesterday, I thought. Now there was a word to conjure with. When was yesterday? As far as I was concerned, I’d never seen Amy before today and it had been Carmen who had tended to me yesterday.
“Thank-you,” I replied. “I will speak to the doctor about my amnesia. That’s if I can remember any of this by the time he gets here,” I joked. Even though I was facing death, I could still find some dark humour in my situation.
