Pieces of My Life

by Rachel Dann

  Above all, I remember the sound of the van doors sliding shut – a loud, definitive noise signalling the end of an era. The only era my short life had known. I remember holding on to Dad’s leg as he walked towards his car, him bending down to tell me he would see me soon, and I remember already, even at that age, not believing him. Then Granny told me to stop ‘putting my parts on’ and took me inside for a chocolate milk.

  Tears roll down my cheeks and splash on to my phone, clutched uselessly in my hands even though I’ve had no signal since we left Quito, and the two attempts I’ve made to call the hospital from the bus station were unanswered. My mind races for the hundredth time, wondering what could have happened to my father. Heart attack? Stroke? Catastrophic thoughts spiral further and further out of control in my mind.

  My ears pop as we descend from Quito’s altitude, and signs of civilisation gradually give way to rambling greenery. I realise the tears are not just for my father. How could Harry stand there and hesitate about coming with me now, knowing Dad could be in potentially grave danger, hospitalised in a strange town miles from anywhere? Even if he didn’t agree with my decision to go and find my father, how could he even consider staying behind? If things were the other way around, I would have followed him unconditionally. In fact, I did follow him unconditionally. First to Fenbridge, so that he could take up the job at the Academy he wanted so much. And now to South America, in pursuit of his dreams to travel one last time before we finally, supposedly, settled down and started a family. The very thought of this makes a shiver run through me, remembering how, just months ago, I had been so desperate to have a child with Harry. Now, feeling like I barely know him anymore, the very idea leaves me cold.

  The bus continues its winding descent, leaving Quito well and truly behind, spiralling ever downward in a series of brake-grinding curves around the mountainside, now an expanse of green without a single building or relic of civilisation to be seen. A strange, eerie mist creeps down around us, blotting out the sun, making it seem like twilight rather than early afternoon. Giant fern leaves thwack against the bus window just inches from my face as the driver performs another nail-biting pirouette around a tight corner, nothing but open space and twinkling mist filling the space in the sheer precipice to the other side. Despite my anguish I can’t help but lean over and gaze out in wonder at the expanse of unspoilt nature surrounding me on every side, a total contrast to all I have seen of Ecuador since I arrived in the country, and barely an hour outside the capital city’s centre.

  When dotted, ramshackle buildings start appearing around us again and the bus finally comes to a stop, my tears have dried and I’m filled with a strange sense of calm. I have made it here on my own, without Harry’s support, and some inner determination tells me that, whatever is about to happen next, I will cope with it. I have to cope with it. I stumble down the bus’s steps clutching the crumpled piece of paper with the hospital’s address on, ready to ask the first person I see for directions.

  But as I disembark, I stand frozen to the spot for a moment, taking in my striking surroundings. The bus has pulled over at the side of a wide, sandy street lined with wooden buildings – judging by their signs, mainly restaurants and cafés and souvenir shops – and interspersed on every side with an explosion of nature and greenery. Not the familiar green of an English landscape, but the wilder, deeper shades of tropical plants with oversized leaves and vivid red-and-purple flowers drooping over into the road, emanating rich, spicy aromas. Tourists of various nationalities stroll up and down the street and sit eating at wooden tables outside. The strange mist from earlier still lingers but the air is warm and sticky, bringing with it the sounds of crickets, birds, frogs, and other creatures I can’t place. Apart from a few cyclists and our bus – incongruous in its modern, shiny splendour – there is no other traffic.

  I let all the other passengers hustle past me in their search for lunch and hotels and activities, then scan my surroundings for someone who can help.

  ‘Please – can you tell me how to get to this place?’ I brandish the piece of paper at an older, portly lady serving giant plates of whole fish and rice to a table of tourists at the nearest outdoor café.

  She stops, frowning, then slowly straightens up and points to a building just diagonally across the road from us.

  It takes me a few seconds to understand.

  ‘That’s the hospital?’

  The woman frowns at me again. ‘This is Mindo’s main street, and that is the local clinic.’ She turns back to her table to collect their empty glasses, and I half expect her to say, ‘You’re not in Quito anymore.’ It couldn’t be more obvious.

  The building she indicated is not much more than a whitewashed concrete box painted white with a small sign above the door, that if I really squint I can make out reads ‘Mindo Regional Clinic’.

  Part of me wants to run inside, flinging open doors until I find my father, and another part of me yearns to turn and flee as fast as possible in the opposite direction, not ever having to learn of his fate.

  Pointlessly looking both ways for traffic, I take a deep breath and cross the road towards the clinic.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘Dehydration?’

  The word echoes off the walls in the bare, tiled room. I repeat it several more times, even as Dr Rivas nods at me patiently, confirming that I have not misunderstood her Spanish and my father is not, after all, about to die.

  ‘A passer-by found him wandering along the riverbank, just before he passed out. Apparently he was trying to make a phone call from a mobile phone with no battery, and going on about trying to look for somebody… luckily for your father, the passer-by had good intentions and brought him in to us.’

  I stare back at the doctor and her polite, professional demeanour, trying to assimilate her description with the Dad I know.

  ‘We don’t think he had eaten or drunk anything for many hours by the time he came in. He was also suffering from mild sunstroke. He seemed to have spent the whole day walking around Mindo.’

  ‘Just… sunstroke, and dehydration?’ I say again stupidly, feeling a crashing wave of relief begin to break over me.

  ‘We did a brain scan and checked his heart. We are confident this… episode… was not caused by anything more serious… at least physically.’

  I lean forwards in the uncomfortable metal chair drawn up opposite Dr Rivas’s desk and rest my head in my hands, feeling suddenly exhausted as the coil of suppressed worry and panic of the last three hours begins slowly to unwind inside me.

  Something in the atmosphere of the cramped little doctor’s office changes almost imperceptibly, then Dr Rivas speaks again. ‘Miss Morgan, has your father ever been diagnosed with… any form of dementia or other mental health condition?’

  My head jerks up of its own accord, at last properly taking in the woman sitting opposite me wearing an obviously long-practised Sympathetic Doctor Face. Faintly pursed lips, gently knitted brow, her own age-spotted hands folded neatly before her on the desk.

  ‘He’s fifty-five,’ I say mindlessly. A good fifteen years younger than you, I only just stop myself from adding.

  Dr Rivas’s marshmallow-pink lips purse even further. ‘Miss Morgan, the reason I ask is that your father, when he came in, did not stop talking about a person called…’ she glances down at a notepad on the desk in front of her. ‘…Dorice.’ I hear the quote marks in her tone as she says the name. Dr Rivas straightens her glasses and lowers her head slightly, as if preparing to deliver me some terrible news. ‘He was insistent that this person was travelling with him, was just around the corner, and kept asking us to phone her… the thing is, Miss Morgan, your father appears to be here in Mindo completely alone. Of course, it has not been easy to understand him with the language barrier. But we are beginning to doubt this Dorice person actually exists.’

  ‘No, no, Dorice is real all right,’ I mutter, remembering her for the first time since I left Quit
o. ‘She’s his girlfriend. They came here together.’ So where the bloody hell is she? ‘Look, can I just see my dad? I think everything will become clearer once I can talk to him.’

  ‘Of course. I will take you through now.’ Dr Rivas is already getting to her feet. ‘But I think I should warn you, Mr Morgan may still be experiencing the effects of the sunstroke, so he might not… make a lot of sense.’

  I follow her along a short corridor, its walls lined with leaflets titled things like ‘Urinary Incontinence: What You Need to Know’ and ‘Family Planning Basics’ in Spanish. I’m reminded strangely of the little GP surgery back in Fenbridge, and realise that, despite its humble outer appearance, this clinic could just as easily be somewhere in the UK. Everything is spotlessly clean and ordered, although the three rooms we walk past appear to be empty apart from an occasional blue-coated nurse opening cupboards or mopping floors.

  ‘Here you are.’ Dr Rivas stops at one of the doors and holds it open for me. I feel a pang of something similar to nervousness. Just how incoherent is my father going to be? I’m not sure I will know how to handle any crazed rantings and ravings…

  I step into the small, bare room. The bed in its centre is empty and my father is sat in a big reclining chair beside it, flicking through a Spanish-language edition of Grazia. He looks up as we enter, and immediately gets to his feet, the magazine sliding to the floor forgotten.

  ‘Kirsty!’ He takes a step towards me, arms outstretched, then stop abruptly and frowns, sitting back down again heavily in the chair. ‘Er… thank you so much for coming.’

  I hover in the middle of the room, also wondering whether to go and hug him, but eventually settle for perching on the edge of the little coffee table opposite him, and reaching out to pat his arm awkwardly.

  ‘Dad – what on earth happened?’ I flick a glance at Dr Rivas, standing in the doorway with her arms folded, watching us, and showing no signs of leaving. I lower my voice. ‘What were you doing, and where the hell is Dorice?’

  ‘Dorice is gone. Left. Back to England.’ Dad rubs his eyes and blinks, looking as if he is comprehending this information for the first time himself as well. ‘I woke up this morning in the hotel and she was gone. Six a.m., vanished, no note…’ He stoops and picks up the copy of Grazia on the floor and stares at it, as if the beaming celebrities on its cover might provide him with answers.

  ‘At first I thought something terrible had happened to her. The hotel hadn’t seen her leave. All her stuff had gone. I was so worried, and felt terrible for ever bringing her here in the first place. So… I went out looking for her.’ He frowns down at the magazine. ‘I got lost, as ridiculous as that sounds. Couldn’t find my way back to the hotel. We had to check out this morning, anyway, as we had a bus ticket back to Quito tonight.’ He looks down at his watch, realises it is no longer on his wrist, and rolls his eyes. ‘Well, we’ve missed that now anyway.’

  ‘But… how do you know she’s actually left? Back to England? If she’s still missing, shouldn’t we call the police…’

  ‘She phoned finally from the airport, in Quito, about an hour ago,’ Dad continues, indicating his mobile phone, plugged in to charge beside the bed. ‘A courtesy call, one might say.’ To my dismay, an amused smile starts to tickle the corners of his mouth. ‘The thing is, I don’t think she liked Ecuador very much.’ He snorts, suddenly on the brink of explosive laughter. ‘Or me. I don’t think she liked me very much, either.’ The laughter now spills out of him, causing his shoulders to shake and his eyes to water.

  ‘It’s the sunstroke,’ Dr Rivas stage-whispers to me, then, turning to address my father, she raises her voice to the slow, carefully enunciated tone reserved only for small children or the very old.

  ‘Mister Morgan…’ She leans right down and peers into his face. ‘Would you like another glass of water? Or one of those nice energy drinks? Hmm?’ My father manages to curb his laughter and looks back at Dr Rivas with dismay.

  ‘I’ll go and get you one, shall I? Grapefruit flavour, yes? Now you just lie down and take it easy…’

  ‘Lie down?’ My father is already getting up, straightening his clothes, picking up his glasses case from the table. ‘I don’t want to lie down. We’re going home. Come on, Kirsty.’

  I stand frozen between my father and Dr Rivas, not knowing what to do. My father widens his eyes at me, clearly saying get me out of here.

  I turn to Dr Rivas and say, in Spanish, as politely as possible, ‘I believe my father is… recovered enough… to be discharged now?’

  Dr Rivas rolls her eyes and gives me an ‘on your head be it’ shrug. ‘Your father is well, although my recommendation would be for him to rest…’ She shoots a withering glance at my dad, already putting his shoes on and pulling his rucksack on to his shoulders. ‘But if Mr Morgan insists on leaving already…’ She gives a martyred sigh. ‘I’ll start getting the paperwork together.’

  As she turns to leave the room, I hold out my arm to stop her, a realisation suddenly hitting me.

  ‘Wait! Do you know where we can buy bus tickets back to Quito?’ The bus had deposited me in the middle of the main street, with no bus station or ticket office anywhere in sight. I remember the crowds of people at the bus terminal in Quito, signalling the mass exodus from a city that can only happen at the beginning of a bank holiday weekend. I had only just managed to purchase one of the last tickets to Mindo… I glance nervously at the clock above Dad’s chair. Already six p.m., meaning it will be dark very soon…

  ‘You won’t catch a bus to Quito now! Not until at least tomorrow, when the fiestas are over,’ Dr Rivas snorts, looking at me as if I, too, am in need of one of her grapefruit-flavoured energy drinks. ‘And all the hotels here in Mindo have been booked up for weeks. If you didn’t buy a return ticket, you’re basically stuffed.’

  I translate this roughly for my father, who – judging by the look of panic spreading across his face – has grasped it well enough.

  Dr Rivas stands in the doorway, arms folded, looking back and forth between my father and me. Eventually she gives a long-suffering sigh and pulls a mobile phone from the pocket of her robe. ‘My brother-in-law has a hotel. Let me make some phone calls.’

  ***

  Less than half an hour later, the heat of the sun is beginning to fade into evening coolness, and my father and I have been checked in to Dr Rivas’s brother-in-law’s ‘hotel’.

  We almost get lost all over again, taking turn after turn away from Mindo’s main street, finding ourselves going deeper and deeper into the foliage as we try to follow Dr Rivas’s scribbled directions. Then a scruffy little girl of about eight runs out into the dirt track in front of us and says in a heavy accent, ‘Kristie Morgan?’

  Without waiting for an answer she takes my hand and leads us down a short path framed by giant glossy-leafed banana plants, their still-green fruit drooping heavily right into our path. Looming before us is a large wooden hut, raised from the ground to waist height on stilt-like legs. There’s a cleared dirt circle reaching about twenty feet all around it, in which two scruffy dogs and a gaggle of chickens are scrabbling and playing. Beyond that is the dense, untamed green of the jungle. A single, hand-painted sign saying ‘hostel’ is staked into the ground beside it.

  My father and I stop, exchanging doubtful glances, but then a short, chubby man, wearing mud-stained overalls and a big smile trots down the steps of the hut to welcome us in surprisingly capable English.

  ‘I am Samuel, hotel manager, my sister-in-law told me all about you. Some character, isn’t she? And this is Tamia, my daughter – and Customer Service Assistant.’ He winks at the little girl, now bouncing up and down on the spot with excitement. ‘Come, come, I will help you make yourselves at home. You are in luck, we have one room left.’

  One room?

  Dad and I exchange glances again, my own dismay reflected in his face. Eventually he shrugs, and we allow ourselves to be led up the rickety wooden steps to th
e front door.

  In ten swift minutes Samuel has written our details down in a notebook behind a small desk covered in tourist leaflets advertising white-water rafting and nocturnal jungle tours, and led us up another flight of wooden stairs to our room.

  Despite the fact the whole building seems to be made entirely of varnished wooden boards, the room is clean and tidy, bare except for twin beds covered with bright purple-and-green hand-woven fabrics.

  ‘Dinner will be served downstairs in the restaurant in ten minutes,’ Samuel beams, handing me the room key. ‘And please remember – today is Day of the Dead, or Halloween in your world.’ He pauses dramatically. ‘So do not be alarmed if you experience anything… a little strange.’

  My father and I look at each other, then turn in unison to stare at Samuel in alarm.

  He lets out a hearty laugh. ‘I am just joking! But at nightfall, there will be a procession of villagers going to the local cemetery, to pay homage to our ancestors, and share a meal with them there. It is tradition. You are very welcome to join us.’

  My father and I exchange glances again. ‘Er… thanks. We’ll consider it,’ I reply politely.

  The ‘restaurant’ is in fact a wide balcony at the rear of the building, directly overlooking the rushing river just feet below us and surrounded by exotic plants and flowers in an array of vivid colours.

  Samuel indicates for us to sit at one of the balcony’s three tables and places a jug of lemonade before us. ‘Dinner is trout,’ he declares proudly. ‘Would you like it boiled or fried?’

  After ordering, I check my phone for the first time since getting off the bus in Mindo’s main street hours earlier. There are two missed calls and a single message from Harry, sent two hours ago, saying simply ‘???’.