Open Your Eyes

by Paula Daly

  ‘Tell me,’ I said flatly.

  ‘The nail gun was from here,’ she said. ‘It belonged on the site of the property. So that means we will have to charge anyone we arrest now with grievous bodily harm, and not with the increased charge of attempted murder.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whoever did this to Leon,’ she explained, ‘did not come here specifically with the intent of murdering Leon.’

  ‘How can you know that? They aimed that gun at Leon’s head!’

  ‘They picked it up and inflicted damage in much the same way as if they’d picked up a brick and aimed that at Leon’s head. That would warrant a charge of GBH too.’ She took no pleasure in telling me this, I could tell. ‘I think it’s important you know that it’s unlikely the CPS would now authorize a charge of attempted murder,’ she said. ‘Even though I must stress we’ll continue to push for that.’

  ‘But GBH? That means the sentence will be a lot less. It could be as little as a couple of years.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  She didn’t take her eyes off my face, and it dawned on me that she was watching to see if I appeared relieved.

  Would the news that I would be going to prison, if I was convicted for attacking Leon, for a much shorter duration have any effect?

  ‘You’re not seriously still considering me for this, are you?’ I said.

  ‘As I’ve made clear before, we’re considering everyone.’

  I passed Ledecky her coat.

  Intimated it was now time for her to leave.

  ‘You know,’ I said, holding the front door wide for her, ‘at the rate you’re going with this investigation, it’ll be quicker to wait for Leon to wake up to find out who actually did it than rely on you and your officers to provide answers.’

  And she left.

  But another week passed, and still we didn’t have answers. Still we didn’t know who did it.

  When the kids were asleep, when I couldn’t sleep but was sitting, the cat curled up in my lap, my mind Rolodexing through thoughts, thoughts that I’d had to put aside whilst ministering to Leon at Fazakerley Hospital throughout the day, I’d think: Who had done this? Why Leon? And what did Glyn Williams want when he was loitering there in the driveway? There was nothing in Leon’s life that pointed to him attracting trouble. He’d never really crossed Glyn, or anyone else that I could think of, never been violent. It made no sense that someone would want him dead.

  Lawrence, Rose and Glyn did stay away from the house after that incident, as Ledecky had predicted, and I, in turn, stayed away from theirs. I ducked inside if Lawrence was filling his recycling bin or backing out his car. I felt hopelessly in the dark about it all, but there wasn’t a lot I could do.

  Instead, I tried to focus on Leon.

  He’d been in a coma for twelve days now and there was no change. Each passing day was another in which he’d managed to stay alive, but also one when he didn’t improve either. It was the worst kind of limbo.

  Time seemed to have taken on a different quality, and days that had slowed by an absurd degree in the stretch immediately following the attack now felt as though they’d come to a complete stop altogether. I’d arrive at the hospital and Leon’s mother would be there. She played music to Leon, but it was the wrong music. She read books to him, but they were the wrong books. She massaged the skin of his hands with cheap, lavender-infused oil that made Leon smell like the contents of my own mother’s underwear drawer. All of these things began to irritate me. I hated the way she seemed to have no interest whatsoever in the police investigation. Hated how she spoke of caring for Leon as if it were more her job than mine. As if she’d been elected chief care-giver, because my attentions were elsewhere – as in, with her own grandchildren.

  It had been explained to Gloria that Leon would not wake from his coma of his own accord. That his state was under the neurologist’s control. But still, she acted as she had seen people do in the movies. She spoke to him incessantly.

  Open your eyes, son. Open your eyes. I’m here for you. Open your eyes.

  And she had these one-sided conversations, conversations where she somehow managed to natter away to him for hours without posing any actual questions.

  When, after over a week of this behaviour, I asked her, as gently as I knew how, if she thought talking to him like this might somehow bring him round, she said, ‘No, dear,’ and she carried on.

  When I pressed her on the matter, she became somewhat brittle. ‘I just want him to know that he’s not alone in here,’ and she looked at me in such a way as to suggest that my absence of chatter, my absence of providing props to keep Leon occupied, might want addressing.

  As though Leon might suddenly wake and glare at me, saying, ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  So I asked Gloria if we might switch. Asked if perhaps she could take the children for a few hours and let me spend some more time with Leon. I neglected to add alone, but I thought she’d take the hint and come over all apologetic. Oh my word, it never even entered my head. How remiss of me to—

  No.

  Gloria ignored my suggestion and simply said, ‘I’m needed here.’

  But the children were getting fed up of being with my mother all the time. Her skills as a grandma didn’t really extend past teaching them how to put on make-up and allowing them to dress up in her old furs. And she was getting fed up of them. ‘You’re here! Again!’ she’d exclaim as they ran past her legs each morning. Then she’d bid me a weary wave and pull her dressing gown around her body before closing the front door.

  Later, when I would return at five o’clock, she’d pull the martyr routine: ‘This is bloody hard work for one person. I’ve not stopped all day. I’ve only had a cracker for my lunch and I’m not as young as I was, you know. And why does Gloria get to sit at his bedside all the time, reading that sodding bible, or whatever it is that she does? You should tell her you need proper help. You should tell her what you really need is help with these children. They’re her grandkids as well, aren’t they? It’s not on that it all falls to us to …’

  But it was now the end of August, and school started in a week, so our routines would be altered anyway. Jack would be starting school for the first time and I’d not bought the uniform, shopped for school shoes, pumps, PE bag, pencil case. Erica had offered to step in and cover it. She said she would be absolutely thrilled to whisk Jack off and sort out the essentials. (Erica’s sons were in their early thirties and were showing no signs of procreating, so she said she had to get her fix of small children wherever she could.)

  But I didn’t want Erica to do it. It was something I should do. Something I wanted to do. How many of these milestones were there in a child’s life?

  Trouble was, I couldn’t seem to summon up the nerve to actually get it done.

  Jack starting school had me conflicted. Yes, the fact that I wouldn’t have to think about childcare for two children any longer would be useful, when ministering to Leon took up so much of my time, but I didn’t feel ready to let Jack go yet. Not without Leon by my side telling me it would be OK. Telling me Jack was ready, that he needed this next stage. Without Leon here to buoy me up, sending Jack off into the unknown made me horribly anxious. And so I avoided, delayed, did what I always did when I couldn’t face what had to be done.

  Today, I arrived at the hospital later than planned. Leon had been moved to the end of the unit and Gloria was there, playing music to him again on her red mini cassette recorder – circa 1986.

  I sighed. Because the thing was, Leon had very particular tastes in music. He really only liked dub reggae: Jamaican producers such as King Tubby and Prince Jammy. Artists like Sugar Minott, Eek-A-Mouse. Along with some awful nineties house.

  I used to hear him coming down from the attic room – where his office was located – at the end of the day, chanting, ‘ONLY house music,’ and I’d know he’d been up there reliving his youth again.

  Today, Gloria’s cassette recorder was playing
Michael Bolton (The Essential); yesterday, she’d been playing that nauseating Dutch violinist, André Rieu; it was Chris de Burgh, the day before that. She played the music not so loud as to disrupt the other patients, but she’d put the cassette recorder right next to Leon’s ear, so close that today I wanted to hit her over the head with it.

  ‘I’m getting a coffee,’ I told her shortly after arriving.

  ‘But you just got here.’

  ‘Do you want one or not?’

  I was turning on my heel when she said, ‘They want to talk to us.’ Her voice was hushed and there was panic in her eyes. ‘They want a meeting,’ she went on, afraid. ‘They said they’d wait for you to arrive.’

  ‘Did they say what it was about?’ I asked carefully.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I expect …’

  ‘What did they actually say, Gloria?’

  I was being short. I was being short with her and this was not who I wanted to be, but I couldn’t help it. We’d been in each other’s company pretty much all the time and though I’d tried, tried so hard to keep my emotions under wraps, sometimes it was as if the words shot out on their own.

  Gloria looked wounded. She stood up. She tried to brush out the creases in her skirt that had formed across her tummy from sitting.

  She said, ‘I’ll tell them to let Dr Letts know you’ve arrived.’

  Dr Letts’s office was impersonal. Like a corporate space rented in a hurry. There were no photographs, no personal items, just a vase without flowers and a bowl containing over-sized pine cones.

  ‘How are you both?’ she began by asking.

  ‘He’s doing OK, isn’t he?’ Gloria ignored Dr Letts’s question, eager to discern the reason for this meeting. ‘Nothing’s happened overnight? The nurses didn’t seem to want to say when I asked them and—’

  ‘Nothing has happened.’

  Gloria exhaled.

  Today Gloria was wearing a wig. She often used wigs when her own hair needed relaxing or colouring and today’s offering was one of the better ones. Some were a bit on the shabby side.

  ‘I have good news,’ said Dr Letts, and she placed her palms flat on the table. ‘Leon’s intracranial pressure has dropped. It’s dropped to a level that we now consider safe.’

  She bestowed a beatific smile on both of us that I’d not seen before. This was her Good News smile, clearly. Her whole face was changed. How pretty she is, I thought absently. How—

  ‘What does that actually mean, doctor?’ Gloria asked.

  ‘It means, Mrs Campbell, that we’re ready to wake up your son.’

  I had not been prepared to hear this news today.

  I turned to Gloria. A tear was welling in the corner of her eye and, suddenly, she reached out and clutched my hand. She placed her fingers over mine and squeezed twice in a kind of victory celebration: We did it.

  Then she hugged me and I felt ashamed of my behaviour earlier.

  We did it.

  Leon was waking up.

  I hadn’t really allowed myself to think about this in case it never happened. Up until now, the focus had been on keeping Leon alive: keeping his skin intact so he didn’t develop pressure sores, keeping his joints moving, his muscles stretched, so he didn’t develop contractures. Keeping his airways clear of phlegm so he didn’t develop pneumonia. We were bombarded with information about Leon’s medical state and Gloria and I had lapped it up willingly. It was something to focus on. It gave us attainable goals.

  But now Leon was going to wake up. Finally, he was coming back to us.

  I took out my phone. ‘I should call DI Ledecky.’

  7

  It was planned for the following day. Dr Letts and her team would bring Leon out of his coma, early in the morning, the hope being that Leon would regain consciousness and begin breathing again on his own.

  After that there were a lot of unknowns.

  Leon, we had been warned, might not wake up straight away. There was even a possibility that he might never wake up. A proportion of brain-injured patients live on for years in that state: unconscious, in long-term residential care, their families neither able to mourn the passing of their loved ones, nor hope for any kind of future with them. But Leon’s brain activity readings had caused Dr Letts to be optimistic. ‘Still,’ she warned when she’d explained the worst-case scenario, ‘always best to have the full picture before we begin the process, I think.’

  By mutual agreement Gloria and I had decided to keep Jack and Martha away from the hospital until now. ‘Not a place for children,’ she’d stated, but that’s not what she really meant. She meant that the sight of Leon would scare them. And she was right. Sometimes, the sight of him scared me. But I didn’t say it. Secretly, I worried that Leon would remain the swollen, bloated-fish version of himself, even when he began to recover. Even when I envisioned him sitting up, joking, eating ice cream, castigating his mother for playing all that shitty music.

  ‘You’ll bring the children along tomorrow, then?’ Gloria said, and I told her I would. But I was hesitant. Was it the right thing to do?

  Gloria fixed me with a glare. ‘It’s the right thing to do,’ she said, sensing my unease.

  She’d also called Juliana and told her to be at the hospital. Juliana would be bringing along her sixteen-year-old son, Eden, but she wasn’t certain if Meredith would be able to make it. ‘Which means they’ve been rowing again,’ Gloria said. Then, without warning, she declared, happily, ‘I’m going to make a cake! Sweet potato and rum! Leon’s favourite. The cake he never got to eat on his birthday.’

  It struck me that Gloria was treating this as a celebration – Leon’s unveiling. Which I supposed it was, but I did wonder if she wasn’t jumping the gun by gathering the whole family, passing out cake and wine for the staff. What if Leon didn’t wake up? What then?

  ‘Shouldn’t I bring the children in when Leon has had a couple of days to come around instead?’ I suggested to Gloria.

  But I think she had this image of Leon in her head: Leon regaining consciousness, casting groggily around the room, his eyes alighting on Jack and Martha, smiling as the children jumped into his lap, all being well in the world once again.

  ‘Leon will want to see his children,’ she said. ‘Do you want to be the one to say that we didn’t bring them to see their daddy?’

  I didn’t.

  ‘No,’ I conceded quietly, but I couldn’t shake my misgivings.

  The following morning, I rose early. An hour earlier than usual.

  I opened the curtains and was about to head to the bathroom when I caught sight of Rose, opposite. She was standing in her front garden in her dressing gown staring at our house.

  Rose had not made eye contact with this side of the street since the visit from Hazel Ledecky, so what was she doing now?

  Perhaps she’s talking to her plants, I thought idly. Like Prince Charles.

  I edged away from the window and watched. Rose was not someone you ever caught stationary. She was a doer, a woman on a mission. She and Lawrence were always busy, busy, busy! Retirement didn’t give them a minute, they liked to say.

  Lawrence and Rose’s wall had been repaired after Leon had ploughed into it, but they’d lost a good proportion of their shrubs; they’d had to plant anew. But Rose wasn’t looking at her plants. And her lips weren’t moving. In fact, her expression, no longer vacant, was now rather stern.

  Was she lucid?

  She didn’t look it.

  Suddenly, all at once, out of nowhere, Rose bent at the waist, as if she was ducking a shot, and her action had the effect of making me flinch. I watched as she fidgeted around by her slippers, her gnarled fingers trying to gain purchase on … what? What was she trying to pick up?

  She straightened.

  And her eyes narrowed further.

  Then she pulled her right arm back and took aim. Launching a rock? A dropped quince? Straight at my wall.

  Straight at my cat.

  Bonita fled the scene and I
stared, agog, too shocked to react at first, as Rose quietly smiled to herself.

  The bitch.

  I hammered on the window. ‘Rose!’

  Is this what she did each day? Before I woke up? Had she been terrorizing Bonita? No wonder Bonita could be skittish.

  Inside the house, Bonita was all smiles, rubbing up against your ankles, purring loudly whenever she settled herself upon you. Outside she was a different cat entirely. Try picking her up and her claws would turn to talons. Her entire body would stiffen, her legs held out rigid at right angles, and she’d scratch at you until she was deposited. Whereupon she would tear off as if she’d been shot at.

  Leon used to say it was as if Bonita didn’t recognize us outside the house. ‘We’re strangers to her out here,’ he’d say. ‘She can’t trust us.’

  Now I knew why.

  ‘Rose!’ I yelled again, hammering on the glass.

  But it was as if she couldn’t hear me. She turned and pootled off, the picture of innocence.

  I stared after her, stunned that she could perform such an act of malevolence so openly. I began pulling on my jeans, grabbing yesterday’s T-shirt from the top of the washing basket. She couldn’t just—

  I checked the clock. There wasn’t time for this today.

  As soon as I got back from the hospital, I’d go over there. Have it out with her. Demand Rose tell me what was going through her nasty little mind. But now there wasn’t time. Now, I needed to get the kids their breakfast and get them ready to go.

  I lifted Martha out of her Frozen dressing-up outfit that was covered in jam (which she’d demanded she be allowed to sleep in rather than pyjamas for the past three nights), and I put her and her brother straight in the bath. Then I rinsed and conditioned their hair, dressed them in clothes I would normally reserve for a party, or dining out at a restaurant, and I explained to them what I hoped would happen later that morning. They knew Leon had been injured. They knew he’d been unconscious. This, I’d explained to them, was the reason for their not coming to the hospital with me each day. And when they’d whined, when they’d complained that they wanted to visit Daddy nonetheless, I’d resorted to the kind of lie my mother would have told me when I was little.