My Sister and Other Liars

by Ruth Dugdall

  ‘Nah.’ He looked down, then recovered. ‘But my Uncle Andy is round a lot. Too much, if you ask me.’

  ‘Oh. Sucks.’

  Rob rubbed his chin then looked at me in a shy, proud way. ‘Yeah, but I’m moving out as soon as a room comes free at The Fold.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘It’s that block of flats by the docks. You get a room and a shared kitchen and everything.’

  My phone beeped angrily. Mum had sent a text:

  JENA HAD ANOTHER FIT. DR GREGG HAD TO BE CALLED IN TO ASSESS HER AND HE’S MOVED HER BACK TO EASTERN WARD. WHERE ARE YOU???

  I stepped out of the shelter, immediately heading for my bike. If I peddled hard enough I’d make the next train. I got on my bike, then turned for a moment.

  ‘What you up to tomorrow?’

  Rob looked surprised; pleased too. ‘Nothing much. I’m not going to church, let’s put it that way.’

  I smiled even as the rain soaked me to the bone.

  CHAPTER 12

  10 January

  I’m an expert on hospitals; the NHS should employ me as an inspector. As well as my experiences of Westerfield Hospital when Jena was there, I’ve lived in the Bartlet for eighteen months, plus I have outpatient appointments at the general hospital in Ipswich.

  This isn’t done en masse, so today it’s just me and Sian in the waiting room of Ipswich Hospital. The room is stuffed with women, all of whom are stuffed with babies. Their bellies, in various degrees of gestation, are smug boasts of their success, their normalcy. The women eye me with unhidden curiosity. Have I had a miscarriage? Why am I here, so skeletal, when they are so fecund? They shiver, rub their stomachs, and make an exaggerated show of looking away whilst keeping me in their peripheral vision.

  ‘Samantha Hoolihan? If you’d like to follow me.’

  The sonographer, at least, seems pleased to see me. I must be a change from floating alien-shapes, a bit more of a challenge. Sian doesn’t even look up from Your Pregnancy magazine, and remains in her seat. She doesn’t care if I can have babies or not.

  The jelly is cold, then pressed in by the steel probe of the ultrasound machine. Both of us look at the screen, listening to the strange cave-calls of my stomach.

  ‘No period yet?’

  Stupid question. I wouldn’t be here if there had been. ‘No.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ She frowns, moves the prod around, left, right. Back to the left, all the time pressing hard on my full bladder.

  Finally, she takes the pressure away, wipes my stomach with a yard of tissue, and starts to make notes. Next is the bit I hate most.

  Sian is called in to join us, and takes a sturdy seat beside the couch, on which I am still prone, managing to look vaguely interested whilst fiddling with her watch.

  The sonographer starts well, talking to me, then turns to Sian and doesn’t look at me again. Sian becomes increasingly grumpy as she notes down the sonographer’s feedback, shoulders hunched. Basically, my pelvic reproduction organs are fucked. Or rather, if I was fucked, nothing would come of it. My uterus is less than one centimetre, the thickness of my endometrium is just a couple of millimetres and my ovaries are small. All of this means I am drastically underweight. Which, of course, is not news.

  As we leave the maternity unit, Sian says, ‘Doesn’t look like you’ll be getting rid of that tube anytime soon, does it?’

  No wonder I hate hospitals. No wonder I hate the smug staff who work in them; talk about control – why else would Sian or Clive or even Birute want to work on Ana Unit? It’s them who want control, not us.

  I’m at the mercy of the staff, just like Jena was, and on 1 February my future will be decided for me. Clive tells me that our sessions are progress, but they hurt, more than starving, more than the tube, more than purging. That kind of hurting can be good, it can be addictive; as a starving girl, I know that more than most.

  But this pain, this emotional kind of hurt, is harder to bear. I can hardly stand that Clive looks at me. He sees me, he listens. And all of that is a tiny scratch across my heart, a shedding of a protective scab, which leaves me vulnerable and raw in a way I haven’t been in eighteen months.

  His sessions do this, because of his warm smile and crinkled brown eyes, beady behind his glasses. Because he seems to care, and that cuts me most of all.

  Once I am in his office, he waits for me to be ready to continue my sad story.

  Arriving at the hospital hopelessly late that Saturday afternoon because of my encounter with Rob, I wasn’t even sure Dr Gregg would still be around, but I went straight to his office and banged loudly on the door.

  ‘Enter.’

  I could see he was getting ready to leave; he was clearing his desk of papers and his briefcase was stood on it, upright and sealed, his job done for the day. When he saw me, he frowned, no doubt thinking about his already-burned tea, and I felt him scrutinising my long unkempt hair, my eyes rimmed with black kohl, ruined by the rain.

  ‘Ah! Hello Sam. What can I do for you?’

  He pointed to a chair. The seat was so low I was forced to look up his nose.

  ‘I got a text from Mum. You’ve moved Jena.’

  I sat on my hands, sweaty palms sticking to the plastic chair.

  ‘Yes, I was called in because the staff were concerned about her, on account of the fits. I’ve moved her back to Eastern Ward, for the time being.’

  He said it in a distracted way; in his head he was already home with his wife, eating his tea and relaxing.

  ‘Jena hates it there.’

  ‘Mmm. I want her under closer care. Your sister has had two seizures in the last week.’

  Three, I corrected in my head.

  He smiled like he was doing me a favour, his thick skin creasing into a grimace.

  ‘There’s a higher ratio of nursing attention on Eastern Ward. It’s for her own good.’

  His gaze went back to his desk and the files he was tidying away, to indicate the conversation was finished.

  ‘But Dr Gregg, she’s getting better. Yesterday, she remembered a dog she was given, just before the attack.’

  I was babbling, desperate for the old man’s attention. I was on the brink of telling him that I’d shown Jena some photos, but his eyes flicked to the clock and I could see I’d caught him at a bad moment. He wanted to leave and I was stopping him.

  ‘Dr Gregg, please listen! Jena put this dog in the window of the flat she was about to move to.’

  I lifted the rucksack, and thrust the dog in front of him.

  ‘I’m going to show her and then she’ll remember.’

  He sighed, and pushed the dog away without looking at it.

  ‘Don’t you believe she will?’ My chest started to tighten, and my feet did a jig on the floor.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Mmm. It’s very much an art rather than a science when it comes to assessing the prognosis with brain injury. But I’ve been through all this with your parents. Maybe you should ask them to explain it to you? I’m not sure you fully understand . . .’

  ‘I’m sixteen, not a child!’ I returned the dog to the rucksack.

  The rucksack slipped from my grasp, and there was the sickening sound of china cracking against the floor.

  ‘Just answer me one thing. Did Mum tell you to send Jena back to Eastern?’

  She liked to have Jena there, with the heightened security. Dr Gregg leaned back, his nostrils flaring so I could see the hairs.

  ‘Naturally, Kath gave her opinion, and we are trying to do what’s best.’ His voice gained speed as he began to lecture me. ‘As I explained when Jena was first admitted, one’s memory is like a series of computer files. A brain collision is effectively a computer crash. Afterwards, it is sometimes possible for data to be retrieved from a deleted section, backed up on the hard-drive, if you like, but often it’s lost for good. Jena’s brain was badly damaged by the fall. She may never retrieve what she has lost.’

  Eastern Ward. After Jena came out of her coma and was
discharged from Ipswich Hospital, they transferred her here. A hospital ward for people who were no good anymore, half-broken zombies who might as well be dead. A prison; the door was always locked, the windows didn’t open. I pressed the buzzer and spoke into the intercom.

  ‘Hello? I’m—’

  Before I could say my name, the door was released. So much for enhanced security.

  The hot air hit me like a wall; it was stiff with warring odours of shit and lavender, the stench of the old. Next was the cotton-wool silence, reminding me of Dad’s shed. To my right was the staff office: empty. The day room to my left was full. The ward may have a locked door, but no staff had come to check on me. I hesitated on the strip of plastic between office and day room, feeling lost. I needed to find my mum.

  The day room was stifling; the only sound came from the television, where a bubbly presenter was talking about re-decorating or re-locating or some other life improvement that none of these patients would ever make. There were familiar faces from when Jena was here six weeks ago. Ernie sat by the window snoring, and several residents were slouched in chairs facing each other or the wall, not saying a word, wearing clothes that were old and hot: men in long-sleeved shirts, Ivy in her layers of woollen cardigans.

  In the staff room, I could see a table with magazines and a plastic tub of sandwiches, a chair with a denim jacket thrown over it, a desk with a jar of pens and a phone. The telephone receiver lay on the desk, upturned. I’d disturbed a phone call, and whoever buzzed me in had gone to fetch someone, or find something, for whoever was waiting on the other end of the phone.

  Then I saw the medicine cabinet, steel-fronted with silver locks, three of them. An impulse overtook me.

  I walked to the desk, opening the drawers, searching for keys, then I rifled through the pockets of the jacket. Rizla papers . . . chewing gum . . . a used tissue . . . a set of keys! Impulsively, I took them to the medicine cabinet and tried each one, increasingly frustrated, until the smallest one worked. Excited and nervous, I went to check the door, but no one was coming. I opened the medicine cabinet. Inside were boxes and bottles. Brown and white and blue. I read the labels: Gaviscon, lactulose . . . I didn’t know what I was doing, what I was searching for, just something . . .

  ‘Can I help you?’

  I spun round. A flustered-looking male nurse was watching me; his badge told me he was MARK and a CARE WORKER. His green trousers and top had fresh yellow stains, and he was holding a cardboard bucket with a sheet of kitchen paper over the top. He noticed the telephone receiver on the desk, and I stepped smartly away from the cabinet, which still hung open, his keys in the door.

  ‘Oh shit, I forgot about that . . .’

  I felt my face darken; I’d been caught red-handed, but he was too distracted to notice. He put the bucket down and picked up the receiver, said ‘Hello?’ then, after a pause, replaced it, giving me time to push the cabinet door shut and slide the key free just before he turned his attention to me.

  ‘You must be Sam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You look just like Jena.’

  I awkwardly tugged at my hair, pulling it to cover my cheeks, which still felt hot. I looked nothing like Jena; she was beautiful.

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He led the way from the office, and I dropped the keys back on the desk, thinking how close I’d come to doing something I shouldn’t, how I’d got away with it.

  I followed him to the bedrooms, heart sinking at how horribly familiar the narrow corridors were. I wondered if she’d be in the same room as before.

  She wasn’t. It was a new room, but the bed, cabinet and sink were identical. A woman-shaped huddle shook under the duvet and Mum sat stroking it, speaking softly.

  ‘Sam’s here, my darling,’ she said.

  The duvet flapped open, revealing a puffy-faced Jena, her bloodshot eyes peering at me from swollen sockets, cuddling Sid the Sloth like her life depended upon it.

  ‘Sam!’

  She pulled me to her so we were nose to nose, which wasn’t pleasant as hers was runny. She’d been crying hard.

  ‘Oh Christ, Mum, look at the state of her!’

  Jena was making noises like a fox caught in a snare, and she was shaking.

  ‘You could have been here sooner. She’s been crying for you. If you’d answered your mobile . . .’

  ‘I was taking pictures, for Jena. I lost track of the time.’

  Mum grunted. ‘She doesn’t need your pictures, she needs you! Watch her, will you, while I go and call Dad? He needs to know what’s happening.’

  ‘No, please . . .’ Jena was still clinging to her, but Mum peeled herself free.

  ‘She’ll settle down.’

  Jena didn’t settle. She didn’t understand why she’d been moved; she kept saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ thinking she was to blame for her predicament.

  ‘I’ll open the window,’ I said, but it only budged an inch. ‘Fat lot of good that is. Come on. Let’s get you out of these pyjamas and into something cooler.’

  Her belongings had been put away with no care. The cuddly animals were tossed in a random pile, the pink photo frame faced the wall and her clothes were squashed in the drawers. After a bit of rummaging, I found a clean T-shirt and some bobbled leggings.

  ‘Come on, Jena. Arms up!’

  A sour odour escaped from her. She needed a wash, but the shower room was kept locked, and going to find Mark to ask for the key would mean leaving her alone. I improvised, wiping a towel under her arms and neck and spraying some Impulse over her. Once in her fresh clothes, she climbed back under the duvet, grabbed my baby photo from the cabinet and hugged it, shivering.

  ‘Head hurts.’ Her voice was weak, like she could barely finish a full sentence.

  ‘I have a special present for you, Jena.’

  Unzipping my rucksack, I lifted out the Staffie dog, guiltily noticing its chipped paw. I placed the dog on the bed, and Jena stroked the paw where the smooth china became rough and flat, then cuddled the dog to her body, her eyes weepy but blank.

  ‘Do you remember it, Jen-Jen?’

  A long whine came from between her lips, like air escaping from a balloon. I was hoping for more, some sign that she recognised it.

  I took the dog from her, worried that if Mum saw it she’d know I’d been in Jena’s flat, despite the police warning us not to go there.

  ‘I’ll take it home with me, but I’ll bring it back next time I come. Promise.’

  As I placed the dog back in my bag, the Black Magic box fell against my fingers. I lifted it free, and showed her; her eyes widened as she recognised the place she kept her keepsakes, her photos. The box where I now kept my evidence.

  ‘Sam, I can’t . . .’

  We looked at each other, and a clear moment of understanding passed between us, that what I was asking was both painful and dangerous. There was a point when it could have gone either way. I could have returned the box to my bag. I could have chosen to be a good girl.

  ‘We have to, Jena. I’m gathering pictures, to help you remember. I’ve met Rob, Douglas’s son. Andy is his uncle; he was there too. I’m trying to work out how it’s all connected, and I need your help. But don’t tell Mum about this, or about the dog. Remember to forget.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and her voice was so clear it seemed like a moment of lucidity. ‘I always do.’

  CHAPTER 13

  11 January

  Despite the disastrous visit to Ipswich Hospital, where my current infertility was confirmed, I still got an extra star on my chart because I haven’t tried to yank out my feeding tube. Good girl, Sam.

  Then, when I gained at the weigh-in this morning (I don’t know how much by, we’re never told), I got another. Two more stars meant a reward: I could watch a film.

  Now I’m re-united with the Black Magic box, I know exactly which one to ask for: Dracula. The old version, in black and white, with Bela Lugosi. I wanted to test if the film sti
ll affected me, like it had when I saw it last. It gave me nightmares for weeks, and turned every potential threat, every bogeyman, into a faceless monster in a cloak.

  Manda lets me take over the day room for the viewing, which gets grumbles from Stacey. ‘Can’t we all watch it? Come on, Sam. I love a good flick.’ She winks at me. ‘I’ll bring toffee-covered popcorn.’

  But Manda is firm. ‘This is Sam’s reward. If you want to request a film, you’re at liberty to do so, though you’ll need to get some gold stars first.’

  Stacey’s waterloading got rumbled when she couldn’t even stand straight, her bladder was so full. And Sian was cruel. She made Stacey wait, took her time with her notes, until finally Stacey couldn’t bear it anymore and had to dash to the loo, clutching her sides.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Stacey scowls, ‘it’s easy to get gold stars when you’re fed by a fucking tube.’

  Manda closes the thin curtains on the cold sky outside, then leaves me alone, closing the door behind her. I sit on the edge of the long, lumpy sofa as the film starts, my mind drifting back to the first time I saw this film.

  Mum was out at bingo with Chloe, and I was supposed to be asleep. Jena was downstairs with Dad, watching an old black-and-white movie. Andy had popped round, and he ended up staying when he saw what they were watching. He said it was a classic. Regardless, I was sent to bed. I suppose I was about twelve years old.

  I pretended to be asleep when Dad came up to check on me, like he always did when Mum was out, tucking the duvet around me and kissing my cheek. When he’d gone, I made myself stay awake, fighting off sleep, then sneaked quietly down the landing, where I hid at the top of the stairs in the darkest corner, watching the television. Jena and Andy were sat close together on the sofa, but Dad didn’t seem to notice.

  The screen was hazy, but I could see a man walking up the steps of a castle in a swirl of fog; spider webs dangled from the walls and his footsteps echoed. He had spooky dark eyes and hair as glossy as a blackbird’s wing. Then he disappeared, just like that, and there was a bat bouncing up and down by the open window.