Because he got me arrested.
Details of the day start slotting in, but what happened after the kiss and make up? What landed me here?
I look over my arms. No bruises. My head feels a little… off. But not painful. No headache. I wiggle my legs to find them responsive, not aching or sore. So what am I doing here?
“You’re awake.”
The nurse at my door sounds surprised by this.
“Yes, I’m awake,” I say, my voice rasping, as if I haven’t used it for weeks.
“I… I’ll fetch the doctor,” the nurse says, then dashes off.
I don’t know much about hospital protocol, but I don’t think the note of panic in her voice bodes well.
I push myself upright in the bed, looking round for a mirror. Perhaps my lack of pain is down to being dosed up with morphine or some other drug. But though there isn’t a mirror, I can see my reflection in the glass window of the ward, and I look… normal. A little pale, maybe, but that could easily be down to the strip lighting.
A doctor appears moments later - short, harassed, but staring at me with curiosity.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Fine, I guess?” I say. The words barely escape my scratchy throat. I cough to clear it and try again. “Fine. Confused. What’s going on?”
“What do you remember?”
Not an answer to my question. I’m starting to worry.
“Not a lot.”
Movement catches my eye and I turn back to the window, surprised to see a police officer outside. It’s not PC Withers. I don’t recognise her at all - she can’t be one of the locals that patrols the estate.
“What’s she doing here?” I ask the doctor.
He looks round, nodding at the police officer.
“She’s guarding,” he says.
“Guarding what?” I’m clearly still a bit dopey, because I actually look round the room, as if someone else might be hiding in here.
“Guarding you,” the doctor says.
I snort. “Scared I’m going to do a runner? I’m kind of flattered they think I’m up to it, but last I checked the police don’t do that kind of thing for people with drugs in their handbags.”
Drugs they’d fully admitted they knew didn’t belong to me.
The doctor frowns. “Charlie, they aren’t here to arrest you. They’re here to protect you.”
My stomach disappears somewhere beneath the bed. “From what?”
“I think they were hoping you could tell them that,” the doctor says.
He goes over some basic tests with me, but doesn’t say whether I get them right or not. My chest grows tighter with panic every second that passes.
Protect me? Why do they think they need to protect me? What happened last night?
Is Jason okay?
For some reason, that thought leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Has Jason done something to me?
No. He wouldn’t. He’s not like the other guys. He would never hurt me.
The doctor leaves and a police officer replaces him. Not the woman from outside, but someone in plain clothes with a stern but somehow also gentle manner. She asks me to confirm my identity, then bombards me with loads of questions about where I’ve been, what’s happened to me, pencil poised over her pocket notebook, ready to write down everything I say.
But I don’t have any answers.
“I don’t know,” I snap, after the fifth different phrasing of ‘what happened to you’. “The last thing I remember is getting arrested by you lot. Then I went to the pub with my sister and then I woke up here. Maybe I had my drink spiked or something.”
The officer’s expression drifts from ‘I’m here and I understand you, you can talk to me’ to something more honest. Surprise. She buries after a moment, the professional shield back.
“Charlie,” she says. “You were arrested a little over a month ago.”
I can’t even process this. My brain just shorts out. Like a radio tuned between two stations, just white noise and fuzz fills my head.
“What?” I say after a long moment.
“It’s been over a month since you were last seen leaving the pub and walking off in the direction of your home address. We’ve been very concerned for your safety, Charlie. We’d very much like to know where you’ve been.”
“I…” I open my mouth and close it a few times, like a fish. I search my memories. Find nothing. “I don’t know.”
I’m not sure if the police officer believes me, but my answer does prompt a whole series of tests. Most of them scans, which are noisy and uncomfortable at times, but not invasive. They take blood and subject me to some memory testing, each additional test they do leading to another round of head scratching, until eventually they summon a specialist.
A psychiatrist, who speaks to me in a slightly patronising tone of voice and throws around words like ‘amnesia’ and ‘psychological trauma’. I tell him that the only trauma I’ve suffered is all the medical testing and all the questions I’ve had to answer. I don’t think he finds it funny.
But the thing is, I don’t feel traumatised. I feel tired, a little fragile, but it’s not as deep and dramatic as trauma. I feel down. Which probably has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve been poked and prodded all day.
I expect night to be a blessed relief, but when I lie back on my hospital bed, I feel the weight of something huge settling on my chest. An emptiness. A hole, not in my head, but in my heart. It feels like… going to a friend’s house as a kid and watching their parents laughing and joking together, being affectionate. With each other, with their children. And with me, when I’m there. It feels like sitting there amongst all that warmth and love and knowing I’d have to go back to my own home, step over the empty vodka bottles to get to my bedroom, hoping that my father is asleep, or at least so drunk he can’t throw punches with any accuracy.
And I begin to wonder if, maybe, I haven’t forgotten something terrible, something traumatic, like everyone seems to think.
I wonder if I’ve forgotten something good.
They let my family visit the next day. Just Nat and my mother. No one else. Not while the question of where I’ve been for the last month remains unanswered.
“Where have you been?” Nat asks, hugging me tight.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Yeah, alright. But where have you been, seriously?”
“I seriously don’t know.”
Nat doesn’t look like she believes me. Mother just grunts. She’s got a bottle of vodka in her handbag. I can smell her from across the room. Nat glances over her shoulder at her. Shrugs.
“She took you disappearing hard,” Nat says.
Really? I think. Because it doesn’t look like she even remembers who I am.
The days start to blend together after that. Time behaves strangely in hospital wards, stretching out ahead of me, turning minutes into hours. I sleep a lot, watch a lot of bad television.
The only thing the doctors can find wrong with me is a strange mark on my forehead, right in the line of my hair. They poke at it, ask me if it hurts, and it doesn’t. They discuss whether it’s a burn or a fading bruise and all I know is every time they touch it, I feel a little worse. I try to explain this to them and they think perhaps it’s my memories starting to emerge, that I’m remembering something that happened and reacting to it, even if I don’t know exactly what it is yet.
But I’m not feeling bad about my missing month. It’s other stuff that keeps playing in my mind. I have flashbacks, bad dreams. Often about the time my father got arrested, taken away from my mother’s hospital bed. But other stuff, too. Jason putting me down. Nat getting felt up by squaddies while I was forced to watch and feel uncomfortable about it. Mark. Always Mark. I can usually steer my thoughts away from that night, Nat’s wedding night. But when I do, they turn to another memory.
My mother telling me not to say anything about it.
“Do you remember that time I came to you t
o tell you about what Mark did, what Mark tried to do to me?” I ask her next time she visits, having sent Nat on an errand to the cafe to get her out of the room.
“I remember,” she says.
“Do you ever regret giving your fifteen year old daughter such shitty advice?”
She bristles. “What was shitty about my advice? Kept the peace, didn’t it?”
“Was keeping the peace really the outcome you wanted? Not protecting your daughters from a predator? He assaulted me, Mum. You acted like that was something to be swept under the carpet. Like I’d done something dirty or wrong.”
“You used to follow him round like a lovesick puppy,” she says. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know what you did. You wanted his attention.”
“I was a child. I wanted him to buy me sweets and take me to the cinema, not tell me I have a sweet ass and try to grope me!”
“Who tried to grope you?” Nat appears in the doorway.
My instinct is to shut my mouth, say nothing, but another, louder part of me says no. That enough is enough.
“Mark did,” I say. “On your wedding day. He put his hands up my skirt and told me that it was my fault, that I was making him do it.”
Nat’s hands are shaking, her face drained of colour.
“I’m so sorry, Nat. I should have told you ages ago. Mum told me not to, and I was stupid enough to listen.”
She turns to me, eyes narrowing. “Are you sure you’re remembering things right?” she says.
My heart goes cold. “Yeah, Nat. I remember it. I’ve been remembering it for nearly ten years.”
“Mark wouldn’t do that,” she says.
“He did it to you, too,” I say. “What thirty year old wants to date a seventeen year old? He told you you were mature for your age and not like the other girls. That’s called grooming, Nat, I saw a documentary on it once.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. I see the moment her temper snaps clear as if cartoon fires had lit behind her eyes.
“You and your fucking documentaries,” she says. “You’ve got your head in the clouds, Charlie. Think you’re better than the rest of us coz Jason likes to big you up and call you his princess. Think you can mess with our lives. Mark never did anything to you. He told me what you were like, told me how awkward you were making things for him. Always getting in his personal space, hanging off his arm, touching him. Flirting.”
“I didn’t do that,” I say, shocked. “He’s lying, Nat. I was eleven when you met him, for God’s sake. Eleven years old. I wasn’t trying to flirt with him.”
“He said one day you’d take it too far,” Nat said. “He said one day you’d do something to try to come between me and him, and when you did the guilt would eat you up, and you’d try to blame him. I thought he got you wrong, I thought you were better than that. I guess he was right after all.”
I look to Mother for some support, but she’s just shaking her head at me.
“He got to both of you, didn’t he? He tried to assault me at Nat’s wedding, and he went running to you, didn’t he, Mum? Told you a twisted version of the truth to make out like it was my fault. And when I came to you, you told me to never mention it again.”
“Well, I was right about that, wasn’t I?” she says. “Gone and made a mess of things now, haven’t you?”
She’s slurring her words, so close to the violent stage of her drunkenness.
“Get out,” I say. “Get out. Both of you. Get out. Get out get out get out.”
I’m shouting at them, screaming. Doctors and nurses come running, usher my family out of the room.
“Don’t let them come back,” I say to anyone who might be listening. “Don’t let them come back here, I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to see them ever again.”
I don’t really fight the nurses, but I’m wound up. My consultant is summoned. He asks in his patronising voice what the confrontation with my family was about. I don’t feel like talking about it, so I tell him to piss off and leave me alone. He tells me how he’ll be ready to listen when I’m ready to talk, but perhaps it’s best if I rest and relax for now. He knows I like nature programs, so he finds some old animal program narrated by David Attenborough and puts it on for me. It’s one of the water episodes, the camera tracking an octopus as it undulates through a coral reef, all alien with its eight sucker-lined limbs. Attenborough’s dulcet tones ought to lull me into a state of calm, but for some reason, the sight of the octopus has my heart racing. I don’t understand it. I’m sure the consultant would have something to say about it being the memories starting to come through, but I don’t feel like I remember anything. I just feel awful and I’m sick of it. Sick of not knowing what’s going on in my own head.
I get out of bed and go into my bathroom, switch on the harsh mirror light and stare at myself. I look washed out, pale. The mark is still on my forehead, almost gone now. The only clue I have to my lost month, and it’s vanishing before my eyes. Impotent anger fills me, and I sink my fingers into my hair, pulling at it to feel the pain. Pain gives me something to latch on to. I want to rip my hair from my roots. I stop myself, though, letting my head drop forwards until it touches the mirror. I think the cold of it will cut through my strange mood, but I just get this vision of smashing my head into it. Crazy people do that in TV shows all the time, and I’m feeling a little crazy.
I bump my head against the glass experimentally. Not hard, just a gentle knock.
It’s probably some super strong, break resistant plastic anyway, I think.
I wonder if I hit my head hard enough, whether I could knock all the horrible thoughts out of it.
I drag myself away from the mirror.
What the fuck am I doing?
I’m a complete and utter mess.
I threw my family out and told them never to come back.
They deserved it.
I’m a horrible person.
They’re horrible people.
They think I made Mark attack me.
Maybe I did make Mark attack me.
No.
No. I won’t let my thoughts go down that path. Whatever else is going on in my head, I know I didn’t do anything to deserve what Mark tried to do. Didn’t do anything to encourage him. That was all him, and he deserves to be in prison for the rest of his life for what he was going to do to me.
A headache is starting to build now.
I put my hands on my temples, pressing down on my skull as if this could contain it.
I gasp at the sudden onslaught of pain and dread, memories flashing through my mind in such rapid succession, it takes a moment to make any sense of them.
A circle of light opening above me.
Submerging in the cold.
Waking up in it.
Warm arms around me and a voice.
Dhak.
Dhak.
Commander H’Varak and the horrible, familiar glint in his eyes.
Impractical and beautiful dresses.
Denestra. Being taken by kidnappers again. Trying to escape.
Talking about PTSD in the tunnels, holding Dhak in my arms.
Kissing him on Chasira. His body moving over mine.
Unlike the first time I experience Abbarax venom, the memories I experience are recent, so recent as to be overwhelming. None of them the worst memories - some of them my best - but with each of them comes the knowledge that I have to give it all up, let it all go. Forget it. Forget him. Forget me.
And then I’m in the chair again, not looking at the doctor as she goes through her list of questions.
Family history of strokes or clots.
No.
Headaches or migraines.
No.
Mind altering substances.
I’d answered no, but it wasn’t strictly true. I hadn’t even considered the Abbarax toxin, truth be told. Had thought it out of my system days before. But perhaps Dhak just made me so happy I didn’t notice the effects it had on me. Because it’s clearly still
in my system, accounting for the strange depressive funk I’ve been in since I woke. Now I’ve gone and burst open a load more capsules, overloading my system with it.
And apparently overloading whatever it was the Protectorate did to my memory to stop me telling anyone my truth.
When I come round, I’m lying on the floor, doctors and nurses surrounding me. Everything in the room is beeping, and my vitals must be off the charts because everyone looks panicked. They pick me up and put me to bed, sharing concerned glances that they think I’m too out of it to notice. I play docile, letting them do whatever they want, waiting until they all leave the room.
Then, when they’re all gone and I’m alone.
I start laughing.
Chapter 32
Charlie
They let me go a few days later. With the Abbarax toxin gone and my memories back, my mood improves enormously and gradually they stop looking at me like I might break under the pressure of the blankets on my bed. Not that I tell them my memories are back. That would be a one way ticket to a diagnosis of ‘crazy’. But, despite my continued insistence that I don’t remember anything, the doctors start running out of reasons to keep me in. I’m taking up a valuable bed, and there’s nothing else wrong with me.
I don’t have any money on me, or a phone. Or a plan. I’ll have to go home, I guess, much as I don’t want to have to look at Nat or my Mother right now. All my stuff is there. I’ll have to see about getting my phone back from the police. My bank cards were in my pocket when I got abducted, probably now in a bin somewhere on Xentra. A bank. I should go to a bank and get new ones. I don’t have much money, though. Probably not enough to stay in a hotel for more than a few nights.
I’m in reception trying to beg some cash off the receptionist for a taxi when Jason walks in. He heads straight for me, throwing his arms around me.
“They wouldn’t let me come see you,” he says. “We were all so worried about you, Charlie. Where have you been?”
Funny how much difference a month makes. Before my abduction, this sort of show of affection would have made me feel weak at the knees. Right now, I just feel awkward. I extract myself from his arms.
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