by Dani Atkins
As I approached the large arched gate in the railings, I wondered what I would do if it were locked. Climb over? I looked up and surveyed the height of the fence… no, that wasn’t going to happen. Come back in the morning, I supposed. Yet the urgency to make this very real and physical connection with Jimmy was so strong, I didn’t think I could wait until the following day.
The gate swung open on well-oiled hinges. Strange, I’d felt sure it was going to creak and make the cliché complete.
Once inside the churchyard my courage wavered slightly. Was this an act of total madness, to be wandering around a deserted graveyard at this time of night? Wasn’t this just the sort of behaviour I’d always ridiculed heroines for in the movies?
A noise from an approaching car startled me, and instinctively I ducked behind a large oak tree to avoid being picked up in its headlights. I’d forgotten I could be clearly seen by passing cars on the road. Plus, I wasn’t exactly dressed for covert manoeuvres in my long white coat. I wasn’t sure if I was actually committing a criminal office, or an act of trespass, but winding up at a police station, trying to justify my actions, was not how I planned to end the evening. My brush with disclosure decided me against hesitating further, and as soon as the car was out of sight I drew away from the tree and walked with renewed purpose towards the rear of the church, where the small graveyard was situated.
There weren’t many graves in this part of the cemetery. The larger, older section was around the other side, and much of this grassy area was still awaiting the arrival of its new occupants. I supposed the large crematorium in the next town might account for the comparatively few new markers I could see in this more traditional place of rest. I instinctively knew that Janet would have wanted somewhere close by where she could visit her lost son. I also knew that the easiest way to find him would be to look for the best maintained plot.
I didn’t have to look at many before I found what I was searching for. Just long enough to read half a dozen moving and heart-wrenching epitaphs as I walked among the granite headstones. Dearest husband, Beloved grandmother, Much loved father. So much grief, so many tears, the frozen soil must be virtually saturated from those emotions.
Jimmy’s grave stood slightly to one side, clearly newer than its neighbours. The headstone was sparkling white marble which seemed to glow under the winter moon’s iridescence. I walked around and steadied myself for a moment before reading his inscription.
Jimmy Kendall. Lost too soon at 18 years. Cherished son and loyal friend. Our love for you will live on for ever.
A sob broke from me, so raw with grief it sounded more animal than human in its anguish. I felt my knees begin to buckle and I sank onto the cold grass beside his grave. I had come here hoping to voice all of my feelings but none could reach the surface through the boiling swell of pain that swept me in its path. I had believed that over the years I had reached a place of acceptance, but I realised now that all I had done was pull a thin veneer of pretence over a gaping wound. I was incapable of words; only able to rock slowly back and forth on my knees, repeating his name over and over again.
This was too painful. I wasn’t strong enough, either physically or emotionally, to cope with this grief tonight. It was madness to have come. Still hiccupping soft sorrowful sobs, I started to get to my feet and then swayed forward, only stopping myself from falling by flinging out my hand onto the ice-slick turf. My head felt suddenly strange, too heavy for my neck to hold. Then, giving a small helpless cry, my supporting arm gave way and I fell forward onto the cold, unyielding ground beside the grave.
The pain from my head now encompassed my entire neck and shoulders and I wondered if I had somehow struck myself on a rock when falling. But the cold grass beneath my cheek was clear of any obstruction. Very slowly, trying to minimise each movement of my head, I inched back my arms until both hands were flat on the soil on either side of me. I tried to lever myself up but although I exerted every ounce of my strength, my quivering forearms would not comply. After several abortive attempts, I realised I wasn’t going to be able to get to my feet that way.
Suddenly the danger I was in was terrifyingly obvious. I was lying, sick and virtually immobile, in a deserted graveyard. No one knew I was here; no one was going to miss me – not until the morning at least. I could die here. The thought, so terrifying, managed to pierce through the vice-like pain in my head. I had no idea how long it took to die of exposure, or hypothermia. But I did know that giving up and lying down to die beside the boy who’d lost his own life while saving mine, was not going to happen.
Trying to ignore the agony in my head, I began to attempt to roll gradually onto my side. My progress was slow, each movement sending a paralysing spasm from my neck. I stopped several times to gather my breath, finding the strength to continue not in my desire to live, but more in the knowledge of what losing me, especially in these circumstances, would do to my father.
Eventually, when I had regained my breath a little, I gingerly raised my knees towards my chest. At least that area of my body wasn’t in pain, but it did feel strangely numb, which I supposed must be as a result of lying on the frozen ground. With my legs in position, I realised I couldn’t afford to tackle my next manoeuvre so delicately. I didn’t have much strength left and it felt very much like this would have to be an all-or-nothing attempt. I braced my arm to support me, took a deep breath, held it and rolled with Herculean effort onto my knees.
Bright spots of light pinwheeled behind my eyes; I felt the sway of an incipient faint, and bit deeply into my lower lip to fight back against the weakness. When it had passed, I cautiously opened my eyes. I was still on all fours, and was so grateful not to have succumbed to unconsciousness that it took me a moment or two to realise there was something wrong with my eyes. Seriously wrong. An involuntary cry of pure terror escaped my frozen lips. My vision had virtually disappeared in my right eye, and my left had only tunnel-like vision, the periphery of my eyesight disappearing into a cloudy fog. This, I knew, wasn’t anything to do with exposure, hypothermia or intense grief. The loss of sight was the last dire warning link in the chain of medical advice I had so unwisely chosen to ignore.
Telling myself that I couldn’t afford to let myself panic, I groped out with my left hand, found the wide marble edge of Jimmy’s headstone and pulled myself upright on legs that felt as stable as elastic. I realised I had stupidly left my mobile in the hotel room, so my only chance of aid was to try to get to the road. Hoping they would forgive me for the disrespect, I used the surrounding grave markers as handholds as I made my slow and unsteady way through the graveyard.
The sight in my left eye appeared to be decreasing at an alarming rate; the small circle of vision now felt as though I was looking through a narrow tube. I tried to ignore my greatest dread that this might be permanent. I just couldn’t allow that thought to overwhelm my mind, or exhaustion to take my body. It was hard, particularly when what I wanted to do more than anything was lie down and close my eyes against this pain-wracked nightmare. Even walking was now proving difficult, and each shaky step I took had all the fluidity of a newly awakened zombie.
As I left the last gravestone support, I thought I could vaguely make out a distant sound. Was that just a train from the station or could there be a car approaching? It was probably not yet eleven o’clock, surely not that late for someone to be driving by? The road, although quiet, might still have the occasional passing car. But from where I stood, in the shadows of the church and its surrounding trees, I knew I would never be seen. The noise grew in intensity. It was a car.
‘Help!’ I cried out uselessly. ‘Please stop, help!’
I lurched forward, trying to run and raise my arms to flag down the car. It was my last bad idea, in an evening full of them. Running isn’t really an option when you can barely stand. Or see. I was already pitching head first towards the ground and oblivion by the time the car’s headlights arced into the starlit sky.
3
The
first thing I became aware of was the continuing soreness from my head, which seemed to feel somehow strangely enlarged. I moved it slowly, just the merest fraction, and heard the soft scratch of crêpe bandage against cotton. I tried to raise an arm to investigate but stopped when I felt a painful tug from something embedded in my forearm. It would appear that I was attached to some sort of machine. A persistent beeping sound from a piece of equipment positioned directly behind me confirmed I was probably hooked up to some sort of monitoring device as well as being on a drip. Clearly I was in hospital, but why couldn’t I see anything?
I blinked several times. My eyelids felt weirdly unresponsive, and it made no difference, everything was still in darkness. Why couldn’t I see? What had happened to me? I felt a powerful wave of panic begin to engulf me. Why couldn’t I remember? What was the matter with my head – and my eyes? I strained to recall. In small fragments I could see fleeting snapshots of the day before. I could remember visiting my old house, then a fast forwarded image of being at a restaurant. Then I’d gone back to the hotel. Had I taken a cab? I couldn’t remember. Then I’d reached my room… and then… nothing. There was a gaping chasm where the rest of my memories of the evening should be.
I struggled to move, to sit up, even with all the wires and tubes attached. The noise of this ineffectual stirring did however alert someone in the room.
‘Well, hello there. Welcome back to us, Rachel. It’s good to see you awake. Let me just call your father.’
There was a sound of a door opening and footsteps rapidly receding down an echoing corridor. I realised I was alone before I could manage to command my numb lips to form a question.
Was she going to phone my dad? Had someone already informed him I was in hospital? Dread at how he would have reacted to that news rippled through me. He was too ill to cope with any more worry in his life right now. I wondered if they could bring the phone to my bedside. Perhaps if he could just hear my voice he’d be reassured that I was OK. But how could I calm and reassure him about my condition when I didn’t even know what that was myself? I gave an angry moan of pure, impotent frustration.
‘Hey, hey… none of that now. Everything’s going to be all right.’ Swift and sure footsteps approached the bed. How was this possible?
I started off the pillow, ignoring whatever agony might ensue. My head was already spinning in shock anyway.
‘Dad? Dad, is that you?’
A warm and familiar roughened hand engulfed my own where it lay on the stiff hospital sheets.
‘Of course it’s me, my love.’ His breath warmed my face as he bent to kiss my cheek, his beard scratching against me.
‘Oh Dad…’ I began, and then, although there were a thousand things I could say, should say, none of them managed to come out as I was helpless to stop myself from dissolving suddenly and very noisily into tears.
‘There, there, there,’ muttered my dad, frenziedly patting my hand in discomfort. I knew the look that would be on his face, even without the benefit of sight. He had always been fazed by my tears, either as a small child or in my turbulent teenage years. Knowing how difficult it was for him to deal with them, I made a real effort to stem the torrent.
‘I’m so glad you’re here, Daddy,’ I sniffed, slipping back into the childish name without even realising I’d done so.
‘I’m so glad to see you awake again, my love. You can’t believe the fright I got when I first came in and saw you like that – all wired up and everything. It brought back so many horrible memories.’ I heard the catch in his voice. Of course, he must have been unable to stop thinking back to the night of the accident.
I could only imagine the anguish he must have gone through back then, as he’d sat for days on end beside a hospital bed just like this one. It was many months before he had ever revealed to me the true terror he had lived through while I lay unconscious and unresponsive. And even though the doctors had reassured him that I just needed time; that the emergency services had got me breathing again before the threat of brain damage; that I would make a full recovery; he must still have been fraught with anxiety until the moment I had first opened my eyes.
That was the moment of relief from his heartache and the beginning of mine. For I hadn’t allowed him to put off giving me the dreadful news; had refused to wait until I was ‘stronger’. And truly, who was ever going to be strong enough to hear the news that your best friend had died, while saving your life?
The accident of five years ago was obviously as much in his mind again as it had been in mine.
‘Memories of the accident,’ I said softly.
‘Accident?’ he sounded puzzled. ‘No, love; memories of your poor mum.’
I was confused, he so rarely spoke of her. I suppose the thought of losing me had reawakened many painful recollections. I wasn’t sure how to respond but was saved from the need by the sound of the door opening and several people entering the room.
‘Hello, doctor,’ greeted my dad. It sounded as though he knew the man who had just entered my room, knew him quite well, in fact. For the first time I thought to ask the question:
‘How long have I been in here?’
‘A little over thirty-six hours, young lady,’ replied the doctor, in a voice that I supposed was meant to be calming. I did not feel calm. As though in a game played against the clock, my mind frantically tried to fit together the jigsaw pieces of what had happened to me. Like an arc of electricity between two terminals, I suddenly remembered: the cemetery; the crippling headache; my sudden virtual blindness. I remembered it all.
I lifted the arm not encumbered with hospital paraphernalia to my bandaged head.
‘Have you had to operate on me, for the headaches? The blindness?’
A deeply amused chortle came from the doctor. How could there be any humour in what I’d just asked?
‘Bless you, Rachel, you’re not blind.’
‘But I can’t see!’ I wailed.
Again that laughter; this time even Dad joined in.
‘That’s because your eyes are covered with bandages. They sustained some minor scratches – you probably got those from the gravel chippings when you fell face down. You really did take a terrible old knock on your head.’
I turned my head in the direction of the nurse’s voice. What the hell was she going on about? Clearly she either didn’t see, or chose to ignore, the look on my face which clearly said she was an idiot, for she continued:
‘That’s what Dr Tulloch is here for now, to take off the bandages and check out your sutures.’
‘But I didn’t hit my head,’ I insisted to anyone who would listen. I felt my dad once more take hold of my hand.
‘Hush now, Rachel, don’t get yourself upset. Things are bound to be a little fuzzy to begin with.’
‘I think I’d remember if I hit my head,’ I responded, more sharply than I intended. ‘It was the headache, you see,’ I tried to explain. ‘It was absolutely excruciating.’
‘You have a headache now?’ enquired the doctor, with keen attention.
‘Well no,’ I replied, realising for the first time that although my head hurt, the pain was different from the splitting agony of the headaches I’d been experiencing. ‘It just feels kind of sore…’
‘I’m sure it does. It will settle down in a day or so. As the nurse said, it really was a nasty fall.’
I would have protested further but I was aware of hands reaching behind my head and beginning to release me from the swaddling bandages. With each rotation the pressure against my head lessened and my anxiety increased. When finally relieved from my mummy-like accessories, disappointment coursed through me.
‘I still can’t see anything. I’m still blind!’
The doctor’s voice had a slightly more impatient edge. Clearly he now had me pigeon-holed as a major drama queen.
‘Just let me remove the gauze first before you go off and get a white stick, young lady. Nurse, if you please, the blinds.’
Deciding
I didn’t like the man, however much my father might disagree, I nevertheless turned my face towards his voice and allowed him to lift first one then the other circular coverings from my eyelids. I blinked for the first time, enjoying the unfettered freedom of the movement. The room had been darkened by the lowering of the blinds but enough daylight fell through the half-shut venetians for me to make out the vague shapes of four people around my bed: the doctor, a white-coated young man standing beside him, the nurse and, on the other side of the bed, my dad.
‘I can see shapes,’ I declared, my voice a strange mixture of joy and disbelief. ‘It’s cloudy but—’
‘Give it a moment. Nurse, a little more light now, I believe.’
She obliged by a further twist on the corded blinds. Suddenly things began to clear and I saw the white-haired senior doctor, the young bespectacled intern, the middle-aged nurse. I began to smile broadly, a reaction they all mirrored.
I turned to my dad, my grin wide, and then froze, the look on my face unreadable.
‘Rachel, what’s wrong? Doctor! Doctor what’s the matter?’
The consultant was beside me in an instant, flashing a small torch in my eyes, checking my reactions, but I fought against him to look again at my dad.
‘Rachel, can you tell me what’s wrong?’ urged the doctor. ‘Are you in pain, is your vision disturbed in any way?’
Disturbed? Well yes, I should say. But not in any way that he meant.
‘No, I can see all right. Everything’s clear now.’
‘Then what’s wrong?’
‘It’s my dad.’
‘Me?’ My father sounded totally confused. Well, join the club. I forced myself to look at him slowly and with greater concentration then. But what I saw made no sense. The doctor’s voice had adopted a tone I guessed he usually reserved for those with mental illnesses.
