Eight Rooms

by Various

  Jena, small, blonde, young, stepped forward and smiled as well, saying something, though I couldn’t tell what. Tears filled my ears. I closed my eyes to stop them falling out.

  It was later, another day? I had been awake for some time, eyelids masking the world. I was content just lying, drifting. Then I could feel someone come into the room. I opened my eyes, relaxed; it was the blonde girl.

  “I’ve just come to check your drugs!” she said brightly. “They’re good you know! When you’re feeling a little stronger you’ll be able to control them yourself, but right now I’m just making sure that you’re as comfortable as possible.” She twiddled with something behind my head, out of vision, a faint coolness washed across my face – I almost hadn’t noticed the prickling sensation until it disappeared.

  Jena checked her watch and signed a clipboard, then bent over me. I felt her hand on my arm and was comforted; my eyes closed again.

  Dr Partha was here once more, smiling again. It seemed that everyone smiled here. She told me that I was doing well. I’d banged my head but that was nothing to worry about, that my face was burnt but the hospital would make it better. Her voice was like the Queen’s.

  I moved my index finger to acknowledge her; I wanted to move my lips but my face was frozen. I wondered how bad my face was. I tried to move my hand more, to gesture, to try and ask, but it was so very heavy. It didn’t move as I asked it to. I knew all about that, about my body refusing to obey the screams of my mind.

  “Your facial burns are severe.” She was picking her words carefully, as precisely as her diction. “You do not have a great deal of skin left on your face at the moment. But skin is an amazing thing; it will heal, in time the scars will not be noticeable. You’ll be beautiful again, don’t you worry.”

  But you don’t know, I thought, you don’t know if I was beautiful before. Perhaps she thinks everyone is beautiful, that everyone is lovely.

  The Doctor hesitated, seemed about to say something, then, “Your head may be a little sore where you banged it, but in a day or so that’ll be back to normal. I’ll see you again tomorrow; we’ll have longer to talk then. Keep sleeping and resting in the meantime. You’re doing well.”

  I lay back and closed my eyes; it was justified, I’d been told to. Daydreams, dreams, came quickly and I sank into them. I was running, with Zeb, through the trees. They were so green and the ground underfoot was spongy, forgiving. I could hear my shrieks, him calling me, speaking in our language, telling me he’d catch me. Zeb was older, he always caught me, but I didn’t mind. Often he and our cousins chased me away, were not keen on a girl hanging around. I’d crouch on my heels, watching, hoping I could join them. I grew out of it, of course, when I was older, when Zeb sought my company and we became best friends.

  It was unusual for there only to be two of us, it made us feel special, that it was us against the rest of the clan. Our mum had died having me and Zeb could remember her. She was a smell to him, and a feeling of being in her arms. When I was very little I used to get Zeb to hold me, to try and pretend. But it didn’t work, however hard I tried to imagine her.

  Our aunties took us in. While I was careful to be unobtrusive, not to cause offence, aware that we were intruders into our aunties’ lives, Zeb was outspoken and rash. There only had to be a rule for him to want to break it, even if it meant disobeying my father. No one else ever disobeyed our Da. My aunties were at first tolerant and then dismissive – he was labelled a troublemaker. None of us went to school that often, we moved on too much, but he less than anyone. Our Da didn’t mind, it was an extra pair of hands, and in a family business that was never a bad thing. Until Zeb cheeked him, and he’d casually reach out and punch him, hard, and Zeb would go off for a few days. He always came back though. Until the day he didn’t.

  That was the mother of all rows; Zeb wanting to marry out. I’d met her, she was sweet, but they were both so young that I was as surprised as anyone. If they’d been left alone I reckon it would have blown over, but the aunties found out about her, wouldn’t let it be. Zeb, typically, fanned the flames by announcing proudly that they were getting married. He was traditional at heart, I think. He left and never told me where he was going, never wrote.

  I tried to think of something else, tried to finish the fish jingle from yesterday. We’d fished together Zeb and I. We’d never caught much, but occasionally we’d be able to provide tea. We fished until I was too old, until the aunties told me I had to start behaving properly.

  I opened my eyes to make him go away. I was conscious of my body, could feel it pressing an outline into the narrow mattress. My hands moved, touched the edges, gripped them, loosely. As I tightened my fingers I could feel something in my left arm. A sideways glance confirmed it, a tube reaching down in that direction. I’d seen this on TV. My head moved, slightly, as my gaze followed the line down, and then, with some effort, returned to the same position, eyes glazed by the ceiling’s glare.

  The light was bright, fresh with a whiff of bleach when I next woke up. Jena backed in, wheeled around with her hands full, chattering away.

  “How are you feeling this morning? You look lots brighter.”

  She came closer, looked at my face, noticed my fingers wiggling at her.

  “Excellent. It looks really good.”

  Jena drew away and replenished the drip.

  “You’re going down to a lower morphine level today. But you can call for more pain relief at any moment by pressing this button.”

  A plastic bulb was placed gently in my hand, and she looked at me carefully to check that I had understood.

  Dr Partha joined us in the room, and mirrored Jena’s comments.

  “Thank you.” I surprised myself with the whisper of sound, barely moving my lips.

  They smiled with genuine pleasure. Dr Partha paused, then spoke. “We have had a call from your husband, he has asked whether he can visit. In cases like this,” she paused again, “we are cautious about allowing visits too early.”

  I didn’t speak, could not communicate my thoughts.

  Dr Partha was looking at me. “It is difficult to judge how the body will react to trauma on this scale. I think, until you are able to articulate your wishes more clearly, we will keep you quiet for the moment.”

  I tried to smile, felt my face immovable but a shard of pain cutting across my thoughts. I pressed the bulb.

  Dr Partha returned later. After doing the, by now routine, checks on the clipboard, she sat on the seat next to the bed, yawning as she did so.

  “I’m sorry,” she turned it into a laugh. “I was up early this morning with an emergency. You’re progressing well Farah, I’m really pleased.”

  “Great,” I moved as little of my face as possible.

  “It’s an odd circumstance, but facial burns sometimes heal more quickly than others. The eschar,” she glanced at me, “that’s a scab, is starting to form already, and I don’t think we are going to need to do any skin grafting; the deepest burns are quite contained in their area.”

  “Great,” I said, again.

  Dr Partha seemed to be in no rush to leave. I was glad; it felt companionable to have her sitting there. “My family come from India originally, we’re Hindus,” she was relaxed into her chair, casual in imparting this information.

  I was interested, our family lore says that many generations ago we came from the Indian sub-continent. “Hmmm?”

  “My father is a medic too – he came here as a junior Doctor – and my grandfather in India still practises, although he is 83 now. They are both GPs. I liked surgery so I decided to specialise. And,” she glanced at me smiling, “it seemed a bit dull to follow the family tradition and be a GP as well.”

  I obviously was looking interested enough for her to keep going, although quite how I’m not sure.

  “Burns interested me because of a tale my Grandmother told me when I was a teenager. There was a news story about suttee, a widow burning herself to death on her husband’s funera
l pyre, and Aka told me – with such horror that I can still hear her explaining it today – of the history of suttee.”

  I felt sick at the thought of someone voluntarily burning themselves to death.

  “I’ve never heard it,” I managed to whisper.

  “In the north of India it was a reasonably common practise hundreds of years ago for the higher castes. It was outlawed almost two centuries ago, but there had been the very occasional news story of its recurrence through Aka’s lifetime. She told me that burns were such a painful injury that she could not imagine many instances where the practise had been fully voluntary, that the majority of suttee widows had been forced to do it by their husband’s family.”

  Dr Partha paused. “There were also, quite often, reports in the Indian press of wives suffering terrible burns while living in their in-laws’ homes. Frequently it seems these women are very careless when frying the family’s dinner.”

  I stiffened under my sheets.

  “Aka was a great advocate of women’s rights and she volunteered at a charity for destitute women, often widows thrown out by the husband’s family.” Dr Partha smiled at me. “It all made a great impression on me; I felt that working with burns was my calling. Although, of course, in England it is unusual to find burns as a result of abuse.”

  I was silent, my eyes blanking out her story.

  “I’m tiring you.”

  She patted my arm, softly, checked I had the pain relief bulb securely in my hand, and gently left the room.

  I woke to press the button several times that night, stark images searing my dreams, and woke with Zeb’s name on my lips.

  I was 15 when he’d dropped his bombshell, and I could not lie when I was asked if I had known about the girl. I didn’t mind the blow from Da, I understood his loss. He had never hit me before, and he never did again. The aunties were more painful.

  “I always knew that boy was bad.”

  “An outsider right from the start.”

  “No family feeling.”

  “Always causing trouble.”

  I had to listen until I thought I would scream and had no one to share my memories of his kindness and his love.

  And then the aunties’ gaze switched to me. I made their lives untidy, I was a reminder of a community failure. I could see that they wanted to tick me off, dispose of me. Our clan traditionally marry young, but to the right type. It’s normally a family group known to us, that live like us, have the same customs, traditions. The same sense of honour. Marriages aren’t arranged, so much as introduced. Of course if you’ve any sense you try to make your own decisions, to find someone before a choice is forced. But I was shy and did not have any sense. And, anyway, who is to say it would have made any difference?

  I felt brave enough to try to touch my face the next day. I lay for a long time before I focussed on raising my forearm, bending my elbow and ever so slowly moving my fingertips closer until they touched, something. I could not feel them on my face, and my fingers told me they were in contact with a surface that wasn’t skin. It was hard, solid, immobile. I grew braver, allowed the fingers to roam across my cheeks, my chin, even up and over my nose. In places the surface felt like a beetle’s, it was smooth and slightly rounded, and then it became corrupted, bumpy and pitted. Like those flat layered rocks shelving out to the sea, with little holes and lines where pebbles have worn away at weaknesses. It was slippy, but then my fingertips would stall on a sticky section along a crack, seepage from the flesh underneath.

  My face was vast; it took a long time for my fingers to work their way around it. I became much less tentative, even tried pressing lightly. That was not a great idea, it hurt, a lot, deep under the surface, and the pain spread from the first point, trickling outwards until it covered the whole of my head. My scab of a face would never look normal again. The salty self-pitying sting deep in the crevasses didn’t stop me slipping back into temporary oblivion.

  Hideous or not, I was undoubtedly feeling better. The bed was set with an incline for my head and shoulders when lying down (“It helps reduce swelling,” Jena had explained). Once I had stopped feeling so utterly sorry for myself, I gradually worked my way into a better sitting position. The effort made my face burn a great deal more. I could feel blood pounding up against the scabrous surface, but I was happy with that. Surely it must mean that I was fighting and healing? I groped around for the control for the incline, increased it and sat back with my face painfully expanding and contracting. I took a proper, horizontal, look around the room, my room.

  It was utilitarian, but clean. A locker sat in the corner to the left of the bed, white chipboard with two swing doors underneath and a tray on the surface holding packets of swabs and wipes. There was a sticker on it, disclaiming any hospital responsibility for valuables. The swing doors, through which I’d had slanting glimpses of the corridor, occupied the wall beyond it. To the right was a window, looking onto a new brick wall about two metres away.

  It was wonderful. It was my space. I was happy to sit and look at it all with the pride of possession. I’d never had a room of my own before. I’d shared with Zeb when we were very young, then with my aunt and a female cousin. And then, of course, I was married. I breathed deeply, appreciating that it was only me that could hear, that no one else could know that I had breathed. Would not know if I stopped.

  “You’ve worked out the bed then.” Jena gave me a complicit glance. “You wouldn’t believe the number of people we have to explain those controls to! Now, would you like the TV on?” She looked enquiringly towards me.

  “Yes, please.” Slurred, but recognisably words.

  “Here’s the remote.” Jena stayed close to me to examine my face, softly tilting my head back and round. “Still no infection, good. That’s what we have to be very careful about; it can cause havoc with burns.”

  “How long will I be here?” My whisper was firmer, although the intonation was still flat, my mouth trying to expel the words without disturbing the skin around it.

  “It depends how long it takes for you to heal, but I think it will be at least one week more. Dr Partha will be here shortly; she’s got a big round today. She’ll be able to tell you better than me.”

  Gathering up the swabs she’d been wiping my face with, she left. She did, I thought, an amazing job.

  “Jena mentioned that you were asking about progress; I’m afraid that I can only counsel patience, it’s too soon to say.” Dr Partha stood at the foot of the bed. “You’re making great steps. Now,” her tone softened, “can you tell me how this happened?”

  “I was cooking dinner, I slipped and fell towards the pan of oil.”

  “You were deep frying?”

  “Yes.”

  “In an open pan?”

  “Yes, it’s how I always

  “Yes, it’s how I always do it.”

  “Farah, I have to tell you, that I cannot imagine how you managed to sustain these injuries just falling towards a pan of oil. Your whole face went into it. And then you hit your head hard enough to knock yourself out.”

  I could say nothing.

  Her voice was still gentle. “You can trust me, you know. If you need help I can get it for you.”

  There was nothing I could say. She let the silence lengthen and then breathed deeply.

  “There is nothing to worry about, but you will have to speak to the police. The hospital has to inform the police if we feel patients may have been involved in suspicious circumstances.”

  “But I can’t, that’s not necessary.” I felt panic. “They don’t like us; I don’t want to see them.”

  “They will be very kind, and very discreet, and I’m afraid that there is no medical reason to bar them from interviewing you now.”

  I gazed at the ceiling again.

  “And your husband,” the Doctor’s voice tiredly went on. “Do you wish for me to tell him that he can visit now?”

  I nodded, still unable to speak.

  Jena brought me
some books that morning, a good mixture of novels left by other patients. I loved reading, could always be found curled up with a book, unobtrusively in a corner. English was my favourite subject at school, my teachers consistently surprised by my work. “It’s the words,” I’d try to explain, “they are like magic.”

  Whatever my mood there was always a book to match it – exciting or adventurous or comforting. Tobe thought me dopey, getting distracted by a book and I had to be careful when I spoke to him. To make a conscious effort not to use words that I’d just delightedly discovered, that described something more precisely than I’d thought possible. Today, in my room, I could read whatever I liked. I picked up a book with a horse on the cover, a thriller, but for the first time ever was too tired to start it, even to read a page.

  Tobe and the police arrived almost simultaneously in the afternoon. I woke to the sound of voices outside, my heart beginning to pound, then the doors opened and Jena came in with Tobe. She stood back and let him move forward. He didn’t stop and stare; he’d obviously been warned what to expect. He came forward to the head of the bed, awkwardly holding some flowers, speaking quickly.

  “Are you OK? How are you feeling? I’ve been dead worried.”

  I looked at him for a long second before speaking, “I am going to be fine.”

  “What?” He couldn’t decipher the words, leaned closer. He did look worried.

  “I’m going to be fine.”

  He sat next to me, put the flowers on the bed. “I love you so much. You know that? Don’t you?”

  I nodded. He couldn’t see where to kiss me, I could see the indecision on his face, so he took my hand. I felt it burn as he bent the wrist to hold it.