by Various
We left it there, returning to the safer, neutral, subject of books. She promised to keep supplying my fix while I was in hospital, would bring some of her other favourite authors in for me to browse. “Oh, I almost forgot to say, but your face looks like its started healing.”
“I haven’t seen it at all yet; I haven’t a mirror.”
Sarah looked at me and considered. “Do you want to look? I have one in my handbag.”
I wasn’t sure. Thought for a moment. Took a deep breath.
“Yes.”
I held the compact she handed to me for several seconds before raising it. Left to myself I would have chickened out, but I couldn’t with someone watching, someone who thought I was brave.
My face looked like it felt, crusty, horrifying. A variety of shades of angry reds fading to softer browns near the edge. It was not me that I was looking at, but a blotch of a stranger. A new person that I needed to get to know. Someone who, looking at what I had become, felt very angry.
Sarah’s voice was soft, breaking into my thoughts, “It’s better than you think. Even just yesterday it was all far redder; it looked much sorer. I think the darker patches must be where the skin is healing and reforming underneath.”
She was right – Dr Partha said as much when she and Jena came round in the early evening. Tobe was there as well, he’d just arrived when ward rounds began, bringing a bouquet of roses, and telling me how much he was missing me. He had always been great at buying flowers, it was a romantic side to him that I liked a lot. He didn’t stay long, we chatted about not much, and Dr Partha’s instruction to keep getting lots of rest released him almost immediately. “Love you, can’t wait to have you back.” He had brought me a bag of some clothes. I might, I thought, try getting dressed tomorrow.
“Once the new facial skin is starting to be revealed we’ll be able to allow you home.”
Dr Partha was peering through a magnifying glass at my skin as she spoke. “I want to make sure that it is healing just as it should before we let you go. Perhaps in two or three days. Now,” she stood back and looked at me, “how is the pain?”
“Hm. So, so.”
“Jena mentioned that you’d asked about the level of painkillers, do you want to try a lower dose?”
“No.” I reddened slightly. “I think Jena was right, I’ll stay with the two tablets for the moment. It is still quite painful sometimes.”
Dr Partha nodded, and made a note, and Jena passed over the dose. I treated it as before, tucking the spare pill quietly away.
It felt odd to be dressed and walking around. I’d even, slightly shakily, ventured out of my room that morning, explored the corridors outside, and asked the nurse at the desk (I didn’t know her) for a mirror. I felt pretty much well again, although I still seemed to sleep a lot. I propped the mirror above the washbasin, and stood in front of it, gazing at my face. It was itching. I ran my fingers over the surface, allowed them to stray to the edge, the almost shocking line between face and neck, where the solidity of my road-kill-face changed to no-longer-just-ordinary skin. That join was alluring, my fingernails almost absently slipped sideways, sliding along the edge, seeing if the scab was loose, if it would allow my nail a sliver of purchase. It did.
I couldn’t ever accurately describe the feeling of release as that first bit of solidity flaked off and revealed new skin underneath. It was unnaturally pink, it looked nothing like my neck, but the knowledge that there was new skin, NEW SKIN! waiting to be revealed was amazing; I had not felt a happiness that intense before, a conviction that anything was possible. I think I had not quite believed Dr Partha when she’d said that I would start to heal so quickly. This demonstration that she was right, that something could grow from nothing, was revelatory.
Dr Partha made me jump guiltily as she came in while I was standing there, tapping my nails against the hard scab on my right cheek, trying to resist the temptation to keep working at it, to scrape as hard as necessary to reveal what lay underneath.
“Gosh Farah, be careful!” She came across to look over my shoulder in the mirror. The contrast between our faces was stark.
“Look,” I pointed at my neck in the mirror, “new skin!”
“Yes, that’s good.” She peered closer. “It looks very healthy. But don’t go too far with it. I know it gets itchy doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but…”
“Well, trust me, the best way for the healing to continue quickly is to leave it alone. Don’t pick at it!” She tapped my hand as I absently moved it towards my face.
“I know it’s hard, but before you know it you’ll have caused more damage. The area you’ve just been looking at was on the edge of the injury, the damage was much shallower. In places, here, and here,” she was pointing to my cheeks and nose, “the burn was extremely deep. It was touch and go whether those areas would need grafts. The eschar on those areas will take many more weeks before they are ready to fall off and leave the new skin capable of surviving without protection.”
“What will my face look like?” I was pleased my voice was calm.
“You will have quite visible scars to start with. They’ll fade given enough time, but you should just be prepared.” She was serious. “They’ll be worse if you pick!”
I was sobered by her sternness and left the mirror to lie on the bed, trying to ignore the Delilah call of the itches. And the message they contained.
I was, (of course, how could I not be?) pleased that I was healing rapidly, but it meant that I had to face the outside again. Doing the simplest thing would involve people staring at me, asking questions. I could not even think of how to face my mother-in-law, my cousins. And I would have to, they would be there, around me as soon as I left the hospital. I was already embarrassed by what they would think, what the community would talk about. It was likely that I’d be blamed, that people would wonder comfortingly that it must have been my fault. And then there was Tobe. But I didn’t have much choice.
Words from two days ago floated back into my mind. “There’s always a choice.”
There was one choice I’d thought about before, and then dismissed as cowardice, or just plain wrong. But, actually, I am a coward, cowed, and why not meet wrong with wrong?
Because there might be other choices.
What choices?
The ones Sarah had mentioned, the possibility of just leaving, starting again, creating a different life.
But it was different for her – she had a degree, a career, an obvious future.
She hadn’t mentioned her family though; I’d assumed, reading between the lines, that she either wasn’t in touch, or was too ashamed to tell them what had happened to her. And she hadn’t had a posh job to go back to, she’d got an ordinary job in a shop, one that anyone could do, and lived in a hostel for nearly a year. She then started sharing a flat with another girl from the hostel. It was only then that she’d gone back to her professional world.
Perhaps I could train for something? Nursing maybe?
No, it was impossible, it was totally different, easier, for Sarah. She came from a background where women were much more independent. I had never lived alone, never survived outside my community; how would I possibly manage with all these people who didn’t understand me? I wouldn’t make friends, no one would like me because I was different. I’d no qualifications, I’d never even had a proper job. It was impossible.
My room surrounded me with calmness, space. Urged rationality.
To be fair, I corrected myself, I didn’t have a lot of friends in my own community. I’d been shy when I first arrived to live with Tobe’s family, and things had started going wrong between us quickly. It was impossible to confide in his cousins, to become proper friends with them, when their loyalty would always be with him first. I had, actually, always been totally dependent on him. And, again, trying to be reasonable, I did get on with Sarah, and she couldn’t be from a more different background to me. I could join a book group, I could even try and find Zeb;
that thought made me shiver with its enormity and move quickly back to the seesaw of my thoughts.
Sarah had had more incentive to leave – she’d been trapped by her husband, she’d been completely scared of him, he’d been violent constantly. I wasn’t scared of Tobe. Sure he had a temper, but not all the time, and sometimes I did provoke it. He had not meant to cause this much damage; I could tell he’d been horrified by my face. I think it had made him think about things differently, in fact, I was sure that he’d be more controlled in the future. Tobe was a good provider, and his family were supportive. If we ever had tough times they would all step in to help – there’d never be any real material worries. And he loved me, he loved me to bits. I might not ever find someone to love me like that again. If we had children, that would make all the difference – maybe it could still happen? Maybe I could raise the subject again.
I drifted into an uneasy sleep, I was running, Dr Partha pursuing me across a car park waving a pregnancy test and then Tobe loomed over me accusing me of bearing someone else’s child. He raised his arm to hit me and I handed him his baby, a scaly monster that smiled and stabbed a knife into his chest as he reached for it. I woke sweating. Jena was by the bed, taking my hand, speaking calmly to me, telling me there was nothing to worry about, to calm down.
It was two days later. I’d spent the long progression of hours troubled by the unremitting to and fro of my thoughts, the space I’d initially relished now would not let me stop exploring possibilities. I had reached no resolution, I did not know if there was one. One minute it was as clear as day that I should do one thing, the next another. The outcome, it seemed, would be dependent on which way the pendulum was swinging when I could no longer avoid making a decision, when I walked out of the hospital doors.
My injuries were setting the timescale, they had continued to heal, “solid progress” Dr Partha called it. The edge of my face was already shedding some of its eschar, proving involuntarily that I was ready to present the new me to the world.
Sarah had visited each day, and she didn’t seem to mind that I was distracted, wasn’t able to talk much. She told me about her job, her volunteering, her plans to get a kitten. We’d laughed, mocking our pretention, as I agreed that Henry James was a really great name for a cat.
Tobe had also come often. Uncomfortable in the institutional environment, his visits were brief, but he was obviously delighted that I was making such swift progress. And he was very pleased that I was coming home so soon.
Today I carefully packed my belongings into my bag, pushing the small envelope of morphine pills I’d hoarded into the inside pocket. I was sitting in my pink armchair when Dr Partha came in, accompanied by Jena. They were both a little more business-like and a little less chatty than normal, and Dr Partha spent longer than usual running some checks on me.
“You are fine, it seems.” She didn’t smile. “You need to arrange a series of out-patient appointments with the reception desk, to check on progress, but there is absolutely no medical reason why you can’t go home now.”
Jena handed me some pills with murmured instructions about dosage.
“Farah,” Dr Partha was about to continue when Sarah knocked at the door and on Dr Partha’s “Yes?” slipped in to join us.
Sarah beamed at me. “You’re looking so much better Farah; I’m really pleased that you’re well enough to leave hospital.”
She walked over and I stood to hug her. I looked round at the three women in my room and swallowed hard.
“Thank you. It isn’t enough, but thank you. I can’t tell you how much I have appreciated all that you have all done for me. More than anyone else ever has.” My eyes were awash, but I was calm. “And more than you will ever know. You’re such special people, and I’ll remember you always.”
I looked around at them; this was the moment I’d been dreading. Blood pounded against my new face, my stomach felt odd and my mouth was dry. There was a moment’s silence, and in it I could hear the children from the next ward having their sing-song, I smiled as I heard the now familiar verse.
‘One, two, three, four, five,
Once I caught a fish alive,
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
Then I let it go again.
Why did you let it go?
Because it bit my finger so!’
The others had been silent with me, listening. I took one last look around the room, already no longer mine, and took a deep breath.
“My husband is coming to collect me.”
I breathed again, concentrated on speaking calmly, could feel the focus of three pairs of eyes.
“He is coming tomorrow. I would be most grateful if the hospital could inform him that I discharged myself today, and that you do not know where I went.”
“I am so glad.” Sarah broke the quietness. “You’ll let me take you somewhere safe?” I nodded.
Jena was grinning and blowing her nose, and Dr Partha’s face had relaxed; she was smiling.
She then stepped forward and held my shoulder’s firmly. “Farah, you are doing the right thing. You will not regret it. If you ever need any further help, please just ask.” Her words were emphatic, confidence flowed through her healing hands. “And I can assure you,” she spoke more formally now, “that the hospital takes the confidentiality of patient records very seriously indeed. No one other than you will have access to your details, your future appointments or to any other information relating to you.”
I stood and enjoyed the moment. This was what making my own choices felt like. Terrifying. There was suddenly one more thing I wanted to do. I reached into the bag and drew out the morphine pills I’d secreted away.
“Jena, I didn’t take these, and I don’t need them.”
I was no longer a coward and I would not take that way out.
Sarah picked up my grip, and held the door for me to precede her out of the room.
“We’ve lots to do.” She said it with energy. “Lets get going!”
I took my first step forward, heading in the right direction.
About the authors
C. J. Carver
C. J. is half English and half Kiwi. She is the author of five novels published by Orion, including CWA Debut Dagger Award winning novel Blood Junction. She lived in Australia for ten years before taking up long-distance rally driving. She has driven London to Saigon and London to Cape Town, both with all-female crews. Her story was inspired by a drive through the remote Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China, a beautiful area of wilderness that is home to countless gulags.
Rebecca Strong
Rebecca’s parents are from Sri Lanka and moved to England in the 1970s, where she was born in 1981. She is the author of Here or There, published by Legend Press in 2007, which follows eleven seemingly unconnected characters captured at points in their everyday lives. Rebecca had a passion for writing and language from an early age and studied French and Spanish at University College London. She wrote her story in 2008 while pregnant with her son.
D. E. Rhylis
D.E was born in Stoke-on-Trent, and spent her childhood moving around Great Britain due to her father’s job. She is a self-confessed travel lover and has worked abroad as a head nurse in Saudi Arabia. As a qualified nurse, wife, mother and grandmother, she has a different perspective on life and death. D.E. met her present husband while working abroad and they married in America.
Mark Kotting
Mark was born and bred in London, and moved to Sydney for a while to look at the surf. He is the author of Nappy Rash, published by Wrecking Ball Press in 2005. He has written TV and radio comedy including two plays for BBC Radio The Match, 2007 and Gulf, 2008. Mark is a London Cab Driver, who once played second division Rugby League.
E. C. Seaman
Emma is Legend Press' only author to be published in all four collections in the Short Story Reinvented series. Having studied English at Oxford, she only began writing again a few years ago, having given up 'working on her first novel' to
start on her second instead. She has been widely published and has won numerous short story prizes. Emma lives in Devon with her husband and two young daughters.
Guy Mankowski
Guy was raised on the Isle of Wight before being taught by monks at Ampleforth College, York. After graduating with a Masters from Newcastle University and a Psychology degree from Durham, Guy formed ‘a Dickensian pop band’ called Alba Nova, releasing one EP. After that he started working as a psychologist at The Royal Hospital in London, writing his story during any free moment he could get. Guy now works at a psychotherapy clinic in Newcastle. The setting and mood of the story was inspired by the front cover of the Tubeway Army album Replicas.
A J Kirby
Andy has published a large number of short stories in a variety of media, including print anthologies, magazines and journals, on-line and as downloadable pod casts. He was awarded third prize in the Luke Bitmead Writer’s Bursary competition 2008, judged by a panel including best-selling authors Deborah Wright and Zoe Jenny. He is currently engaged in writing a sitcom. Andy lives in Oakwood, Leeds, with his girlfriend, and kitten, Eric, who provided inspiration for the cat in his short story.
Miranda Winram
Miranda lives in Yorkshire with a one-eyed dog and a black fluffy cat, neither of whom approve of her new habit of ignoring them and typing madly away at fictional stories. Miranda’s story was inspired by her own brief stay in a Yorkshire burns unit and by the wonderful people she once met at a Sheffield women’s refuge. It is Miranda’s first published fiction.
