by Alec Birri
Dan woke with a start. Bright light made him screw his face up and he raised a hand to try and squeeze out a sudden migraine. He turned in the direction of the voice. His vision and head cleared at the same time to see a tea lady with her trolley.
‘Milk and sugar?’
She stirred the tea and placed it next to his bed – his new bed. Dan glanced in the direction of the window to see it was now a wall. He then looked to where the broken digital clock would have been – it was no longer there. The things I have to do to get rid of that stupid clock, he said to himself. Dan was about to survey the rest of the room when he came face to face with Tracy. She had her hands on her hips and was tapping a foot – never a good sign in a woman.
‘So, any free tickets to your next gig?’
Dan looked at her, confused. ‘Gig?’
Tracy kept her hands in place. ‘Well, we all thought after that little antic, it’s clear you must be some spoilt brat of a rock star. What next? A television through the window, or are you going to drive your Rolls-Royce into a swimming pool?’
Dan shrank in her presence, but was determined not to be the little boy again. ‘Tracy, my wife is having an affair.’
She launched at him. ‘I don’t give a damn if she’s banging the entire England football team – you could have killed someone! You do something like that again and I will personally throw you out of the window afterwards.’
Given his weight loss, Dan was sure she was capable of that, but knew she just wanted to make a point. At least, he hoped so.
‘Have I made myself clear?’
Dan sheepishly nodded.
‘Right. Thanks to your childishness, we’ve lost a room, so you’re going to have to double up with another patient for the time being.’
Dan now saw the second bed opposite him and fretted. ‘Which one?’
‘What?’ Tracy still had her hands on her hips.
‘Which patient? What if we don’t get on?’
He knew he’d end up regretting throwing the champagne bottle out of the window sooner or later, but had hoped the feeling of euphoria would last just a little longer.
‘You’ll soon find out. Doctor Adams will be in shortly to see if there are any adverse effects to the sedative he had to administer, and then the physio will be in after that. Any questions?’
Dan shook his head.
Tracy marched to the door and opened it. ‘Drink your tea before it gets cold.’
She nodded towards the mug and left. Dan picked it up and took a sip. He recalled Gary’s comment about the hospital being like a prison and Dan worried who his cellmate would be. Anybody but him, he thought.
He pondered the dream. Brian and the letter aside, it was the people that intrigued Dan most; or, rather, the ones he recognised and, in particular, the order in which he saw them. It couldn’t be more obvious. Lucy and he needed each other; but in turn, she needed her mother, who needed her and Tony, who needed her and whomever else he was hanging on to, and so on and so forth.
‘So much for Brian’s theory of no longer being able to dream,’ he scoffed.
The door opened and in walked Adams with a woman Dan assumed to be the physiotherapist. Adams went straight into his usual series of questions, always culminating in the ones about the World Cup and the crash, both of which Dan still couldn’t answer. It was beginning to annoy Dan that he’d yet to see any recordings of the matches despite being promised them.
There was another fruitless attempt at getting him to restart taking the red pill too, but those days were over. No, there was only one thing Dan was interested in now, and that was getting physically fit enough to be a proper father to his daughter again. Cue the physiotherapist.
The doctor left and Dan made the introductions. ‘Dan Stewart. Pleased to meet you. I thought we’d start with a few warm-up exercises in the gym, followed by some circuit training and then a run. Nothing too ambitious – say, a mile or so. What do you think?’
The physio reached across and took his left hand. Dan winced in anticipation, but there was no need to.
‘Hello, Dan. My name’s Lisa.’
Dan begrudgingly acknowledged her politer approach.
‘Have you ever heard of the phrase “you have to learn to walk before you can run”?’
‘Of course I have,’
Lisa smiled at him. ‘Then let’s start with a few baby steps – squeeze my hand as hard as you can.’
‘But I’ll hurt you.’
‘Let me worry about that. Come on, squeeze my hand.’
Dan shrugged and pressed his fingers against hers.
Lisa stopped smiling. ‘I said, squeeze it – hard!’
Dan sighed. ‘Okay, if that’s what you want.’
Ignoring his own pain, he gripped her hand with a pressure just short of what he thought would hurt – he was a gentleman after all. Lisa began smiling again. Dan gripped a little harder in response. She kept on smiling. Just about coping with what was becoming agony, Dan gripped harder still, but her expression didn’t change. Ignoring all accepted social boundaries between the sexes, Dan squeezed her hand as hard as he could. Lisa was still smiling.
Dan forgot to breathe, turned a bright shade of red, and collapsed in a drama of sweaty puffing and panting. He opened an eye mid-recovery in the hope of seeing Lisa just as stressed, but she was still standing there – smiling. Dan closed the eye and tried not to add her to a list that was starting to look a lot like an inventory of the entire human race.
Lisa let go and waited for Dan to recover.
‘Okay?’
‘Looks like I have a lot of work to do,’ he admitted.
She examined his other hand. ‘Well, there’s strength in there somewhere. No one throws a magnum of champagne through a window without having at least some potential.’
Dan perked up. ‘So, my fame’s spreading, eh?’ He particularly liked the exaggeration of the bottle’s size. That’s how these things start, he thought to himself. It will be a jeroboam next week and a methuselah after that.
Lisa raised her eyebrows. ‘You were famous before that.’
Dan’s mood dropped again as he recalled the incident with Tracy. He wondered if his weekly exaggeration theory also applied to penis size. It probably did – but in the opposite sense.
‘Let’s sit you up.’ A click of the remote and a few seconds later Lisa had him in a semi-reclining position. ‘Can you sit upright?’
Dan pulled his back up off the pillows the last few degrees, until it was at right angles to his legs. So far, so good.
‘Stretch your arms out in front of you and spread your fingers – palms down.’
Dan did as he was told. Still good.
‘Now turn your palms up.’
Again, no problem – even with the break to his forearm.
‘Now make two fists.’
‘Do I have to?’
Lisa regarded him as if it were a rhetorical question. Dan prepared himself for pain and began rotating the joints. It felt as if each were welded in position and he had to break them free again. Biting his bottom lip, Dan tried to ignore the sensation of bone grating against bone as they curled. He got about halfway when agony forced him to open them again.
‘I guess there’s some real damage there,’ he said despondently.
Lisa massaged his fingers. ‘Better?’
Dan nodded. Maybe he could grow to like her after all.
‘Right. Let’s take a look at the rest of you.’
Before Dan had a chance to protest, Lisa had undone the buttons of his pyjama jacket and whipped it off him. He closed his eyes, tight.
‘Are you all right?’
‘It’s okay, Lisa. Just resting my eyes.’
‘Well, while you’ve got them closed, po
int a finger with your left hand and touch your nose with it.’
He did as he was told and hit the bullseye. He opened his eyes and grinned. ‘Not bad, eh?’
Dan found himself looking at his naked torso for the first time. Oddly, the sight didn’t make him ill and he found that strange. He looked across his chest, stomach, and down both arms. None of it bothered him in the slightest, even though it was all horribly burnt, damaged, and wasted. ‘Fascinating,’ he thought he was saying to himself.
‘What is?’
Lisa moved to his shoulders and felt her way across them.
‘I don’t know.’
Dan examined his chest more closely. It was only that morning he’d compared it to an animal’s carcass but now it seemed to be more fleshed out – healthier. Pumped up, even. His ribs were still more visible than he would have liked, but it was almost as if the meat he’d had for dinner the previous night had gone straight to them. He studied his left bicep and moved his right hand across to touch it. It was still thinner than before the crash and the skin wrinkled easily, but it didn’t seem to be as visually repulsive as he thought it would be. Dan looked more closely. The muscle underneath appeared to be—
‘OW!’
Lisa had dug one of her knuckles into his shoulder. ‘Does that hurt?’
He gave her a look but she carried on, regardless. Dan went back to examining his body. Preparing for the worst, he pulled back his left trouser leg, just as he had the day before, but even though his knee was still wider than his calf, it didn’t seem to be as bad as he remembered.
‘How strange.’ He uncovered his right leg. ‘Lisa?’
‘Hmmm?’
‘Do I look normal to you?’
She stood back. ‘Pretty normal for a guy who’s spent most of the last six months lying in bed doing nothing. Why do you ask?’
‘It’s just that yesterday morning, I couldn’t stand the sight of my body but now…’ He raised his right hand and looked at the back of it. ‘It seems almost… natural.’
‘Lie back.’ Lisa took hold of the remote and his bed became flat again. ‘I don’t know. Acceptance of your situation perhaps? You’d need to speak to Doctor Adams on that one.’
Dan harrumphed. ‘He just lies to me and encourages everyone else to do the same.’ He narrowed his gaze at Lisa. ‘Does that include you?’
Lisa thinned her lips in return. ‘You know what they say when everyone else appears to be mad except you?’
Dan had been waiting for someone to say that. ‘That the conspiracy theorists were right all along?’
She moved to his legs and rotated the joints. Dan gritted his teeth against the occasional ache and stab.
‘So, you think this hospital is part of some conspiracy theory?’
‘Well, something’s not right.’
‘Listen, the only conspiracy in this place is the one that stops me getting a pay rise. Come on, let’s try standing up.’
She put her hands out to him but Dan let her know he was capable of getting off the bed on his own.
‘Take your hand off the bed rail.’
He did as asked, but then grabbed her still-outstretched hands instead. ‘Shall we dance?’
‘I don’t know about dancing, but I’ve heard your walking’s not too bad – come with me.’
She stepped backwards and Dan went with her. His neck ached so he tilted his head forward and found himself looking at her name badge. He looked back up.
‘Lisa, how tall are you?’
‘Five-eight. Maybe five-nine in these shoes.’
‘But I’m nearly six feet and I’m looking up at you.’
She tilted her head to one side. ‘Men – always exaggerating the size of something.’
‘Seriously, Lisa. I’m a lot shorter than I used to be.’
‘Well, your posture’s not exactly helping – stand up straight.’
He did as told and it helped a little, but not the four inches or so he needed to regain. What struck Dan more than anything was that he should have been devastated by the height loss but wasn’t. Almost as if he had always been that tall.
Lisa soon had him walking around like a toddler, which was progress, so Dan was pleased. She was right, of course. He was going to have to learn to walk all over again before he could even think about running. She finished up with a demonstration of the exercises he had to complete before her next visit, and left him with some literature and a sponge ball for hand exercises. Dan expected another lecture before she left about restarting his medication, but it didn’t happen. He respected her for that.
He reached for his pyjama jacket to get dressed again when he saw Brian lying on the other bed. Dan spoke first for a change.
‘Go on then. Say something disparaging about Lisa.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You’re the most judgemental person I know. There’s bound to be something about her you can’t resist telling the world.’
‘She seems like a nice person.’
‘Is that it? Nothing about her being too skinny or having a flat chest that makes her a lesbian in your book?’
Brian got off the bed. ‘You’re the one saying it, Dan. Maybe the book belongs to you?’
Dan changed the subject. ‘Anyway, you told me a brain injury means no more dreams, but I had the most vivid dream possible earlier.’
‘Yes, I know. Good, wasn’t it?’
‘What do you know about it?’
Brian walked over and mimicked rapping Dan on the head with his knuckles. ‘Dan, wake up. I’m in your head, remember? I not only know about it but produced, directed, and starred in it too! Well, co-starred.’
Dan sat on the edge of the bed and placed the jacket on his lap. ‘You made it happen?’
‘Of course. Well, we both did, but I told you I was here to help. What did you think of the snow actually being letters? Clever, eh?’
Dan recalled the sequence of events. ‘You clearly weren’t in it to help – why did you let us fall into the hole?’
Brian became confused. ‘Us?’
‘Yes, Lucy, Claire, Tony, me, and all the others.’
Brian returned to the other bed and sat down. ‘They were in the dream too? I didn’t see any of them – only you.’ He appeared to ponder the significance. ‘Interesting,’ he finally said.
That’s all I need, Dan thought, my hallucination turning into my doctor.
Brian stood up again. ‘I deliberately let you fall into the hole because I wanted you to understand how serious things are. What did you do after you crossed over the edge and went into it?’
Dan searched his pyjama top. ‘I made sure I still had hold of Lucy.’
‘Before that. What stopped you from falling?’
Dan found a sleeve, put a hand in and pulled it up to his shoulder. ‘Grabbing the edge, of course.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Er, we stopped falling – remember?’
Brian approached him. ‘What did you try to do then?’
‘Pull us all out, of course.’
‘And why couldn’t you?’
‘Because I was trying to pull everyone else up too?’
‘No, the weight of all those people was academic – there was another reason you couldn’t pull them out. Think.’
Dan reached around his back and flailed for the right sleeve. He stopped. ‘The edge of the hole kept crumbling away.’
Brian remained silent.
‘Anyway, it was the doc who first mentioned holes – not you.’ Dan went back to finding the sleeve.
Brian leaned towards him. ‘What happens to holes when their edges start to crumble?’
Dan let the jacket hang from his shoulder. It had dropped to hi
s wrist when he realised where Brian was going with the conversation. ‘They get bigger.’ Dan grabbed the sleeve and pulled it back up again. ‘Anyway, that’s clearly not happening to me. My memory’s getting better all the time.’
Brian looked him in the eye. ‘Is it? Are you sure? How do you know you don’t forget something again the second you’ve remembered it?’
‘Well, mister smarty pants, Doctor Adams asks the same questions every time he sees me, and every time I give him the same answers – what I know I tell him, and what I don’t – I don’t.’
Brian stood back and folded his arms. ‘Okay – what’s your name?’
Dan let go of the sleeve again. ‘Give it a rest, Brian. It’s bad enough the doc sounding like a broken record.’
‘I’m trying to prove to you that just because you think your memory is improving, doesn’t mean it actually is. Everyone’s already admitted lying to you – how do you know you’re not lying to yourself?’
Dan sighed. ‘Go on then.’
Brian went through Adams’ usual questions, which Dan answered just as before – all except one.
‘Who won the World Cup?’
Dan went quiet. He got off the bed. His pyjama jacket fell to the floor. He walked over to the sink and stared into the mirror above it. The question had made him remember something, but it wasn’t the answer.
‘Tony showed me a film of the final game this morning. We didn’t watch it all the way through, because as soon as it started, I realised I’d seen it before and knew what the result was going to be.’ He dropped his head. ‘But not now.’ He walked back to the bed and lay down on it. ‘You told me yesterday I had to find a back road while I still could. Now I know what you meant.’
Brian moved closer to him. ‘Dan, it’s pretty clear. Whatever the reason we decided to stop taking the red pill, our memory is still deteriorating. If we can’t retain something remembered just a few hours before, how long do you think it’s going to be before memories of Lucy or Claire start going the same way?’ He noticeably steeled himself before adding: ‘How long before we forget them completely? We have to resume taking it – there is no alternative.’
Dan was about to agree but then sat up. ‘Repeat all the questions.’
