The Things We Learn When We're Dead

by Charlie Laidlaw

  ‘Past tense, I regret, Lorna, although I shouldn’t really say so. Everything is in the past tense now.’ He too was biting his lip, perhaps having said too much. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘I’d better go and find Irene. She’s been ...’

  ‘Designated, I know,’ sighed Lorna, burying her face in her pillow and breathing in its alpine freshness. In my short lifespan, she thought, I have been in hospital as a patient three times. I have had stitches put in a gashed leg (horse-riding accident), an appendectomy ... and now, this. I have also visited friends and relatives in hospital; I have seen and heard the mundane rituals of hospital life. Surely a neurological ward wouldn’t be that different? OK, she hadn’t been awake very long, but why no specialist in a white coat to examine her? Why no flowers on her bedside table? For God’s sake, not even a window! She frowned into her pillow. All hospitals had windows. It was therapeutic, even if the view and the weather outside was dismal, which it usually was. She sensed, rather than heard, the male nurse leave and waited for the hiss of enclosure.

  And waited.

  Lorna sat up, pushing hair back from her eyes. The door to her room had been left tantalisingly open. In his haste to find Irene, Sean had forgotten to close it. She swung her feet to the floor and took a deep breath. To escape or not to escape, that was her question. Well, not properly escape, there wouldn’t be much sense in that – and she had no outdoor clothes to wear – but if she couldn’t get straight answers to straight questions, she’d find someone who would help. In the process, she’d also discover where she was. She supposed Edinburgh but, who knows, maybe she’d been transferred to some highly specialised unit. Perhaps her injuries had been so unusual or complex that she’d been moved to another city. That might explain the absence of flowers or visiting loved ones. The quality of the food, judging by her one meal, suggested a private hospital. Hospital or facility. He’d also said past tense. Everything in the past tense. She looked at the open door and listened, heard nothing. No clattering trolleys, no chatter, no squeak of feet on lino; just the faintest hum from the overhead ventilation system.

  It was time, she concluded, to get some answers.

  She peered cautiously round the door, like a kitten using a cat-flap for the first time, anxious to avoid discovery before making her own discoveries. She wrinkled her nose, smelling meadow flowers. To her left, the dimly lit passageway stretched for perhaps fifty yards. Like her room, it was white-painted and featureless. She was able to stand at its centre and touch both walls with her hands. As she did so, her bedroom door hissed shut.

  Lorna controlled her breathing and looked hard at the spot that she’d inadvertently touched. Like the rest of the corridor, the wall on which her fingers rested seemed utterly blank. She touched the spot again and her door opened. Bending her face close to her trembling fingers, she could just discern a small bluish circle against the white wall. She tapped the circle again and her door sighed shut.

  To her right, the corridor extended for some twenty yards then inclined upwards. This was the direction that Lorna immediately took, reasoning that, without windows in her room or the corridor, she must be at basement level. Having experienced no natural light for ... well, long enough, she craved sunlight. She wanted nothing more than to feel moving air, even the wet sting of rain. She’d been knocked down in early summer; for all she knew, it might now be autumn or winter ... or, God forbid, summer again. A year torn from her life’s book and ripped up. She shuddered, suddenly chilled, although the corridor, like her room, was comfortably heated. She padded soundlessly on the warm floor, fervently hoping that nobody would chance the other way. Irene, perhaps, designated to look after her, now hurrying to her bedside. Halfway towards the incline, she stopped and listened. Once more, only a faint and reassuring hum from the ceiling air-conditioning. No hospital bustle; more importantly, no self-important 007-lookalike in hot pursuit. It took her only a handful of seconds to reach the bottom of the incline and look up. Once again, a featureless rising corridor leading to the next level. Pressing her back to one wall, Lorna slowly inched up the incline, listening intently. She stopped again as she broached the next level, chest hammering, and almost had to laugh. Here she was, a grown woman, creeping around a hospital like a mad person.

  She emerged from the inclined corridor into a large rectangular room. Like everywhere else, it was dimly lit from above with the same flat and featureless walls. Ahead, another thin corridor, like the one below, stretched away into the distance. Then she became aware of a light glimmering on the floor; it pulsed alternately red and green. A thin light, a strip of changing colour. Lorna stared at it for a few moments; the first primary colours she had seen in this place of medicinal white. Then she realised the light was coming from outside. On the left side of the rectangular room was a floor to ceiling window.

  She edged closer. At first all she could see were stars. That would explain the lack of hospital activity, she thought, reassured. It was the middle of the night and only she was out and about, creeping around like a deranged person. Then she reached the glass; she pressed her face against it, seeing only her reflection. Gradually, her eyes focussed on what was beyond.

  At a distance of about a hundred metres was a huge white structure. It stretched far to her left and right, almost as far as she could see, like an impossibly large ocean liner, but without recognisable ship’s superstructure. The sides of its hull were gently rounded, although other smaller structures protruded, seemingly at random. On top of its upper deck were arrays of backward-facing communication dishes and, on extended antennae, red and green lights that winked in sequence down its great length. Surrounded by stars, the hull of the structure was bathed in white light; in places, its creamy exterior was blank, elsewhere, other lights glowed from inside. One hand to her forehead, Lorna counted thirty storeys. She didn’t know what to think. Her mind had fused: credulity and disbelief melded together.

  She put her hand to her mouth.

  Suddenly she wanted Irene or James Bond to find her. Facing the impossibility of what lay beyond, she didn’t want to be alone.

  An intricate latticework joined the structure she was in to the one beyond the glass; a bridgework of diamond lights from one to the other. Squinting, it looked as if the two structures were connected with ice or crystal walkways; rainbows of lights at different deck levels. And all around, another latticework of stars and flaming suns that reflected off the gleaming hull and bridgework and made the whole structure glow with celestial fire.

  On the side of the structure, painted in lustrous gold letters twenty storeys high, were three letters.

  HVN

  It was the last thing that Lorna saw as she collapsed to the floor, her assailed mind finally attaining critical overload and switching itself off.

  Heaven

  She woke to find herself in a book-lined room, a blazing log fire throwing out heat and shadows. She was in an easy chair, with plump cushions supporting her back, her feet propped on a circular wooden coffee table. She was still in her nightgown, she noticed, warily looking around the room. The room was crammed with an assortment of furniture. Bookcases jostled against chests of drawers, an oak sideboard entirely covered with empty flower vases had been pushed against a cupboard door. Sepia prints of a city she didn’t recognise covered what wall space wasn’t devoted to books. The room had a high ceiling from which hung a simple chandelier and two large windows across which were drawn red velvet curtains. It was warm and cosy and on the coffee table beside her bare feet was a bottle of malt whisky, a bottle of white wine, and two crystal glasses.

  As she blinked her eyes open, a Kate Winslet lookalike appeared suddenly and soundlessly at her side, throwing her a quick smile and holding out a manicured hand.

  ‘I’m Irene,’ she said. Her handshake was cool and firm. ‘I thought you might need a drink,’ she continued and, without waiting for an answer, poured liquid into two glasses. Wine for Lorna, whisky for herself.

  Lorna r
emoved her feet from the table and placed them on the carpeted floor. She no longer knew where the boundaries of reality lay. She existed, that much was clear from the warmth on her face and the taste of wine in her mouth, raised there by a shaking hand, but how much else was in her imagination? The near-empty hospital bedroom, the windowless corridor without any obvious doors, a giant white superstructure bathed in starlight? Lorna sipped from her glass and laid it shakily on the table.

  Irene was dressed in a knee-length black skirt with matching blouse, a silver belt at her waist. ‘You must have a lot of questions,’ she remarked, fetching cigarettes, a lighter, and an ashtray from the mantelpiece, setting them down on the table, and taking a seat in an armchair opposite. Irene regarded Lorna evenly. The log fire hissed, throwing shadows across her face.

  Lorna cleared her throat. ‘Are you the person designated to answer them?’ She tried, and failed, to smile.

  Irene nodded, lighting her cigarette. Unlike Kate Winslet, Irene exuded authority. Where Kate Winslet’s mouth was framed in a smile, Irene seemed slightly disdainful. They were identical, or so it seemed to Lorna, but quite different.

  ‘Then what the hell is going on?’ she asked. ‘For a start, what is this place?’

  Irene looked at her through smoke. ‘Which question would you like me to answer first?’

  ‘Frankly, I don’t much care,’ said Lorna. ‘I just want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’

  ‘You really were a lawyer, weren’t you?’

  ‘Am a lawyer. Or shortly to be a lawyer. Present tense! I want some answers, Irene.’

  Irene, puffing on her cigarette, inclined her head and nodded again. ‘You must first understand that you are among friends. You might not believe it, not immediately, but it’s true. Friends, Lorna, who mean you no harm. All of us want the very best for you and to do everything we can to make you welcome.’ Abruptly, Irene stubbed out her cigarette. Her mouth was curled down; her sharp eyes flashed. ‘But first you must come to terms with what’s happened.’

  ‘I have come to terms with what’s happened. I had an accident, I’ve been in a coma, and now I find I’m in a lunatic asylum.’ Lorna put a hand to her mouth. ‘Christ, this isn’t some kind of mental home, is it?’

  ‘It does sometimes resemble one, but no, it isn’t. I’m only sorry that your arrival has caused you so much distress.’

  ‘Then what has happened to me?’

  Irene picked up her glass and tapped the rim with a manicured hand. ‘OK, here goes. The difficult bit, Lorna.’ She exhaled slowly then laid her glass on the table. ‘Sadly, your injuries were quite severe. You suffered internal damage, a fractured spine, and extensive trauma to your skull. The car, I regret, was travelling quite fast. Legally, I assure you, but quickly. Frankly, I’m rather surprised you didn’t hear it.’

  Lorna listened, as if to someone else’s life. She should have heard the car, of course; looked right and left and right again. Irene’s unblinking eyes were appraising; she was biting her lip. Lorna sensed a threshold, a boundary about to be crossed.

  ‘The medics on the scene did what they could, which wasn’t much, and you were then taken by ambulance to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. They also did everything possible, Lorna, that’s the main thing. Everything that could have been done, was done. But your injuries were too extensive, that’s the truth of it. You didn’t suffer. You never regained consciousness.’

  Lorna had a panicky desire to laugh. Here she was in a nightdress in a book-lined room drinking white wine. While it didn’t quite add up to normality, equally it wasn’t the alternative that Irene seemed to be suggesting. She drank the contents of her glass and felt tears prickle her eyes.

  ‘That means I’m dead,’ said Lorna flatly, feeling warmth from the fire and finding everything preposterous. At the same time, a gulf was opening. Through a chink in the curtains, she could see blazing starlight and the white outline of the gleaming hull.

  Irene now adopted a businesslike-tone, the bringer of bad news having run out of evasions. Her voice wasn’t Kate Winslet’s either. Irene had a voice that demanded compliance. ‘There’s actually no easy way of saying this. You died in hospital from your injuries and you are now, I’m afraid, dead and gone. Oh, God, sweetie, I’m so sorry.’

  Lorna had been staring at Irene open-mouthed. She really was in a lunatic asylum, except she was the only sane one. This can’t be happening, she thought. Maybe I’ll wake up any moment. Maybe it’s April Fool’s Day. ‘This is a joke, right?’

  But Irene wasn’t smiling. She had picked up her glass again, tapping its rim with one finger. ‘Then where do you think you are?’ she asked eventually and gestured round the room. ‘Doesn’t exactly look like a hospital, does it?’

  ‘Irene, you’re scaring me,’ said Lorna. But at the back of her mind she also had to concede that Irene’s words, however absurd, did hold some sense. When all avenues of logic had expired, curiously even the ridiculous now seemed possible.

  * * *

  Lorna had not inherited her mother’s steadfast faith. Her belief in God and life eternal was tempered with doubt. As a small child, she had accepted the wisdoms of her mother without question, particularly since God could be distinctly homicidal at times. She didn’t want locusts or plagues of frogs, thank you very much. If the price of escaping his wrath was simply to believe in him, then the young Lorna was happy to oblige. But as the years passed and her visits to church became less frequent, she came to realise that, in matters of faith, she was neither an agnostic nor an unbeliever. She no longer believed in the God of the Bible: its ancient stories held no resonance for her when people were dying of hunger in Africa and God didn’t seem to care very much. Ever since that Star Wars video, she’d believed in the nothingness of the universe; a God of the mere Earth seemed meagre set against a million billion galaxies. Growing up, she had been caught between the unquestioning devotions of her mother and the disinterest of her father. Church or golf. While neither appealed to Lorna very much, her parents’ choices offered her options: she chose neither to believe nor disbelieve, and instead found a temporary home in radical politics. If God wants me to see things otherwise then, she thought, he knows where I live.

  ‘I’m sorry to have scared you,’ Irene was saying. ‘But it’s not easy telling people that they’re dead. Not something anyone wants to hear, is it? And for some reason it’s usually me that has to say it. Not that I’m complaining, of course. Not easy for the person being told, either. Anyway,’ Irene continued, after a small pause to refill their glasses. ‘I have absolutely seen it all. Tears, tantrums, throwing stuff.’ She looked at Lorna over the rim of her glass. ‘Do you want to throw something? Feel free if you do.’

  ‘But I can’t be dead,’ said Lorna, although there was some doubt in her mind. Her clear memory of the accident suggested that her injuries had been serious, and the bizarre surroundings in which she had woken up seemed to indicate changed circumstances. She held out one hand for Irene’s inspection, seeing each vein and artery. Then she was angry; angry at Irene, and at the joke being played on her. Now she did want to throw something. Abruptly she stood up. ‘I’m not dead,’ she declared loudly. ‘How the hell can I be dead?’

  It was something in Irene’s eyes that stilled her. They were the eyes of someone who had seen it all, eyes that could see over horizons.

  ‘But it does make a curious kind of sense, doesn’t it?’ Irene said softly.

  Lorna sat down, her anger melding into a kind of acceptance. But in the middle of the mind-numbing reality in which she now found herself Lorna felt only that she was alive. The fire crackled and shadows chased across the wood-panelled walls. ‘But I don’t feel dead,’ offered Lorna.

  ‘And what does being dead feel like? Actually, sweetie, don’t bother to answer that. Rhetorical question. Maybe,’ she leaned across the table, ‘it feels a lot like this?’ She paused to light another cigarette and sat back in her chair, neatly crossing her legs.
‘Your mother and father scattered your ashes on North Berwick Law.’ Irene’s voice was precise and clipped; it didn’t hold sentiment. ‘You used to go there as a child, remember? You used to think it was Mount Everest.’ Lorna did remember, wondering how Irene knew. Another birthday, another picnic, this time on the top of the world, the small town laid out towards the sea. On its conical peak, a whale’s jaw. On the water, white waves across the Firth to Fife. From the peak of the Law you could see the whole world – and eat a ham sandwich at the same time. Her world. At the age of six, her only world: a panorama of houses, water, and fields. Everything she knew could be seen from the volcanic tip of the Law. She tried to imagine the scene: a scattering of dust to mark the end of everything, her mother with a tissue to her nose, her father not quite knowing what to do with his hands. A priest, almost certainly, reading a prayer and sounding hopeful for her soul’s progress to a better place. Yes, it was where she would have chosen to be scattered. A haunting place where others could remember her, her child’s world painted at their feet.

  ‘I know it’s difficult, Lorna, but try not to worry about those you’ve left behind,’ Irene was saying. ‘They’re far, far away and there’s nothing you can do for them. You’re in a different place now.’

  Lorna believed it. ‘Where am I?’ she asked. It was the question she had dreaded asking, but she now knew what Irene’s answer was going to be. She’d seen the giant hull of the other structure and read the three gold letters on its flank.

  ‘You’re in Heaven, sweetie,’ said Irene.

  * * *

  But it felt more like life than death, although she’d never really given it much thought. Death had always seemed the ultimate full stop and, if an afterlife existed, it would be a place beyond understanding; a spirit domain of ascended souls, where nothing would resemble the mortal world. Instead, everything here seemed to point to a continued mortality. She was still breathing, eating, thinking. She had ascended intact to a place that, while odd, was filled with the familiar.