The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Thriller (Omnibus Edition containing both Book One and Book Two)

by Irvine, Ian C. P.

  “I don’t know. The travel agency is doing their best to get me anything they can out of New York to anywhere close to London. It’s a nightmare. Lots of flights aren’t going to London just now, and those that are, are all booked solid. I’m still short-listed for a couple this evening, but they’re a long shot. It looks like that the earliest I’m going to make it back is on Saturday morning. I will probably have to fly to Canada tomorrow, and get the night flight back from Toronto.”

  “Where can I reach you when I’ve spoken with the doctor tomorrow.”

  “Call me at the hotel, the moment you hear anything. Room 412. You promise me?”

  “Yes”, I reply, and he gives me the number for the hotel.

  A few moments later I hang up, and then go through the whole thing again with Mandy.

  .

  --------------------------

  .

  I am lying on my bed in the dark. It is late, probably about 2 am. I am wide awake staring at the changing shapes dancing on the walls, as the wind gently blows the trees outside and the yellow streetlights cast shadows on the wall that move with the wind.

  .

  I was doing so well. I came down to London, found a place to live, got a new job, made new friends, started a new life. Then suddenly, in an event that lasts less than a second, my world is blown apart. Not by the direct blast of the explosion on the underground, but by the aftereffects, the waves that ripple out from the centre and affect not just one person, but scores of people all around. It will be difficult to imagine just how many lives have been destroyed or turned upside down today by the senseless, cold-blooded actions of a mindless bunch of terrorists; how many families have been ripped apart, how many relationships have been ruined? How many tears are being shed tonight?

  I haven’t decided yet if I believe in fate or not. The jury inside my mind is still out on whether or not, when each of us is going to die is predetermined in the stars; perhaps it is, perhaps it is not. Maybe one day I will know what to believe, but for now, it occurs to me that if you do believe in fate, then in some bizarre way those who have lost their lives today may be the most fortunate of all those who are affected; it is an odd thought, perhaps a cruel one, but surely those who are left behind and who are forced to live with the loss of a loved one day after day, they are the worst affected of all the victims? Perhaps when you are gone, then quite simply, you are just gone, …and there is no more being, no more consciousness of any kind, and maybe those that have left this world today do not even know that they have left? For them, there is no loss, no mourning, no suffering, or at least none that they will ever perceive or feel. They are departed from this world, and it is those who are left behind that have to suffer.

  My thoughts of death turn to my father. Where is he now? Does he exist anywhere else, or is there just nothing? What happens when someone dies? Do we just cease to be, does everything we have been in life just vanish? …Like a bright burning flame that once extinguished, is never seen again?

  I think back to the week my sister and I had to go through our father’s possessions. There was so much that he left behind, so many things that were of so much value to him, but honestly speaking, probably of little value to anyone else. How could Hannah and I decide what we should throw away, and what we should keep? All those piles of photographs of relatives, long dead and long gone: who were these people? When did they live, and what sort of lives did they lead? Were they related to us, or just photographs that dad had kept all his life, because like us, one day he had had to wade through the remnants of someone else’s life and could not decide what to keep or throw away.

  In the end, we kept the photographs, and after a week of sorting, crying, and laughing at memories until then long forgotten, my father’s life had been filtered down to the contents of three large boxes, two of which were immediately relegated to the attic of Hannah’s flat in Edinburgh.

  For me, the saddest lasting thought about my father’s passing was the fact that at the end of it all, his entire life- his hopes, his dreams, his successes and his failures, his loves, his passions and a life time of work- all fitted into those three boxes. Three boxes that only had sentimental significance to his two children, and one day when we are both gone, the boxes in Hannah’s attic that contain his life will be thrown away by someone else who never knew him or anything about him. And in that moment, all traces of my father’s life will have been expunged, as if he had never ever been.

  In fact, I am already guilty of beginning the process, because I have forgotten what is in the boxes,… which means that even now most of my father’s life is no longer remembered.

  The expression “from dust to dust” wanders through my mind, followed by a depressing thought of my own: “Life: what is the bloody point?”

  I need to talk to someone. I pick up the phone, and I am mildly surprised when I watch my fingers dial the number of Gail, and not my sister.

  The phone rings a long time, but I am in no rush to go anywhere fast so I let it ring.

  “…Hullo?” a man’s voice, groggy and still half-asleep.

  “Luke? Is that Luke? I’m sorry, I didn’t want to wake you up…I wasn’t thinking…I’m a friend of Gail’s…is she there? Please…”

  “Who is it? Do you know what time it is?”

  “It’s Andrew...is it two o’clock? Sorry…Can I talk to Gail?”

  “I’ll see if she is awake. Are you okay or is this just an unsocial call?”

  “I’m not okay. That’s why I want to talk to Kate, …sorry, Gail…”

  “Kate? Are you drunk? Who is it that you want to talk to? Have you got the right number?”

  “Look Luke, please see if Gail is up. My world was just turned upside down today by one of the bombs on the underground, and right now, I need to talk about it with someone, and I think that in the whole of London, Gail is the only person who will understand. Please…”

  He hesitates for a second, and I can almost hear him weighing up what to say next.

  “I’ll get her for you,” is all he eventually replies.

  I hear the sound of soft footsteps, a knock on a door, some voices, and then I am talking to Gail.

  “Andrew? What’s up? Is something wrong?”

  “Yes,” I reply. “I just need to talk to a friend. And right now, you are the only one I have in London. I have to tell you something. Sal’s in hospital. She might be dying. She was one of the people blown up by the terrorist bombs this morning and the doctors don’t know whether she’ll live or die. And yesterday, …Gail, it was only for a second, just a stupid passing moment when I was angry, but yesterday I wished that maybe Sal was dead. And now…now Sal is lying in a hospital bed in a coma...Gail, do you think it was my fault? Has this all happened because I wished it yesterday? I know it sounds stupid, but I just can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Are you serious?” she says, almost in disbelief.

  “Never more, Gail. I’m totally serious. Tomorrow Sal may die, and it’s just because of something I wished.”

  “Don’t be stupid Andrew, that doesn’t make sense!”

  “And being blown up and killed in a random bomb explosion for no reason whatsoever does make sense?”

  “Andrew, no it doesn’t, but blaming yourself for it just because you had a bad thought is really silly. So stop it, now!”

  I don’t say anything in reply.

  “Now tell me about Sal…what happened? Start from the beginning, and calm down, okay?”

  It’s not okay, and I don’t know if it ever will be okay again, but I start from the beginning and bring Gail right up to date.

  “…Fine, so this is what you should do Andrew: tomorrow you call James and tell him you have to go to the hospital to see a close friend injured by the explosions. You don’t need to tell him any more than that. Then when you know what the results of the scans are we can talk again. Until then, honestly, there’s nothing more to do. At times like this all we can do is to take one step a
t a time.”

  “You’re right. I know you are. It’s just that …”

  “It’s fine, Andrew. I understand,” she replies, and the best part of it all is that, genuinely, I think she does.

  .

  .

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  .

  .

  I am sitting in a small room at the end of the ward where Sal is lying. The doctor in front of me is just studying the results from the scans that the hospital ran on Sal last night, and I am sitting patiently waiting to hear the news. I can hear a clock ticking on the wall above the doctors head, and looking up I follow the second hand as it moves around one full circle, noticing the momentary pause before the hand makes the jump from one second to another. There is a large calendar on the wall underneath the clock, with the name of a well known drugs company plastered on every page. On my right hand side, light is coming into the room through a small window, although the glass is dirty and looks like it has not been cleaned in a long, long time.

  “Thank you for coming back this morning, Mr Jardine,” the doctor finally says, looking up from the notes.

  “I understand from the nurse that her fiancé will not be back until Saturday?”

  “Yes,…he’s still stuck in America, but he wanted me to come in and sit with Sal and find out the results of the scans.”

  “Thank you. Sitting with her just now and providing as much external stimuli as you can is very important. I’m sure you want to hear the test results so I will just get straight on with it. We ran a number of tests on Miss Wentworth last night to see if we could establish if she had received any internal damage to her brain or neck, any bruising, swelling or haemorrhaging of any sort, and we looked at the activity within her brain as well, to see if we could detect any abnormalities. During our examinations we were able to detect signs of focal head injury and slight haemorrhaging and the brain activity that we monitored was in-keeping with such injuries. You asked yesterday if she was in a coma, and now we know that the answer is yes, probably due to the focal head injury she sustained. Unfortunately she is not responding to external stimuli as we would like her to, and she is continuing to remain in an almost sleep-like state, although we know from the brain activity that we have monitored that there is a lot more going on inside her head than would appear from her outward appearance. So what does this mean? Well, the bottom line is that there is room for concern, but there is also room for some optimism too. On the one hand, from experience we know that some people can remain in this form of coma for many weeks, and some may never regain consciousness at all. On the other hand, there is every reason to believe that she should wake up at any moment.”

  “If she wakes up,” I interrupt, “...will she remember everything and recover fully? You mentioned before the possibility of brain damage?”

  “That is a good question, and one which I’m afraid I can’t answer. In Sally’s case, we will only find out the answer when she finally wakes up. From experience, however, we think the likelihood of some form of brain damage which may result in loss of memory or some basic body function, is more likely to occur the longer the person remains in the coma. Basically, the sooner she wakes up, the better the prognosis is likely to be. ”

  “Doctor,” I ask, “you read these stories in the press about how when people are in a coma, someone is sitting by the person’s bed and they say something, or do something, and for no apparent reason the person in the coma suddenly wakes up? Does that mean we should make sure that someone is always sitting beside her and trying to wake her up by doing something or saying something? Will that help?”

  “No one really knows why some people suddenly come out of a coma, if there is a physical reason for it, or if it is a direct result of some form of physical or mental stimuli, but for lack of any concrete scientific proof, all we know is that sometimes people seem to be shocked into waking up by something that happens around them, or they are suddenly stimulated enough to open up their eyes, or move a hand, or say something. Andrew, the truth of the matter is that we simply we don’t yet know enough about the human brain to understand why these things happen.”

  “What do you mean …‘loss of basic body function’? What does that mean?” I ask, going back to something scary he said a moment ago.

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Let’s not dwell on all the negatives…”

  “I just want to know what we’re dealing with here…” I interject.

  “I understand…Fine, well, what I meant was that sometimes people find that the parts of the brain that deal with walking or talking or hearing are affected and they no longer function properly, or at all. Of course, you may have heard that there are cases of people who later regain the ability they lose …although we don’t know how. Perhaps this is due to the brain rewiring itself in some way…Like I said, the reality is that the human brain is still a mystery to us all. We know very little about it.”

  “So, what do we do now?” I ask.

  “We wait. It’s all we can do. In the meantime, it would be very beneficial to Sally if you could sit with her and talk to her as much as you can, …just as you suggested. If she has friends, perhaps you could try and arrange to get a rota of visits arranged between you, so that she always has someone sitting with her during the day?”

  I sit staring at the doctor, trying to take it all in.

  “So….”I start to say, feeling that I should say something else now, but not knowing what. Surely that can’t be it. “There must be more that we can do?” I ask, almost pleading. I feel so helpless.

  “I’m afraid there isn’t. For now, all we can do is to let nature take its course, and just hope that Sally is strong enough to come through this by herself.”

  .

  After thanking the doctor for his time, I am led back through to the bed where Sal is lying, still asleep, almost as if she has not moved a centimetre from last night. I notice though that someone has washed her hair, and she looks somehow more peaceful today than she did last night.

  Sitting down at the side of her bed, I look at her for a while, trying to make a decision as to how and what I am meant to feel towards her. The nurse brings me in a cup of hot tea, and I sip it slowly while staring at Sal’s broken and bruised face. So beautiful, even in sleep. Albeit, a deep, deep sleep.

  I don’t hate Sal. I don’t. I just hate what she has done. The human part of me is pushing me to forget everything, to focus only on the injured person in front of me. What cruel twist of fate has brought us both to this position now, with her lying there on that bed, with her lead accuser the one sitting beside her wondering whether or not to reach out and hold her hand? Is God trying to teach me some sort of lesson? If so, then what?

  In the end the humanitarian side of me wins over; that and the realisation that Guy is my best friend, and that he loves this woman. For his sake, I find in myself the reason to put my confused feelings about Sally on hold, to file them away for another day, and to allow myself to take her hand in mine and to stroke it slowly while speaking to her as gently as I can.

  So, what do we talk about? I think for a second, how I would feel if I was in a coma unable to open my eyes, but maybe able to hear or feel the outside world. What would I want to know?

  “Sal. This is Andrew, you know,…Guy’s friend? Can you remember me or Guy? Can you remember Guy, your fiancé? Can you remember how he proposed to you last Saturday? He loves you Sal. He truly does…”

  My voice quavers, and I think of the Friday night and what I saw Sal doing with another man. Perhaps it’s not good to talk about Guy and her.

  “Sal, do you know where you are? Do you know what has happened to you?” I ask, wondering whether or not I should be telling her this. “You were in an explosion. A bomb went off on the underground train. You broke an arm when you fell over, but apart from that you are fine…Can you hear me? If you can, just squeeze my hand. Sal, you’re alright, but you just need to wake up. Leave the dream behind Sal, wake up,
okay? Wake up!”

  .

  .

  Except she doesn’t wake up. Not now, or anytime in the next five hours, and she is still asleep when the nurse insists that I should go home and get something to eat. Apart for stepping outside to call Guy for five minutes I have not left her bedside all day.

  As I pull the curtain aside and step outside into the rest of the ward, I notice that the bed opposite, which was occupied this morning by another victim of the blast is now empty, the curtain drawn back to the wall, with the bed stripped and bare.

  I look briefly at the nurse and glance towards the empty bed. She slowly shakes her head and closes her eyes and her meaning is only too clear.

  .

  When I emerge into the world outside I look up at the sun still quite high in the early evening sky, and I think to myself how much a world of contrast we live in. Inside, behind me, people are dying, fighting for their lives, but here outside it is Friday night, a beautiful evening still ahead. I feel lost, alone, slightly desperate. I need to talk to someone, I need human contact. I desperately need a hug. I consider calling Hannah for a while, but then remember that she will be at her yoga classes just now. My next thought catches me by surprise, and I fight with the urge to call Kate. It’s the first time I have thought about calling her since I moved to London. I know she would talk to me if I called her, but what’s the point? My thoughts of Kate do nothing but add to the despair that has engulfed me. Then it dawns on me, why not call Gail?

  “Hey, it’s Andrew isn’t it? Listen, I’m sorry about last night. I was still half-asleep when you called.” Luke answers, recognising my voice this time.

  “No problem. Anyway, how are you?” I ask, politely, not really bothered about the answer.

  “I’m okay. I’m back together with Paul. We talked. Made up. He’s here now… It’s good…”

  “Excellent,” I say, thinking the complete opposite. He must be mad. “Is Gail in?”