by B P Walter
The woman talking has noticed I’m awake. I look up at them, not saying anything. Then they both smile. They’re in nurses’ uniforms and one of them has a clipboard in her hand. She’s much older than me, probably in her fifties, whereas the other barely looks twenty-five.
‘Oh, hello dear,’ the older one says. ‘Lovely of you to join us.’ Then she turns to the younger nurse. ‘Go and get the doctor, love.’
She moves around the other side of the bed so she’s closer to me. ‘Can I get you some water?’
I nod, and try to pull myself up, but one of my arms is in a cast and the other feels weak and wobbly.
‘Stay still, dear,’ the nurse says, and holds the cup to my lips. ‘Small sips. There we go. Danielle will be back with the doctor very soon.’
Sure enough, the young nurse is approaching my bed, accompanied by a tall, thin woman with dreadlocks and bright pink glasses. She beams at me and says in a warm, cheerful voice, ‘So glad to see you awake, Ms Byrne. Do you mind if I call you Caroline?’
I try to smile in response but feel some sore skin stretch across my lip, and abandon the attempt. ‘Caroline’s fine,’ I say.
‘Good. Now, it’s important we just go over a few things first, just to check how you’re doing. My name is Dr Newton and you’re at Southend University Hospital. Do you know why you’re here?’
I try to think and a sound flashes through my head, as if I’m hearing it again. A loud smash, then a screech, then another crash. ‘A car accident,’ I say hoarsely. Dr Newton nods.
‘That’s right. Do you remember where it was and what you’d been doing up until the moment of the crash?’
I try to think back, but find it more difficult than I expect. I have some images, some scraps of information, but it’s as if they’re flickering just out of reach, like a movie being shown too far away. ‘There was rain. Lots of rain. I was driving down a road. I’m not sure why… why I was there.’
Dr Newton nods and then writes something down. ‘OK, Caroline. Things may feel a bit confusing to start with. That’s perfectly normal.’
I nod, then wince at the pain.
‘Try to remain as still as you can for now. Can I just ask you some questions that may seem a bit random, but I just need to cross them off my list, OK? Can you tell me who the current British Prime Minister is?’
The name arrives immediately and Dr Newton nods.
‘And what month we’re currently in. I can assure you that you’ve only been asleep for two days and we’re in the same month we were in before the crash.’
I have to think for a moment, then the answer comes to me. ‘It’s June.’
‘Good good. Not that we’d know it, from all the storms.’
Dr Newton seems satisfied and comes over to examine my eyes and does some checks with a light, like an optician.
‘What’s the last thing you remember before the crash?’ she says. I decide I like her voice. It’s the most comforting thing I have right now and I don’t want her to go away, but I’m struggling to find much to say.
‘I don’t know. It’s all a bit hazy. Very hazy. I just remember rain. And the road being wet. But I’m not sure where I was. Why have I been brought to Southend Hospital? I live in Kent.’
Dr Newton bites her lip a little, then looks down at her clipboard. ‘You don’t remember coming to Southend?’
Anxiety starts to course through me.
‘No, I don’t…’ I try to control my voice, but it comes out in a cry. ‘Why am I here?’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Mother
May. Three months after the attack.
I am told to relax, to try not to worry about my memory and that there will be an MRI and various other tests booked to check on my brain function. But the words ‘perfectly normal’ keep on being said, over and over, as if that makes the whole thing any less frightening. Dr Newton is called away before long to assist with an emergency situation happening on one of the beds down the ward and I am left with Danielle, the young nurse, who explains the meds I am on and the injuries to my arm, wrist, and back. ‘Dr Newton will be able to tell you more when she comes back, but I understand it’s nothing major. You’ll have some aches and pains but she said she’s confident you’ll heal.’
Of course this is comforting, but the physical damage done to my body hasn’t occurred to me until now as a thing I needed to worry about. I’m more worried about why I was in a crash in another county, away from my home and my family.
‘Your husband should be back soon. He just drove home to have a shower and change his clothes.’
I feel instantly better. ‘He’s coming? Was he with me? In the crash? Is he OK?’
Danielle makes calming motions. ‘Don’t worry, he’s fine, he wasn’t with you. You were in the car alone. His number was in your emergency contacts on your iPhone.’
Thank God I’d bothered filling out those details. Alec had pestered me about it for weeks before I finally caved. I realise that I’m remembering things now. The conversation I had with Alec about the phone, back in the autumn, when I upgraded to the new model. We were in Bluewater shopping centre and had stopped to have a muffin in the Starbucks there and he kept saying that one day, if I was in an accident, it would be useful to the emergency services if they could have all my details at hand. It could save them hours trying to track down family or discover if I was on any medication that may conflict with whatever treatment they needed to give me.
‘I think I need to go back to sleep for a bit,’ I say to the nurse, feeling my eyes starting to close of their own accord.
She smiles. ‘That’s all fine. You need your rest and just listen to your body. The morphine will make you feel drowsy for a bit, but we’ll go through your recovery steps once you’re feeling more awake.’
I nod, even though I’m only vaguely aware of what she’s just said. Sleep carries me off and I go willingly.
It feels like I’m spinning down a long, dark tunnel that’s steadily growing lighter and lighter. Then the light is blinding and I wake up and someone is staring at me.
‘Hi, darling.’
A man’s voice. Alec’s voice.
‘It’s you,’ I say, then start crying. I’m not sure why, I’m just so pleased to see him.
‘It’s me. I’ve been so worried about you. When they said you’d woken up… God, I can’t tell you how relieved I was.’
I gesture to the water with my one working hand and he gets up hurriedly, as if he should have thought about it himself, and helps me take some sips.
‘Why am I here?’ I say. It’s the thing I most want to know above anything else. I don’t care about fractures or the degree of bruising or any of the other things I’m sure they’re clamouring to tell me. I just want to know what’s going on.
‘You’ve had a car accident.’
I tut. I’ve only been awake minutes and I’m already tutting at him. I try to stop myself feeling annoyed, but the happiness at seeing him is fast being replaced by an all-too-familiar feeling of irritation.
‘I know that. I mean, why am I in Southend?’
Alec looks pained and stares at me through his deep, sad eyes. ‘Well, I was rather hoping you could tell me that.’
I stare back at him, completely at a loss. ‘I didn’t tell you I was coming here? You didn’t know where I was?’
He shakes his head. ‘No. Well, to be completely honest, you told me you were in Australia.’
‘What?’ I’m completely baffled by this. ‘Why the hell would I go to Australia? On my own?’
Alec shrugs. ‘To see your mother? At least, that’s what I thought.’
‘And I didn’t want you to come with me?’
He looks awkward again. ‘We’ve been having a few issues. It’s not exactly a happy time. You going off to Australia alone would have been a bold step but it would have… made sense. If you wanted a bit of space.’
I rub my eyes with my hand. The tiredness is threatening to retu
rn, but I need to stay awake. I need to work out what strange hell I am in.
‘That’s a whole lot of space. Couples don’t need thousands of miles if they need a break.’
Alec’s rubbing his eyes now and I think he’s crying. ‘Caroline, I need to ask you something very important. It’s about your memory. Dr Newton says she’s aware of some amnesia and that it can happen in major accidents and they’ll be able to tell very soon what’s causing it, but I need to ask: how far back do you remember? Do you… do you remember what happened to Jessica?’
I stare at him, then down to his trembling knees. And then something clicks and I realise I know what he’s talking about. It’s all here in my head.
‘Jessica’s dead,’ I say, nodding a little. And he nods too. Then I start crying fully, and he does too and comes close to me and holds me as best he can and we just stay like that for what feels like ages.
‘I was worried… I don’t think I could bear it if I had to see you go through all that again…’ He withdraws from the embrace and gets a pack of tissues out of a rucksack by his feet. He shakes one free of its folds and hands it to me and I dab at my face. After blowing his nose, he straightens up and asks: ‘Do you remember how she died? And when?’
I nod, slowly. ‘Stratford,’ I whisper.
It’s strange, I think, how a place name can begin to take on a whole new meaning once an atrocity happens there or something that passes into the public consciousness. Like Columbine, or Amityville.
‘Yes,’ he says, nodding too, ‘Stratford.’
We sit in silence for a moment, then he says, ‘The day you left, or the night before, there was another terrorist attack. Do you remember that?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t think so. Where was it?’
‘There was a bus bombing in central London. ISIS claimed responsibility. It was in Piccadilly Circus – it killed twenty-three people. Both of us were very upset by it. It brought back memories, of course.’
I nod, understanding what he means, but I have no memories of what he describes.
‘I knew it had affected you – I could see it. We watched the news together. We’d been arguing and you were already very unhappy – well, we always are – but something about seeing the new attacks on the news must have caused you to react in a fight-or-flight kind of way. I presume that’s why you just took off in the night?’
I go to rub my eyes with my right hand then wince as I feel the joints protest and I remember I can’t move it. ‘But I don’t understand why I said I was in Australia…’
He sighs. ‘Maybe it was just to get me to back off. To make sure I didn’t follow you. I thought about it, of course. I was even going to drive to the airport, but you made some threats and said you’d make a scene if I did, so I decided it would just be better to let you go. Let you have some space. I think… I think you may have started to hate me, recently. Or maybe before that. And I think I’m to blame…’
I see a few tears slip from his eyes and he dabs at them. I try to shift in my bed to face him properly, but I find my whole body feels limp and reluctant to respond. I’m still extremely groggy from the painkillers they’re pumping through me but I try to focus my gaze on Alec’s face.
‘I’m sorry.’
He smiles. A genuine smile. For a second, he’s the kind, beautiful man I married. Or thought I married. Before things started to fall apart. Before our daughter became a pawn in a warped game of his, forever punishing me for having a successful career while he floundered around in the shallows of his. Forever trying to make out I was a bad parent just to make himself feel less insecure. Forever suggesting, in subtle little ways, that it was my fault he cheated, my fault he felt the need to look elsewhere for intimacy, because I wasn’t up to the job. And then, amidst that already cluttered collection of issues, he suffered the worst thing a parent can suffer. And became the broken shell he is now – one that walks around shouting and crying and blaming the world for his troubles.
‘I can’t talk about this now,’ I mutter quietly, now trying to divert my gaze from his tears. ‘But I don’t… I can’t understand why I went to Southend.’
Alec shrugs. ‘Didn’t you go there as a kid? There’s a photo in that old album you found in the loft when we were moving out of the old house. Most of the pics were of you in Saudi, but a few were in England. I could have sworn I saw Southend pier in there. I’m fairly sure you said you had relatives of your father who lived down here.’
I nod. ‘Uncle Tom and Auntie Cathy. Both dead now. And I only came a couple of times. There were other places that meant more. Like Somerset; we went there at least three or four times when we visited England. It was my dad’s favourite place. Why didn’t I go there?’
Alec shrugs again. ‘I don’t know. But I’m sure you will soon. The doctors are fairly confident your memory will come back. It will happen in bits at first, apparently, but it’s very normal after a trauma like you’ve been through.’
I try to smile in response but I’m scared I’m going to cry again, so I close my eyes and eventually hear Alec tell me I should get some more rest. As if on command, I feel myself drift off. Sleep feels strange and surreal and as I fall deeper into its clutches, an image keeps flicking in and out of my brain.
A teenage boy, in the middle of a road. Standing there in the rain.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Boy
I didn’t cut for over a week after that woman walked in on me. I hadn’t even meant to then, but I’d got myself so worked up whilst standing under the cold water, I ended up hunting for the old razor Dad used to keep on top of the bathroom cabinet. It felt so good and so bad all at once and I couldn’t stop crying once I’d started. Taking the top layer of skin off, where it had begun to start healing at the sides, made my whole leg feel white hot with the pain. And as always, I thought about Jessica as I did it, and her face in my mind looked into my thoughts and she knew this was for her. I kept telling her over and over that this was for her.
I know deep down she wouldn’t want me to hurt myself. We talked about self-harming, as the teachers call it, quite a bit sometimes, usually when we were still chatting on the Circle app, but then not as much once I’d moved over to Michael’s Facebook account. We’d got to know each other by then. We’d covered a lot of the heavy stuff earlier on. She confessed that, on some nights, when she thought about things – her ‘demons’ – too much, she used to pinch her arm, really tightly. Sometimes she’d be all bruised in the morning and would have to wear long-sleeve tops. I told her I’d never properly tried. But I did confess other things. Like issues I have about sex. How I sometimes do it with random older women. And how I felt alive when doing it, then awful and confused afterwards. She told me not to worry. How she had her own issues with sex and that it was only natural.
And then, on the day I told her all this, I typed out a reply that made my hands shake. I wanted to say it, to get it out, for it to not be the monster inside my head anymore. I said that sometimes, when I was trying to sleep at night, I would think about those times when Dad would come into my room. His hand over my mouth. Stop my cries getting too loud. I would think about those times and I’d imagine I wasn’t me any more, but I was someone else, standing some way away, watching myself as if from someone else’s eyes. And that would make the blood rush through me so strongly, I would eventually end up crying, or being sick, and in the morning it would feel like I’d been through it all again. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop the thoughts coming at night. And how I’d never be free of them. Her reply made me cry:
You are free. We’re both free. And we’ll make memories so good, they’ll cover up the bad.
I should have told her I loved her then. But I was too upset to think clearly. And I’ve regretted it every day since.
I don’t think I believe in heaven. Or the afterlife. Or ghosts. But Jessica, if I’m wrong about all that, I really hope you can in some way hear what I think and feel. Because I want you to know t
hat, if I could go back in time, I’d change everything. I’d turn up. I’d have been there. And I wouldn’t have hidden anything from you. I would tell you all my demons, the same way you told me yours. I would give you all of me. Every piece that’s left.
Chapter Thirty
The Mother
May. Three months after the attack.
Alec is starting to unnerve me. As the days go by and my memory starts to return, I remember all of my anger towards him, bit by bit, and each day I wake up feeling more conflicted. He’s being kind. Kinder than he’s been in a long while. And while I’m trying to find the right way to accept this from my hospital bed, I’m also having to reconcile it with the puzzle that’s slowly being built in my head – and how much I hate the picture that’s steadily emerging. A picture of both of us caught in deadlock, for years; a stalemate that’s truly stale.
I’ve had MRIs and blood tests and talks with physiotherapists. The upshot is that there’s nothing wrong with me, really. Aside from damaged muscles, strains, cuts and bruises, my body is in pretty good shape, including my brain. The memory loss is something they need to keep an eye on, they said, and advised me to keep a diary for the first few weeks in which I should write things as they come back. If things stop coming back, and there are still major gaps, this might be a bad sign and they’ll do more tests. I still have check-ups and outpatient appointments to go to, but for now, I’m free to go. And Alec’s got everything organised.
‘We’re going to your hotel, first, to get your things, then we’ll drive home,’ he says, as he walks me slowly out of the hospital, his hand on my good arm, guiding me as if I’m a child who might lose her way.