The Things We Learn When We're Dead Page 2
Then, slowly, she seemed to rise upwards, like a diver leaving the bottom of the ocean, lifting slowly towards. As she drew closer to the light, she also became aware of her breathing, of blinking, of wriggling her nose. She couldn’t yet make out where she was, but could see shapes of people bending over her. She supposed that they were doctors or nurses, checking her pulse, changing drips, as she rose upwards towards the light, and finally awoke in an unfamiliar bed in a white room. One minute, she’d been asleep; the next, awake, blinking rapidly like a nocturnal animal. It took her some minutes to readjust to the light. She lay and blinked, giddy with relief. Above her head was a ventilation grille and she was wearing, as far as she could tell, a white nightgown. She felt drained of all energy. She slowly moved her head, looking around. I’m in a high-dependency ward, she concluded, with my own room. But she was puzzled by the lack of any visible medical apparatus. No oxygen tubes or feeding drips; no cabinets with painted crosses; not even a pedal-bin in which to deposit swabs or old bandages; just her bed, a bedside table, and on the far wall, tantalisingly, a full-length mirror.
For the next few hours or days, she kept her arms under the bedclothes; lifting them out would have been too much of an effort. In any case, they didn’t feel like her arms. She tried to move them, to move just a finger, but they stubbornly disobeyed her. In between the relief of wakefulness, she also experienced waves of panic, of wondering if this was all she had left, but mostly she slept and it was when she slept that she seemed to see the shadowy figures bending over her.
After a while she was able to wiggle her fingers and toes, small triumphs that were exhausting yet wonderful. Through it all, she thought constantly about her accident, cursing her stupidity; feeling the onrush of air and the sound of a car skidding. Then stars spinning and falling in her eyes; a blue light with paramedics rushing. She’d tried to speak to them but, then as now, it was too much effort. She supposed her random memories and lassitude was something to do with the healing process; her mind making sense of physical assault, her brain relearning how to order her limbs to move.
Then, hours or days later, she extracted her right arm from under her blankets and lay looking down its length to her hand. One by one she commanded her fingers to move; reluctantly they obeyed. Buoyed by this small success, she did the same with her left hand. Once more, her fingers responded.
She frowned, sensing dislocation. Everything looked normal, but nothing felt right. She supposed it was the accident; being broken against a car bonnet and then bounced on the road: a porcelain vase painfully damaged and stuck back together again. Probably her own bloody fault, she told herself, raising her right hand from the bed and marvelling at how her brain could once more command such respect from her limbs.
Afterwards, she slept without dreams. She could have slept for ten minutes or ten hours; without a watch she had no way of telling since her room had no exterior window. When she woke, she felt strong enough to conduct an inch-by-inch inspection of her body. She had feared lost limbs, broken bones encased in plaster. At the very least, lacerations and bruising. Tentatively she eased down her blankets and withdrew her legs. She could now see that she was indeed wearing a white nightgown that stretched to her toes, all ten of which looked remarkably intact. Tugging up the nightgown she saw only the pink flesh of two undamaged legs.
It took only a few more minutes to ascertain that, as far as she could tell, there wasn’t a mark on her. Elated, she slowly swung her legs off the bed and kneaded her toes against the warm flooring. The room seemed to be heated from below. The only sound was a distant hum. Breathing deeply, she tried to stand, using the metal bed-head for support. Her first attempt wasn’t successful; her legs buckled and she fell back on the mattress. She took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and tried again. This second attempt fared better; she gained the vertical for a few seconds before her legs again decided that enough was enough. She sat on the side of her bed, willing strength into her thighs and knees.
This time, success, and a dizzying sense of achievement. She stood by her bed, leaning against the white wall, feeling new strength course through her. She seemed to be reclaiming her right to her own body’s functions. Becoming whole again. On the far side of the small room was the full-length mirror and she slowly edged along the wall towards it, feeling more confident with each hesitant step. At the mirror, she halted; once more kneading the floor with her toes. Then she pushed herself clear from the supporting wall and stood upright on her own two feet. Once more, a rush of elation, a small Everest conquered and new strength flooding into her limbs. Almost afraid, she turned to the mirror.
She didn’t know what to expect, what horrors might have befallen her face. Instead, her reflection was much as she remembered: strawberry auburn shoulder-length hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones. Her mouth, a little too wide for her liking, was puckered with the effort of standing. Freckles dappled her cheeks. She ran her tongue round her mouth; her teeth all seemed OK. Then she tugged her nightgown from her shoulders and let it fall with a faint rustle to the floor. Underneath, she was naked. Tall and angular, small-breasted, with long legs. She turned in a full circle, looking at her back over her shoulder.
It wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. She was unblemished. Not even the faintest of bruises.
She frowned, then ran a hand through her hair, and stared dumbly at her reflection, elated but disquieted. How could she be so untouched? The only explanation was that she must have been in a coma for months. But how many? Or, God forbid, years. Having reached this conclusion, she didn’t now know what to feel, still staring at herself in the mirror and wondering how many days, weeks, or months had been taken from her. But at least I’m OK, she kept telling herself over and over, like a mantra.
She imagined her parents at her bedside. Her mother, hopelessly emotional, would have been in tears at each visit but trying to put a brave face on things. In contrast, her father would have hovered at the end of the bed, not entirely sure what to do; being in hospitals had always made him uneasy. She imagined him, his hands bunched, puffing out his florid cheeks. Not unloving, but incapable of dealing with difficult situations. Her friends would also have come. Suzie, her best friend since ... well ... forever, with whom she shared all her secrets; other friends too, perhaps colleagues from the HappyMart where she worked to make ends meet, all holding her hands and talking to her. Isn’t that what you do to coma victims? Play them favourite pieces of music? Play them tapes of TV shows? Tell them what’s going on in the world? Read them newspaper stories? So that, in time, the conscious makes contact with the subconscious, and all the broken bits in your head are put back together.
‘Oh Lord, I’m so sorry.’
Lorna turned sharply from the mirror to see an old man in a cream tracksuit standing in her doorway. Her room, she now saw, had a pneumatic sliding door that opened and closed with only a faint hiss.
The man had long white hair tied back loosely in a ponytail and an impressive white beard. His piercing blue eyes were now gallantly turned upwards to the ceiling as Lorna scrambled for her discarded nightgown and clutched it in front of her.
The old man looked faintly embarrassed. ‘I should have knocked first,’ he shrugged.
‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded Lorna, surprised by the strength of her newfound voice. ‘Are you a doctor?’
The old man didn’t look much like a doctor; for a start, he seemed well beyond pensionable age. Also, not many doctors she knew of wore strings of brightly coloured beads around their neck and open-toed sandals.
‘Not exactly,’ he conceded. ‘Look, perhaps I should come back another time.’ He nodded for a moment, weighing up this course of action. ‘Yes, that’s probably the best idea,’ he said, suddenly offering her a warm smile which cracked open deep lines on his face. ‘I sincerely apologise once again, young Lorna.’
‘But who are you?’ Lorna, now fully awake, wanted some answers – from anybody, even old men in tracksuits.
&nbs
p; ‘For now, that can wait,’ he replied. ‘But I’m glad you obviously feel so much better. It takes time, you know,’ he added with a small wink of one blue eye. ‘Anyway, after all this time, you must be hungry. I’ll make sure that some food is brought to you.’ The old man fingered his beard for some moments, perhaps undecided whether food was a good idea. ‘You must eat, Lorna, get your strength back. But please,’ he said, removing a hand from his beard and wagging a finger, ‘you mustn’t feed the little brutes, all right?’
* * *
The old man was as good as his word and a tray was swiftly brought by a male nurse in white clinical overalls who looked spookily like a young Sean Connery. On it was a plate of grilled lamb cutlets, string beans, and sautéed potatoes. There was also a warm bread roll with a knob of butter and, under a silver dome, a bowl of chocolate profiteroles with cream. In short, exactly what she would have ordered in an expensive restaurant, given the choice, and if she’d ever been able to afford to eat in one. Also on the tray was a small metal jug of white wine, which made no sense. During her coma, had it become health service policy to keep patients inebriated? And why the metal jug?
‘The boss says you’re up and about now,’ the nurse remarked, placing the tray down and making sure it was well balanced on Lorna’s knees. The jug of wine and glass he placed on her bedside table. Why wasn’t there a bunch of flowers in a vase? That’s the first thing her mother would have brought. It was the first thing she always took to friends and relatives in hospital, even the ones who suffered from hay fever.
‘Who was the old man? The one who was here a minute ago?’ she asked, as if there might be several old men in her wing of the hospital. ‘Grey hair. Beard. Beads,’ she added.
The nurse gave a small shrug. ‘He’ll tell you himself the next time you meet. Anyway,’ he added, making for the door and looking uncomfortable, ‘if there’s anything else I can do, just ask.’
‘I’d like to know how long I’ve been asleep.’
‘Asleep?’ The nurse raised one eyebrow.
‘Yes, asleep. I mean, how long have I been here?’
He didn’t reply for a few moments, hands clasped behind his back. ‘Not long, as far as I know.’
‘And how long is not long?’ she asked. ‘Look, if you don’t know, could I please speak to someone who does?’ Lorna, running out of patience, had raised her voice. The nurse took a step backwards towards the door.
‘All in good time,’ he assured her and indicated the tray. ‘For now, you need to eat. Get your strength back.’
‘Look, I really need to know how long I’ve been here. Can I see a doctor? Actually, I shouldn’t have to bloody ask that, should I? What kind of useless hospital is this?’
The nurse, perhaps unused to being shouted at, had backed himself to the door. ‘Anything you need, just ask, OK?’
Lorna wanted to scream at him. ‘But how?’ she asked instead, looking around the blank walls for a call button. ‘And what did he mean by not feeding the little brutes?’
‘Just ask, that’s all. Your room is sound-activated so don’t worry, I’ll hear.’ He touched a blank place on the wall that somehow made the pneumatic door hiss open. ‘But he’s right about not feeding them,’ he added as the white door closed again, leaving Lorna utterly exasperated.
* * *
As she ate, she considered the circumstances in which she found herself. No doubt she was in a specialist unit for the brain-injured; in other rooms would be the lucky survivors of other car accidents, all of them suffering the aftermath of head trauma. Strangely, it was a comforting conclusion. I have emerged on the other side of mental assault to reclaim my life, she thought, recalling the kerb under her heels, teetering slightly on its stepped edge, feeling the chill of a still night; looking up, a canopy of stars. In that moment, a sense of the infinite and of being a minute speck in a great universe. The huge sky above the city, lit with stars and galaxies, had made her momentarily insignificant: a small cog in a universe that was overwhelming. Thinking back, she could dimly remember the outline of the driver, both of his arms at full stretch on the steering wheel, his face in a grimace as he tried to stop the car. He looked young, had slicked back hair; like an actor she knew she should recognise. Then she was on the road looking up, watching as a shooting star crossed the night sky.
The driver had pushed something soft under her head. A pillow? Jacket? She’d tried to focus on him, but couldn’t even remember what films he had appeared in. A spy, she finally recalled. He was frantically speaking into a mobile, summoning help. Around the puddle of light within which she lay, other shadows were forming; lights in adjoining houses were being switched on, a woman in a blue dressing gown, emblazoned with a hamster motif, had a hand to her mouth. Lorna felt cold, but relaxed, without pain; she could only lie and wait. In the distance, a siren was getting louder and closer. Above, another shooting star. She saw its burning path and made a wish. I just want to live, to touch the stars. Is that too much to ask? Or too little? Not like this, she thought, her head now strapped tight in a brace. Her only view was of the heavens; a vista of light from a billion other worlds. They looked so beautiful; a panorama so perfect that she tried to reach up, to touch them, but a restraining strap was being tightened across her chest.
No pulse, one of the medics had said. Lorna knew this to be nonsense. She was keeping a close eye on the pneumatic door, before it hissed open to reveal friends and family. She might be in a strange hospital but her ordeal seemed to be coming to an end; she had recovered. She had wished upon a star and her wish had been granted. She looked at the tray on her lap and, despite what she had heard about hospital food, decided to have a small taste. The lamb was perfection, likewise the profiteroles. It was one of the best meals she had ever tasted, taking her mind off her strange surroundings and transporting her back to a Norfolk holiday with her parents and brother, with river-boats pottering past and a riverside pub on the other side of the water at which yachts and pleasure cruisers would tie up.
* * *
She must have been about ten, her brother Tom a couple of years older, and the holiday had been her idea. She’d seen a story about the Norfolk Broads on a travel programme on TV and badgered her parents into submission. They lived in a three-bedroom flat in North Berwick, a small town on Scotland’s east coast, from which her father would depart each morning for the railway station and, so he said, a relatively lowly job with an insurance company in Edinburgh. Her mother worked in the town’s bakery shop, and sometimes brought home cakes and sticky buns that, with a muttered don’t ask, she would present to her children. Each morning she’d put on a garish red smock with STAFF written across the back. Lorna never understood the need for this. In every shop she’d been into, staff stood on one side of the counter, customers on the other. The difference between the two was obvious. She sometimes wanted to pin a piece of paper to her back with CUSTOMER written on it, but never did.
Her father came home with brochures of river boats, the family gathered round the small kitchen table, and Lorna had her way.
‘I’ve never driven a boat,’ said her father, flipping pages, already seeming rather enchanted with the idea of being a ship’s captain. The boats all had pictures of happy families on them, and girls in bikinis and dark glasses. The sky was uniformly blue. Lorna looked surreptitiously at her mother and hoped she wasn’t going to do anything as gross as wear a bikini. Then she glanced at her dad who was also looking surreptitiously at her mum and no doubt thinking the same thing.
Her mother was also looking at the girls in their thongs and dark glasses and had probably (hopefully) reached the same conclusion. ‘But you, young lady, must wear a life-jacket,’ she commanded, nodding solemnly at Lorna. ‘You’ll have to promise me that.’ Lorna looked at the pictures in the brochure. Nobody seemed to wearing very much of anything, and certainly not a stupid life-jacket.
‘I promise!’ she said, reluctantly, knowing the battle of the holiday was already won.
There was even a TV with a selection of videos, including several episodes of Star Trek and the first Star Wars film. She’d never seen it before and watched, mesmerised, as Luke Skywalker saved the universe. She took to endlessly repeating ‘May the Force be with you’ to Tom until, thoroughly irritated, he pushed her off the side of the boat. Not wearing her lifejacket, as promised, Lorna had to be rescued with a lifebelt thrown by her father. But even then she could swim, so it wasn’t a life-threatening experience. However, her parents didn’t see it that way and Tom was sent to his cabin to ponder his stupid behaviour, emerging sheepishly some hours later when supper was ready. The incident was quickly forgotten; her mother, despite the tiny cooking area, had cooked a special meal of lamb cutlets with beans and potatoes. At the stern of the boat, open to the elements, was a miniscule sitting area, from where Lorna fed the ducks and moorhens with scraps of bread.
In the last days of the holiday, Lorna discovered that her mother was a little odd. They’d moored beside a hotel which advertised that it had a swimming pool, free to patrons. Her dad figured that if they had a sandwich in the hotel bar, that would qualify them as patrons. Lorna would much rather have swum in the oil-coated rivers, but her mum said it was unhygienic and she would still have to wear a stupid life-jacket. However, the algae-infested swimming pool in the hotel garden was considered OK, even though they were its only patrons; everybody else having presumably decided it was a genuine health hazard. Her mum said that she was going for a lie-down on the boat. Tom said he was feeling sick and also went back to the boat, unusually holding his mother’s hand.