Fractured (8 page)

The first thing I became aware of was the continuing soreness from my head, which seemed to feel somehow strangely enlarged. I moved it slowly, just the merest fraction, and heard the soft scratch of crêpe bandage against cotton. I tried to raise an arm to investigate but stopped when I felt a painful tug from something embedded in my forearm. It would appear that I was attached to some sort of machine. A persistent beeping sound from a piece of equipment positioned directly behind me confirmed I was probably hooked up to some sort of monitoring device as well as being on a drip. Clearly I was in hospital, but why couldn’t I see anything?

I blinked several times. My eyelids felt weirdly unresponsive, and it made no difference, everything was still in darkness. Why couldn’t I see? What had happened to me? I felt a powerful wave of panic begin to engulf me. Why couldn’t I remember? What was the matter with my head – and my eyes? I strained to recall. In small fragments I could see fleeting snapshots of the day before. I could remember visiting my old house, then a fast forwarded image of being at a restaurant. Then I’d gone back to the hotel. Had I taken a cab? I couldn’t remember. Then I’d reached my room… and then… nothing. There was a gaping chasm where the rest of my memories of the evening should be.

I struggled to move, to sit up, even with all the wires and tubes attached. The noise of this ineffectual stirring did however alert someone in the room.

‘Well, hello there. Welcome back to us, Rachel. It’s good to see you awake. Let me just call your father.’

There was a sound of a door opening and footsteps rapidly receding down an echoing corridor. I realised I was alone before I could manage to command my numb lips to form a question.

Was she going to phone my dad? Had someone already informed him I was in hospital? Dread at how he would have reacted to that news rippled through me. He was too ill to cope with any more worry in his life right now. I wondered if they could bring the phone to my bedside. Perhaps if he could just hear my voice he’d be reassured that I was OK. But how could I calm and reassure him about my condition when I didn’t even know what that was myself? I gave an angry moan of pure, impotent frustration.

‘Hey, hey… none of that now. Everything’s going to be all right.’ Swift and sure footsteps approached the bed. How was this possible?

I started off the pillow, ignoring whatever agony might ensue. My head was already spinning in shock anyway.

‘Dad? Dad, is that you?’

A warm and familiar roughened hand engulfed my own where it lay on the stiff hospital sheets.

‘Of course it’s me, my love.’ His breath warmed my face as he bent to kiss my cheek, his beard scratching against me.

‘Oh Dad…’ I began, and then, although there were a thousand things I could say,
should
say, none of them managed to come out as I was helpless to stop myself from dissolving suddenly and very noisily into tears.

‘There, there, there,’ muttered my dad, frenziedly patting my hand in discomfort. I knew the look that would be on his face, even without the benefit of sight. He had always been fazed by my tears, either as a small child or in my turbulent teenage years. Knowing how difficult it was for him to deal with them, I made a real effort to stem the torrent.

‘I’m so glad you’re here, Daddy,’ I sniffed, slipping back into the childish name without even realising I’d done so.

‘I’m so glad to see you awake again, my love. You can’t believe the fright I got when I first came in and saw you like that – all wired up and everything. It brought back so many horrible memories.’ I heard the catch in his voice. Of course, he must have been unable to stop thinking back to the night of the accident.

I could only imagine the anguish he must have gone through back then, as he’d sat for days on end beside a hospital bed just like this one. It was many months before he had ever revealed to me the true terror he had lived through while I lay unconscious and unresponsive. And even though the doctors had reassured him that I just needed time; that the emergency services had got me breathing again before the threat of brain damage; that I
would
make a full recovery; he must still have been fraught with anxiety until the moment I had first opened my eyes.

That was the moment of relief from his heartache and the beginning of mine. For I hadn’t allowed him to put off giving me the dreadful news; had refused to wait until I was ‘
stronger
’. And truly, who was ever going to be strong enough to hear the news that your best friend had died, while saving your life?

The accident of five years ago was obviously as much in his mind again as it had been in mine.

‘Memories of the accident,’ I said softly.

‘Accident?’ he sounded puzzled. ‘No, love; memories of your poor mum.’

I was confused, he so rarely spoke of her. I suppose the thought of losing me had reawakened many painful recollections. I wasn’t sure how to respond but was saved from the need by the sound of the door opening and several people entering the room.

‘Hello, doctor,’ greeted my dad. It sounded as though he knew the man who had just entered my room, knew him quite well, in fact. For the first time I thought to ask the question:

‘How long have I been in here?’

‘A little over thirty-six hours, young lady,’ replied the doctor, in a voice that I supposed was meant to be calming. I did
not
feel calm. As though in a game played against the clock, my mind frantically tried to fit together the jigsaw pieces of what had happened to me. Like an arc of electricity between two terminals, I suddenly remembered: the cemetery; the crippling headache; my sudden virtual blindness. I remembered it all.

I lifted the arm not encumbered with hospital paraphernalia to my bandaged head.

‘Have you had to operate on me, for the headaches? The blindness?’

A deeply amused chortle came from the doctor. How could there be any humour in what I’d just asked?

‘Bless you, Rachel, you’re not blind.’

‘But I can’t see!’ I wailed.

Again that laughter; this time even Dad joined in.

‘That’s because your eyes are covered with bandages. They sustained some minor scratches – you probably got those from the gravel chippings when you fell face down. You really did take a terrible old knock on your head.’

I turned my head in the direction of the nurse’s voice. What the hell was she going on about? Clearly she either didn’t see, or chose to ignore, the look on my face which clearly said she was an idiot, for she continued:

‘That’s what Dr Tulloch is here for now, to take off the bandages and check out your sutures.’

‘But I
didn’t
hit my head,’ I insisted to anyone who would listen. I felt my dad once more take hold of my hand.

‘Hush now, Rachel, don’t get yourself upset. Things are bound to be a little fuzzy to begin with.’

‘I think I’d remember if I hit my head,’ I responded, more sharply than I intended. ‘It was the headache, you see,’ I tried to explain. ‘It was absolutely excruciating.’

‘You have a headache now?’ enquired the doctor, with keen attention.

‘Well no,’ I replied, realising for the first time that although my head hurt, the pain was different from the splitting agony of the headaches I’d been experiencing. ‘It just feels kind of sore…’

‘I’m sure it does. It will settle down in a day or so. As the nurse said, it really was a nasty fall.’

I would have protested further but I was aware of hands reaching behind my head and beginning to release me from the swaddling bandages. With each rotation the pressure against my head lessened and my anxiety increased. When finally relieved from my mummy-like accessories, disappointment coursed through me.

‘I still can’t see anything. I’m still blind!’

The doctor’s voice had a slightly more impatient edge. Clearly he now had me pigeon-holed as a major drama queen.

‘Just let me remove the gauze first before you go off and get a white stick, young lady. Nurse, if you please, the blinds.’

Deciding I didn’t like the man, however much my father might disagree, I nevertheless turned my face towards his voice and allowed him to lift first one then the other circular coverings from my eyelids. I blinked for the first time, enjoying the unfettered freedom of the movement. The room had been darkened by the lowering of the blinds but enough daylight fell through the half-shut venetians for me to make out the vague shapes of four people around my bed: the doctor, a white-coated young man standing beside him, the nurse and, on the other side of the bed, my dad.

‘I can see shapes,’ I declared, my voice a strange mixture of joy and disbelief. ‘It’s cloudy but—’

‘Give it a moment. Nurse, a little more light now, I believe.’

She obliged by a further twist on the corded blinds. Suddenly things began to clear and I saw the white-haired senior doctor, the young bespectacled intern, the middle-aged nurse. I began to smile broadly, a reaction they all mirrored.

I turned to my dad, my grin wide, and then froze, the look on my face unreadable.

‘Rachel, what’s wrong? Doctor! Doctor what’s the matter?’

The consultant was beside me in an instant, flashing a small torch in my eyes, checking my reactions, but I fought against him to look again at my dad.

‘Rachel, can you tell me what’s wrong?’ urged the doctor. ‘Are you in pain, is your vision disturbed in any way?’

Disturbed? Well yes, I should say. But not in any way that he meant.

‘No, I can see all right. Everything’s clear now.’

‘Then what’s wrong?’

‘It’s my dad.’

‘Me?’ My father sounded totally confused. Well, join the club. I forced myself to look at him slowly and with greater concentration then. But what I saw made no sense. The doctor’s voice had adopted a tone I guessed he usually reserved for those with mental illnesses.

‘What about your father?’

I couldn’t find my voice.

‘Rachel honey, you’re scaring me. Can’t you just tell us what’s the matter?’

‘Is there something wrong with your father, Rachel?’

I turned to the doctor to reply to his question and then back at my only parent. My newly empowered eyesight took in his plump cheeks, his bright eyes – albeit clouded now in concern – the small paunch he was always planning on joining a gym to lose. There was no sign of the haggard, prematurely aged, cancer-raddled man I had last seen three weeks ago.

‘No! That’s what’s the matter. There’s nothing wrong with him at all!’

December 2013

Also Five Years Later…

The man must have been watching me for a considerable period of time before I first became aware of him. Of course he could have been right beside me on the crowded underground platform and I’d never have known it, packed as we were like cattle during the usual Friday evening exodus from London. Moving along the twisting tiled passages while changing underground lines, I wasn’t really aware of anything except the annoyance of having to drag my small suitcase behind me through the rush hour. I stopped apologising after I’d run over about the fifth set of feet. It had been a huge mistake to leave it so late to begin my journey: it would have made far more sense to have driven down with Matt that morning as he had suggested, but I had an immovable deadline for an article I’d been working on that just couldn’t be ignored.

‘Shall I wait for you, and we’ll drive down together when you’re done?’

I’d considered that for a moment but then dismissed the idea.

‘No, there’s no sense in both of us being late. You go on ahead, I’ll finish at work and then catch the fast train down.’

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, and now… well, not so good at all. Between my attempts at weaving through the crowds with the suitcase in tow (which was how the five sets of toes got mangled), I kept glancing frantically at my watch, knowing time was fast running out if I was going to make the mainline train out of London for Great Bishopsford. At this rate I would be lucky to get to the restaurant before the desserts were being served. Guilt at letting Sarah down added impetus to my stride and I cannoned between two suited businessmen earning a very ungentlemanly comment from one of them.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, not even glancing back to see if my apology had been heard.

I looked again at my watch:, I had less than twelve minutes until the train left. I was going to have to make a run for it. As I lowered my arm a sudden flash of brilliance arced back at me, momentarily dazzling in the reflection of an overhead light. Damn! That showed how harassed I was, because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d forgotten to hide my ring before catching the tube home. In one swift movement I swivelled the large diamond on my ring finger so that it now nestled against my palm, showing only a plain platinum band on my exposed hand. Matt would have been furious if he’d known I’d forgotten. He really didn’t like me wearing it for travelling but what was the point of having such a fabulous engagement ring if it had to be kept locked up in a safe all the time?

God knows how but I made the train with barely seconds to spare. My heart was still thumping furiously in my chest from my sprint down the platform as I stowed my case in the overhead rack and sat down on legs trembling from the unaccustomed exertion. I promised myself that this year my New Year’s resolution would be to actually
go
to the gym I spent so much money on each month and hadn’t visited for three months or more. Like so many areas of my life, all my good intentions had swiftly been buried in an avalanche of work.

I was lucky that Matt was every bit as busy as I was and perfectly understood the demands of my job, otherwise we’d never have survived together until now. Long hours at the office, plans that had to be cancelled at the last minute, late nights and working weekends, these were all things we were equally familiar with. When I thought about it, when I had a free second to think about
anything
that wasn’t work-related, I wondered how anyone ever managed to find the balance between a successful career and a relationship. And if at the back of my mind there was a nagging voice telling me that things shouldn’t be the way they were right now, then I just ignored it, telling myself this was only a temporary glitch and that everything would be sure to settle down some time next year when Matt and I eventually found somewhere to live together. That’s supposing we ever found enough time to clear our schedules to go flat hunting.