After the Rain

by Natália Gomes

  I stumble back, and edge away from the door. When I reach the exit, I run.

  Jack

  Lauren sits at the edge of my bed, perched on her chair that was dragged through from the waiting room. She shuffles forward and places her hands in her lap then glances at Will then Alex who seem to be leading the conversation. They all sit around my bed like I’m an exhibition in a gallery. Upright, backs straight, eyes darting around then fixing on me. I see conversation happening around me, but I can’t hear it. They open their mouths, exchange glances and when they turn I turn too to see who’s now the speaker. I wish I could hear what they’re saying to me. I’m sure they know that my ears are damaged but yet they still seem like they’re trying to talk to me. What if this is permanent? What if I’ll never be able to hear again?

  I desperately look at them, wishing I was a part of what’s happening here but the silence in my ears just excludes me more. The sudden emptiness of sound creates a distance between us as friends, one that I fear will be difficult to mend. I glance back at Lauren, who looks painfully uncomfortable. She alternates between fidgeting with the belt on her dress and with her hair. It’s up in a ponytail, then it’s down around her shoulders. Up. Down. She can’t decide, or she’s just found a very mundane task to pass her time while she’s here. Don’t worry, only five more minutes then you can say you’ve done the girlfriend duty. I flinch even though no one is touching me, and look away from her. She doesn’t deserve this. I’m making her someone she’s not, probably because it’s easier for me that way.

  Maybe we never really had a connection at all. You know, now she’s sitting here, I can’t remember what brought us together in the first place. When did we meet? She’s always been in my friendship circle, we go to the same parties, hang out in the same group, and maybe that was it, just one day we decided to be more than friends. But were we ever really friends? I don’t really remember the conversations we had together. We enjoyed the same things – travelling, running, skiing. We spent so much time together over the past couple of years but now that I’m thinking about it, what do I really know about her? What’s her favourite colour? What music does she listen to? I have no clue. Probably because I never asked.

  I open my mouth and try to voice something, anything to let her and the others know I’m trying. I’m trying so hard. Some kind of a sound or noise must come out because they all look up at me. I try to put together a sentence, make a weak joke about being in here. But the sounds must come out jumbled, if they come out at all because they squint their eyes and edge closer trying to decipher my words. I can’t do it. I lean my head back and feel a sigh through my chest. Lauren’s hand is on my shoulder now and she’s gently squeezing it to either empathise or just remind me she’s still there. I know she’s there, because it hurts. Hurts to see her, hurts to be reminded of the life I had before. Never again will I be able to do the things that define me, that make me ‘Me’. All the things I love. I’m not the kind of person that can survive something like this. This isn’t me. I can’t just stay home all my life. I’ll never run again, or row, or climb a mountain and stand on the summit and have the wind beating against my face and feel that accomplishment rippling through my body. I did all those things with my dad, with my friends, and sometimes with Lauren. Now they’ll do them with someone else.

  I look at her. She’s beautiful, but she looks scared. I am too. Because everything is different now. There’s nothing here for her anymore. I’m not the Jack Addington she knows. Not the same one that attracted her, anyway. I don’t know who I am anymore, so until I figure that out I’ll just hold her back. I’ll hold all these guys back.

  Alice

  I haven’t left the house in days.

  I don’t know what came first – the vomiting, the fainting, or the bolt from the hospital room all the way down the hallway and out the dark green doors, back to home. Mom wants to know what happened. Of course she thinks it’s something to do with this ‘friend’ I went to see. I just tell her that being outside is just too much for me at this moment, but that answer seems to concern her more. Doesn’t help that the flashbacks are happening more often. Now I can barely breathe when it happens. My breath gets trapped in my throat and I cough and try to bring it up, but I choke on it. Then I start sweating and overheating. I can’t control it. I can’t stop it.

  I lie in bed thinking about Jack, wondering what thoughts are going through his mind. Is he having flashbacks too? Like me, is he terrified of going to sleep in case he doesn’t wake up? Or does he yearn for sleep, wanting so much to close his eyes and wake up to find this is all a nightmare? That we never collided that morning in Leicester Square, that no bomb went off, that no one died or lost limbs or lost loved ones. That we’re both just tucked up in our beds at home, still blissfully unaware of the horrors that could unfold on our streets and still going about our usual routine of school, homework, friends, high school drama.

  I squeeze my eyes closed, as a ringing sound fills the hallway outside my room. A quiet knock on the door forces my eyes open.

  ‘Your dad is on the phone,’ my mom whispers through the door like she’s undecided whether to wake me or leave me.

  I throw the covers off my bed and slowly open the door. Light from the hallway hits my face and I blink hard. I feel her hand on my face, brushing back my hair, then gently rubbing my shoulder. The phone is in my hands. I smile weakly and return to my room, closing the door behind me. I crawl back into bed, and pull the covers up over me.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘How you doing, Alice?’

  ‘I’m okay, Dad. How are you?’

  ‘I’m okay, sweetheart. It’s been really hard not talking to you these past few days.’

  My heart twinges and aches at the sound of his voice breaking. I’ve never seen my dad cry before, but he’s always taught me that it’s okay to.

  ‘Yeah,’ I whisper. ‘I’m really sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to lash out.’

  ‘You never have to apologize. What you’re feeling is normal.’

  Is it? Then why do I feel so alone in this?

  ‘I’m coming home, Alice. My leave request was approved. I’ll wrap up here and be home soon. I promise.’

  The tightness in my chest immediately loosens, and I feel my breath coming back. ‘Really?’

  ‘Not long to go. Then I’ll be home, and we can do this together.’

  I press the phone to my cheek, as tears fall from my eyes. I have my dad, and my mom, to help me. But who does Jack have? What if he has no one? And like me, what if he’s lost?

  Jack

  My hearing is back. I wasn’t sure at first but I know now. I was woken this morning by sounds. Sounds of muffled voices, banging desk drawers, chugging food trolleys down echoey hospital hallways. I could hear it all. It’s not completely clear and the ringing is still there but it’s softer today and I can hear everything around me for the first time in a while.

  At first I was relieved. I’ll be able to hear my mum’s voice again, listen to music, engage in conversations and jokes with my friends, hear London traffic when I run down the streets. And then it hit me again. Yes, I have my hearing back but I’m still here in this hospital. And maybe having my hearing back is a curse, not a blessing. Because now I’ll be able to hear the pity in people’s voices when they talk to me, the verbal awkwardness when they accidentally ask when’s my next race or how my squash game went or want to discuss the location for the next ski trip. I’ll hear their backtracking as they splutter and stutter their way through an obvious topic change.

  I’ll hear it all.

  I don’t want to hear them. I’ll just pretend for a little longer. Let me enjoy being quiet and alone for a few more days. I’m not ready to share what’s left of myself with the world. Not yet. For now, I just want to close my eyes and sleep. Let my dreams carry me away from here, from this body.

  My dreams are so vivid these days. I’m still dreaming about that girl from the explosion. The girl with the y
ellow polka dot umbrella. She consumes my dreams, good and bad. When I woke the other day, still groggy from sleep, I thought I saw her. The girl with the red hair. I thought I saw her standing here in this room, at that door, looking right at me. She had the same fiery curls, same red cheeks, big eyes. But when I closed my eyes and opened them again, she was gone.

  Alice

  I’m back at the dark green doors of the hospital. I just need to go inside, find a way back up to his room without anyone seeing me, introduce myself and say sorry. One uncomfortable but brief interaction to stave off years of guilt, self-hatred and regret. How hard can that be? Why do I feel like throwing up in that bush?

  When I get to the white waiting room with the white armchairs and the white walls, I pretend to be a patient and tell her I have an appointment at 11:00 but I can’t remember the doctor’s name. She rushes off to find a nurse to help her explain why they don’t seem to have my appointment written down. And while she runs around, I sneak upstairs. Back to 10B.

  Jack is in the same position on the hospital bed. His eyes are wide open and he stares at the ceiling at a panoramic print of a mountain that’s been taped up there. I gaze up at it too, and wonder if he’s dying to reach up and tear it down like I am. The room is bigger than I remember. The window looks onto the Thames, a glass pyramid-shaped building on the other side. The walls and furniture are white like downstairs. On either side of him are tall vases filled with lilies, gerbera daisies, sunflowers and roses. At the foot of the bed by the leather ottoman are three more vases filled with lavender and baby’s breath. The whole room smells like our last house in San Diego. We had a beautiful big garden there with patches of yellow buttercups, sprigs of mint, clusters of flat basil, feathery pea shoots and bulbous bluebells. I learned a lot about flowers and herbs. Now we have a square of crushed stone with a broken swing and a damp shed.

  ‘Hi.’

  He doesn’t even blink.

  ‘Hello.’ He doesn’t look at me. ‘Jack?’ I take another step closer. ‘Okay. I’ll just jump right in. My name’s Alice. We met the other day – well, we didn’t meet exactly, that’s a stupid thing to say, we … um … you see, you knocked into me when you were running and spilled my coffee down me and onto my books; they weren’t even mine, they belonged to the library. I’ll probably be fined for them … um, anyway, sorry, yes, when you banged into me I started yelling at you – well we more yelled at each other, it wasn’t just me you know – we had an ‘exchange’, shall we say and maybe I gave you a finger, then … um—’

  Images of smoke, dust and fire fill my eyes and I squeeze them shut and try to remember what I was saying.

  ‘—anyway, I looked everywhere for you, at fourteen hospitals, to be exact. And then I learned about the private hospitals – I mean, wow, this is a nice room. Big flatscreen TV, nice armchair in the corner too, I wonder if it comes in blue – I’m rambling, I know. I think we go to school together. I mean, we do but you probably don’t know me because I barely recognized you but then I just moved here. I guess what I’m trying to say, in a very inarticulate way, is that I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, for, you know’ – I wave my hand towards his legs – ‘this.’ Now I immediately want the ground to swallow me up. But I don’t know what to say in situations like this. Regular conversation with a boy is hard enough, let alone making conversation with a boy in a hospital bed who I helped put there. I fill my lungs with air and start again. ‘If I hadn’t yelled at you, you wouldn’t have stopped and if you hadn’t stopped you might have got further away from the blast and maybe have been okay.’

  He’s still not moving. Is he dead?

  ‘Jack, did you hear me?’

  ‘He can’t hear.’ I turn around and see a young male nurse standing behind me, clipboard cradled to his chest.

  ‘What?’

  His face softens as he looks towards Jack. ‘Doctors think his ear drums were ruptured in the blast and there’s permanent damage.’

  ‘He’s deaf too?!’

  I stand there, mouth agape, just staring at Jack, then back at the nurse. Deaf? How can I apologize if he can’t hear me? How can I help him?

  I’ve finally found the one person who knows exactly what I’m going through, what I’m feeling, and he’ll never be able to hear my words and I won’t hear his. I’ll never hear his voice, know what he sounded like, whether he had a low tone or a high-pitched, clipped accent. I wonder what his laugh would have been like. Teaching someone a new communication system after hearing loss could take weeks, months. I don’t have that time. I’m drowning here. I need him. I need … I need air, I can’t breathe.

  I push past the nurse, mumbling a pathetic apology, and head for the exit. When I get outside, I cover my face with my hands then stagger towards the wall. My back stings when I collapse into it, but I don’t flinch with the pain. I deserve it. When my heartbeat finally slows and the street outside isn’t spinning, I look back at the green doors which I seem to be spending more time outside of than in.

  Jack

  She survived.

  At first I thought I was dreaming again. Fiery red hair, flushed cheeks, large eyes that always seem to be in a state of surprise or confusion. She was wearing different clothes and she didn’t have that yellow polka dot umbrella, but it was definitely her. I wasn’t dreaming.

  The hair, her face. Everything about her brought back that day.

  The thump of two bodies colliding. The scattering of books and a coffee cup on the ground, the liquid pouring out all over the pavement. The staining of the book covers. The slow turning of the umbrella on its head. Her voice. I still remember her voice. ‘Hey, watch it,’ she’d said to me. What did I say to her? I don’t remember. She’d been so angry with me. I wonder if the coffee had spilled on my trainers. Weird to think of that now, but I am. Where are my trainers? Are they still on my feet? Where are my feet?

  A wave of nausea brings everything up. I fiddle with the call button. Dizziness is making my head spin. I lie back and wipe my mouth. The nurses are here now, cleaning me up. Why did I just think about that?

  She did this.

  She brought this all back. What did she say to me? ‘Sorry for this’? Sorry. How dare she? She’s up walking around without a scratch on her and I’m lying here like this, and she has the nerve to think a casual ‘sorry’ will make everything better. She’s right, if she hadn’t yelled at me I wouldn’t have stopped. This is her fault. I don’t want to talk to her. I’ve got nothing to say to her. I don’t want to see her face again, that red hair, and be reminded again of that morning. I swallow hard and close my eyes, and beg sleep to take me.

  Alice

  I was awake again most of the night.

  I can’t seem to let sleep take me. I’m too scared. What if I have another nightmare? What if I relive that morning again, even if it is in my head? What if I don’t wake up this time?

  I also couldn’t stop thinking about all the things I want to say to Jack that I thought I couldn’t because of the hearing loss. Then I realized that he doesn’t have to hear my words. He can see them. So I wrote him a letter. I debated for quite some time about how to start it. ‘Dear Jack’ seemed a bit formal and ‘Hey, Jack’ seemed too casual considering we’ve never really had a proper conversation. So I went for just ‘Jack’ followed by a comma and then a very lengthy letter that was somewhat comparable to War and Peace. Of course I scrapped that, and after three drafts I was left with a simple but hopefully effective note. I’m going to deliver it today. I could mail it, but what if it didn’t arrive? I would never know and there would be no real resolution or closure to this – this unimaginable tragedy. So I’m going to get the bus back into London and drop it off at the front desk. I don’t want to hand it to him myself. I don’t need to see him again. The last two visits haven’t exactly gone well, or even as planned. And I can see from the abundance of flowers and cards and the fancy hospital suite that he’s well looked after, and that he has friends to talk to about this. He doesn�
��t need me like I first thought. Although I wish he did kind of need me, which I know is selfish.

  The envelope is already sealed with his name and room number on the front, and my coat and shoes are on. I hover in the doorway, dreading those green hospital doors.

  ‘You’re going out again?’

  I turn and see my mom in the hall, hands clasped around a coffee mug.

  ‘I’m just going for a short walk. I need to drop something off at someone’s house.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Just someone I go to school with.’

  ‘Okay, but just remember your appointment with the community nurse is at 2:45 to check on your stitches.’

  ‘I’ll be back in time.’

  ‘Phone charged?’

  I nod and pull her in for a quick hug, not really feeling it like I used to. Then I release her and hurry out the door.

  When I get to the hospital, there are two women working at reception today. ‘Hello, can I leave a letter here for Jack Addington in room 10B? Can you make sure he gets it?’

  ‘10B?’ A blonde-haired woman in a white dress and white cardigan appears from the waiting room. Her hair is pulled back into a painfully tight ponytail, but her features are soft, kind. Minimal makeup and very beautiful. Very English-looking, if that’s a term. ‘Have you been visiting my son?’

  Of course, the resemblance is obvious now. ‘Um, yes, actually.’