Very Nearly Dead

by A K Reynolds

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Good luck with that. Keep in touch.’

  ‘I will. See you.’

  As she climbed into her car, I got the feeling Kylie was another person I’d never see again. We weren’t close, we weren’t even on good terms, in fact we were barely on terms at all, but even so, I hoped my feeling was wrong. Death was getting to be a close companion and I’d already had more than enough of his company.

  13

  : Way Back When

  Once I’d recovered my ability to think, I devoted every hour of every day to directing my consciousness into every part of my body, starting with my toes.

  I’d think about them individually, trying to feel them and get them to move. From there I’d work upwards, through my shins, knees, thighs and torso, trying to detect something – pressure on my skin, responsiveness – anything other than deadness. It was a fruitless task for a very long time.

  Then at last I had a breakthrough: I opened my eyes. This caused great excitement among the medical staff who were caring for me. They immediately summoned a doctor. He murmured something about ‘Glasgow Scale four’ and said it was a very positive development. He leaned over my bed and spoke to me. ‘Keep it going, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘We’re all delighted with what you’ve achieved so far.’

  Perhaps he said it to all his coma patients, but his words motivated me, whether or not they were his standard spiel. It was as if he knew that opening my eyes hadn’t happened by accident, and he was praising me for working as hard as I had done. So I followed his advice and kept it up, teaching myself to move my fingers and make speech-like sounds. Eventually I learnt to take food through my mouth, as long as I was spoon-fed.

  More than anything, I looked forward to the day I’d walk again. I was convinced I’d make a full recovery. The possibility I wouldn’t fully recover never occurred to me. It was too horrible a fate to contemplate – a life in a hospital bed, devoid of activity, utterly devoid of meaning, and consumed by emotions I could barely cope with – hate, and the lust for vengeance being chief among them.

  I lay there day after day, stewing in my own vengeful juices, aware of my stomach churning, bile often enough rising in my throat because I was so angry. Much as my anger gave impetus to my efforts to recover, I became aware I’d have to do something to quell it, because it was taking a toll on me. It made me throw up from time to time, gave me indigestion, and put me into a deep, dark downward emotional spiral.

  My hate would’ve killed me in the end, but I saw the danger and turned it around. I listened and learned, hoovered up any information I could that would be useful to me, and discovered meditation. Then, by a sheer effort of will, I found a new way of thinking. It took time, but over the course of many years of meditation I reached a sort of inner peace and developed the strength to forgive my enemies. I became able to recite their names without feeling any negative emotions about them: Seth Delaney, Charlie Duggan, Mike Stone, Stuart Foss, Danny Scott, Kylie Wood, and Jasmine Black. I was able to wish them well, hope they’d found the same sort of enlightenment I had. I even hoped they weren’t all living in fear because of what they’d done to me.

  My days became tolerable, and at times good, once I’d jettisoned my hate and anger. I focussed on the positive things in my life – visits from my family and friends, radio shows, television – there was always some form of broadcast going on in my room, intended to provide me with stimulation – and I lost myself in my thoughts.

  By the time I realised I’d never fully recover, and this was as good as it was going to get, I was mentally equipped to deal with the situation, courtesy of my new approach to life in a hospital bed.

  My peace was only broken when one day I received a visit from someone I never expected to hear from.

  She pushed open the door slowly, and hesitated before coming into my room, unlike my other visitors, so I knew it was someone who hadn’t been before. I had my eyes shut. I was tempted to open them, but decided to wait to find out who it was. After all, this was a big event, probably the high point of my day – a new visitor – and I wanted to milk it for all it was worth.

  Footsteps on the tiled floor told me my new acquaintance was advancing slowly, cautiously towards me. I heard my name, ‘Charlotte.’ It was a woman’s voice, speaking in a whisper. ‘Charlotte,’ she repeated, speaking my name out loud this time.

  The voice was all too familiar to me: it was Jasmine Black. Being helpless and alone, I felt threatened. What is she doing here? I wondered. My mind went into wild speculations about the purpose of her visit. She is here to kill me, I decided, to make sure the truth about what she and the others had done never gets out. Seth has sent her.

  I opened my eyes to make sure I was right. I was: there, looking down at me I saw her, Jasmine Black. She stepped back, the expression on her face mirroring the fear I felt deep in my soul, and I realised our meeting was as scary for her as it was for me, possibly even more so. Lines of concern were etched in her face. I knew then that she wasn’t visiting in order to kill me, and I relaxed. She pulled up a chair rather noisily, sat next to me, held my hand and squeezed it gently, affectionately. My senses have in some ways become more acute during my incarceration in hospital. I was vividly aware of the feeling of her skin against mine. It felt smooth, dry, warm, and reassuring. I sniffed the air, and smelled the remains of a recent binge drinking session oozing from her pores. Then I noticed she wasn’t wearing any perfume, and, taking another sniff like a dog, I detected the pleasing fragrance of the shower gel she’d used, the shampoo on her hair, and the deodorant she’d applied to her armpits.

  ‘Charlotte,’ she said, gently squeezing my hand again, ‘it’s me, Jasmine. I’m sorry I haven’t visited before. You’ll never know how much I’ve wanted to, and how sorry I am you’re… you’re – how sorry I am about what’s happened.’

  What purpose she had I didn’t know, but at least it didn’t seem sinister.

  ‘My God,’ she added. ‘You know who I am, don’t you, Charlotte?’

  I was surprised she seemed able to read my emotions from the expressions on my face. Then I thought, The nursing staff can do that, so why not Jasmine? I answered her as best I could. I wanted to tell her I knew her, and I’d long since let go of my bad feelings about her. I knew any attempt on my part to communicate with her was doomed to failure, but I had to try. ‘Aaaahuuuooo.’

  She didn’t understand, of course.

  ‘I want you to know I had no idea you’d be in the park that day, and I never wanted you to get hurt. I didn’t do anything to you. I just watched. I know I should’ve done something to stop it, but it all happened so quickly, and in any case, I was too scared to stop it even if I’d thought to. I should’ve been a better friend to you, Charlotte.’

  I attempted to reassure her, tell her all was forgiven. ‘Aaaahuuuooo.’

  The puzzlement on her face told me she hadn’t understood. ‘I’m so sorry. I ought to go now, Charlotte. Goodbye.’

  I would’ve liked her to have stayed longer but she let go of my hand and left after that.

  For the remainder of the day, my thoughts were in a state of turmoil, and it was several days before I managed to rein in my feelings and restore the peaceful frame of mind I’d been so carefully cultivating for many years.

  14

  Here and Now

  With Kylie gone, I was alone with my thoughts. The situation wasn’t entirely welcome. I retreated to the kitchen to make another coffee and glanced at the calendar. It was still 5 April, and I was still feeling out of sorts, partly from the drink I’d imbibed the day before, partly from the general shitness of my existence. I considered having a hair of the dog to make me feel better, or at least well enough to make it through to five o’clock, when I could allow myself to drink without a getting a guilty conscience about it.

  I reached into my wine cupboard but managed to summon up the willpower to stop myself from taking a bottle out of it. As I stood in the middle of the kitchen won
dering what to do to kill time until I could drink with a clear conscience, my stomach spoke up. It told me I should eat, so I looked in my fridge, selected a spaghetti bolognaise meal for one, and gave it a dose of full-on radiation in the microwave oven on my worktop. That got it so hot I nearly burnt my tongue on the first morsel I spooned into my mouth. As for the taste, the flavour had something of a chemical edge to it, making me suspect it might contain poison, but of a kind put there by the manufacturer rather than by an assassin. When I’d finished I washed up and went to the front room to chill out with a cup of tea.

  Chilling proved impossible because I was about as strung-out as it’s possible for a body to be. But I was dealing with it, at least for now. I picked up the remote and switched the TV on to a news channel, being the news junkie I am. There was lots of stuff going on in the world, all of it bad. It occurred to me that sometime soon, my own death was probably going to get a mention. It wouldn’t be a big item, and it probably wouldn’t make the national news, but it’d definitely be reported locally. I could see the London Evening Standard giving me a couple of column inches, and there’d be something on one of the radio stations covering my area – maybe KISS if I was lucky – and a brief item on local TV.

  ‘Defence lawyer poisoned – foul play suspected’. That’d be the headline, or something like it. A couple of weeks later there’d be a tiny two-line obit paid for by my parents, something about a loving daughter who’d be sorely missed. It made me sad to think about my parents and brother missing me. It was almost worse than the thought of death itself. I wished there was something I could do to spare them the misery of having to find me dead, or be informed by a grim-faced copper that I’d died.

  The thought of my parents having to answer questions like ‘did your daughter have any enemies you know of?’ was too much to bear. I finished my tea and opened a bottle of merlot. The first glass hit the spot so well I promptly poured another, and another. By late afternoon my nerves were well-settled and I was multi-tasking. I had a cheap tablet on my lap (the one my iPad had superseded before being stolen), a paperback novel on the sofa next to me, and the TV spewing out as much news as anyone was capable of taking in on any given day. I turned my attention from one to the other to the other, lost in my own little world.

  Mid-evening when I got hungry I ordered a takeaway pizza – I reckoned the chances of the poisoner working in the self-same fast food outlet I was ordering from were too remote to bother about. It was a margherita which proved disappointing, and I made a mental note never to use the place again. Nevertheless I ate it all, even including the burnt bit of crust around the edge. It filled my belly and made me drowsy.

  At some point I must’ve fallen asleep on the sofa. When I woke up the TV was on, an open bottle of red was in front of me on a low occasional table with an empty glass next to it, telltale red stains in the bottom, and there was an empty pizza carton next to me. Christ, I’m not a slut, I thought. Why didn’t I get myself a plate and eat properly? I must’ve been pretty drunk to eat straight out of the carton and leave the mess by my side.

  I was about to clear it away when a news item caught my attention. Something about a man overdosing and dying in his own garden. There was a shot of the street where the death had occurred. It looked like the Honor Oak Park area where Mike lived, but it couldn’t be Mike who’d died. He’d left town. Anyway, whoever it was, he was probably just a junkie who’d taken too much of the wrong stuff, so there was nothing for me to worry about.

  I poured a final glass of wine and dragged myself off to bed, wondering at the coincidence of the death on Mike’s road.

  When I woke up, somewhat the worse for wear, I’d forgotten about the body that’d been found in Honor Oak Park. After I’d showered and dressed, I brewed a coffee and sat in front of the TV to watch the morning headlines, first nationally, then locally. Christ knows why I enjoy such stuff. Maybe ‘enjoy’ is the wrong word. It’s more that it has always had an eerie hold on me.

  When the local news was broadcast the main subject covered was the death I’d heard about during the night. It was no longer being attributed to an overdose. Foul play was suspected. As a result, a lot of airtime was given over to it. Nothing excites the interest of the public at large – including me – as much as ’orrible murders do.

  The name of the victim was a shock: Mike Stone. How could it be? Obviously, when I’d first heard about the death, I should’ve worked it out, but I’d been too pissed to think straight and in addition I’d given Mike’s survival instincts more credit than they were due.

  Poor Mike had been found behind his car with two suitcases next to him. It seemed someone had gotten to him before he’d had the chance to make his getaway. By the time he was ready to go, it was already too late. He’d been poisoned and was very nearly dead.

  He’d picked up his cases and taken them to his car, then collapsed on his gravel drive without even having opened the car door to stow his cases in the luggage area. He’d remained on his drive for an hour or two before being discovered, as his car, a large four-by-four, had hidden him from the view of passers-by walking up and down the street.

  It was devastating news. The more members of the gang who were killed, the more likely it became that I’d soon be a target on the killer’s list. The list was now very short, consisting only of Danny Scott, me and Kylie, which gave me a one-in-three chance of being taken out next. I’m not the betting type, but even so I knew those weren’t great odds. My hands shook with fear just thinking about it.

  I wondered if there was any chance the killer would leave me alone. After all, he might think he’d done enough to me by slipping me a Mickey Finn and sending me a baseball bat through the mail. It was a notion which gave me succour for approximately five seconds. No, I soon decided, whatever the reason he hadn’t killed me, he’d be coming to get me in the near future. If he was out to slay all the members of the old gang, and it seemed he was, there was no reason he’d spare me. I was probably meant to die in a car crash, but fate had stepped in and I’d survived. The killer would undoubtedly have a second bite of the cherry and he’d make damned sure he bit enough of it to finish me off next time round.

  My mobile beeped interrupting my thoughts. It was Bernie, my AA counsellor. I couldn’t bring myself to admit to him I’d fallen off the wagon and watched it drive so far up the street I didn’t have any chance of climbing back on, so I ignored it.

  The mobile stopped ringing then started again, about two seconds later. It was Bernie again. The pattern was repeated until I picked up, on the fifth time of being rung.

  ‘Bernie,’ I said, wondering how to explain myself, what excuse I could give. ‘I’ve been… ah…’ my voice tailed off. What had I been doing? More to the point, what could I claim to have been doing?

  ‘You’ve been drinking,’ he said.

  He’d got me bang to rights. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘For a start you haven’t been to any meetings lately, which is always a sign. Secondly, you felt obliged to explain yourself to me, but you couldn’t come up with any sort of an explanation. You’re not a good liar. Thirdly, you slurred your words when you answered.’

  Christ, I’d slurred some words and I hadn’t even noticed. I’d thought I’d delivered them with perfect diction. What was I coming to?

  ‘I’m sorry, Bernie, things are tough for me right now.’

  ‘I’m here to help. We could meet up if you want support, even if that just means complaining to me about all the shit things in your life.’

  I wondered what he’d think if I did as he suggested. He’d probably fall down with shock if he knew I’d killed a young man and left the scene of the crime; and been a member of a gang which had killed a young man and left a young woman with such life-changing injuries she might as well have been dead; and was involved in a cover-up; and was doing my best to survive a mad killer who was out to poison me the first chance he got.

  ‘That’s very good of you, Bernie, but I can�
��t. I’ve got a lot on at present.’

  ‘Just remember I’m here for you. And no matter what, you can always come back to the meetings. Drop in tonight if you can.’

  ‘I’ll do my best. See you, Bernie.’

  ‘I’ll keep in touch. I’m not going to let you go. You’re too young and too talented to fall by the wayside.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, hanging up.

  Too young and too talented – it’s not how I saw myself, but I’d gratefully take that praise from anyone.

  I had the rest of Friday to kill but how would I do it? By hanging around pointlessly until someone murdered me? If they tried, would I manage to escape them? If I managed to escape, would it grant me anything more than a temporary reprieve?

  My internal debate, I realised, amounted to a very good argument for staying on the sauce. But I wasn’t going to spend every minute of the day drunk. I had to find other ways of diverting myself.

  For lack of anything better to do I called Jake. I needed buoying up and he could provide some buoyancy. There’s something about being a woman in your early-to-mid thirties. You feel as if the clock’s ticking, your bloom is fading, and you’ve lost, or are on the verge of losing, your allure. So having a man – a younger man at that – who acts as if you’ve still got it in spades is quite the morale booster. Or at least it was for me.

  ‘Hi, Jake,’ I said when he answered. I almost added ‘how’s it hanging?’ When you spend time in the company of younger people, it’s tempting to talk young, but if you did you’d get it all wrong. It’s one of those pitfalls you have to avoid, so instead I said, ‘How are you?’ Far more appropriate for an older woman.

  ‘I’m good, Jaz.’