Comatose

by Graham Saunders

  Chapter 15

  She walked with delicate steps along the sandy cove, her legs still struggling to support her weight. The eternal sea swelled and sent small waves creeping over the hard sand and filling her trailing footsteps. The seabirds called and swooped, she felt they were excited to see her again after all those missing months. As she stood with the bracing wind wrapping itself around her she felt more vividly alive than she had ever done before, alive but with something still painfully unaccounted for. As Emily stood on the shore with her eyes stretched to the horizon, the sights were familiar and yet somehow strange. They had told her that time would heal her, make her whole again... be patient her mother had said, let your guardian angels take care of you. If Emily had ever believed in guardian angels, then they had deserted her when she was lost in her coma, but coming back to her cottage under a warming sky with the winter months lost to the void of her memory, maybe those winged messengers were hovering close again. Despite her improvements there was still the shadow of sadness from something unremembered.

  A more tangible sadness was brought by the continued absence of her brother. Emily had tried many times to call Tony but it appeared that his phone service was unavailable. An unpaid account Emily guessed, or maybe he had simply abandoned his phone in his desire to completely drop out of sight. Tony had gone missing before but never quite so completely, never for so long.

  Emily, as was her nature, wished that she could do something to help him. Whatever trouble he was in would best be solved as a family, she was sure of that. Even just knowing that he was well would be something, but Tony had managed to slip away from her and her mother completely. Since waking from her coma Emily had only seen her brother a couple of times, both times had been confined in the harsh, antiseptic atmosphere of her room on Artemis ward. The hospital seemed to be a place that made Tony uncomfortable. Even then, when he should have been happy at her recovery, she felt him to be distant as if his mind was trapped elsewhere. Emily had never really had the opportunity to talk to him seriously since the accident and she felt an overwhelming need to do so. There were things in her own life that she wanted to share with him. Emily remembered how she used to boss him around when they were children, cajole him into going along with her ideas, now she just wanted his company on equal terms.

  As she slowly regained her former strength, Emily was starting to get a few callers drifting in to see her at the cottage. Ken Granger called in quite frequently, he would sometimes come with Suzanne with whom an easy friendship had developed. Often he would simply drop in for a quick chat if he was in the vicinity. He told Emily that he would find a position for her at the clinic whenever she was ready but Emily was aware that there was hardly enough work in the small practise for her as well as the new girl. A solution presented itself when Margaret Jenkins dropped by on one of her whirlwind visits. Despite spring being well advanced, the weather was still chilly when Margaret arrived unannounced and dressed in a heavy parka.

  "It's so good to see you looking well again Emily... I can't stop, I just called in to give you this." She held out a small gift wrapped parcel, gold paper and curled ribbons.

  "Oh Margaret you shouldn't have... What ever can it be?"

  "It's just a trinket sweety... just to say how sorry I am about what Juno did to you. I've been racked with guilt over pressing you work with him."

  "Oh Margaret you should feel no guilt. I wanted to ride Juno, he was coming along fine. If not for the overexcited dog panicking him none of this would have happened."

  "So he was spooked by a dog, I never really knew what had happened... Was it Badger?"

  "Yes but he meant no harm... dogs do what they do. In don't want you you to blame anyone. Especially yourself."

  "No, I'm sure you're right Emily thank you for being so understanding sweety...Go on open it up." Emily carefully untied the ribbon and found a delicate silver bracelet.

  "It's beautiful Margaret... I love it but there was no need."

  "There was a need... maybe just my need to make sure our friendship was still intact." They exchanged a warm hug.

  "Of course our friendship is still intact... Look there's some wine in the fridge will you have a glass?"

  "It's tempting, really tempting but I've got a busy afternoon... Bank manager busy."

  "No problems I hope."

  "Quite the opposite, the business is doing rather well at the moment... In fact... I know it's early days but..."

  "Go on, spit it out."

  "Well I was wondering if you might like to... When your fully recovered... if you might come and work for me at the stables. I really need someone around the place that I can rely on... I appreciated your help before the accident and I miss you and your good sense about the place. I was thinking of something more formal with a proper salary."

  "Well that sounds fantastic Margaret... Ken has promised me some work but I'm not sure he will be able to afford to pay me for many hours a week... Could we look at the possibility of me doing a few days with you and a few with Ken?"

  "That would suit me well Emily... At least to start with... maybe in the future I will be able to wean you away from our favourite vet. I can't say too much yet but longer term I've been mulling over the possibility of bringing a partner in... someone like you."

  "Wow, are you serious... this isn't just your misplaced guilt talking."

  "No not at all... I have been thinking about the idea for a long time... well before the accident."

  "I'm truly flattered... and more than interested."

  "OK darling hold that thought, we'll talk again but for now I really must fly... time and bank managers wait for no woman." She kissed Emily on the cheek and was gone into the cool afternoon. Emily watched though the window as Margaret's Land Rover made a three point turn in the lane and then disappeared up the hill towards Biddenfield. The convalescent young woman was suddenly starting to look forward to her new life, maybe the delicate wings of her angels had indeed settled over her again.

  As evening fell and for reasons which lay more in pandering to her comfort, Emily lit her fire and sat reading, curled up on her easy chair with a cup of hot chocolate at her side. As she drew drowsy breaths under the fading light with the words of her book lost to the growing darkness, Emily let her eyes drift to the hypnotic flickering of the flames of her fire. There as she watched transfixed, the flames seemed to form themselves into recognisable shapes. Maybe a sailing boat, a shimmering dog with its legs in the air. As she watched a face seemed to grow from the movement of the flames. She watched as her mind constructed the image from the glowing embers. It was a face that she finally knew; it was the face of her stranger. It was Alexander's face drawn at last from her memory.

  The emotion held in the recognition was almost too hard for her to bear. Suddenly as if a switch had been thrown, the memory of her phantom life cascaded back to her. This was no gradual thing, no slow piecing together of a vague jigsaw puzzle; it was sudden and complete in an instant. Shocking and numbing in its detail, each precious moment was held up in front of her. She remembered discovering the cottage door, the strange impenetrable membrane that separated her from her body in the hospital, even trivia like the broken eggs, the flash of sunlight on Alexander's glasses, or the pale almost transparent blue of his eyes as he turned to look at her. Emily remembered Alexander's pledge that he would save her and they would be together again and she remembered the slow but certain path she had followed over the weeks and months which had led her, even as a phantom, to fall in love with him.

  The whole insane story was true. Emily sat back on her heels, her arms tight around herself reliving the time when she had known Alexander, the times they had spent together in this very cottage writing his novel. She remembered it all with a fondness and with a passion. The remaining evening light had faded completely now but Emily's eyes were illuminated by the vision of her winter of contentment. Her glorious memory was finally back. But with it came an almost unbearable need to find A
lexander again.

  Still shrouded in darkness, Emily groped for her phone and called her mother.

  "Mum, it was all true, everything you told me. My memory just came flooding back. Mum you have to help me find Alexander."

  "Hold on darling, I'll come round and we can talk. Give me twenty minutes."

  When Suzanne arrived clutching a bottle of wine, Emily had finally found the light switch and had washed her face and pulled herself back together. The two women hugged.

  Suzanne held up the bottle.

  "Are you allowed to drink yet?"

  "I'll get some glasses, frankly after the last hour or so I could use a glass of wine." Emily headed to the kitchen while her mother set to work on the bottle. As the wine was poured Emily revealed what she had remembered.

  "One of the first things that really stands out for me is seeing and smelling the scent of blue freesias when I first burst into the cottage."

  Suzanne's eyes welled with tears, the flowers had been the expression of some desperate hope that they might somehow draw her daughter back home. At the time, buying them had been symbolic of her love for Emily but also expressed her faith that her daughter would, one day be back in her cottage, whole and well.

  "I had almost forgotten those flowers darling, but it proves that this strange event was all true. I put the flowers on your table and no one else in the world knew of them."

  "At the time when I discovered the flowers, nothing much was making sense to me, but somehow I knew the flowers were a symbol of love."

  Suzanne held her daughter's hand and smiled at her.

  "Go on darling, tell me more."

  "I hardly know where to start. You remember the dream I told you about..."

  "The tragic lovers?"

  "Yes... Well it was the story as I remembered it from the book that Alexander and I were working on."

  "Alexander's book... You were working on it together?"

  "Yes... sort of."

  Wow, well that all fits, he never did tell me much about the book and certainly never mentioned you... not until he needed to. Frankly this whole past winter feels like dream to me... There was really only one thing on my mind."

  "Mum, over the winter I think... as unlikely as it sounds, Alexander and I fell in love."

  "I think I already knew that darling. Alexander was so concerned for you when he thought that you were in danger, that I felt sure his feelings for you ran pretty deep."

  "Did you? Could you see that... that he might have loved me?"

  "If ever I've seen a man in love, then it was Alexander during those desperate minutes while we were trying to save you. He kissed you with such tenderness at your bedside that I almost burst into tears. It was that kiss that woke you darling."

  Emily fell silent for a moment trying to accept that the feelings for Alexander which had suddenly come back, may really have been reciprocated.

  "But then when I woke up I could not even remember him and poor Alexander must have felt totally rejected. I need to find him Mum... I need to tell him that I still feel the same, I want him back in my life Mum. Ever since coming home I've felt that something has been missing and now I'm certain what it is. I want him back so much that it hurts. How could I have forgotten him so easily?"

  "If one thing is clear from this, it is that you were in a physical and emotional turmoil that defied all reason. It's not really very surprising that your memory did not behave normally. But I blame myself for letting Alexander slip away. I was so focussed on your recovery, that I blocked everything else out, even Tony's persistent absence. I hardly thought of Alexander at all. But you're right he must have felt totally rejected by all of us. I don't even have a forwarding address, a phone number or anything. I don't know where to start to try and find him anymore."

  "There must be something we can do."

  "I have recently thought of trying to contact him again but I could find no where to start. He paid all his bills in cash so there are not even bank records to chase up. I'm so sorry Emily, Alexander is probably the most important man in the world to us because of what he did, and what he means to you, and I just let him slip through my fingers without thinking."

  "Don't blame yourself; you couldn't have known how I felt about him."

  "Emily... there's something else I haven't told you yet... This is hard for me to say."

  Emily noticed more tears welling in her mother's eyes.

  "Go on tell me... It can't be that bad."

  "Yes, it is... It's worse than bad, but I need to tell you. The doctors had finally convinced me that there was no hope left for you and I had made the decision..." Suzanne took a deep ragged breath. "I made the decision to let them turn off your life support... I had already said goodbye to you."

  Emily held her mother tight.

  "I already know that... I told you all my memories have come back. When you read me those lines from Shelly's poem To the Moon it was the saddest, sweetest moment in my life. You have nothing to feel guilty about my lovely petite Maman."

  Both women gave way to their emotions, and when the tears were dried they sat together talking into the night about the future. The bond between them had survived the turmoil of the past months and had emerged stronger for the testing.

  The next day Emily busied herself by doing an internet search for Alexander Havers. There were no matches that fitted her particular Alexander. A brief article about a man with that name who had tragically lost his wife but he was a business man, an accountant. There was nothing that fitted the Alexander she knew. So she posted messages for him on all her social network accounts. Surely, she thought, that would bring a response. It was just a matter of time before he looked for her. Unless, Emily thought, he had already forgotten his muse, she hoped that such a thing could not be possible.