by Melanie Rose
Everything was so familiar, so normal. I began to think that my experiences as Lauren must simply have been a very real-seeming dream after all.
Back in the office, Stephen was panicking over some mislaid notes, and I hardly had time to grab a cup of afternoon tea, let alone dwell on the workings of the sleeping brain, or the outlandish theory of shared souls. By the time I returned to my flat after Frankie’s evening walk, it was after seven o’clock. I kicked my shoes off in the hallway and walked in stockinged feet into the kitchen to throw a TV dinner into the oven, then flopped down in my armchair with a glass of orange juice.
I glanced anxiously at the clock, allowing my thoughts to return to the forbidden territory of “what if?” So far, if I assumed the worst—that Lauren and I both really coexisted in some way—then it had worked quite well logistically until now because Lauren and I had been keeping strange hours, due to the fact that we’d both been in the hospital. What would happen, I wondered—providing she was real—if she were ready to wake up before I was ready to go to bed? Could both of us be awake at the same time? I couldn’t see that it was possible, given that there was only one me, one consciousness—even if I had started flitting between two bodies like something out of a horror movie.
After eating the cardboard-flavored shepherd’s pie and giving Frankie her supper, I curled up in my chair to see what was on the television, flicking through the channels without much success. I was about to give up and see if there was any ice cream in the freezer when the phone rang.
It was Dan.
“How are you today?” he asked solicitously. “Feeling better?”
Adrenaline flooded my body at the sound of his voice. There was a discernible tightening in my chest and my palms became so clammy I thought the phone was going to slip right out of my grasp. My voice sounded strained when I tried to use it, so I cleared my throat and tried again.
“I’m much better, thank you. I went in to work today. I’ve only been home just over an hour.”
“Do you feel well enough to come out for a drink this evening?”
I was about to say I’d love to, when I glanced again at the clock. Eight-thirty might not be late in evening terms, but it was getting late to be sleeping in the morning.
Then I remembered Nurse Sally’s voice speaking to me as I’d woken as Lauren the previous morning. She’d complained that I was an incredibly heavy sleeper, and that she hadn’t been able to rouse me. Did that mean that Lauren couldn’t wake until I went to sleep?
“That would be great,” I heard myself saying. “Where should we go?”
He suggested a friendly little pub not more than ten minutes’ drive away. I agreed to meet him there in half an hour. However, once the phone was hung up and the feeling of euphoria I had felt at the sound of his voice had started to wear off, I was assailed by feelings of guilt. Poor Lauren—or, rather, poor Lauren’s family, I thought. Suppose my theory was right and this wasn’t a dream? Her children would be waiting to visit her and wondering why their mummy wouldn’t wake up. On the other hand, I had no wish to jump back into her shoes any sooner than I had to. Apart from the children, there was Grant of course. He seemed like a nice caring husband, but I was not his wife and I could see that things could get very complicated there.
If I could postpone the moment when I was back in her body by an hour or two, then that suited me just fine, especially if she was going to be allowed to go home today. I wasn’t looking forward to stepping into that minefield one little bit.
Anyway, I reasoned, as I brushed mascara onto my eyelashes and finished smoothing on lip gloss, this was all simply a wild theory. I would probably tumble into bed tonight and dream about something completely different. And even if I was somehow right, then I didn’t owe them anything. If their mother was dead, then that was very sad, but why was it my responsibility? I’d never asked for any of this, had I?
The pub was noisy and crowded when I pushed through the front door, and I was beginning to wonder how I would find Dan when he appeared at my side. “Shall we go through to the other bar?” he shouted over the din, and I nodded, following him into the much quieter lounge bar, where he grabbed us a couple of seats at a small round table.
“What would you like to drink?” he asked.
“I’d like a still mineral water, please.”
His eyebrow went up, but he didn’t try to change my mind, as happened frequently when I was out with friends. I’d stopped drinking alcohol in any quantity a few months previously, not for any highbrow reasons, but because I didn’t like the feeling of being out of control. Now, with the lightning strike and my present state of confusion, I decided it might be more sensible, for the present at least, to abstain from drinking altogether.
Dan returned with my water and a pint of lager for himself, and we sat looking at each other warily across the small divide afforded by the table, sipping nervously at our drinks.
“You’re very pretty when you’re clean and dry,” he said at last, sitting back and licking a mustache of froth off his top lip.
“You brush up quite well yourself,” I replied with a smile.
We sat in silence for a moment, contemplating each other over our glasses.
“I’d really like to get to know you better.” He blurted it out as if he’d been unable to prevent his thoughts escaping him.
I must have looked rather startled, because he grinned widely and took my hand in his.
“I mean, I’ll tell you something about my life, and you can tell me something about yourself.”
“You start then,” I said, trying not to show that it felt as though his touch was setting my hand on fire.
“Okay. Well, for a start I’m not married,” he said, answering the question I’d been itching to know. “I was engaged to a girl for a while a year or so ago, but she ran off with a friend of mine.” He took a swig of his lager and looked me in the eye. “Your turn.”
“I lived with a guy for a while, but it didn’t work out. I moved out and got a place of my own two years ago. I live alone now, apart from Frankie of course.”
“My elderly father lives with me,” he said. “He’s an old rogue, but his heart’s in the right place. You’d like him.”
“I’m sure I would.” I yawned suddenly and clamped my hand over my mouth, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day, especially after what happened…”
“Come on,” he said, downing his pint and pulling me to my feet. “I shouldn’t have asked you out this evening, especially as you struggled into work today. You would have been perfectly within your rights to have stayed in bed all day.”
I longed to tell him that bed was the last place I wanted to be. That was the place where I was thrown into a bizarre alternate world, but that information wasn’t something I thought would go down particularly well on our first date.
He walked me to my car, and I apologized again for having to leave almost before our evening had begun.
“I’ll ring again in a few days, when you’ve had a chance to recover properly,” he said, giving me a chaste peck on the cheek. “Go on, get yourself home. What you need is a good night’s sleep.”
It was past ten o’clock when I clambered at last into bed and snuggled down with Frankie on the floor beside me in her basket. I was so tired, I didn’t even have time to fret about what possibly lay ahead of me. My last thought was that the nightmare might all be over by now. Perhaps the lightning had, after all, induced hallucinatory dreams, and that being the case, maybe I would never have to be Lauren again.
As it turned out, there was no such luck.
I felt myself being shaken awake by Dr. Shakir, who was standing over me looking extremely concerned.
“How do you feel, Lauren?” he asked as I opened my eyes.
“Fine,” I replied groggily. My head felt as if I was waking from the deepest of sleeps, my eyes were having difficulty opening, and I was sure my lids were puffed up like a pig’s.
“We hav
e been worried about you. Do you remember who you are?”
I contemplated for the briefest of seconds telling him that I was Jessica Taylor, but decided against it almost immediately. What was happening to me was the result of no medical condition Dr. Shakir would ever have encountered. There seemed no point in doing anything other than playing along with this strange game in which I found myself once again.
“I’m Lauren Richardson,” I said. “I’m married with four children.”
“Lauren, sweetheart!” came a voice from the other side of the room. “You’ve got your memory back!”
I turned my head to see Grant advancing on me, eyes bright. “We—the doctors and I—thought you’d gone into a coma! We thought we were losing you all over again.” And, to my horror, my husband gathered me in his arms and began to sob uncontrollably.
Dr. Shakir snapped his fingers at Nurse Sally. “Fetch Mr. Richardson a cup of hot sweet tea, would you, Nurse?”
“Grant,” I said from somewhere beneath his shirt, “you’re suffocating me.”
“Don’t do that again, my love,” he said, releasing me, but taking hold of both my hands as he perched on the edge of the bedside chair. “I couldn’t bear it if you left us.”
I stared with some embarrassment into the tear-stained face of this man who was gazing at me with such love. I told myself to think of him as if he were the husband of a good friend. I knew that if I were an onlooker and not the object of his love I might have been moved by his obvious devotion. The knowledge quelled my instinctive feelings of alarm and I found a small spark of compassion. Grant was not a strong man.
“I’ve only been asleep,” I told him gently. “I’ve felt so tired since this all happened.”
His eyes darted to Dr. Shakir, who shook his dark head as if my condition was a new one on him.
“The nurses have been trying to rouse you since seven o’clock this morning, Lauren,” Dr. Shakir said. “In the end I was called, because they feared you had fallen into a coma. We ran tests, but although they showed your metabolism had slowed considerably, your vital signs have remained steady. We simply couldn’t wake you up.”
“I think,” I said slowly, realizing that my worst fears had been justified, “that I might be needing a lot of sleep from now on. I’m sure there’s no need to worry about me, though.”
“Lauren!” Grant exclaimed, undisguised exasperation overlying his earlier tone of abject misery. “They’ve been trying to wake you for the last three hours. That’s not normal, sweetheart.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have me back for a few hours a day than not at all?” I asked him shortly.
Grant looked affronted, but I plowed on regardless.
“What I’m trying to tell you is that if you let me wake when I’m ready, I’ll probably recover a lot quicker.”
Grant nodded eventually and went out into the corridor. I heard him calling the children and I closed my eyes again, mentally preparing myself to try to be suitably motherly.
“Lauren,” Dr. Shakir’s voice murmured softly, “is there something you aren’t telling us?”
“Like what?” I asked, frightened suddenly that he knew my secret.
“I don’t know. Maybe your memory has returned more than you are willing to admit?”
“Why should I say I don’t remember things if it’s not true?” I asked. I was unsure what he was getting at, but he was looking at me strangely, and I didn’t like it.
“You have a very demanding home life,” he said with a shrug. “Everyone seems to depend on you. It can’t be easy to cope with four children under the age of eight, especially as one of your twins has special needs.”
I stared back at him, relieved that he thought I was shamming. It was a lot better than the prospect of him discovering the truth. I had no intention of spending the rest of my days in a laboratory, being hooked up to monitors while I slept, and having my life examined in minute detail.
“If you’re insinuating that I’m delaying my recovery on purpose, then I can assure you, you couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“You haven’t seemed too eager to see your children since you’ve been in the hospital,” he pointed out. “No one’s blaming you, Lauren. Everyone deserves a rest sometimes.”
“Perhaps I should share my secret for a peaceful life with other harassed mothers,” I retorted. “Get yourselves struck by lightning, girls; it works wonders in the sympathy stakes.”
Before the doctor had a chance to respond, Grant appeared with the children in tow, and I sat up and pecked them each on the cheek in turn. Teddy tried to twist his face away at the last moment, but I managed to kiss the side of his ear. I felt it was the least I could do for Lauren.
“Did you all enjoy Chessington World of Adventures yesterday?” I asked them.
“We went on some really cool rides,” Nicole said. “Daddy wouldn’t let us go on the really big ones, but Sophie and me went on the Vampire Ride!”
“Toby and Teddy were too small,” Sophie put in with a twinge of disappointment. “They only wanted to go into the Bubbleworks and to Beanoland.”
“I drove Daddy in a Tiny Truck,” Toby put in excitedly, “and in Beanoland we fired foam balls and went on the Bash Street Bus.”
“Did Daddy go on it?” I asked with a smile.
“I had to go on all sorts of things,” Grant said with a playful grimace. “Most of the rides require a parent to accompany young children, and it wasn’t easy with the twins being too small for a lot of the bigger rides.” He gave me a wan look. “It would have been easier and more fun if you’d been well enough to come, Lauren. We missed you.”
I turned my attention to Teddy. “Did you have a nice time, too?”
He twisted the toe of his shoe into the floor and wouldn’t answer.
“You know he finds those sorts of places a challenge,” Grant said with a sigh. “Remember when we took the children to the local fair last year and he spent the whole time with his head hidden under my jacket?”
I stared at him blankly and there was a short silence as everyone realized they’d forgotten I didn’t remember anything about anything at all.
“Is Mum coming home today?” Sophie asked into the silence.
“It may be possible, depending on the result of the MRI scan and as long as there will be someone at home to look after her for the next few days,” Dr. Shakir said.
“I’ve taken the week off work anyway,” Grant said. “And Lauren’s sister Karen has said she’ll come to stay for a couple of days next week.”
Dr. Shakir looked at me. “What do you think, Lauren? Are you ready to go home, even though your memory has not yet returned?”
I didn’t like to say that if the return of my memory was the criterion for going home with the Richardsons, then I’d be in the hospital forever. Lauren’s memories were not available to me. I would have to start fresh from here, or else I’d have to persuade them to keep her sedated in the hospital for the rest of her life in the hope that under the influence of a drug-induced sleep I never had to return here.
Studying each of her children in turn, I decided I’d give it a go, for their sake. A heavily sedated mother was really no mother at all, and I felt they needed a mother desperately, each in their own special way.
Dear God, I thought, as I watched Toby bouncing on the end of the bed and the girls chatting animatedly about yesterday’s outing, is that why I’m here?
Grant brought in a fresh change of clothes for me that afternoon, when he returned with the children for a second visit. He told me he’d gotten rid of the ones I’d been wearing when the lightning struck.
“They were all burned, Mummy,” Nicole told me, her eyes as large as saucers as she remembered the incident.
“And your shoes were melted,” Toby added. “I carried them to the ambulance for you, but they were squished.”
I didn’t want to dwell on the horrible reality of Lauren’s burns, which I now believed had actually killed her.
>
“Don’t forget I still haven’t been given the all-clear from Dr. Shakir,” I reminded them gently.
He arrived at that moment looking flustered, and asked Nurse Sally to take the children to the playroom for a few minutes. Grant paled as he looked at the doctor’s expression and took my hand in his.
“We’ve had the results of the MRI scan. It has shown scarring to the surface of the brain.” Dr. Shakir came straight to the point. “We have also discovered a weakness in your skull, Lauren. It seems you suffer from a congenital defect that might never have been picked up, and probably wouldn’t have been a problem if it hadn’t been for the lightning strike.”
I stared at him. “What does this mean?”
“It means that the lightning strike, which might otherwise have been deflected by your skull and the skin of your scalp, has penetrated the temporal lobes where memory is stored.”
“And…?”
“From the damage we have seen, we are not sure that your memories will ever come back. I’m sorry.”
There was a short silence as we each contemplated the enormity of the diagnosis.
“You must be able to do something!” Grant spluttered. “In this day and age you’re supposed to be able to fix people!”
“Grant,” I said quietly, “I think I knew already that the memories weren’t coming back. It’s not the doctor’s fault.”
“I don’t understand how this can be happening.” Grant put his head in his hands and groaned. He looked shocked, as if this were the first time since the accident that he’d really understood that his life was changed forever.
“The temporal lobes are vulnerable to interruptions in oxygen supply to the brain,” Dr. Shakir went on, as if explaining the medical facts would enable us to cope with the reality of the problem more easily. “These in turn wreak havoc with the brain’s electrical signaling system. But the miracle is that Lauren doesn’t seem to be suffering from any other symptoms, Mr. Richardson. I am hopeful she will be able to lead a normal life.” He turned to me. “I have made an appointment for you with our psychiatric counselor for early next week. It may help you to come to terms with your condition to talk to someone trained in such things.”