In Another Life

by Carys Jones

  “We’ve got someone here, she’s convulsing, we need to get her out, now!”

  Three fire fighters ran over, clutching the Jaws of Life.

  “She’s just in there,” Jane pointed. The girl was still twitching and convulsing in the driver’s seat though she didn’t appear to have regained consciousness.

  Twenty tense minutes later, the young woman was on a gurney, her head and neck supported in a brace, being loaded on to a waiting ambulance.

  Jane looked down at her. Through the congealed blood covering her face she could see how young and beautiful she was. In her line of work, Jane quickly learned how vicious death could be. It didn’t care how good you were, how young, how old, how rich or how poor. It would come for you with ruthless determination no matter what.

  Watching the girl get loaded in to the ambulance Jane took a brief second to hope that she would live, that she would be okay. Then she raced over to the next vehicle, to the next life hanging in the balance.

  *

  “What have we got?” Dr. Simmons asked the presenting paramedics who stood around the girl on the gurney who was strapped down.

  “Young female, involved in a head on collision. Appears to have suffered severe head and chest wounds. Assessment on site showed a weak pulse. She was also convulsing heavily on site so needs an emergency CT and MRI.”

  Dr. Simmons nodded as he listened, scanning the injured girl with his eyes.

  “Multiple breaks in the arms,” the paramedic continued. “As well as the legs.”

  “Thank you,” Dr. Simmons replied formally. “How many more can we expect to be coming in from the accident?”

  “Not many,” the paramedic reported grimly. “Many were dead at the scene.”

  Dr. Simmons felt his chest tighten but he remained professional and courteous.

  “Thank you, we’ll take it from here.”

  The paramedics left and Dr. Simmons immediately began ordering essential tests for the girl on the gurney. She was fast running out of time within the golden hour. She was already at risk of so many fatal injuries; a bleed on the brain, ruptured lungs. He needed to assess her as swiftly as possible.

  *

  Several hours later and Marie Schneider was alone in a hospital room, intubated and unconscious. The machines around her beeped as they helped her breath and monitored her weak vital signs.

  Her arms had been bandaged at her sides, as had her legs. Initial x-rays showed that she’d suffered multiple breaks.

  With all the blood cleaned off her face she appeared as ghostly white as the walls around her. Her hair seemed eerily dark against the pristine pillows which propped her head up.

  Dr. Simmons glanced in on his patient as he prepared to finish his shift. She was alive which made him feel satisfied that he’d done his job that day. When she came in, Marie was clinging on to life by the thinnest of threads. Now she was at least stable. Dr. Simmons would be unable to assess the true extent of the injuries until she woke up. If she woke up.

  His patient was young. In her twenties. Her belongings had been with her at the crash and had enabled them to contact her next of kin. Soon they would arrive, worried and anxious to be told that the person they loved was currently in a coma and doctors had no idea when and if she would wake up.

  Comas were difficult. Dr. Simmons understood when family and friends wanted finite answers but all he could give them were theoretical outcomes. Every coma patient was different. Sometimes a coma lasted three days, sometimes it could last three years. It was a trying, tense time for all involved.

  Marie had not recovered consciousness since she’d been admitted to the hospital. She’d had several further fits which were under control now, thanks to the drugs being pumped in to her veins. The CT and MRI scans showed excessive bleeding on the brain which had needed an emergency procedure to help clear.

  The crown of her head was now swathed in bandages, covering the incisions which had been made and now needed to heal. It appeared that the bleed hadn’t caused any permanent damage, but then it was all so hard to judge when the patient wasn’t awake to tell you how they felt. Marie’s body was almost in stasis as it struggled to cope with the horrific injuries which had been inflicted upon it.

  “Dr. Simmons?” Angela Crenshaw appeared at the consultant’s side. She was a newly graduated nurse and carried the nervous energy of someone acclimatising to the demands of the job.

  “Yes?” Dr. Simmons turned away from Marie to face her.

  “Marie’s family will be here soon,” she began tentatively. “They are going to want to know when we expect her to wake up. What should we tell them?”

  Dr. Simmons sighed. This was always such a difficult question to answer. Hope was so important within hospitals; he knew it was essential to never let it die completely, even when a situation appeared hopeless.

  “Be positive,” he urged. “Explain how she’s currently in a coma but could wake up at any given moment.”

  “Could she?” Angela sounded bright with optimism.

  “Also explain the severity of her injuries, how her brain especially has been damaged and as such her body has shut down while she recovers. Currently the intubation is breathing for her and all we can do is wait and hope she wakes up.”

  “Exactly,” Angela smiled in agreement. She wanted Marie to wake up, no, she needed Marie to wake up. In her brief stint working full time as a nurse since graduating she’d not seen anyone die, not yet. She couldn’t bear the thought that the first death she witnessed might be of someone just a little older than she was.

  “They also need to be aware that as and when Marie wakes up, she might be different.”

  “Different?”

  “Her speech might be impaired; she might be unable to walk. We can’t predict how badly her brain has been damaged until she’s awake.”

  Angela nodded gravely and cast a forlorn look at Marie. It seemed so cruel that even waking up wasn’t a guarantee that everything would be alright. She’d either wake up and be herself or she’d wake up and be irrevocably damaged for the rest of her life.

  “She was just driving home, oblivious about what was about to happen,” Angela said uneasily, scared by how fragile life was. Growing up, as a teenager she’d felt infinite, like she could do anything. Then as she started studying medicine she learned just how impossibly fragile the human body was. Bones could break, skin could tear, and organs could rupture. There seemed to be a million ways that someone could die. It was terrifying.

  “Remember to be positive with her family,” Dr. Simmons advised. “They are going to be scared and confused and needing answers.”

  With that he walked away. His body ached and he longed for the comfort of his king sized bed. Whether or not his wife would be in it didn’t matter. He loathed the weekend shifts. He tried to put off taking one as much as he could but they always seemed to catch up with him. It felt like the worst cases always arrived over the weekend, as if everyone was being cautious with their lives all week but once Friday rolls around they embrace recklessness and lose all sense of their own mortality.

  As Dr. Simmons reached his Audi he realised how desperately he needed a drink. Something strong to dull his senses like neat vodka. He couldn’t let his anxieties about what went on in the hospital pollute his time at home. He couldn’t sacrifice his precious free time wondering whether or not Marie Schneider would live. Vodka was his medicine. It helped him forget, it helped him cope.

  He climbed in to his car and turned the key in the ignition. When he returned Monday morning he’d discover if the young girl had pulled through and whether or not she’d woken up.

  *

  The music throbbed in Sebastian’s ears as he pushed his way towards the bar. His vision was already slightly blurred from the five gin and tonics he’d already enjoyed throughout the evening. The room around him felt alive and pregnant with opportunity, his senses both dulled and elated by the alcohol in equal measure.

  He was having a g
ood night. He was with his friends, the drinks were flowing and soon they’d stagger off to a night club where they’d awkwardly manoeuvre on the dance floor until the small hours. Everything felt great. Almost.

  Sebastian thought of Marie and felt a twinge of longing pull at the nape of his neck, drawing him away from the revelry of the night. He missed her. Every time he thought they were getting closer she’d escape back to her home, to her family, closing the hatches and refusing to completely let him in. To Seb, it felt as if he’d never truly know her. Despite their years of dating and their promise to wed, Marie remained an enigma to him. It was part of her allure but it also drove him crazy with desperation. He wanted to know her, wanted to feel like they were two halves of the same whole but for Marie it was different. She was also looking for something to complete her, except what she was looking for wasn’t him.

  In his suit jacket pocket Sebastian’s phone began to vibrate against his chest like an artificial heartbeat. He quickly retrieved it, hoping it was Marie. He looked at the name flashing on the screen and had to do a double take. It was a number which had never had cause to call him before. It was Bill Schneider calling him, Marie’s father.

  Over the past few years Sebastian had met Bill Schneider on a handful of occasions and when they met they barely said anything to one another. They discussed bland topics like the current weather or state of various football teams. Marie was the only thing they had in common. Bill was understandably protective of his only daughter and regarded the millionaire Fenwick boy with caution. Yet here he was, suddenly calling Sebastian out of the blue on a Friday night. What could he possibly want?

  As Sebastian accepted the call his blood ran cold, the liquor quickly dispersing from his system, the pleasant effects it induced being washed aside as fearful realisation set in. If Bill was calling it meant that something bad had happened. It meant that something bad had happened to Marie.

  “Hello?” Sebastian heard his voice shake, the music no longer pulsating in his ears, it had been replaced by his own, racing heartbeat.

  “Sebastian?” Bill’s voice sounded hoarse on the other end of the line.

  “Yes, Bill, it’s me. Is everything alright?”

  Then Bill said the words Sebastian had been dreading; “Sebastian, it’s Marie. Something’s happened.”

  *

  Sebastian didn’t like to use his name and wealth too flippantly but he had to get to Marie so he made an exception. He immediately called for a private car to drive him straight to Manchester, to St. Jude’s Hospital so he could be by the side of the woman he loved.

  Bill’s details had been sketchy.

  “There’s been an accident.”

  “She’s in a coma.”

  “Stable.”

  The details seemed to conflict one another. If Marie was stable then why was she in a coma?

  As he sat in the car Sebastian tortured himself, imagining her alone and in pain, trapped within a crushed car. He should never have let her drive back so late at night. He should have insisted she wait until the following day to head home. This was his fault.

  He’d thrown up several times since leaving London. Each time he’d frantically waved at the driver to pull over before he cracked the car door and leant out in to the early morning air. Dawn was still hours away as Sebastian vomited on to the hard shoulder, his body shuddering.

  His entire being was awash with overwhelming emotions. He felt distraught, scared but worst of all, powerless. He had access to vast amounts of money but not one single pound could fix the situation he was about to walk in to. The damage to his beloved Marie had been done. The more he fretted over her, the more he shook. But he’d be there soon. He’d feel better when he saw her, he was sure of it.

  *

  An eerie symphony of beeps and drips played around Marie Schneider as she lay motionless within the web of lines and monitors. The ventilator kept a constant rhythm as it took each vital breath for her.

  Carol Schneider watched the machine with keen interest, unable to comprehend how it was keeping her daughter alive.

  “Why can’t she breathe?” Carol implored the young nurse who was working the night shift and monitoring Marie.

  “Because of the coma.”

  “But she’s still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  It made no sense to Carol. She watched machines breathe for her daughter with tear filled eyes. She didn’t dare go over and touch Marie. She appeared too fragile as she lay lifelessly on the bed, her skin the colour of porcelain and seeming just as delicate. Carol feared that if she even squeezed Marie’s hand the spell keeping her alive would be broken and her little girl would disappear right before her eyes, never to return.

  Bill wrapped a comforting arm around his wife as they stood just beyond the ICU, looking in through the glass. Doctors and nurses constantly milled around Marie, checking her vital signs, repositioning some of her lines.

  “She’s stable now,” the young nurse told them, sounding hopeful.

  “So she’ll wake up soon?” Bill asked, his bushy eyebrows lifting expectantly.

  “We don’t know,” the nurse replied awkwardly. “I’m afraid we don’t know when she will wake up.”

  “How can that be right?” Carol asked her husband once the nurse had walked away and they were alone.

  “How can they not know when she’ll wake up?”

  “I don’t know, honey,” Bill replied, his mouth drooping at the sides.

  “She has to wake up!” Carol declared fervently. “She’s our little girl, she has to wake up!”

  “And she will,” Bill told his wife sincerely. “But until she does we have to be strong for her, can you do that?”

  Carol nodded and leaned her head against the broad chest of her husband. Bill held her tightly, seizing the opportunity to privately release a solitary tear. It was all he could afford to do whilst with his wife. He needed to be strong for her, he knew that.

  “Our little Marie,” Carol sobbed, her body heaving with despair. “How could this have happened?”

  *

  When Sebastian arrived at the hospital he was directed towards the ICU. He raced there with an urgency and purpose he’d never before felt in his life. Nothing mattered except getting to Marie. As he rounded a corner he spotted the familiar figures of her parents locked in an emotional embrace and he slowed his pace. In his desperation he’d almost forgotten that he shared her, that she wasn’t completely his. They had an emotional stake in her well being too, arguably a greater one than he had.

  He walked over towards Marie’s parents and turned to face the glass window behind them. Through it he could make out his fiancée and when he saw her his breath caught in his chest.

  Marie was attached to so many monitors with numerous wires connected to her slender hands. Her arms appeared to be in splints, resting in straight lines at her sides. Her face was covered by large, plastic tubes which disappeared down her throat like some macabre tentacle covered monster. Glancing to the machines it was obvious that these tubes were breathing for her.

  What little of her face Sebastian could see appeared swollen and distorted, the colour of her skin darkening as angry bruises prepared to be released to the surface. And where she wasn’t broken and bruised she was deathly pale. She was his beautiful Marie but she was tragically broken.

  Sebastian let out a pained gasp and leaned uneasily against the glass. His body felt weak from shock and exhaustion, the initial adrenalin which had fuelled his journey from London beginning to wane.

  “Sebastian?” Carol removed herself from Bill’s strong arms and came over to the tall, lean boy who was due to marry her daughter.

  Carol didn’t say anything else. Instead she threw herself around him, pulling him tightly to her. She smelt of Estee Lauder and hand sanitizer. Sebastian embraced her back, needing the physical connection. They both trembled with despair. When eventually she pulled away from him she saw that he was crying.

  “Here,�
� she fumbled nervously in her jeans pocket and handed him a crumpled tissue which he gratefully accepted.

  “Thanks,” Sebastian sniffed as he wiped at his eyes. He noticed Bill, strong as ever, managing to maintain his composure.

  “Thanks for calling me,” he nodded to the older man.

  “Of course.”

  The three of them looked in on Marie. It was bizarre to see her so still when previously she’d been so full of life. It was as if she had been frozen.

  “Did they say when she will wake up?” Sebastian asked the obvious question.

  “They don’t know,” Carol replied mournfully. “But she’s stable, which is a good sign.”