Her intuitions had been right because as soon as the Staffie had looked up from its search and seen Coco, the dog had bolted full-pelt straight for her. Rhoda had fleetingly thought to pick Coco up, but she hadn’t had time and it hadn’t mattered anyway because just before making contact with Coco the big dog had swerved and knocked Rhoda down onto the muddy grass. A flash of pain had ripped up her leg and into her hip. A shout came from across the park, the old man’s voice calling angrily to his dog, making his way to help her as fast as his cane would allow. At least that was what she’d thought, but as he got closer and she’d raised a hand so he could help her up to her feet, that’s when the first blow came. His thick wooden cane struck her so hard across the cheek, the blow knocked the air straight out of her. She’d gasped a breath in to shout out, but the next blow came down before she could make a sound. And all the while he was shouting at her. Poor Coco, dancing around her on the grass yapping furiously.
None of it made any sense as he glared down at her while swinging his cane a third and final time, his hate-filled voice saying terrible things, a storm of ugly words she would only begin to process afterward. He told her she was stupid, a stupid bitch, why had she got in the way of the dog, she was a stupid fucking n*****, and suddenly she knew why this was all happening.
Disbelief in burning hot waves had flushed through her. She hadn’t thought things like this happened anymore, not here in this country, not now, and yet, somehow, here she was.
After the third blow the old man had pulled back, spittle hanging grotesquely from his chin as he scowled down at her. Then he’d lowered his cane, looked around the park purposefully, and called to his dog before turning and stalking away. Just like that.
The way he’d walked off, in such an ordinary, everyday way, her ears ringing and blood stinging her eyes as he’d left her to bleed in the mud. That was the thing that made the tears come as Coco whined and nosed around her.
Rhoda lay almost motionless, stunned, crying hot tears of confusion, scalding tears of rage. What had been a nice afternoon walk was now a nightmare. He’d walked away and she couldn’t think of what to say or what to do, so dizzy and disoriented she’d screamed at the top of her lungs after him.
“HEY! HEY!”
And at that, he’d turned back briefly to look at her, his eyes scanning the still-empty park beyond her. But seeing no one else, no one but the two of them, he’d turned and stumped away, his stupid oblivious dog following obediently at his heels.
Rhoda stayed in the park long after he’d left. The last thing she wanted was to see him again farther down the street back toward her home. She needed to fix herself, wash her face, check the throbbing wound on her forehead, but she had no pocket mirror in her bag. Rhoda knew she was a brave woman, she’d been a nurse for nearly three decades, but for some reason she’d not fought back. When the moment came, she did nothing. Why? She’d asked herself then, and every day since.
She’d talked it all through with the police counselor of course. It was shock, he’d told her. Simple as that. The old man had caught her by surprise; no one expects to be attacked in a public place in broad daylight walking their dog. No one expects frail old men with canes to be a threat. She had been blindsided, plain and simple.
Just as she’d been blindsided again on the ward. But this time someone else had been there to help. He’d looked into her eyes, and he’d understood her fear. He’d stepped in for her. He was her lucky charm. Her gift from God.
So, when she gets to work, she heads straight to his ward and shakes out the contents of her bulging rucksack on his bed. He sits motionless under the blankets, watching, as six thick books tumble out, alongside pens, pencils, and a brand-new sketchpad, with their discount stickers still attached.
Rhoda smiles at him. The library books are foreign dictionaries, the library maximum was six, and the sketchpad was the idea of one of the police officers yesterday.
If he couldn’t talk, then perhaps he could draw? the policeman had suggested. Perhaps he could communicate where he was from or anything he could remember?
He looks down at his gifts now, arrayed on his blankets, and he smiles a knowing smile to Rhoda. Thanks, his eyes say. Her gifts promise that today they will get to the bottom of this, together.
“I’ve been thinking,” Rhoda says, laying the books out so that the patient can see the titles and covers. “I know you can’t remember your real name just yet, but how do you feel about a temporary one? Just for now?” Her fingertips absentmindedly touch the scar by her hairline. “I know it’s not ideal but it would be nice to call you something, what do you say?”
He looks down at her pile of books, eyes flitting from one to the next, then back up to her. He nods.
18
DR. EMMA LEWIS
DAY 8—PUBLIC SPEAKING
Nick leads me up to the hospital canteen on the top floor. I follow, my mind whirring.
He chatters on as we take the stairs up two at a time. “Sorry for the stairs, the elevators take forever and I told everyone to be ready up there at half past.” He glances at his watch and then back over his shoulder at me. Catching my expression, he smiles. “Listen, seriously, there’s no big speech required, don’t worry about that. Nothing too stressful, just a quick mission statement so everyone knows who they’re working with and who to speak to if they have questions. Okay?”
It’s hard to tell how pale my face has got but I suddenly feel intensely light-headed. I pause on the stairs for a second, pretending to be out of breath. A speech in front of most of the hospital staff. I feel sick. This is not keeping a low profile. I suddenly wonder: How much has Peter actually told Nick about me and my history? I’m guessing nothing, otherwise Nick would appreciate the implications of me “getting my face out there.” But what can I do?
Just pray that no one I was at school with went into medicine and works here, I suppose.
Nick pauses. “Sorry! I’m rushing you, aren’t I? Sorry, take your time. They can wait a few more minutes. It’s just all a little fraught at the moment, morale up and down—things like this help. Makes sure everyone feels like they’re part of the team, in it together.”
“Of course, it’s fine. I just—I haven’t had much exercise over the Christmas break, ha,” I lie.
It’s fine, I tell myself; even if someone does recognize me, they aren’t going to blurt it out in the middle of a speech, are they? People don’t do things like that in real life. They’d come and talk to me after. Right? Right?
Stop it! No one here is going to remember you. You have a different name. And you look completely different. So stop it.
I smile up at Nick.
At the top of the stairwell, he turns to me again.
“So, it’s just through here. Shouldn’t be more than forty, fifty people. I’ll do a quick intro and then you can introduce yourself, a bit about your background and maybe a basic outline of the diagnostic plan. I’ll open up a quick Q&A and then we’re done.”
I take a fortifying breath in and nod. “Great.”
Nick’s hand goes to the door and I suddenly realize I have no idea what we are calling the patient. “Wait, Nick. What are we calling him? The patient?”
“Oh, bloody hell, sorry, Emma. We’re using Matthew for now. I know—but he seems to like it and we can’t call him Mr. Nobody, obviously. So we’re stuck with it for now. I should have mentioned before.” He suddenly looks as vulnerable as I feel, which, thankfully, takes my focus off of myself for a second.
“No, it’s fine,” I reassure him. “Let’s get through this bit and then you can take me to meet Matthew.”
He nods happily, back on safe ground, and with that he pulls open the doors.
My hands are slick with sweat, my chest fluttering. I take in the faces as we enter the canteen. Nurses, junior doctors, paramedics, porters, canteen staff, groundskeepers. I try to s
can each face for any sign of recognition. The crowd has hushed with our entrance and all eyes are on us as we make our way to the front.
Nick clears his throat and starts to speak. I notice a woman, standing by the hatch of the kitchen, turn toward us and I realize with sudden dread I know her. I rack my mind for who she might be, how I know her. She’s looking back toward the doors now, frowning. She’s waiting for someone. I struggle to focus on Nick’s words.
“—enormously lucky to have her with us. So, if you could all give a big hand to Dr. Emma Lewis, I’ll turn this over to her.”
I find myself stepping forward to join Nick, my eyes still locked on the woman. Then her eyes find mine, she gives me a tight smile before her gaze is pulled away by a younger woman sidling up beside her and I suddenly realize how I know her. It’s the receptionist from the lobby downstairs. Jesus. That’s how I know her.
I need to calm down. I need to stop being paranoid. Everything is fine. The relief I feel is overwhelming and I can’t hold back a smile. I let my body relax ever so slightly, take in my expectant audience, and begin.
19
THE MAN
DAYS 3–6—PATIENT
Rhoda sits patiently by while Matthew undergoes further scans on day three. He is assessed by multiple doctors, none of whom fully understand his problem, and none of whom manage to pry a single word from him.
He is moved to the psychiatric ward.
Rhoda moves with him. She plumps his pillows, she changes the dressings on his head wound, she brings in more library books and together they sift through the dry pages, hoping to find a glimmer of recognition in the darkness.
There is a small piece in the local paper that evening, an article about the man found on the beach. The patient doesn’t see it but Rhoda does. She particularly likes the photograph they used. The picture shows Matthew in the distance, a blurred dot, Officer Graceford with him and Officer Poole running toward the camera, caught in the moment, Poole’s mouth half open, shouting something at the photographer. The picture has an otherworldliness to it, like a painting.
She takes the evening paper home and carefully cuts the article out with her kitchen scissors. When this is all over, she decides, when he’s better, she’ll give Matthew all his cuttings, if he wants them. The picture is beautiful, she thinks. The great sweep of Holkham Beach, dunes she recognizes even without the caption under the photo.
The article beneath is about Mr. Garrett, how Matthew saved the day, right after being admitted to Princess Margaret’s. The article mentions how Matthew hasn’t spoken a single word since they found him. Portrayed as a mysterious hero, and easy on the eye, Rhoda can see how that would make a good story. Like a fairy tale, there is a magic to it, as delicate as filigree, and she feels that magic around him too.
Whoever wrote the article got it right, she decides.
Another day passes. It’s day four and Rhoda administers Matthew’s meds. He takes the pills from her trustingly, as if knowing in his heart she wouldn’t drug him. He doesn’t trust the doctors, he doesn’t know why exactly. He goes along with their tests, he tries to listen to their words, to what they say, but he is really only waiting. Waiting for everything to come flooding back in, like it should, soon. And he is waiting for her to appear. He knows she will come. It is just a matter of time.
To Matthew’s mind the psychiatric ward isn’t that much different from the ward he was on before. He knows there is something wrong with his brain, with his memory, and he’s picked up enough from his interactions to see the move coming. But the doors aren’t locked here, and his room isn’t padded, it’s just another blank hospital room.
There’s a courtyard garden on this ward, which Rhoda takes him out to if it’s not raining. She brings him in a puffer jacket from home. It smells of talcum powder and geraniums and it’s not new, but it keeps him warm, for which he is grateful.
He’s felt the cold more since the beach. He wonders if that might be because he’s not used to the weather here. Perhaps he comes from somewhere warm. There’s no way to be sure, it’s just a thought that occurs to him. He’s had so many fleeting notions of what his life was, is, but they float away as they come to him with nothing substantial to anchor onto.
He looks at the books Rhoda brings, the words in them, and he waits for the moment when they fall into place, as he knows they must.
* * *
—
That afternoon Rhoda finds another story in the papers. The tone suddenly different from before. They use her name. She realizes that the questions she was asked in the lobby by the reporters on that first night have been threaded into this article. She knows now she shouldn’t have spoken to those reporters. Her words sound foolish at this remove.
Thankfully, she sees it first, before the rest of the hospital staff. She’s set a Google alert, to know when to get the paper; her niece had shown her how to over Christmas.
Somehow they’d managed to get a picture of Matthew walking in the garden. He’s not wearing his puffer jacket in the picture, so it must have been taken the day before, the day he moved to the psychiatric ward. She has no idea how they took the photo; no one noticed a photographer on the closed ward. You’d think someone might have seen them, she thinks, but then that wasn’t usually something they had to worry about at Princess Margaret’s. That would have to change from now on.
The article accompanying the picture was wrong, Rhoda thought. This time they hadn’t got it right.
The picture was misleading. It showed Matthew, his dark hair tousled, his jaw stubbled, standing in the ward’s garden, his face contented, calm, his good looks somehow more pronounced against the rich greens of the bushes. And in his hand, its text clearly visible, one of her books from the library, a book she knows he only happened to be holding, just one of many language books he’d tried to look through that day. In the picture Matthew is holding a Ukrainian language book.
On the fifth day the story hits the national headlines. More details about Rhoda herself, about Matthew’s new name, make their way into and across the tabloids and broadsheets. The story of a wandering man with no name found on a beach, a man who did not speak but could disarm a man and defuse an incident. Theories. Appeals to anyone who might recognize him. Questions about how the patient was being dealt with in the hospital.
A video of Rhoda talking to the reporters appears online.
When Rhoda is called into Nick Dunning’s office on the patient’s sixth day and ushered into a seat next to someone from HR, she realizes what the full impact of her words may have been, that she might be part of something much bigger than she had anticipated. The hospital isn’t angry with her, how could they be, she hadn’t been aware that the reporters she’d spoken to had been filming her, on a phone, as she spoke to them. That much was clear from the footage, but as Nick explained firmly, “This can’t happen again.”
Nick calls a general staff meeting. The hospital is crawling with press, and while he understands it isn’t a doctor’s or nurse’s job to act as a bodyguard, he informs them that there will be security on all wards going forward, in light of the current situation and in light of the recent incident on a ward. Protecting patient safety and privacy must be a priority moving forward.
Nick mentions one last thing before the staff mill out: There will be a new doctor coming. A specialist from a London hospital. Someone for Matthew, someone who specializes in his exact condition, an expert.
And to her surprise a little shiver of dread passes through Rhoda as she joins the others shuffling out. The idea of Matthew remembering his real name makes her frightened, because in her heart Rhoda knows that as soon as he remembers who he is he’ll leave.
20
THE MAN
DAY 8—FIRST SIGHT
It’s her.
He sees her as soon as she rounds the corner of the ward, and his skin starts to thrum.
He knew something would be happening today. They brought him to the dayroom earlier than usual this morning. There were less staff on the ward. He’d felt instantly that something was coming.
And now he sees her, striding down the corridor, flesh and bone as real and solid as the building around her. Walking confidently toward the dayroom, toward him. He watches her from his safe position as she stops to talk to someone; she’s too far away yet to notice him. He studies the gentle swish of her chestnut hair, her face in motion, pale and strong. The clean lines of her jaw, her cheekbones. But it is her eyes he can’t stop looking at as they brush over the ward, over nurses, doctors, other patients. Her intelligent eyes, picking up everything, missing nothing. She’s stopped at the nurses’ desk just outside the dayroom. Surreptitiously, he scans the other patients around him. To see if anyone else sees what he sees. Do they too recognize her?
But the other patients are oblivious, they haven’t noticed. His eyes glide back to her, he watches her talking, listening, that open, beautiful face. It’s her. She’s come. For him. He doesn’t remember who she is yet but he knows she is the one he’s been waiting for.
His head wound prickles along his scalp, still not fully healed. With a shudder he remembers the word written on his hand in ink, the word he’d rubbed away.
A warm burst of laughter flutters and snaps him back to the here and now. She’s laughing at something one of the nurses is saying. It’s a generous laugh. He can tell from her body language that it’s not a great joke but she’s invested in them liking her. She wants them to know she’s not a threat, they are safe, all is well. The group she’s talking to relaxes, he watches it happen, they open to her, softening instantly.
And then a realization creeps over him: he can’t remember what it is he has to do. The panic he felt on the beach begins to flex inside him. She’s coming and he can’t remember who she is. All he knows is time is running out, he has to do something. Fear, cold and clinging, grips him as he struggles to remember what it is he’s supposed to do now that he has found her. He knows with crystal clarity this first meeting is crucial. It’s the most important thing he’ll ever do.
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