I open my mouth to test this theory but frustratingly no words emerge, even though the voice inside my head is loud and insistent. It’s like someone has cut a wire, pulled a plug: I’m jabbering in my mind but no sound is coming out. I feel cross with myself. I can’t just lie here; I had something important to do.
What did I have to do?
“You’ve suffered a head trauma and have been in a coma for some time.” The man’s speech is careful, measured and unhurried, in stark contrast to the wild, panicky voice still screeching inside my head.
Coma? From a bang on the head—a fall? For some time?
I close my mouth, which feels parched, and give up trying to speak. Listening is so much easier than battling; it’s far less exhausting to give in and do as I’ve been instructed, to just lie here and let this kindly stranger talk to me, even if his words don’t make any sense.
I’ve been in a coma?
I watch his mouth as if lip-reading might help. But I’m not deaf—I can hear perfectly—I just don’t understand what he’s telling me. I can’t feel any connection to the information he’s relaying, the person he’s describing; it’s like he’s talking about someone else.
“Emergency surgery was carried out at the West Middlesex Hospital in Isleworth. Once you were stable, they transferred you here for rehabilitation.”
Still nothing clicks. I understand the words individually, but I can’t fit them together into a recognizable meaning. He reaches for the clipboard and consults his notes, and I’m impatient to get a closer look, wondering if they might help me grasp the situation more quickly, but when I try to lift my head it feels as though it’s weighed down with rocks. I can’t move. I’m not exactly in pain; I’m just . . . numb.
Am I paralyzed?
Fear darts through me and I know I’m holding my breath as I make a deliberate effort to twitch my fingers and toes; I only release a deep sigh of relief when the sheet rises up slightly where my feet must be, and I see my fingers lifting one by one as if I’m silently rehearsing a piano tune. I notice my wedding ring is missing from my left hand, and I frown.
“Movement may prove difficult at first, Mrs. Castle,” the doctor goes on, more softly now, his steady gaze observing my downturned mouth. “Think of it this way: your body has been asleep for more than three months. You’re not simply going to bounce back. There’s been minimal nerve damage and you’ve shown reassuringly limited signs of muscle atrophy, but even so. Physical recovery takes varying amounts of time after a coma. We have the very best facilities here, though. Your recovery program will include physiotherapy, hydrotherapy . . .”
More than three months?
I zone out, taking in little beyond this one simple fact, and I widen my eyes until my eyebrows can’t arch any higher; I still don’t trust my voice to work but I need to convey my shock and disbelief somehow. One-sided conversations are so tiring, I think, wondering if I’ll ever be able to have a proper two-way communication with anyone ever again.
“You look shocked, and I understand that,” he adds gently, bending to lean closer, blotting out the infernal bright light once more. “I’m sure it is frightening and very disorienting to discover you’ve lost such a chunk of time. You did begin to wake up after you arrived here, as a matter of fact, but I’m afraid you became extremely unsettled at that point. I would suggest, however, that such agitation is to be expected in the circumstances.”
Circumstances. Yes, that would be my daughter’s murder, then. Thank you for acknowledging that. At last we’re on the same page.
“We acted quickly to avoid any potential for cerebral compromise. A swelling of the brain, and so forth,” he tells me, straightening up, his tone brisk now. “With your husband’s consent, my team and I took the decision to induce a medical coma to allow for the better facilitation of recovery. Hence you have remained—”
Wait—did he just say with my husband’s consent?
His voice is almost hypnotically smooth; the words slip silkily across my understanding like oil over polished stone, gone before I can fully grasp them.
Dom has been here? But he hurt me. I was scared he would hurt my son. So I didn’t leave him—or something, someone, stopped me? He’s been with Aidan all the time I’ve been—
I rock my head from side to side in agitation now, lost in confusion, wracked with sudden fear—for myself, and for my son. My brain tells me that I’m clenching my fists, but when I look down my hands are flat and unmoving against the sheets. There’s a mottled purple bruise where a cannula is inserted into the back of my left hand, connecting me to a drip by a plastic tube that winds its way to a little bag filled with clear liquid, suspended from a hook on a metal stand. I try to press my chin against my chest to examine myself more closely, wondering exactly how incapacitated I am, but again my body seems slow to follow my brain’s instructions. Still, I can make out little round pads attached to my chest, a baffling array of tubes and wires wiggling like a child’s follow-the-line puzzle towards the flickering digital displays.
“Don’t worry about the gadgets and wires,” the doctor says, misinterpreting my distress and abruptly changing the subject as he watches me stare at the formidable collection of equipment. He waves a dismissive hand at them. “I know they look scary, but they’re largely precautionary, for monitoring purposes. They’re pretty tame, on the whole. They won’t hurt you. And remember they all have an off switch. Man rules machine.” He gives a quick smile.
I have no means of correcting his assumption and telling him that it’s not the machines I’m worrying about, but my husband. He definitely has no off switch; no one rules him.
Was it Dom who found me? I wonder if he called an ambulance or drove me to the hospital himself. But he was at work . . . I was alone and chasing desperately round the house, looking for something—what? I remember feeling like someone was watching me the whole time. Did they do this to me? I force my breathing to slow, my thoughts to be still, to empty and allow memory to resurface and fill in the blanks, but nothing comes.
“They’re just sensors so we can make sure your body is responding normally,” the doctor continues, frowning slightly now as I stare blankly at the monitors. I’m not even really seeing them; I’m still wondering about Dom, and how I got here in the first place. “I have personally been monitoring you, Mrs. Castle. It’s a relief to see you waking up this evening. I was growing concerned these last forty-eight hours, I’ll admit. You were becoming agitated and disturbed again, and your vital signs were showing signs of distress—your heart rate, blood pressure, EEG . . .”
I drift off as the voice lists a whole ream of medical words I don’t understand. It’s such a gentle voice—the accent is Spanish, I realize. I want to lean into it, close my eyes and sleep—
“Stay with me, Mrs. Castle. You’re doing really well.”
I feel my eyelids pried back one at a time, but I don’t flinch as he shines a little torch into my eyes: my mind is looking inwards. I’m no longer present; I am drifting . . .
“It’s very important you don’t get distressed. We need to keep you as calm as possible while we give your body and mind a chance to fully wake up. I know this is all a lot to take in, but there’s no rush.” He holds my hand while I concentrate on slowing my breathing. “There you are, just relax. You must take it easy.”
Take it easy. He keeps repeating this as though there’s a chance of my leaping out of my hospital bed and doing a quick jig around the room.
“Try to stay calm,” he continues as I glare at him.
Calm. It would be a miracle if I ever feel calm again.
“It is a miracle you are even alive after the injuries you sustained,” the doctor echoes uncannily. “You are my star patient, let me tell you that much. Even with the absolute best twenty-four-hour care we offer here, very few patients come back to us after being shot in the head.”
TWENTY-TWO
I can hear the wind chimes again; they are close by. My eyes open and I c
an see that the thin mauve curtains have been drawn back now, billowing like a ship’s sail into the room, jangling the chimes. I’m relieved that the blinding lamp over my bed has been switched off; daylight pours through the half-open window and for the first time I notice the whiteboard opposite my bed. There are notes scribbled all over it—diagrams scrawled in dark ink. I recognize them and something clicks into place: my whiteboard. No sign of Shay, though. Where’s the Ghost of Crushes Past when you need him? I think, and a bitter laugh forms deep in my chest. It hurts, badly.
I must have fallen asleep, overwhelmed by the information given to me by that treacle-rich Spanish voice. I still can’t move my head much but I can swivel my eyes to the left, just to check that I didn’t imagine the machines, that I’m not back in my living room, waiting for Aidan to get home from school. Every time I open my eyes, the world around me seems to have changed; I don’t trust my own brain. But little green numbers blink stoically at me, and there’s something comforting about the repetitively flashing digits and silently watching monitors. I’m definitely in hospital, then. I hear a soft electric hum and a familiar low beeping sound.
I’ve heard these sounds before, I think with a jolt of recognition, surely only moments ago. But I thought they were noises in my house—I thought I was at home and these were the everyday sounds of domestic life. I think of the grocery truck I imagined reversing, preparing to make its delivery to Mr. Cooper next door, the beeping warning signal weirdly switching to the back garden. They weren’t sounds from home: they are medical sounds, the soundtrack of hospital life, I realize.
So how was I hearing these noises in my living room?
I try to lift my left arm to call for someone, but it’s a dead weight. I find I’m able to bend my neck slightly, though, arching it to the left so that I can see the cannula disappearing into the back of my wrist beneath a clean, freshly applied bandage. I can feel liquid flowing into my veins, rushing through my body, waking me up again.
Yes, I am awake; which means I must indeed have been asleep—or unconscious. For three months? The doctor’s words come back to me in a frightening rush.
“But I—”
“Buenos dias, Mrs. Castle. Take your time. You’ve slept very well. All night, in fact. How are you feeling this morning?” The doctor is at my side again.
So he’s real too, not just the figment of a bad dream. He’s standing in exactly the same place as before and I have the sense that he’s been right next to me the whole time, even while I’ve been sleeping.
Briskly, he takes hold of my right hand and squeezes it—comforting me or testing my physical reactions? Or maybe both. It feels good to have someone hold my hand, I realize, and I’m relieved to find that my brain is still receiving messages from my nerve endings, even if it’s having difficulty sending commands in the opposite direction. I may not be able to move, but I can still feel. And I’ve felt his touch before, I’m sure of it. Always so tender, soothing, apart from that one time when—
My voice—it worked! Suddenly I register that the doctor heard me. He was responding to my words, not just second-guessing my mood and facial expressions. Surprise fills me with elation. “I can speak,” I say, testing my new-found ability again.
“Indeed you can,” he says simply, as if it’s not the biggest deal ever. “You have been extraordinarily lucky, Mrs. Castle.”
Lucky? That’s not a word I feel much connection with.
“I don’t feel lucky,” I say croakily, reminding myself to speak the words aloud.
“Perhaps not. But as my mother would say, al fin es debido el honor. All’s well that ends well,” he translates with a quick smile, picking up the clipboard from the end of my bed and studying it.
“This isn’t my idea of a happy ending.” I close my eyes, remembering Aidan and Annabel jubilantly shouting out in unison “The End!” as we finished each bedtime story.
“You have survived. You have woken up. It is a positive outcome, Mrs. Castle,” he says firmly, a stern father rebuking a stubborn child. “That is what I mean by lucky. And all the signs are very positive for a complete recovery. In fact, you won’t be needing these hideous beasts much longer,” he says, pointing to the machines with his ballpoint pen before writing something else on his clipboard. He hangs it back over the end of my bed before efficiently changing the drip bag.
“Injuries,” I repeat, trying to remember what he told me before I went to sleep. Something important.
“Your surgeon did an excellent job. Thankfully, there has been no lasting brain damage. As I say, lucky. We’ll continue to monitor you very closely, of course,” he adds, stepping up to the whiteboard where he jots more notes in small neat handwriting. “We’ll help you find the happy ending you’re looking for. I’ll help you,” he says, throwing a quick, preoccupied smile over his shoulder before turning back to his notes.
For a few seconds, I watch his hand move fluidly across the whiteboard, underlining words, jotting down new ones.
Nothing makes any sense.
I thought that whiteboard was only in my mind, a memory of university lectures that I resurrected to help me process my thoughts and bring them to order. But here it stands, identical in all respects. How very strange. It’s like I’ve walked into a living dream. I look around the white room wondering what or who might appear next.
“Annabel,” I whisper, breathing her name from the depths of my soul. “Aidan!” I say more loudly, urgently. Immediately I want to say it again, just for the pleasure of hearing it, just to marvel at how wonderfully, banally familiar my voice sounds, as if it’s no big deal to be talking to a strange doctor; as if I could easily have spoken at any time.
But I haven’t been able to talk to my son; that much I know was real.
Does Aidan know I’m here?
“Who’s Aidan, Mrs. Castle?” The doctor puts down his pen and turns to look at me.
“My . . . he’s my son.” There’s a lump in my throat; my words barely manage to scrape over it.
“Ah, yes. I remember now. Your husband did mention taking your little boy to visit you at the West Mid after your surgery. He said it would be too upsetting to bring him here, though. Children often find hospitals scary, it is true. It’s often best they don’t visit until a patient is recovering fully.”
Aidan visited me. Was it him playing the recorder? Trying to wake me up?
Annabel would have teased him. Mum hates that squeaky noise, Aid! But that was obviously the point. My clever boy. If he’d played his violin, the beautiful sound would probably have sent me deeper into the coma; but the piercing notes of his recorder could penetrate even the sleep of death. Annabel would have been proud of her brother. She would have given him one of her quick hugs, her sparkling smiles . . .
“And I believe the new school term has just started. So Carol, my nurse, tells me. Your husband is probably trying to maintain the normality of daily routines while you recover.”
“Just started. So it’s September? And I’ve been here for three months?” Dates whirl through my mind. “I’ve been here since the twins’ birthday. The end of May,” I say breathlessly, watching the doctor check his notes.
“That is correct.”
“But that means . . .” Everything is a muddle and there’s something important that I still can’t grasp. Something that keeps sliding away from me. It feels like my mind is frozen and as it gradually thaws, my thoughts are melting and trickling away into a dark puddle.
“Take your time.”
“So Dom visited me here. In hospital. In this room.” My voice is a dry, croaky squeak and my throat feels raw.
“That’s also correct,” the doctor says, and pours a glass of water from a jug on the bedside table. He holds it to my lips and encourages me to take a few sips. I struggle a little and he grabs a tissue, pressing it gently to my mouth and chin afterwards.
“But I’ve been at home. My husband has been at work. Aidan has been at school. I was looking for something.
I thought someone was following me round the house, that they had come back to hurt me. But I was here all this time? Ever since Annabel . . . Ever since—”
“Coma is a fascinating phenomenon,” the doctor says, interrupting me and resting a calming hand on my arm. “I’m sure your brain has been unraveling a lot of things while you’ve been unconscious. Processing memories from the past, perhaps. Retrieving scenes and conversations you believed were taking place in the present moment but were, in fact, all recollections from various incidents in your life. Trauma does strange things to the brain, Mrs. Castle. There’s plenty we don’t yet understand about it.”
“That doesn’t help me much,” I say, feeling a sigh roll up through my chest.
He smiles. “I’m sure it all felt very real, as dreams do.”
“Dreams? Memories?”
So how do I know what was real and what was only in my imagination?
“Reality is often a matter of perception,” the doctor continues, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to me. “Truth is often something we rewrite in our heads over time. We have a memory of a certain day, perhaps, or a particular event, but sometimes it is only that we’ve seen a photo of it. Our brain has constructed an entire narrative around a single image. It’s quite remarkable. One snapshot can conjure up a whole sequence of events that may or may not have taken place. Smells can often trigger the same process in the unconscious mind. Sounds, too.”
“The wind chimes.”
“Your husband brought them. To remind you of home, he said. You like them?”
“Very much. And I heard them.”
“But of course. You have been unconscious, but your brain—your senses—has remained very much alive. This is not uncommon,” he says, watching the frown I can feel creasing my brow.
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