It was freezing in the bedroom and Grace got into her bed, lifting the cover so that Evie could climb in beside her. She had a crocheted blanket – bright granny squares edged with navy blue – that she had spent the previous winter working on. Back when she was still a good girl, a good daughter. She ought to be grateful. It was so cold in the bedrooms that every scrap of extra covering was needed, but she didn’t like this reminder of her old existence. It was so much easier if she pretended that none of it had happened, that she’d just hatched from an egg on her first day of training.
‘He talks about the world. And ideas. And he really thinks. He says I’m jolly ignorant but he asks me questions that make me feel like there’s something else out there. A life beyond this.’
‘The hospital?’
Evie shrugged. ‘The hospital, Brighton, England.’
‘I don’t like to think about that. Father used to read from the paper at breakfast and I hated it. Once you’ve heard the bad news you can’t forget it and you can’t do anything about it.’
‘Robert doesn’t think like that. He says that it’s our duty to be informed. That the more we know, the better we can be prepared.’
‘Prepared for what?’ Grace said, snuggling down further under the blankets.
‘Anything,’ Evie said. ‘That’s the point, Gracie.’
Grace lived in constant dread that Dr Palmer was going to collar her for a rehearsal, but as May Day drew closer, she began to wonder if she was being silly. He changed his mind about his act and told everybody that he was going to do some card tricks and a ‘five-ring illusion’. Grace wasn’t certain that he still needed an assistant and began to let herself believe that he might have forgotten about her.
The concert included a motley variety of skits and songs and in the days before, the common room was in near-constant use. Grace was admiring a line of elaborate papier-mâché masks, which were lined up to dry on the table tennis table, when Dr Palmer crossed the room to speak to her. ‘You’d look rather fetching in one of those, Nurse Kemp.’ They were grotesque and twisted faces, painted in primary colours, and Grace didn’t know how to respond. She tried to say ‘thank you, Doctor’ as politeness demanded, but her tongue felt stuck to the roof of her mouth, her jaw clamped tightly together.
‘We’ll have a run-through on the day,’ he said. ‘Not that you need it. I’m the one doing all the hard work, you just have to do as you’re told and smile for the audience.’
Grace felt her stomach swoop at his words but he seemed distracted and walked away without adding anything else.
On the day, Grace woke up with such a knot in her stomach that she felt she would be sick. The thought that she was going to have to spend time alone with Dr Palmer for their rehearsal, and then perform with him in front of everyone, made her chest tighten. She could barely breathe.
‘You can’t be poorly today,’ Evie said, pouting a little. ‘You’ll miss my song.’
Until that moment, Grace hadn’t even considered the possibility. Hope shot through her, as Evie laid a hand on her forehead and frowned. ‘You’re disgustingly hot. I’ll fetch Sister.’
Sister Bennett had a reputation for disbelieving in illness, at least when it came to the nurses. Barnes had once told Grace (somewhat proudly) that she’d had to work a full shift with a fever. Grace decided the only option was to lie so she told the sister that she’d already been sick three times. Miraculously, Sister Bennett told Evie to help Grace to the nurses’ infirmary – a double room on the corridor below – and to tell the ward sister that they were a pair of hands short. ‘Of all days,’ Sister Bennett said, but the usual acerbity was missing. As she stumbled to the sick room, her head spinning, Grace realised that it hadn’t occurred to Sister Bennett that she would fake illness on May Day. The idea that a nurse would willingly miss the concert, and the cider-with-dinner and the assistant matron’s famous Simnel cake, was beyond her understanding.
In the infirmary, after a disgruntled Evie had gone to breakfast, Grace closed her eyes. Her skin was clammy and she felt as weak as a sparrow, but her soul was soaring high with relief.
MINA
I was definitely getting stronger. I could walk from one end of the corridor outside the ward to the top of the main staircase and back again. My next goal was to use the lift. If I used the lift, I’d be able to make it to the patients’ garden. I’d heard there was such a thing and I was determined to see it. I’d fixated, you could say.
After Pat’s visit, things felt more real. It had hit me that this wasn’t some strange dream. I had really been bashed up in an accident. I was truly in hospital and, until I recuperated enough, I was stuck in the hospital. All the talk I’d heard about ‘treat ’em and street ’em’ didn’t seem to apply once you’d had a coma. It seemed like a bit of an overreaction to me, but then my PhD was in physics, not medicine, so what did I know?
I felt a renewed sense of purpose, though. Dr Kanthe had said that I could go home as soon as I was mobile enough not to end up back in A&E. I wanted to see the house that Mark had bought and restart my life. At least I thought I did. All of that – life after hospital stuff – still seemed hazy and unreal. My immediate desires consumed me. I wanted a really good cup of tea. I wanted a full night’s sleep in a bed that didn’t have collapsible sides. But what I really wanted, most of all, was to make it to the patients’ garden.
I was making a bid to get there. I had shuffled down the corridor and pressed the button for the lift. I knew that if it didn’t come quickly enough, I was going to use up too much of my valuable strength standing and waiting. I considered leaning against the wall but I was worried I’d get too comfortable or not be able to move fast enough when the doors slid open. I stood as close to the doors as I dared. I didn’t want to get knocked over if a group of fast-moving people came bowling out. There was no way I would be able to take evasive action. Picturing this scenario made me feel vulnerable and a little bit frightened. I straightened my spine. You are not afraid, I told myself. You are fine.
When the red light showed four and the doors opened, the lift was empty. I let out a breath of relief and stuck my hand in between the doors to stop them from closing while I shuffled inside. I needn’t have worried, hospital lifts are calibrated for the infirm, but my heart was hammering as if danger was about to strike at any moment.
My heart didn’t slow and I could feel sweat running down the back of my T-shirt. I had a hoodie on, in case it was cold outside. Outside! But it was sweltering hot inside the hospital even without the exertion of walking so far.
When I got out of the lift, I saw the sign straight away. It was at the end of the wide corridor and the green arrow pointed right. I wanted to follow that arrow. Green for grass. Green for open spaces and fresh air. I assumed there would be park benches. Patients needed seating, after all, but apart from that I couldn’t imagine what I was going to find. A neatly kept lawn and a couple of flowerbeds? A giant oak tree with squirrels running amongst its spreading branches?
The pain in my knee, which had been manageable thus far, began to really complain halfway down the hall. People walking in the same direction as I was split their groupings and flowed around me, overtaking with ease. There was an old man, probably in his nineties, sitting on a plastic chair in a window recess. He was looking through the glass and I wondered if he’d been trying to make it to the garden, too. It strengthened my resolve and I managed to speed up a little. I wasn’t an OAP. I was going to make it.
I turned right at the sign, hoping with all of my heart that the garden wasn’t much further. I could see the next sign, it wasn’t so far. For a healthy person it was probably twenty paces. For me, it suddenly might as well have been twenty miles. I thought about the long trek back to my bed and felt tears pricking my eyes.
‘Miss Morgan, as I live and breathe.’ It was Stephen with a paper cup that smelled of coffee and a smile that faltered as he took a closer look at me. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Garden,�
�� I said. I took a couple of breaths and managed to elaborate. ‘I wanted to see the garden but it’s a bit further than I thought.’
‘Shall I get you a chair?’
He meant a wheelchair. I shook my head.
He hesitated, assessing the situation, then transferred his cup to his other hand and offered me his arm. ‘Shall we? I’d like to drink this in the sun.’
I leaned on him gratefully. My spine was on fire. Flames were licking outwards from the central strip of white-hot pain, sending lines of fresh agony down my legs, spiking up into my skull. I knew my knee was complaining but my back hurt so badly I didn’t have enough brain space to process the separate feeling. I was dissolving in a mindless scream of ‘it hurts’.
Stephen was walking very slowly and talking in a calm, but upbeat kind of way. I was leaning on him so heavily I was amazed he didn’t fall over. I guessed he was a lot stronger than he looked. I distracted myself by trying to imagine his body from what I could feel through his shirt sleeve. Long-limbed. On the skinny side. But with a wiry strength. Strength, I had to admit, he needed as he bore me along the hallway. I hadn’t been this close to a strange man for – well, I had no idea for how long – and it was distracting. I concentrated on the slight scent of his aftershave or deodorant, the male otherness of his skin and low voice, and used those details to push the pain down. I compressed it into something small, something I could carry.
When we got to the garden entrance it was a heavy door and I knew that on my own I would never have been able to open it. Even standing unsupported for the seconds it took Stephen to let go of me and pull it open was a gruelling test of my ability to stay upright. I knew that if I fell I would probably lose consciousness and that would mean a trip straight back to bed-land. Maybe even the ICU. I was so close to the outside now, I had to make it. I had to get into that garden and feel the fresh air on my face. Maybe hear some birdsong.
I was working so hard not to pass out that I didn’t really take in the garden until I was sitting on one of the benches, Stephen next to me, casually laying his arm across the back of the bench and sipping his coffee in a manner that was clearly calculated to disguise the fact that he was professionally assessing my medical stability.
As the pain receded in the relief of sitting, the weight off my bad knee, I was able to focus on my surroundings. To say they were disappointing was an understatement. The garden was a small quad, guarded by the high walls of the hospital on all four sides. In my daydreams, there had been a view. Maybe not the rolling green of parkland, trees and pathways, but definitely a bush or two. Some flowerbeds, maybe a weeping willow.
Instead, there was a scrubby patch of bare earth and bins overflowing with cigarette butts. Stephen followed my gaze. ‘You aren’t supposed to smoke here, it’s not one of the designated areas, but,’ he shrugged, ‘you know.’
‘I don’t know if I’m a smoker,’ I said.
‘Do you want one now?’
‘A cigarette?’ I inhaled deeply, catching the faintest whiff of old cigarette smoke from the bin. It smelled stale and unpleasant. I shook my head.
‘Probably not a smoker then,’ he said. ‘Although, you’ve been cold turkey for weeks so that could’ve cured you.’
‘Cured me?’
‘Of the addiction,’ he said. ‘Although, most smokers I know say it never ever goes away. That’s why I never started.’
‘Sensible.’
He pulled a face that was hard to read. ‘Yeah, sensible, but more like scared. Something that you could do a couple of times and then it has a permanent hold over you, an effect that lasts your entire life.’ He looked momentarily embarrassed, like he’d revealed more of himself than he’d meant to. ‘I don’t like the idea of something having the upper hand, you know?’
I did know. At that moment I felt there was a connection between us, something hanging in the air like a silvery thread. I didn’t want to break that thread but I wanted to tell another person what I’d been seeing even more. I knew it would rip apart the fragile respect, comradeship, whatever this was we both felt, but a part of me wanted to break it anyway. I liked Stephen and that made me feel vulnerable and I’d had more of that than I could take already. I shifted slightly on the bench, trying to find a more comfortable position.
Stephen moved, too, began shucking off his coat. ‘Do you want to sit on this? These benches are a bit hard.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘It’s nice to be outside.’ I waved a hand, encompassing the grim scarred benches, the bin that looked like it had been set on fire in the not-too-distant past and the scrubby bit of grass, flecked with rubbish. ‘Maybe it’s the coma, but I’m genuinely happy to be here.’
‘You don’t have to do that, you know.’
‘Do what?’
‘Assume that everything is different now. You’re still the same person you always were, you’ve just got some gaps to fill in. You mustn’t think that you’re starting all over again.’
‘Is that your professional opinion?’
‘I suppose. Why? Do you want to start all over again?’
‘It’s a tempting notion, don’t you think? A clean slate. That’s why that born-again nonsense is so popular.’
He let out a startled laugh that could’ve been a snort.
‘Sorry. You’re not—’
‘No.’ He held up his hands. ‘Are you always this outspoken?’
I gave him a crooked smile and tapped the side of my head. ‘I have no idea. Gaps, remember?’
‘You’ve got a few weeks’ grace, you can play the coma card. You could really try it on.’
‘Now you’re thinking,’ I said. ‘And I want a T-shirt that reads “bona fide miracle” with your name signed on the bottom.’
‘Oh, God, I didn’t say that, did I?’
‘There was something else I wanted to ask you about.’
He noticed the shift in tone. I could see the humour drain out of his face and the neutral professional expression appeared.
‘I’ve been seeing things.’
He waited, not saying anything. Which was probably a technique they were taught at medical school. Or during their compulsory psych rotation.
I took a deep breath. ‘Birds. I saw them when I was a kid, but then it stopped for years and now it’s started again.’
‘When you say you can see birds—’
‘I mean birds that aren’t there.’ It was done. I’d crossed into crazy territory now. I’d said something so outlandish that the way back was going to be tricky.
‘How do you know they’re not there? Are they unusually large? Or are they frightening? Or do you just know, instinctively, that they aren’t real?’
I silently thanked him for staying calm and speaking to me like a rational human being. ‘Partly it’s the latter – something I just know – but it’s also the way they behave. Sitting on my bed or my shoulder. That kind of thing.’
‘Can you feel them?’ Stephen pointed to his own shoulder. ‘When they’re sitting there, can you feel it?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘Little birds are really very light and if I’ve got a coat on then I wouldn’t feel their feet or claws or anything so I don’t. But if it’s something big like a crow or a raven then I feel their weight.’
‘So, it’s very logical. Very real.’
‘Apart from the fact that I know they’re not, yes.’
‘Could they be real? I mean, some birds are so used to us now, they can get really close to humans.’ He indicated a pigeon, which had arrived since we’d sat down and was pecking at the ground near our feet.
‘No,’ I said. ‘They’re not real.’
‘Okay. Do you see any now?’
I looked around. Apart from the real live pigeon, there weren’t any birds here at all. It was one of the disappointing things about the garden. I’d been looking forward to hearing birds, at least. Chattering and calling. ‘It’s spring. Where are they all?’
‘I guess this space just is
n’t that enticing.’
Having started, I didn’t seem able to stop. Rather than taking the easy route and changing subjects, maybe moving on to garden planning in municipal spaces or the latest football scores, I said: ‘I see ghost-birds when something bad is going to happen. They’re a warning. I don’t usually know what they’re warning about, although sometimes I guess.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘I know it’s impossible, if that’s what you’re asking. I also know seeing the birds is probably random and I’ve just ascribed cause and effect afterwards to try and explain it, give it some meaning.’
‘It’s not at all unusual for people to have hallucinations after a head injury.’
‘You said that before. But I saw them when I was a kid. A long time before the accident.’
‘Did you suffer any injuries as a child?’
‘No.’ I compressed my lips.
‘Okay.’ Stephen wasn’t looking directly at me any more; he was gazing at the grey wall opposite, lips twisted while he thought. I watched his profile, glad of the break in eye contact and for the chance to look at him. He really had a nice face. It was the kind of face that made me want to open up, to trust, to over-share. All those mushy things I’d successfully been avoiding. His face was so nice, in fact, that I didn’t even feel angry that I was acting all needy, like a baby bird coming out of a broken shell.
‘What were you like as a kid?’ he asked. ‘Were you very . . .’
‘If the next word out of your mouth is “imaginative” then this conversation is officially over.’
His mouth twisted further into a quick smile, but he didn’t look at me. ‘I was going to say “crazy” but that seemed rude.’
‘No. I wasn’t crazy. Not diagnosed crazy, anyway. And I know kids have imaginary friends and obsessive behaviours and all kinds of weird shit that’s considered normal until they hit adulthood.’
In the Light of What We See Page 18