In the Light of What We See

by Sarah Painter

  ‘Normal-ish, perhaps,’ he said, glancing at me.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’

  He turned to face me fully. ‘I think you’ve been through a hell of a lot and that a return to childhood thought patterns is a completely normal and understandable reaction to trauma.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, slumping a little. The disappointment was complete and I didn’t even know what I’d hoped for, which made it worse.

  ‘I also think you are one of the strongest people I’ve ever met and that if anybody can regain their sense of self and their physical strength, then it’s you.’

  So now I warranted a pep talk. It was sickening.

  ‘And if seeing birds that aren’t really there is part of who you were before, then I don’t think it’s necessarily a big deal that you’re seeing them now. Unless they’re linked to unhappiness in some way. Some people see dark shapes, black figures or birds, when they’re depressed. Do you feel depressed?’

  ‘I’m in hospital,’ I said flatly. I wanted the conversation to be over. I wanted it never to have started.

  ‘Are you sleeping? Has your appetite changed? Do you still take pleasure in things you used to enjoy?’

  And now he was trotting out the Pfizer PHQ. Just in case I was in any danger of forgetting that I was a patient. ‘I used to enjoy running, so I’ll have to get back to you on that. I used to enjoy drinking cold beer and playing pool, I used to enjoy going out for a nice dinner and getting happily drunk on wine and then going home with my boyfriend and fucking my brains out.’ I looked down. ‘I’ll have to get back to you on all of those things.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘That was stupid of me.’

  ‘No,’ I said, taking a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry. I just—’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Stephen said. ‘I’m doing that annoying thing. Trying to make it all better rather than just listening.’

  His earnest tone changed my mood. He was so delightfully serious; it made me want to be frivolous, magnanimous. ‘Is that a problem of yours?’

  ‘So I’ve been told,’ Stephen said, visibly relaxing, although the ridges between his eyebrows remained. Stubborn little quote marks that I wanted to reach out and smooth away with my thumb.

  ‘And you’ve got enough to deal with without me blundering around.’

  ‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘You’re not blundering. And I like talking to you. I just feel kind of weird. Like I’m homesick but I don’t know where for.’

  He nodded, leaning towards me as if I was the most fascinating creature he’d ever laid eyes upon.

  I was just about to say something else, to tell him that I missed my mum even though I couldn’t remember her properly, when the door banged open. I twisted around, welcoming the fresh jolt of pain that rooted me in the present. It would serve as a reminder of how bloody close I was coming to cracking open like a walnut.

  ‘Isn’t this cosy?’ Mark said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘Extra sessions?’

  Stephen stood up and offered his hand. ‘Hello, again.’

  Mark ignored his outstretched hand. ‘Do you do physio now, as well? Or is this a neuro-psych test I’m not aware of?’

  ‘Mark, please,’ I said.

  Stephen straightened up. ‘I’m not on duty, actually. Not here in my professional capacity at all.’

  ‘I see,’ Mark said.

  ‘Just as a friend,’ Stephen said.

  ‘You should be careful,’ Mark said, his voice mild.

  I sat up straighter. When Mark’s voice got gentle that was when you really knew he was furious.

  ‘After all,’ he continued, ‘there are professional conduct rules, aren’t there? Guidelines to protect vulnerable patients.’

  ‘What are you getting at? Are you suggesting I’m some kind of predator?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Stephen. I tried to stand up, to get in between the two men before things could get any worse. I misjudged how quickly I could move, though, and fell back against the bench, pain jolting through my spine. Mark was there, half catching me, and I leaned against him, straightening up.

  ‘I’ll get a chair,’ Stephen said, moving towards the door.

  ‘I think you’ve done quite enough,’ Mark said. To me, he said: ‘Bed.’

  I was pretty sure I’d always hated being ordered around, but I hadn’t got the energy to argue. Plus, and this wasn’t something I was particularly proud of, there was something oddly comforting about being helpless. It removed the need to make decisions or to feel culpable. I was helpless so I was blameless. Pathetic but true.

  As he pushed me along the corridor he said: ‘I don’t like that doctor.’

  ‘Really,’ I said, keeping my voice light and teasing, ‘because you hid your feelings so well.’

  He stopped wheeling me and came round in front, kneeling down to gaze into my eyes. He took my hand for extra effect and said: ‘It’s only because I love you so much. I almost lost you. And I know how much you hate being looked after, so the thought of that man taking advantage of you while you’re in this state is terrible.’

  ‘He’s not taking advantage,’ I said. ‘Really. He’s just being friendly.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ Mark sneered. ‘Your brain isn’t that damaged. He’s sniffing around you.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting.’ I was so tired. I didn’t want to argue with Mark and I didn’t want to think badly of Stephen, but most of all, I felt ill. I hated Mark telling me I was vulnerable because I felt that way. I was scared and I was sick of being scared. I wanted to be back in my bed, the blankets pulled up high.

  Mark shook his head a little, as if I was being silly, and then he smiled, humouring me. ‘You look exhausted. Tell me next time you want to see the garden, won’t you? I can take you. You’ll set your recovery back if you keep trying to do too much.’

  I closed my eyes and let my head fall back. The one good thing about being injured was that it gave me an excellent way to end conversations. I heard Mark sigh. Drama queen. But I couldn’t stop hearing his crude phrase ‘sniffing around you’. He’d used that before. I remembered a drunken argument after a night out, his face bright red and pushed up close to mine. The memory jolted me so hard I felt as if I was falling. I knew I ought to tell Mark he couldn’t speak to me like that, not ever again, but I felt so tired. It was easier to push the memory aside. It was easier to pretend.

  Back in my bed and still exhausted, I went to the history book, scouring its pages for my ghost-nurse. I was more comfortable with birds that weren’t there; this woman was unnerving me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was real. Or had been real, at least. I turned the pages expecting her image to leap out at me, in a continuous state of hope and disbelief.

  I woke up in an uncomfortable slumped position with a burning pain in my neck. It was night. The lights were low and Queenie was mumbling in her sleep. Her voice rose and became briefly clear: ‘Put the bloody cat out.’

  The ghost-nurse was next to my bed. ‘Want to go for a walk?’ Her voice was soft. So quiet, in fact, that I wasn’t sure she had spoken at all.

  ‘Who are you?’ My voice was real enough.

  ‘Grace,’ the woman said. ‘How d’you do?’

  ‘Did I fall asleep?’ I looked around at the ward. It didn’t seem quite right and the light had become brighter.

  ‘You’ve been reading about me,’ Grace said. She pointed to the book on my nightstand.

  ‘You’re not in there,’ I said. ‘Because you’re a figment of my imagination. Or a symptom of my mild cognitive impairment.’

  Grace smiled. ‘If you say so.’

  Then I knew I was dreaming. We were in a hallway and I didn’t remember getting out of bed. Plus, nothing was hurting.

  One man was shuffling along, locked in a private battle with his body; another dressed in blue scrubs streaked past, on a mission.

  ‘Where are we going?’ My back began to hurt, as if I’d reminded myself that
it should and the dream world was obliging.

  Grace didn’t answer.

  ‘I can’t walk far,’ I said, hating the plaintive sound of my voice.

  At the end of the corridor was a central stairway. Someone had commissioned stained glass for the windows, which suited the old, handsome carved wooden banisters. It was like stepping out of a hospital and into an art gallery or museum.

  ‘This way,’ Grace said, speeding up a little.

  We turned left and into yet another corridor. This one was part of the old building. The proportions were different and there was the unmistakable odour of age, underlying the antiseptic. I could smell floor polish, and the doors leading off the corridor seemed burnished. There was a paper label attached to the nearest door and I stepped closer to see it. The handwriting was heavily sloped, the penmanship old-fashioned, but the paper was very thin and tinged blue: ‘Kindly wash all cups and cutlery after use. This kitchen is for all and its use is a privilege not a right. Sister Atkins’.

  I reached out to touch the note but Grace was already at the other end of the corridor. Besides, there was something about the paper that stopped me. My fingers hesitated just above its surface. I turned and followed Grace.

  There was a sign hanging down from the ceiling, the kind I was used to seeing in the hospital with departments listed and directional arrows. The door at the end of the corridor had a modern sign which read ‘Orthopaedics’ but underneath that I could see another sign, an old one. I squinted, trying to read it, but the letters danced around and my eyes began to water.

  ‘Smoking room,’ my companion said. I tried the door, expecting it to be locked, but it swung open.

  Grace, who had been just next to me, was suddenly in the middle of the room. I blinked, expecting her to disappear completely, but she remained. She turned slowly, looking around the plain little room, and, as she did, details became clear. Or, more accurately, things appeared. Where there had been a couple of chairs and a birch-effect conference table, there were several mismatched chairs including a wing-backed armchair covered in worn brocade. The wall that had been blank seconds earlier, was filled with a giant noticeboard, and the light fitting changed from recessed ceiling spots to a hanging central light with a strange metal shade.

  ‘Badminton league,’ Grace said. ‘We had a sports day, too.’ She looked wistful. ‘Evie was brilliant in the three-legged. Nobody could catch us.’

  ‘Evie?’

  Grace walked to a wooden board and pointed. ‘There.’

  I went closer until I could read the names in gold type. Three names down, Nurse Grace Anne Kemp and, underneath, Nurse Evie Jones.

  I reached out to touch the wooden sign, but something held my fingers back, a thickness in the air that warned me not to.

  ‘I’m dreaming,’ I said. ‘I’m asleep.’

  Grace shook her head. ‘I don’t know what this is, but you’re not asleep.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘This is my hospital,’ she said. ‘I’m on duty.’

  ‘Why do I see you?’

  Grace shook her head. ‘That’s the wrong question.’

  GRACE

  Sunlight streamed through the windows. It hurt Grace’s eyes. No matter how long she worked at the hospital, she still hadn’t grown used to the early starts and her head buzzed with tiredness.

  ‘Is anybody coming for you tomorrow?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Grace had been concentrating on getting as much food into her body as possible and she wasn’t sure that she’d heard Barnes correctly.

  ‘To cheer you on? Or aren’t you going to race with us?’ Barnes turned and sniffed. ‘Are you too refined for that kind of carry on?’

  ‘By your standards, the porter’s a lord,’ Evie said. ‘Grace doesn’t have to run if she doesn’t want to, it doesn’t make her stuck up.’

  ‘My Terry’s coming,’ Barnes said. ‘He might be a bit late, though, because it’s all the way from Broadstairs.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Evie said, her voice dry. ‘He is keen.’

  ‘And why wouldn’t he be?’ Barnes said, her face turning even redder than usual.

  ‘No reason at all,’ Grace said, trying to diffuse the row before it got the attention of the assistant matron, who was delicately dissecting a boiled egg at the next table.

  ‘I haven’t anyone coming,’ Evie announced. ‘I didn’t tell the ancestors, couldn’t abide the fuss.’

  ‘I didn’t realise we could invite civilians,’ Grace said.

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Barnes said, not looking mollified in the slightest.

  ‘You know, people who don’t belong to the hospital.’

  ‘So, you haven’t anyone coming either?’ Evie said. ‘That’s good, we can keep each other company.’

  Grace thought about her parents and wondered whether she would’ve invited them, had she realised it was a possibility. She pictured her mother with a napkin tucked neatly at her neck, eating her dinner as fastidiously as the assistant matron. Perhaps not. The fact was, she didn’t miss her mother any more. She no longer felt homesick, no longer pressed her face into her pillow at night to stifle the sound of her tears. Her life as Grace Kemp, only daughter of Mr and Mrs Harold Kemp, seemed very far away. Almost as if it belonged to somebody else. It was a blessed relief.

  ‘Haven’t you got one of your men coming to see you?’ Barnes said to Evie, her tone just shy of nasty.

  ‘And see me puffing along the field in my gym shorts? No fear.’ Evie gave a theatrical shudder that made Grace smile. She was glad Robert wasn’t going to be there. Glad it would be just the girls.

  Barnes pushed her chair back and stood up. ‘Some of us have got work to do.’

  As she turned and walked away, Grace glimpsed something on what Sister Bennett would’ve referred to as Barnes’s ‘lumbar area’. A black shadow. She closed her eyes, willing it to be a trick of the light. When she opened them again, Barnes was disappearing through the door, but the shadow shape was still there, like a hole in her back.

  ‘Are those eggs off?’ Evie said, nodding at Grace’s plate.

  She shook her head and pushed her plate towards Evie.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ Evie loaded her fork with scrambled egg and then paused with it halfway to her mouth. ‘You’ve gone a queer colour.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Grace managed. She stood up and followed Barnes but changed her mind halfway down the corridor. What could she say? ‘I’ve seen a shadow and I think you might be ill.’ No. She would simply pretend she hadn’t seen it; that would be for the best.

  She reversed direction and went to her bedroom to add an extra hairgrip to her cap, which was already slipping. Barnes was waiting outside. ‘I wanted to catch you,’ she said, looking nervous.

  Irrationally, Grace assumed that she somehow knew about the shadow and was going to ask about it so she was doubly surprised when Barnes said, in a rush: ‘Don’t let Evie laugh at my Terry, will you? He’s awfully shy.’

  ‘Why would she laugh?’

  ‘Oh, you know what she’s like,’ Barnes said.

  Grace was going to say ‘no’ out of loyalty, but honesty compelled her to change the subject instead. ‘Are you feeling quite all right?’

  ‘He’s not a handsome man,’ Barnes said defiantly. ‘I don’t care about that sort of thing but some people do.’ She sniffed, significantly, clearly referring to Evie.

  ‘Who cares what anybody else thinks?’ Grace said, trying to work out whether Barnes looked paler than usual or had any obvious signs of poorliness. She’d eaten well at breakfast, so her appetite hadn’t altered and she didn’t seem especially weak or feeble.

  ‘Well,’ Barnes said, ‘I’ve got to get on.’

  Grace went into her room to fetch her grips, rather than watch Barnes walk away. What was the point in seeing shadows if you couldn’t do anything about them? The familiar feeling of helplessness wrapped around her and squeezed tight.

  MINA

  I w
as playing rummy with Parveen when a woman in uniform arrived. The first police officer had been in plain clothes, which I assumed meant a higher rank. I wondered if that meant the accident had been downgraded in importance or whether it meant nothing at all.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said, smiling. ‘My name is PC Coleman and I’m from the Sussex Collision Investigation Unit. There’s a bit of follow-up to do on your case.’

  I sat up straighter and Parveen began collecting the cards.

  ‘Got a few blanks to fill in, still. I believe you were suffering from amnesia when my colleague visited you last. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Is there anything you can add to your statement, now?’ The officer flipped open a notebook.

  ‘I still don’t remember the accident,’ I said, feeling like a bad pupil, a failure. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  The constable nodded. Her expression stayed neutral and I couldn’t tell whether she believed me or not. ‘It’s clear from examination of the scene that you veered sharply to the right while travelling at speed. If we discount a deliberate act, this suggests a loss of control of the vehicle. Your blood tests were clear.’

  ‘Deliberate?’ I said.

  ‘You tested negative for controlled substances and your alcohol level was almost zero.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I don’t do drugs and I would never drive drunk. Never.’

  The officer’s mouth twisted a bit. ‘I thought you had amnesia. How do you know what you would or wouldn’t do?’

  ‘That’s not how post-traumatic memory loss works,’ Parveen said, her voice sharp.

  ‘I’m not a doctor, obviously,’ Coleman said. ‘Do you have a history of fainting or blackouts? Epilepsy?’

  ‘No,’ I said. I was pretty sure I was telling the truth. Ghost-birds didn’t count. They didn’t obscure my vision, couldn’t make me crash a vehicle. At least, I didn’t think so.

  ‘Do you remember anything about the journey before the crash? Do you remember where you were going? It was almost two o’clock in the morning, not a usual time to be on the road.’