I'll Find You

by Liz Lawler

  Meredith shook her head. ‘It’s early days yet, but it’s looking less grim. I’m hanging around just in case. Hey, we should go out for a drink some night. Let me talk you into coming to work in sunny California. You’d love it there, Emily.’

  Emily felt a warm glow inside and the previous tiredness fall away. It would be so good to start afresh. To have a future to dream of. A life to start living. Then she remembered Zoe, and the small glow of warmth she felt turned to wet ashes. How could she begin again? She could not walk away from her sister. She had made an irreversible choice a year ago. She had to live with that. This life she had to bear was her punishment – until the day came when they found Zoe.

  The anaesthetist jogged away, calling out to Emily to set a date while Emily looked for the key to her bicycle lock, searching her rucksack pockets, her tracksuit pockets and then her scrunched-up uniform. She felt metal through the material, but instead of pulling out keys she pulled out the silver bracelet, safe in the pocket of her uniform. She hadn’t told anyone of her find as she had yet to decide who she could tell.

  Chapter Nine

  In reception Emily tapped the letters of her name and date of birth on the screen to sign in and was unsurprised to see that she was the next patient to be seen. Eric Hudson never ran over time and kept you waiting. She’d been given the last appointment of the day and the waiting room was empty. She walked to the water cooler and helped herself, refilling the paper cone twice to quench her thirst. She was hot from her cycle ride and felt out of sorts. She hadn’t slept well after her night shift. Her usual harrowing dreams of Zoe were matched with equally disturbing dreams of this young woman. At one point both the woman and Zoe were riding tandem on a powerful motorbike, Zoe the driver, at breakneck speed on a motorway. She had felt their fear as they tried to escape someone chasing them, and she had not been able to warn them about the standstill of traffic further up ahead. She had woken from the dream drenched just as the motorbike hit an oil tanker truck. The discovery of the bracelet had played on her mind, and she knew that today’s session was going to be taxing if she wanted to keep this new anxiety hidden. She had no wish to add more medical labels to her name. Depression, Anxiety Disorder, Prolonged Grief Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder were titles she was well versed with. These nifty little labels were all things that had been discussed with her over the last year, and by and by she accepted that she probably had them all to some degree. She didn’t need a psychologist to tell her this. And in truth she was beginning to resent these labels. They were merely the names given to pigeonhole what she was experiencing.

  Talking therapy was the treatment she was receiving. It was a way of dealing with negative thoughts and making positive changes, and she had adapted her thinking to prove it was working. She no longer stood for hours on street corners, staring at every female passer-by in the hope of it being Zoe. She no longer followed strangers, thinking them familiar, an old friend of Zoe’s perhaps, and startling them with her behaviour. She behaved normally. She got up, washed, dressed, shopped, visited her parents, her therapist, kept herself to herself and got through each new day without alarming anyone. And now she was back at work, a major step forward to prove she was coping. So why was she still having therapy, she wondered, not for the first time in the last month? Surely Eric Hudson had other patients more in need of his service than her? Counselling sessions on the NHS usually lasted six to twelve weeks. Was it her GP or Eric who pushed for her to have more than the normal quota? She felt guilty for resenting his care.

  He was a kind man and he had seen her through some dark times. When she first met him, she had been reluctant to talk to someone who was going to analyse her every word and watch for something mentally wrong with her. She had thought him solely as a counsellor, qualified in his field to offer counselling. It was on the business card he gave her with his contact numbers that she saw the letters PsyD after his name, and realised he was in fact a doctor of psychology. In that first hour of meeting him, hearing him speak openly about Zoe, about the devastating effect her disappearance had caused, she knew she had nothing to fear. He was there to help heal her and because it was an ongoing mental torture, he expected no quick fix.

  Slim and a little taller than Emily, he looked younger today. She thought it was because of the lack of his usual jacket and tie. He’d no doubt discarded them due to the warmth of the room; the heat outside had turned the office into an oven. The blinds had been partially pulled to block out the sun, and a fan was switched on. She knew he was forty. It was the only personal information she had on him, as on his fortieth birthday a month ago when he’d said he’d passed a milestone, she’d teased him for being thirty. He’d then laughed and told her to add on another ten years. She regarded him as the closest thing to a friend, yet she knew nothing else about his personal life. He knew everything about hers.

  Fixing his calm blue eyes on her now, he said, ‘Are you ready to talk about what you couldn’t on the phone last week?’

  She stared at him warily. This wasn’t what she had been expecting him to say.

  She settled herself in the chair opposite him, a comfortable blue armchair with wide armrests, and placed her rucksack neatly on the floor, giving herself time to think.

  ‘If you’re not ready, that’s fine, but I’m here to listen when you are.’

  She swallowed hard and then began to speak. ‘Something happened when I was in the hospital. As a patient, that is. There was a young woman in the bed beside me. Small, dark-haired and I think probably foreign. I spoke to her, trying to reassure her. She didn’t speak back and she seemed scared.’

  Eric nodded slowly. ‘It stands to reason that you may be afraid when you’re in hospital and you can’t speak the lingo.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I thought too. Only, during the night I was woken by the sound of the defibrillator. I heard the zap of it as it was being used. I pulled my curtain aside and hospital staff were at her bed trying to resuscitate her. A nurse or a doctor suddenly appeared at my side, giving me a fright, but I couldn’t see them as a torch was shone in my face and the next thing I knew, they were giving me an IV injection and I blacked out.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ Eric commented.

  Emily clasped her hands together, wishing she had something to hold. There had been a cushion in the chair the last time she had been here and now it was gone. Perhaps to be cleaned from tears spilled onto it by other patients. ‘The next morning the bed beside me was empty and the healthcare assistant suggested she’d been moved in the night, so I was relieved she’d survived.’ Emily repositioned herself in the chair, folding her arms and trying to make herself smaller. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. Eric let her sit quietly. He would allow her time to collect her thoughts without interruption or prompting. On many occasions they had sat in silence for several minutes.

  Breathing out slowly, she opened her eyes and gave him a grateful look. ‘When the surgeon and ward sister came to see me, to tell me that everything had gone OK and I could go home, I asked about the woman and they told me that I was the only patient that had been in that two-bedded room.’

  He blinked in surprise. ‘Really? They said you were the only one there?’

  She nodded. ‘The surgeon wanted me to see the anaesthetist.’

  ‘I take it he’s thinking it’s a reaction to the anaesthetic. Have you had one before?’

  ‘I’ve never had surgery before.’

  ‘So, what are your thoughts on this, Emily?’ His expression was curious.

  ‘I don’t know, Eric. A hallucination?’ She laughed harshly. ‘I am so tempted to let myself believe that. Until last night, I had almost persuaded myself that I had imagined her.’ She reached for her rucksack and took out a folded white tissue. She placed it on the arm of her chair and unfolded it. ‘She was wearing this bracelet. I saw it on her and I thought at the time that it looked too big and could slip off her wrist. I don’t know what the hell is going on, E
ric, and I don’t know who to trust.’ She stared at him, bewildered. ‘Surely I couldn’t have imagined this?’

  He smiled kindly. ‘It’s possible that you did. You were, are still, actively searching for Zoe, and looking for similarities would be reasonable. You’ve thought other patients were her before. Both women bore a similar resemblance to your sister.’

  Emily shut her eyes, trying to block the memory of those last days in her old job, when she’d barely been functioning. Zoe had been missing for three weeks when her job came to an abrupt end. Her colleagues had realised that she was using the place to vet every female patient who came through the doors. On her last shift, Emily had left her own patients unattended and went AWOL from the department, having heard a young female patient had been taken to theatre from resus. The nurse caring for the woman said she had nice black hair. It had only been a passing remark, but that was all it took to have Emily scarpering off at speed to see if it was Zoe. Something similar had happened the previous day. Emily was found on the other side of the hospital, seemingly in a trance, staring at a patient on a ward. Her sick leave was instated with immediate effect, and with it came the fear that she was leaving the last place where Zoe was seen alive.

  She stared at him with tear-filled eyes. ‘That was then. But I have never imagined seeing someone who wasn’t there. They were real people. I may have imagined them being Zoe, but I didn’t imagine them up out of thin air! I really don’t know what to think. I’m scared half the time that if I say the wrong thing I’ll get carried away in a straitjacket. I need my job because it’s the only thing in my life that allows me to focus on something other than her and if I fuck it up by coming across as a loony, I don’t how I’ll cope. I have nothing else.’

  ‘Breathe Emily,’ Eric quietly instructed, clearly hearing her distress. ‘Just breathe.’

  When she was calmer and more in control, he spoke again. ‘Is it possible you were dreaming?’

  Emily made a despairing sound. ‘That’s the whole point. Apparently in the night I had a nightmare, which is why they say they gave me something to calm me, but the nightmares I have, as you know, are always the same: me stuck in a mortuary fridge with a dead body. Why dream up someone new who doesn’t even look like Zoe?’

  Eric pressed his palms together, resting his chin lightly on the tips of his fingers. ‘Perhaps your mind has focused on trying to help another young woman, because of your frustration at not being able to find Zoe. You may have even seen this woman in passing, stored the memory and dreamed about her being a patient. She may even have been a past patient who you nursed. Emily, you’re suffering with ambiguous loss; you have no answers and therefore no closure. Added to which your relationship to Zoe went beyond that of an older sibling.’

  ‘But how can I have imagined her in that much detail? The clothes, the hair colour, an actual face and not just a blurry image?’

  Eric pointed through the window to the small enclosed garden of the surgery. ‘I can see you standing there right now. I’ve projected the image of you in front of me to be outside in that garden, but I have you standing, not sitting. Hope is a two-edged sword – a desire to see someone so strongly draws the mind into desperately believing it to be true. Which means your kind of grief renders you unable to find mental peace. It’s called intrusive imagery, Emily.’

  Emily looked at the empty garden and could see herself as he’d pictured her, just like she could imagine a soft sand beach, lapping waves and blue sky. ‘I understand what you’re saying, Eric. I really do. What I don’t understand is how I can simply walk into that room and see a solid mass and not an image. Or how I could find her bracelet on the floor nearly two weeks after the event.’

  ‘You could have seen it when you were a patient there,’ he said simply. ‘Your eyes could have clocked it at some point, harmlessly lying on the floor or beneath a bed. Or even in the spot where you actually found it. Then when back on duty, you remembered it being there.’

  She glanced away, biting her lip. ‘So you don’t think I should look for her then?’ She was aware that this would be the one question that might test his patience.

  He slowly shook his head. ‘That’s not a good idea, Emily. As a patient you were out of your normal role in that room. You are used to being there as a nurse. Zoe went missing from a hospital. Maybe you needed to give yourself another purpose for being in that room, other than being a patient. Maybe your mind needed to search for somebody new.’ Concern showed in his eyes. ‘Be cautious, Emily. Don’t lose sight of how far you’ve come, of what you have now. I still believe returning to work is the best step forward. It may have been wiser to go back part-time, but you’re a stubborn one and I can’t knock you for that. But don’t give yourself more than you can deal with. I wasn’t going to mention this, but it may be pertinent – I am aware that the date of your operation was Zoe’s birthday. Special dates, anniversaries, Christmases, are a particularly hard time to accept a loss. Your mind may have simply taken you away from dealing with it by focusing on something less painful.’

  Tears pricked Emily’s eyes and her face fell. ‘Oh my god. How could I have forgotten? Her birthday!’

  *

  Emily cried properly when she got back to her flat. She was angry and confused that 30 June had come and gone and she had not remembered it was Zoe’s birthday. A second birthday had passed by. Zoe had gone missing on 19 June, eleven days before her nineteenth birthday. She had now turned twenty and her parents hadn’t mentioned it, but that shouldn’t be a surprise. Six months ago they had tucked into their Marks & Spencer’s Christmas dinner on trays on their laps watching all the best that Christmas TV had to offer, and had even put up a fake Christmas tree. Special days, without Zoe, were still celebrated in the Jacobs household.

  Wiping her eyes, she picked up one of the many photographs of her sister that she had framed and glared at her. Taken in the evening, Zoe was wearing Emily’s leather jacket because she’d been cold, sitting on damp grass in Parade Gardens, where she and Emily had gone to listen to the bands at a music festival. The photograph had been taken four weeks before Zoe went missing. It was the last photograph she had taken of her sister.

  ‘Sometimes I hate you, Zoe, for putting me through this. Sometimes I wish you hadn’t been born,’ she whispered.

  Emily squeezed her eyes to shut out the image of her sister. She was vulnerable right now, and if she allowed herself to think the worst could have happened, it would break her. She had to keep reminding herself that Zoe had disappeared once before, for three days, after going to Glastonbury festival aged seventeen. There had been no phone call or text from her to say that she’d hooked up with new friends, or that she’d gone to the coast to set up a fresh camp to carry on partying. It was selfish, thoughtless behaviour that had made Emily worried sick and unable to sleep until she returned home.

  She’d regularly turned off her mobile and been uncontactable if Emily had refused to give in to her on something, usually loaning money, or told her off for advertising on Facebook that she was out all hours of the night when Emily knew she was on a shift the next day. It was these behaviours that allowed Emily to cling to the hope that this is what she had done now.

  She had simply disappeared for a while.

  *

  Eric walked through Royal Victoria Park and enjoyed watching young families out in the early-evening sunshine; fathers kicking balls with toddlers and mothers sitting minding pushchairs. Through the trees he could see the vivid colours of hot air balloons and hear the whoomph sound of the burners inflating them. He brought his own children here most weekends, come rain or shine, because he believed that children should experience all elements of weather, should feel the rain on their faces, the wind in their hair, the snow with their hands. Being outside should feel natural and not something only chosen on a sunny day. He didn’t want them growing up indoors, stuck in front of some screen, because it was raining outside. And they liked it here – they liked to feed the ducks. />
  So far he had spotted three posters of Zoe Jacobs around the park, protected by plastic sleeves and secured with cable ties to the lamp posts. They were new-looking; probably recently put up by Emily to replace ones that had been spoiled by the elements. He was aware she put a fresh load of posters up every few months. He had become used to seeing Zoe’s image dotted around the city and was always reminded of how alike the sisters were, as both had very black hair, blue eyes and pale skin. When he had first met Emily her hair had been shoulder-length, unlike that of her sister in these posters. When she cut it off, Eric had initially thought she was self-harming until she explained that it was falling out and a bald patch had appeared behind one of her ears. He knew that the loss of hair was likely caused by stress. It had grown in the last few weeks and the pixie hairstyle now suited her gamine face. Though it made her look more like Zoe, which of course could be her intention. Maybe it made her feel closer to Zoe.

  He sighed heavily as he thought back to their discussion half an hour ago. She was worrying him. She was doing so well, and had been these last few months, but now it seemed as if she was having a setback. Though she denied seeing someone who wasn’t there, the reactions of the hospital staff members seemed to suggest that what she had seen hadn’t been real. It wouldn’t be the first time she had imagined someone. At the time she’d been taking a low dosage of amitriptyline for depression, and hallucination was listed as one of the side effects. She’d been convinced she’d seen Zoe as close as a metre away, standing right in front of her. Eric had to prove to her it was merely a tree with Zoe’s face on a poster staring back. In those first few months he had seriously worried that long-term she would not cope if her sister remained missing. Emily had burned with energy, with the need to do something, anything, to help find Zoe. She had trawled the streets of Bath on a daily basis, first searching among the homes of old friends, school friends, friends of friends, in the hope that someone may have seen her. She had visited every shop, pub and public business, the railway station and the bus station with her endless supply of posters, refusing to leave until they put up a photo of Zoe in their windows. And she had camped inside the police station, sitting in the waiting area every day, to get a fresh update from Geraldine Sutton. DI Sutton had phoned him a couple of times in those first few months to come down to the station and talk to Emily, as she was concerned about her and didn’t want to send her on her way with no good news.