Mesmeris

by K E Coles

  I woke in a hospital bed with a drip in my hand that hurt and a mask over my face. My parents stood up when I pulled the mask off. Mum hugged me and said something, and then Dad hugged me and said something too. Mum bit her lip and her eyes filled with tears. Then Dad put his arms around her and hugged her and both of them cried. I watched them and wished they’d go away. Maybe I should have felt something, but there was nothing. They sat by my bed. Mum held my hand in hers, while Dad watched me with frightened eyes.

  After a while, the police arrived – Jim and a policewoman. I felt something then. A sharp pain shot through me and disappeared. Hatred. I didn’t know why I hated Jim, but I did. He and the policewoman asked me questions. I knew they were questions because they looked expectantly at me every time they stopped talking. After a while, I closed my eyes. If I didn’t have to see their faces, I could almost forget they were there. Eventually, the noise stopped and I slept, and dreamed of a dark place - a wet, cold place. I was searching for something, through the undergrowth, under stones, behind the tangled roots of trees. I thought I found it, whatever it was, in a hole in the ground, in the mud, in the dark. I reached down to get it but the sides of the hole started to crumble and cave in. I tried to hold on, clutched at the grass, at the soil, but everything gave way in my hands and I fell in, head first, with the mud, and I realised it was a grave, my grave. The earth, the dark, wet, cold earth fell in on top of me, went in my eyes my mouth, so I couldn’t breathe. I woke, screaming and shaking and sweating.

  I stayed in that small, white, sterile hospital room for several days and nights. I lost count of how many. Sometimes, when I woke up, there were doctors there, or nurses, or police, or my parents. I could move properly, I could get up and have a shower and go to the loo and clean my teeth, and I suppose I could have talked, if I’d had anything to say. Except I didn’t have anything to say.

  Cards appeared on the metal cabinet next to my bed. I didn’t bother to look at them. They didn’t interest me.

  One day, I awoke to find two people, a man and a woman standing by my bed. They talked to me, then they talked to each other. The woman left the room for a moment, returning with my parents. The man said something to them and Mum put her hands over her mouth and closed her eyes. Dad just nodded and put his arm around Mum and squeezed her shoulders. Then they all looked at me and I stared back at them. The man said something to me, and then they all shook hands and the strangers left.

  Sometime later, my mother started to collect my things. Then she broke down in tears and sat on the end of my bed, her back to me. It made me feel ill, her sitting there like that, so I turned away and closed my eyes, and that made me feel ill, too, so I looked at my father while he finished packing my bag.

  When they’d finished, Dad helped me out of the bed. Someone came to get us and we walked out of the hospital. It was huge, much bigger than I’d realised, corridors and lifts full of people – loads of them, rushing about and making noise. I imagined we were going home. Instead, we went in another ambulance, Mum and me, while Dad followed us in his car. I watched him driving behind us. Every few minutes, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

  They took me to another hospital – grey and dark and old. The metal gates moved back automatically. They weren’t rusty, not like the others, the ones I’d seen in that place, the place I couldn’t remember. Mum pointed at some flowerbeds, so I looked. She pointed at a little copse of trees, with a funny look on her face, so I looked at that too. I didn’t mind that we weren’t going home. I didn’t particularly want to go home, didn’t particularly want to go anywhere.

  A man met us at the door. The man who had been at the hospital. A nurse stood next to him. They smiled at me. I didn’t smile back. Why would I? They took us to a room on the first floor, a bedroom. The room smelled of disinfectant, and was too hot. It was stifling. I sat on the bed and stared at the poster on the wall. A landscape – fields and sunflowers. My parents put my things away in the chest of drawers. Mum put some books on the table by the window. Next to the bed, she put a photograph. The one of us all on holiday, the one where we all looked happy, because we were laughing at something Lydia said.

  After a while they stopped fussing around and gave me a kiss and a hug, and left.

  When they’d gone, I got up and put the photograph away in a drawer, so I didn’t have to see it. Then I went to the window and opened it. It wouldn’t open much, hardly enough to let the air in. I ripped the poster off the wall and tore it into little pieces and dropped them out of the window. They blew away in the wind. Then I sat in the chair.

  I sat there until it got dark. Someone, at some point, came in with food. I didn’t eat it. I lay down on the bed and went to sleep and I dreamed the same dream, and woke up screaming and someone came in and injected something into my backside. It bloody hurt. I slept after that.

  The next day, a nurse brought me two large brown paper carrier bags sealed with blue and white tape. I waited until she’d gone before I opened them. My Parka and shoes were in one - in the other, a dress, underwear, and a blue slip. I took off the pyjamas I was wearing and put on the slip. It fell over me like a waterfall. I felt better. I pushed the pyjamas through the opening in the window and watched them fall onto the wet concrete below. Then I got my other clothes out of the chest of drawers and dropped them, one by one, out of the window - everything except the ones from the paper bags. Then I sat in the chair and stared out at the rain. Somebody came into my room after a while and shouted at me. They gave me another injection, and then I slept.

  I woke every day, and every day was the same. I sat in the chair and watched the rain, and then I went to sleep. For a while, they tried to make me wear different clothes. As soon as I was alone, I took them off and threw them out of the window. I wore the underwear and the blue slip, all day, every day. If they took my blue slip away, then I wore nothing. Then they would come into my room and shut the window and give me an injection.

  One day, Mum brought me a present. Two more slips, the same as my slip, and a negligee, the same as my slip, the same blue, the same lace trim. They were the only presents I didn’t throw out of the window. I wore them, all blue, all the same, all the time.

  After a long time, weeks maybe, or months or years, I was allowed to go outside into the grounds with a nurse. She sat me on a bench under a tree in the sun. After that, every dry day, I would go out and sit under the same tree on the same bench. Sometimes it would be a different nurse, sometimes my mum or dad or both would sit with me. Sometimes Lydia came. They talked, their mouths moved. I heard a noise. I never responded, couldn’t remember how to. I found that if I stared at them for long enough, they stopped talking and went away.

  Once Jess came, but she just cried the whole time. I don’t know why she bothered to come. In the end, a nurse took her away, put her arm around her, rubbed her back. Maybe I should have done that, put my arm around her, but I couldn’t be bothered and, anyway, I wanted her to go. Why come and see me, if all she was going to do was cry? Somewhere deep inside, I knew I should have felt something but there was nothing. I just watched her cry, like I watched my parents cry, like I watched Lydia cry, like I watched the rain run down my window. I watched everything, felt nothing.

  Every day they gave me tablets to take. I took them. Every day, three times a day, they gave me food. I ate it. It never tasted of anything. I was never hungry. I ate it because I didn’t want a tube put in my stomach again. Some days a doctor came to see me, some days not.

  Sometimes, I was allowed to walk around the grounds on my own for ten minutes or so, watched by a nurse. If I turned my back on her, it felt as if I was alone. One day, my hand felt something deep in the pocket of my Parka. A photograph of a boy. It was washed-out and faded and torn at the edges. I considered throwing it on the ground or tearing it up and throwing it out of the window. I had a feeling it was important though, that I should keep it, so I put it back in my pocket and every time I went out in my Parka, I touched i
t and it was as if I had a secret, and it made me happy.

  The weather became colder and the days shorter. On wet days, I stayed in my room and watched the raindrops slide down my window. Once, they tried to make me sit in a big room with a television in it, and other people in it. I wouldn’t go in. It smelled even worse than my room. When they tried to force me inside, I held onto the doorframe and kicked them, hard. They seemed surprised. I didn’t go outside for quite a while after that. They never tried to make me go into that room again.

  One morning, bright sunshine woke me up. A hard frost covered the ground, so heavy it looked almost like snow. The grass and the trees sparkled in the sunlight. It looked beautiful. I opened the window and breathed in the clear, sharp, stingy air.

  When they brought my tablets, I pretended to take them and hid them in the pocket of my negligee. Later, I flushed them down the toilet. I didn’t know what the tablets were for, anyway - didn’t know why I was taking them and I had a feeling they were trying to poison me. For a week, I didn’t take them. I felt better without them, more awake. They didn’t bother to check any more. As long as I behaved as usual and didn’t kick anyone, they left me alone.

  The beautiful weather lasted for days and days. I loved being outside in the frost. I liked the cold. The central heating made me sick, like the musty air, like the smell of disinfectant. When I was outside, breathing in that fresh air, I really believed I was beginning to get better.

  One morning, one of those lovely, sunny, frosty mornings, when I opened my window and breathed in the fresh air, I felt something, something like hope, some slight glimmer of joy. I think I even smiled. I was in such a rush to get ready to go outside, I spilled some of my water on my slip. The silk went dark and stiff. I stared at it. That was how it was supposed to look. It was meant to be dark and wet and cold. No wonder I couldn’t get well. I’d never get well while the slip was all wrong.

  I tried to remember when I felt well, when I felt normal, but couldn’t. I’d been okay in primary school, and even the first years at comp but after that it became hazy. I couldn’t remember which vicarage we lived in. Was it the modern one, with the sloping back garden that was always dark and damp, or the old, draughty one with bats in the roof and mice in the shed? No, we’d been little then, Lydia barely more than a baby, waddling around on fat, stubby legs. And I knew I’d been on holiday fairly recently, because, in the photograph, in the one of me and Mum and Dad and Lydia, in that photograph I was somewhere by the sea. Once in a while, I’d get an elusive glimpse of something, and then it would be gone. There was someone dark and beautiful that I’d loved, but it was all lost to me now, long gone into oblivion. It gave me a headache when I tried to remember.

  Maybe when the slip was right, maybe then I’d remember. I was going to wet it some more, but the nurse came, tutted, and dried the only right bit of the slip. So everything was ruined.

  She took me outside for a little while, but she shivered the whole time, and hugged her arms, and looked cross. Then she wanted to go inside. I didn’t, but if I made a fuss, then she wouldn’t let me out later, and I wouldn’t see the sunset.

  The doctor came later. He sat and stared at me, and I stared back. Perhaps it was a test, to see who looked away first. If it was, I won. He didn’t seem to mind. He wrote something down on his chart, and then he watched my hands, so I kept them still, even though it was difficult, because everything kept twitching, because I had a plan to make myself better, and he was spoiling it.

  As soon as he’d gone, I tipped a glass full of water onto the front of my slip, but most of it missed, and spilled onto the floor, so I took the slip off and put it in the sink and ran the cold tap over it. Then I put it on again and the slip looked right, all dark and stiff and wet but I still didn’t feel right. I stood by the open window and the cold wind blew in. That room was always too hot.

  The sun moved lower in the sky. My breath looked like smoke, like mist – mist over a river. But there was no river any more. Not any more.

  A key turned in my door so I threw on my negligee. It was surprising how quickly I could move when I wanted to. Not as quickly as I used to, though. I could definitely remember running through streets, up steps, filthy and grey, with someone lovely, so lovely.

  The nurse came in just as I covered my soaking slip, but the water began to seep into the silk negligee, making it dark and wet too so I put my Parka on over the top. I was lucky, the nurse was the dim one, the one who couldn’t care less. She led me out of the room. I couldn’t wait to get outside. The water ran down my legs and into my slippers.

  Outside, the cold air made me shiver and I smiled and then laughed, because my teeth made a funny noise when they banged together. My whole body shook and I knew I was getting better. We went to the usual bench but I didn’t sit down in case I left a wet patch on the wood, and so I stood next to her, while she sat and lit a cigarette. She didn’t even look at me. I held my mouth slightly open, so she couldn’t hear my teeth chattering. It annoyed some people, I knew, that sound of teeth clanging together. Then she got her mobile phone out of her pocket and rang someone and started talking, so I wandered off and opened the front of my Parka, so the cold air could reach me. I felt much better, much better than I had for a long, long time.

  I looked back at the nurse. She laughed and said something into her phone, and lifted one leg in the air and smoothed her tights. I walked into the copse of trees. She couldn’t see me, so I took off my Parka and hung it on a branch, and I felt the icy wind blow the wet silk onto my body. It felt so good. I walked on, but then I remembered the photograph, so I had to go back and get it, and I could hear the stupid nurse still babbling and laughing, so I walked back into the trees. I came to a little stream, only a trickle really, and it was babbling too, over the stones, and, at the edges, ice had formed, shiny crystals of beautiful white ice. I wanted to feel the water flowing over my toes, but I didn’t want to get into trouble when I went back. I didn’t want to be kept inside, in that stinky, musty, horrible room, and so I took my slippers off, so they wouldn’t leave wet marks on the floor.

  I stepped into the water. It ran over my toes. The ache went up my calves to my knees. The stones were sharp, they hurt my feet but that was okay, that was right.

  I took my negligee off and lay it carefully over a stone and watched the water run over it, and the darkness creeping up the fabric. What was that? Then I remembered - osmosis. The silk had dried a little and now the water was climbing up by osmosis. I was remembering more all the time. I had found my own cure, and didn’t need all those tablets, and injections, and blood tests. All I needed was to be cold and wet. It was all so easy, really - so easy. I was feeling a lot better, but wasn’t quite there yet. I needed to be colder, wetter, needed to feel the icy water running over my scalp. That would cure me once and for all, make me normal again, so I could feel again and remember. The water wasn’t deep enough to drown me. It was safe.

  I went to lie down but something stopped me and then I was in the air and up over somebody’s shoulder, looking at his back. White coat – a doctor then. He put me on my feet on the bank and took my Parka from the branch. He had dark hair like the boy in the photograph. He looked a lot like him but it wasn’t him. I knew him though – from that time, the forgotten time. I ran for the water again but he caught me, pushed my arms roughly into the sleeves of my coat and zipped it up. All the time he was talking and I could tell he was annoyed by the way his voice hit my eardrums, the way his mouth snapped shut between the words. Then he lifted me over his shoulder again and ran, and my chin banged, bump, bump, bump into his back and I bit my tongue.

  He ran back to the hospital grounds and he shouted and I saw the nurse’s legs as she jumped to her feet. She ran after us, towards the hospital, babbling again in a wheedling, stupid voice. The doctor opened the door of a black car and bundled me into the passenger seat. He turned and shouted something at the nurse. I was dripping water onto the floor of his car and I knew I was m
aking the seat wet too and I wondered if he’d be angry, when he realised. He got in next to me and started the engine and I watched his face. The nurse stood by the gates. She looked out of breath. I thought she would stop this doctor taking me away but instead she punched a number into a pad set in the pillar and the gates opened and we drove out. I looked back as we drove away and saw two people running from the hospital, waving their arms. The nurse stood there with her mouth hanging open. She looked really thick, standing there, with her stupid mouth open and her eyes. Then we rounded a corner and I couldn’t see her any more.

  The doctor had the heater on full blast so the car felt steamy and airless. I wanted to open the window but couldn’t find the control. He looked at me and said something. When I saw his face full on, I felt a pain in my chest so I looked away, watched the countryside rush past. He spoke every now and then. I didn’t bother to look at him. He made no sense. I held on tight to the photograph, had it crumpled up in my fist. No way was this doctor stealing my photograph.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It was beginning to get dark. We parked outside a church. I knew the church, knew it well. The doctor leaned over, pulled my arm straight and plunged a needle into my vein. I was so surprised, I just watched him as he emptied it into my arm. He took it out, pressed on the wound for a second, then threw the needle into the back seat. He got out of the car and took his white coat off. Then he put on a long, leather coat instead. He opened my door and took my arm so I got out. I wasn’t really dressed for church, not without slippers. The thought occurred that maybe he wanted to marry me and that’s why he’d brought me there. As we walked through the lych gate, I looked around for some flowers because everyone knows you have to have a bouquet when you get married.