Out of The Blue

by Charlotte Mills

  Jamie and I were at the buffet table when Lou danced over to refuel.

  “Have you seen my new teeth yet?” she asked, grinning like an angry dog.

  “Uh yeah, I think you said. Budapest wasn’t it?” I said, hoping she would resist the urge to pop them out for me to take a closer look.

  “Amazing set up they have over there, so organised. Loads cheaper than here.”

  After only a few seconds of the next song, Jamie piped up. “Oh, I love this song,” she said, placing her glass on the table.

  “I know. I put it on for you,” Lou replied with a crooked smile.

  “Dance with me!” Jamie demanded, her eyes fixed on mine.

  “What? I’m not much of a dancer. I’ve got two left feet,” I said, trying to placate her.

  “Come on!” She pulled me towards the makeshift dancefloor. “Imagine we’re alone. Think of it more as cuddling to music.” Her words were so soft only I could hear them.

  I could see there was no escape as I resigned myself to the situation. The dancefloor had emptied a little as Jamie pulled me into her arms. She was going for the full-body contact position. I certainly wasn’t going to stop her as she nuzzled her face into my neck. As we slowly swayed around the dancefloor, blending in with the other smoochers, I recognised the song as Midnight Train to Georgia.

  The party began to thin out around midnight. Spotting Richard outside attempting to tidy away some of the party debris, I took the opportunity to get some fresh air. Finding empty cardboard boxes in the kitchen, I began gathering empty bottles and cans ready for recycling. Jamie came out looking for me as I filled my second box. She had a certain wobble as she attempted to help me with my task.

  “Oops!” I said, catching her arm, preventing her tripping over a stray chair leg. “Are you having a good time?”

  “Yep! But are you having a good time?”

  Her blurry words made me smile. “I am. I think I’m ready to call it a night. What about you?” I asked.

  “Umm. I’m so tired. Are you coming, too?”

  “Yeah. Let me just fill this box.”

  Depositing the box in the kitchen, I picked up a bottle of water before leading the way through the house. Thankfully, the music volume had been reduced as we passed the last remaining stragglers on the dancefloor, Lou of course being one of them. We carried on up to Jamie’s bedroom, and dropping the water on the bed, we went straight for the bathroom.

  Her arms wrapped around me from behind as I finished cleaning my teeth. I’d seen Jamie drunk before, but not like this. Considering her vow of self-restraint this weekend, the alcohol made her pretty free and easy with her feelings. Her warm lips travelled along my neck as I wiped my face on the hand towel. Turning in her arms, I saw the fire in her eyes before her lips covered mine. She slowly pushed me back, pressing me against the bathroom counter. Her thigh pressed firmly between mine, making me groan as blood began rushing to all the right parts. Her mouth was wild as her tongue pushed its way past my lips, claiming me. Her left hand travelled around my back, holding me firmly, while the other held my chin as she devoured me. I pulled back, gasping for breath while she continued to distribute hot kisses along my jawline.

  “I love you, so much.” Her words vibrated in my ear as her hand slowly travelled down between my breasts, resting on my hip before opening the top button of my trousers. I considered stopping her but other needs had begun to take over, bypassing any idea of moderation.

  “I love you, too,” I whispered as I dropped my toothbrush in favour of slipping my hand under her shirt.

  “Oh my God, Jamie! Really? In our bathroom?”

  I looked across the room to see Jo, toothbrush in hand, with a vexed expression splashed across her face. Jamie made a quick exit, leaving me standing there to face the music. I grabbed my trousers with one hand while I used the other to wipe my mouth before speaking.

  “Sorry, Jo. She’s, umm, a bit of a handful tonight. Night.” I slipped out of the room, closing the door behind me.

  I found Jamie lying on her bed, a pillow covering her face. Sitting beside her, I rubbed her thigh. “Hey … you okay?”

  A low groan response emanated from beneath the pillow.

  I tried and failed to suppress a giggle. “Let’s get these shoes off before you cause any more mayhem.”

  “My little sister just caught me making out with my girlfriend. Can it get any worse?”

  “Hasn’t she seen you with anyone before?”

  “God, no!”

  ***

  Jo finally broke her silence over breakfast the next morning, blurting out the bathroom events as she played mother, pouring out tea for everyone. Jamie came close to needing the Heimlich manoeuvre as she choked on her sausage. Luckily, her parents took it all in good humour. They seemed more concerned over what leftover food they could palm off onto all of us before we left.

  After breakfast, we all assisted on the final clean up before getting ready to leave. Unfortunately, we all had to be back at work on Monday.

  “So, how was it?” Jamie asked, as we drove towards Peterborough.

  I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, unsure of what she was expecting. “I was pretty nervous, but it was good actually. You have a lovely family. I can see where you get it from.”

  “Get what from?”

  “You know, the Buxton crazy gene.”

  Chapter 16

  The last six months had been a whirlwind for me. Out of the blue, I had become someone who lived to be with someone else. I’d become a little less work-obsessed and a lot more Jamie-obsessed. Regardless of where I was working during the week, we almost always managed to meet up for the weekends. I loved spending lazy days lounging around in bed, watching movies together, or weekends away exploring wherever I was working at the time.

  I smiled as I walked back to my car, clutching the ring box in my hand. I had so much nervous energy with nowhere to direct it. I felt so sure of my emotions; I knew how I felt. I only ever wanted to be with Jamie, no-one else; this was it for me. I was convinced Jamie felt the same way, too. Our conversations over the last few weeks had spurred me on and I wanted to show her how committed I was. It wasn’t like we had to get married next week. I’d wait as long as she needed. I just wanted her to know I was ready to spend the rest of my life with her.

  My phone buzzed as I approached my car.

  “Hey, where are you?” I said, trying not to sound too excited.

  “Just arrived. Have you left yet?” Jamie asked.

  “Just about to. I had to pick something up before I left.”

  “Please don’t say it’s work, not this weekend.”

  Her voice seemed a little strained. God, I wished I was there in front of her. I was dreading the long drive before I could see her, ask her.

  “No, not work. Just something for the weekend.”

  “And what would that be? Robbie, you’re aware we’re staying with Aunt Lou, right?”

  I liked how she said my name. James had been the only person who called me Robbie, now Jamie had recently started using it, too.

  “Of course. It’s nothing like that. There’s something I need to talk to you about, though.”

  “Oh?” She sounded different, tired maybe. She’d had a long drive from York.

  “It’ll have to wait till I get there, though. It’s the kind of thing I need to ask you in person.”

  “What is it?” Her voice was a little strained.

  “You’ll have to wait and see when I get there,” I said, trying to contain my excitement as I got into my car.

  “There’s something I need to talk to you about, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Something really weird happened today.”

  I paused as I held my seatbelt across my chest. “What? Are you okay?” I felt my stomach flip-flop.

  “Uh yeah. I’ll talk to you when you get here … The sooner you leave the sooner you’ll get here.”

  I didn’t like the h
esitation in her voice. “Okay. I’ll see you soon.” I told her and pointed my car in the direction of the North Circular. Once I was out of the bustle of the inner-city I tried to work through the speech in my head, no matter how many times I tried to write it down it always sounded terrible when I read it back to myself. I figured I needed to be more fluid in my approach, I felt my palms begin to sweat as I mouthed the words I planned on saying to Jamie. ‘My life changed the moment I met you,’ ‘I love you more and more each day we are together,’ ‘you are the love of my life,’ Now I just needed to find a way of stringing them all together in a meaningful way without sounding like a greeting card.

  In hindsight, I should have taken heed of the warning – More haste, less speed – but, as they say, hindsight is a wonderful thing. I was probably a little tired; night driving always had that effect on me. Traffic had been terrible for the first two hours and I still had another hour to go, according to my sat-nav. The November rain had been lashing down, the roads weren’t great; windy single lanes for the last fifty miles. I barely had enough time to focus on the tree in my headlights before it was too late. No matter how much I tried I couldn’t avoid it. Slamming on the brakes on a wet road, I wasn’t as focused as I should have been. The noise of screeching tyres filled my ears with the subsequent shocking bang, then silence, deafening silence.

  I had been in a hurry in London, pitching and closing a deal with James. Now I was in a hurry to see Jamie, but did I really need to be so urgent about it? My excitement at asking her something had got me distracted a little maybe, although I couldn’t for the life of me remember what I was going to ask her now as she sat next to me in my car, a calming hand on my thigh. We were pulling up in front of a house; Jamie was already on the driveway as I got out of the car, waving me inside. I was sat on a porch now, glass of wine in hand as she told me Aunt Lou had already gone to bed, so we were alone to talk, but what about I couldn’t say. A voice told me James was here, that he wanted to talk to me. What was going on here? He was on his way back to Manchester a few hours ago when I last spoke to him. The same voice said my parents were here, too. All of a sudden we were surrounded by people I didn’t recognise; their loud talking irritating me as I tried to look between them to see if Jamie was still there. I hadn’t had the chance to ask her that something yet, whatever it was. She was gone, along with the chair she had been sitting in. I looked around but couldn’t find her anywhere. Everything went very dark and quiet.

  Chapter 17

  I couldn’t stop my mind wandering. I could hear muffled voices but nothing or nobody recognisable. My mouth was so dry I could hardly swallow. A firm pounding in my head blurred my vision as I struggled to open my eyes. The room was bright; I couldn’t figure out where the hell I was. My eyes fell on a shadowy figure moving next to me as I tried to move my hand to rub my eyes. I couldn’t lift my arm; a feeling of confusion filled my body.

  “Don’t move. I’ll get the nurse,” a soft voice said. It took me several moments to realise it was my mother. I felt a warm hand cover mine. It must have been on top of the covers, but I still couldn’t seem to lift it. It felt numb; in fact my whole body felt frozen. I started to feel a wave of panic spread over me. What had happened to me? I tried to open my mouth to talk but there was nothing. I couldn’t even be sure I’d opened my mouth; there were no words, not even noises.

  “It’s okay, Robin, you were in an accident. You’re going to be fine. The nurse is here now.”

  A second voice. It was familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. I heard a few mumbled replies to questions about pain relief; the conversation was going on about me and around me. I felt my fear ebb away as my mind started to drift once again.

  The next few days were a blur as I slowly came around. It was like swimming up through turbid water. Finally, I broke through the surface, only to feel worse than I had ever felt in my life. My limbs felt dull, like something had been sitting on them for weeks, cutting off all circulation and feeling. My head felt as if someone had taken the top off, vigorously used a hand whisk inside then sealed it back up again.

  The doctor arrived, asking me if I knew my name and where I was. I struggled with my words when I tried to reply. They were jumbled but I knew the answers. I just couldn’t formulate the words. Eventually, he informed me that as a result of a car accident I had suffered intracranial haemorrhaging, forcing them to keep me in a coma until the swelling went down. This took a total of twelve days. I could hardly believe I had lost twelve days in the blink of an eye. When he asked me the last thing I could remember, it was a little fuzzy, maybe being in the office or on-site working on a landscaping job. It wasn’t clear. I took no comfort from his reassurance that memory loss was normal at this stage. The gaps were opening up, I felt lost and all I wanted to do was hide in sleep.

  I acquired a specialist who visited me the following day. He told me how lucky I was to be alive while dropping breadcrumbs of my prognosis along the way. Apparently, no two brain injuries are alike. Brain injuries are not like other injuries; they are very unpredictable. Sometimes, when the brain presses against the skull, impairment occurs and the extent of the impairment or injury is not always obvious. He informed me I would need some speech therapy and physio to relearn how to control my limbs and dexterity, which made me relax a little. It was at least possible to return to normal but this also worried me; what would happen if I couldn’t?

  My parents, James and a couple of people from work were my only visitors. I had no girlfriend waiting in the wings; long-term relationships weren’t really my thing. My parents had not been a big part of my life for some time and I already started to feel awkward in their presence. Although we had never really fallen out, the customary feeling of apathy soon returned as their visits continued. Yet they seemed to be very attentive, ignoring any negative remarks I managed to make. The phrase ‘killing me with kindness’ came to mind.

  It was the following day that I discovered I had lost a further nine months of my life. I had become quite insular since the accident, not that I wasn’t before, but I hated being in hospital surrounded by strangers. I felt trapped in my own useless body. In my mind it was still February, or March at the latest, considering I had been in hospital around two weeks. The weather looked the same; February and November can be hard to distinguish if you only see the view from your hospital bed. I’d never been one to watch television or read the papers but a fellow patient handed me her newspaper on one of her daily jaunts, asking if I wanted to do some Sudoku instead of my customary staring into space. They obviously had little comprehension of my lack of ability to successfully hold a pencil. I lazily scanned the page regardless; spotting the date at the top of the page, it slowly registered in my brain. What the hell had I been doing for the last nine months? I was just coming to terms with the actual accident and how it could impair my future; finding out I had lost nine months of memory made me feel frustrated all over again.

  The fact that everyone around me was playing it down only made it worse. It felt like they already knew and weren’t sure how to break it to me. All I wanted to do was go home, but I knew that was months away. My repeated requests were always met with the same answer – “When you’re able to look after yourself – not until then.”

  After heated discussions with both my parents and James, in search of answers, I discovered that I had been transferred up to Manchester soon after my accident. I had no recollection of the event itself, but I was reliably informed that it wasn’t unusual with traumatic episodes. James said I was on the way to a site in Suffolk to do a few days’ surveying. But I had no memory of the contract. The last thing I could remember was working on the outskirts of Manchester on a corporate job. The specialist diagnosed retrograde amnesia, informing me it was a side effect of traumatic head injuries.

  My long-term memory was intact; I knew who I was and who my immediate family and friends were; there weren’t many more important people in my life. To be fair, I didn’t know what I cou
ldn’t remember. The doctors were confident that my short-term memory would return and they even recommended that I immerse myself back into my life, get back into my usual routine as soon as possible to assist in its return.

  It was in the hospital that I started having horrendous dreams, flashbacks to what I assumed was the car accident that had put me there. I was always driving, but not in my normal relaxed fashion, more like Dick Dastardly from Wacky Races, focussed, tunnel vision behind the wheel. The screeching of tyres as I sped along, rounding corners, followed by ear-splitting silence. I always woke up at this point – there was no actual crash in my dream – and I had to cover my ears in an effort to hear something, my own breathing, my heartbeat, if only to know I had survived.

  My time in hospital was coming to an end but my short-term memory still hadn’t returned. The doctors began bringing up other possibilities, saying that I maybe didn’t want to remember or that it was the fear of remembering the accident that was preventing my memory from returning. I needed to open up to remembering to try and fill in the holes; it started to feel like it was my fault.

  Without discussion, my parents organised a private rehab centre in Manchester to assist in my continued recovery. I honestly wasn’t sure whether they were doing it for me or them. Either way, I was grateful. The thought of having to move back home to be waited on by my parents filled me with dread. At the same time, I didn’t like the thought of them taking control. We didn’t see eye to eye on many aspects of my life. Sadly, it made me suspicious. I couldn’t help thinking this would be a perfect opportunity to try and steer my life down a more agreeable path in their eyes.