Try Not to Breathe: A Novel

by Holly Seddon

  Jacob’s index finger was raw from being dragged over the rough corner of Alex’s business card, which had remained in his pocket like Kryptonite, ever since he’d been given it.

  So far, he hadn’t found anything to either quash his fears or give shape to them. He needed to look again. He needed to know what she knew. Did she know who he was? Did she know about his lies?

  Jacob had moved on to lovely Natasha, and yet the journalist had lingered nearby, eavesdropping. If she had really wanted to see Amy, why had she stayed there, craning her skinny neck to the side of his shoulder?

  He stayed with Natasha just a few minutes, just long enough so that it didn’t look like he was fleeing the scene. As he pushed out of the ward, Jacob looked over to Amy’s cubicle and saw the curtains tugged shut.

  As Jacob stood in the corridor, trapped by indecision, he heard a smash from inside the ward. A tray of drinks had probably been dropped, but it unnerved him. The ward, with its mechanical whistles and hums, was his quiet place. When he was in a situation he felt hemmed in by, he would close his eyes and take his mind back to the quiet of the cubicle, and the cool of Amy’s skin.

  Jacob stayed just outside the double doors to Bramble Ward, unsure what to do. He would have stayed there even longer, worrying and panicking, if it hadn’t been for the scream. Before he could catch a hold of himself, the surprise had sent him bursting through another set of double doors and half flying, half running down the bleached stairs.

  His heartbeat bashed his head from either side, and he was too dizzy to think about anything but getting to daylight and away from bloody Alex Dale.

  He could hear doors above and below swinging open onto the stairwell. He had absolutely nothing to be afraid of really but he was running helter-skelter. He was running for his life.

  And then he wasn’t.

  He was in a heap, teetering on the edge of the next set of speckled gray, highly bleached stairs, a full flight down from where he had been seconds before.

  Blood whooshed around his ears and his face was wet. Jacob felt cold. Then hot. Then freezing. He slowly reached up to his face like he’d forgotten how his body was put together and couldn’t find the controls.

  He tentatively touched his temples, and looked at his fingertips. They were thick and sticky with the brightest blood he’d ever seen. Then the pain came.

  There was a deep throbbing in his face but far worse was the agony of his leg. From his right ankle to his knee surged a pain so intense that he needed everything he had to cope, he couldn’t use a single unit of energy for calling or crying out.

  After a few moments the double doors nearest to him flew open and a middle-aged woman with a visitor’s badge sauntered out, took one look at Jacob and screamed.

  And that’s when he saw his leg. And passed out.

  —

  Apart from the days following his own birth, Jacob had never so much as sat in a hospital bed. On, many times, but never in.

  Waking up strapped to a stretcher-bed in the emergency room was never part of the plan.

  Jacob’s leg wasn’t as badly damaged as they had first thought, the doctor said cheerfully, his bright white hair framing his jolly face.

  Oh, the leg was still broken, he chuckled, but it could be fixed and it would eventually be as good as it ever was. And then he’d frowned and leaned in, asking, “Unless you’re a sportsman?”

  Jacob shook his head, looking down at the patterned hospital robe, identical to the ones Amy was dressed in day-in, day-out, and wondered who had stripped him.

  “Oh good. Then yes, you’ll be good as new.”

  “When can I leave?” Jacob asked, suddenly putting two and two together and making Fiona. He tried to sit up, but he was strapped in.

  “Oh, soon, soon,” said the doctor, unstrapping Jacob’s torso and subtly moving the unforgiving hospital robe where it had ridden above the crotch.

  “We had to strap you in to make sure you didn’t wake up and try to move. You could have done yourself even more damage.”

  Jacob nodded, as if this were something he encountered all the time.

  He looked past his drip and up at the clock. It was nearly 1:30 p.m.; he’d lost several hours.

  “Will I be able to leave before five?”

  The doctor looked at Jacob like he had asked if he could still catch his shuttle to the moon.

  “Most certainly not. We’ll move you up to the ward and then you’ll need to stay in for several days at least. You fractured your lower leg and you need to keep off it entirely. Even a fit and healthy young man like yourself needs to be careful.”

  The doctor clasped his hands together.

  “Right, then, we do have a couple of forms that we need you to fill in.”

  “I see. Christ. Okay. I’ll need to ask someone to come and get the car. I’ll need to call work and let them know, and my wife. Oh God.” Jacob looked up at the chipped ceiling tiles. His car was in the hospital car park. He’d fallen down the stairs in a building in which he had no reason to be spending time. And then there was work. He was at a dummy meeting at a made-up prospective client’s office. Oh God…

  The little doctor was still smiling but with his mouth only.

  “I’ll ask an orderly to bring you a pay phone and we’ll get you up to a ward later this afternoon. I’ll have those forms brought over in a little while.” And with that he swept the curtain to one side and left.

  Without waiting for the pay phone, Jacob leaned over to the chair that had his clothes piled onto it. Who had done that? Who had folded his socks and boxers? His boxers. He tugged his jeans until they came away in his hand. He could sense from their weight that his phone was still in place as he worked his hands around carefully until he found the right pocket.

  Work was easy enough; he told Marc that he’d gone to the hospital to pick something up for Fiona as he was on his way back to the office when he’d fallen down the stairs. He’d made it as absurd and funny as possible, lots of wincing and sighing. True to form, reliable, laid-back Marc had laughed and passed the phone on to Geoff, their boss. Geoff had sighed and told Jacob his appointments would be taken care of and to get well soon.

  And now for Fiona. He couldn’t exactly tell her he was picking something up for her.

  The blood beat faster in his temples.

  It had to be unquestionable. He had to have been here, in the hospital, for a reason that was unquestionable.

  He pressed “Favorites,” then “Fiona” on his BlackBerry.

  Jacob swallowed away the taste of sick and blood. The pain in his leg, while dulled, was still creeping up his body. His head swam from the morphine trailing into his arm.

  “Hi, J.”

  “I don’t want you to freak out but…”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing serious, but I’m in the hospital.”

  “The hospital?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t want to worry you but a while ago I thought I’d found a lump…you know…down there.”

  “Oh my God! A lump?”

  He could hear her breathing hard.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s fine.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything? Why are you still in hospital?”

  “Oh, Fi, I’m really embarrassed. The consultant practically laughed with my nuts in his hand because it was so obviously not a lump. It was just a normal part that I’d not noticed before.”

  “Oh, thank God!”

  “Well, I was so relieved that I just ran down the stairs instead of taking the lift and I fell and broke my leg.”

  “What?” Fiona was laughing. Thank fuck, Fiona was laughing.

  “I’m still in Casualty, they’ve strapped my leg up and I’ve got some nasty cuts but nothing that won’t heal.”

  “Oh my love, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what to say. Let me come over there—”

  “They don’t want anyone to come and visit me while I’m in Casualty but you can come and see me in the
ward later this afternoon.”

  “Which ward?”

  “I’m not sure yet but I’ll text you as soon as I know. I have to go, I’m not supposed to have my phone on.”

  “But, Jacob?”

  The curtains suddenly ballooned toward him so he hung up and stuffed the phone under the covers.

  He could feel the phone vibrating as Fiona called back but he tried to keep a neutral expression while the orderly was wheeling the pay phone into position next to his elbow.

  “There y’are, I’ll come back and get it in a few minutes,” the thin young orderly mumbled from under some kind of ratty, trendy hairstyle.

  “Okay, cheers.”

  As soon as the curtains were still again, Jacob pulled his phone back out. Three missed calls in the last two minutes.

  He called Fiona back. The call connected: “Can’t talk, I’m driving. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Amy was absolutely still now, her eyes and mouth giving nothing away. Alex was still frozen next to the clunky bed, mouth agape. Besides her heartbeat thumping in her temples, the only sound was from barely-there radio reception crackling out from the abandoned desk. Three nurses and an orderly were standing at the open curtain staring at her while in the background a middle-aged female visitor lurked, trying to look casual while straining to see what was happening.

  For a moment, no one spoke. Then the orderly with the ponytail stomped away, prompting the visitor to shuffle back to her shrine.

  The remaining nurses stood in height order, with dumpy Nurse Radson at the front. The other two turned to each other, muttering and commenting behind cupped hands.

  “What on earth was that about?” Nurse Radson hissed, her face just a few centimeters from Alex’s collarbone.

  “I’m so sorry. She was…I think she was communicating with me.”

  “You what?” the tallest nurse asked, half laughing while Nurse Radson, for once, looked at Alex sympathetically.

  “She, I…I’m sorry.” And with that, Alex grabbed her bag and her notepad and walked briskly out of the cubicle, out of the double doors and down the corridor.

  It had all gone wrong. It had all gone horribly wrong.

  Alex had behaved like a total ass, probably blowing her chances of being allowed back. Just as she was getting somewhere, she had completely embarrassed herself.

  Alex rushed to the lifts, both of which had their lights parked at the top floor of the building. Keen to just keep moving until she was out of the building, Alex walked back to the stairwell and started down, careful not to slip on her flip-flops and break a toe.

  The highly polished stairs were a sort of faux marble that dated this wing of the hospital firmly in the 1980s. The flecks reminded her of a suit belonging to a short-lived boyfriend of her mum, back when Alex was too small to wonder why she was calling an almost-stranger “Uncle Stephen.”

  The steps felt freshly clean. Her adrenaline was seeping away, leaving the odd swoosh of hot flush and sweat licking Alex’s temples.

  She could feel that dry rot creeping up the back of her throat. That desire to drown, stronger than it had been in months. The need to flood herself and to spend the afternoon with a thick inkblot over all her thoughts.

  Alex needed a drink, and she needed it as soon as possible. She had to get home fast or she wouldn’t make it, and pulling her car into a pub car park and spending the afternoon raw, wasted and vulnerable was not a situation into which she wanted to return.

  Her quickening footsteps slid to a stop almost immediately, as a piercing cry shot up from the stairs below her.

  Alex’s first thought was mental patient. At one of the last outpatient appointments with her mother, they had encountered a “wandering resident” from the nearby community health ward. The confused man had been scratching at his face and muttering impenetrably. Her mum, dancing close to the rim herself, had shrieked loudly and yelled about gypsies stealing the radiators. The man in turn had started screaming. Alex had stood frozen until nurses came running.

  This scream had been incredibly loud and incredibly brief. Spooked, Alex raced back up the stairs to the floor above, crashed through more double doors, skirmished through a reception area and out into another windowless corridor.

  Heart thumping and feeling under siege, she skittered around oblivious outpatients, visitors and whistling orderlies until she came across another pair of lifts. She had to get home.

  One set of lift doors was open, the big gray box inside empty. Alex ran in, jammed the buttons until the door closed and sank to her knees. As the lift started to move Alex gathered herself up, took a deep breath and pressed the G button.

  A few people got in and out along the way, all of them ignoring the skinny woman at the back smiling nonchalantly while gripping her handbag with white knuckles.

  Alex knew she was just reacting to the panic of the moment but all she cared about right now was getting out. Getting out and getting a drink. Fuck the routine.

  As the lift doors opened to a secondary foyer at the back of the ground floor, Alex stepped out as lightly as she could and looked around for the exit.

  Taking the visitor badge from around her neck and slipping it into her bag, she pushed through a fire escape and ignored all the signs to the car park.

  Stepping onto the pavement and away from the hospital grounds was wrong. She knew that, but right now that wasn’t important. Softening the edges, stamping down on the panic, that was what she needed to do. Many years ago she could have had one brandy for shock, then a cab home. Not anymore.

  Alex knew full well that the second she chose to roam around the streets, looking for the nearest pub without discrimination, she would be sunk knee-deep into a bender within the hour.

  —

  The Elephant’s Head was what her mother used to call “an estate pub.” It wasn’t actually on an estate, but it serviced a nearby block of council flats, a garage, a tire place, a builder’s merchant and, of course, exhausted hospital staff.

  The floor inside was a sticky red carpet, with pre-ban cigarette burns and blackened chewing gum in abstract shapes.

  The flock wallpaper helped make the optimistically named “lounge” even more suffocating and the dark wood chairs looked as inviting as a fist in the face.

  Alex had ordered a double brandy as soon as she’d got to the bar. Throwing it back medicinally, she’d followed up immediately with whiskey and Diet Coke in a glass bottle, no ice.

  Tipping just a thumb’s measure of Diet Coke into the cheap bourbon, she’d sunk three in quick succession, still standing at the bar.

  She’d run out of cash and knew she was walking a tightrope but there was no way back now, she had to keep going and pray she didn’t fall to her death.

  Trying to keep her voice level, she asked the indifferent, middle-aged landlord, “Can I put my card behind the bar? I’ll be staying a while.”

  He smiled for the first time, and gestured to a more comfortable-looking chair just around the corner from an “out of order” jukebox. A familiar figure appeared in the doorway, caught her eye and waved.

  —

  Alex woke up with a start. A thick, sticky night still hung outside. She was lying on her bed with her vest and bra on, no knickers or jeans. One flip-flop sat next to her.

  The room was spinning, and it took Alex five minutes of seasick crawling to find her phone. She’d almost given up, assuming she’d lost another one, when her groping thumb felt the cool of its touch screen. She pressed the round indent and the time flashed up: 4:31 a.m.

  She could feel that telltale raw feeling. She wasn’t sore so much as aware. Her heart sank. Why did bloody Peter Haynes have to show up then? Why then?

  She was coated with sweat and her heart thumped sporadically, unevenly. Eventually she found a window in the vertigo to make her way to the bathroom. She knew as soon as she sat down, the contents of her tumbling into the bowl, that she’d had unprotected sex.

  A fucking doctor should have kn
own better, thought Alex.

  Back to a pharmacist for the morning-after pill. Sober Alex would need to clean up Drunk Alex’s mess. Again.

  But for now, she needed to do whatever it took to get back to sleep then wake up in the morning and not drink. Hair of the dog was a dangerous thing, the doorstep to forty-eight hours of oblivion and weeks of mess. She threw up several bowlfuls of acrid bile before swaying her wobbly way downstairs to follow the well-worn procedure of painkillers and a half pint of Berocca.

  She’d done what she could for her morning self, now she just needed to sleep and feel relieved that at least she hadn’t choked on her own vomit.

  —

  Alex woke again at 6:41 a.m., eyes stinging, head humming and stomach eating itself. A brief memory bubbled up of being carried through her front door, laughing wildly. Another of the doctor’s red face above hers, sweating with concentration. Her laughing that maniac laugh and grabbing his awful, awful haircut. When had he left?

  She barely had a second to wonder before running to the loo to throw up gallons of Berocca.

  Considering everything, she could have felt worse. Perhaps she’d gone so far around the hangover wheel that she’d made it back to “feeling all right.” Perhaps she was still drunk.

  She eased into her loosest-fitting pajama bottoms and slowly felt her way downstairs to put the kettle on. No running today. She’d had the wherewithal to plug her phone in when she’d woken at four-something. Now to perform the stomach-churning checks.

  No emails sent.

  No text messages sent.

  She moved to her laptop. Internet banking, deep breath. Balance of bank account about £200 lighter, not great but it could have been a lot worse.

  The kettle eventually reached its climax, spluttering noisily. At first more water splashed along the glossy sideboard than in the mug but eventually a cup of strong, sweet builder’s tea was ready. Coffee would be too punishing today. As she turned to put the teaspoon in the sink, Alex spotted two shot glasses on the side and realized they’d sunk the last of her emergency cistern whiskey.