by Alex Day
And then fell.
She bounced and rolled down the side of the cliff, unable to do anything to stop herself. There was nothing to grab hold of, not the tiniest clump of grass, not a single tenacious shrub. So this is it, this is how it ends, I’ve fallen at the last hurdle and let that poor woman down – The wailing in her head subsided suddenly to emptiness. Her mind switched off. Everything went black.
THIRTY-SIX
Edie
The sound was insistent, constant. It droned on and on. It seemed to be coming from nearby but, drowsy from the painkillers and whatever else was being pumped into her through the tube in her hand, Edie couldn’t immediately identify it. She wished it would stop, would go away so that she could sleep. She was so tired, and she knew there was a reason for such unprecedented exhaustion but couldn’t, at that moment, think what it was or fathom exactly where she was lying. It was all too confusing and the noise was irritating her too much to think about anything else. She lay on her back, staring at the white ceiling, trying to block out the sound. She couldn’t. This was unbearable; she’d have to find out what it was and ask someone to please sort it out.
She turned her head in the direction of the noise. There was a bed next to hers, and another one further on, beyond a window with a blind drawn down over it. Slowly, it dawned on Edie that she was in hospital. On the nearest bed was a humped shape, completely covered with bedclothes. No body part was visible, but the shape was heaving gently up and down. Edie listened carefully. The sound that she had been unable to discern the origin of earlier was of someone sobbing their heart out, weeping, keening, and it was coming from the featureless figure whose face was buried and invisible.
Edie turned her head back to staring straight upwards again. Every movement hurt. Her temples throbbed. She wanted to call out shut up. But something stopped her. This was no ordinary crying; this was gut-wrenching grief that spoke, wordlessly, of unimaginable sorrow and utter hopelessness.
She must have dropped back off to sleep. The next thing she was aware of, through the woolliness that constituted her brain, was a nurse who came and took her blood pressure and checked her temperature. My vital signs, thought Edie. Is that what they call them? Nothing felt very vital at that moment; on the contrary, she was feeling distinctly second-hand.
‘Why am I here?’ she asked the nurse. The smile she received in return was charming, kind. But the words the nurse spoke were incomprehensible.
The day drifted on. The crying had stopped and, at some point, the curtains had been drawn around the bed next to hers. Perhaps the woman had died. There was absolute silence from that direction now. If she was on a ward with dead people, did that mean she would die too? Edie thought that intensive care wards were where people generally died and this didn’t seem to be like intensive care, at least not how it was depicted on TV programmes, all beeping noises and flashing lights and professionally urgent doctors and nurses. But on the other hand, perhaps she was beyond all that and already halfway to some nether world. This might explain why it was all so white and quiet like an antechamber of heaven …
Edie slept. When next she opened her eyes it was to be greeted by a dark figure looming over her. The Grim Reaper? The tight grip of fear sent heat rushing through her body. She screamed.
But it was just the doctor, a doctor who spoke English.
‘I’m sorry I frightened you,’ he said. He had a low, gruff voice that seemed to rumble up from somewhere deep within his chest. ‘You’re doing fine but you need to get as much sleep as you can. Your parents will be here soon; they’re on their way.’
Sleep. That sounded good. Edie was sure she needed sleep. But she had a question to ask.
‘Who is the person who is crying?’ Her eyes flicked towards the bed next to hers to indicate who she meant.
‘We put you in here, with the other girl. It seemed the best thing to do.’
Something about the way he spoke implied that Edie knew who this was, this ‘other girl’.
The doctor moved away, towards the other bed, before she could ask for clarification. He disappeared behind the curtains. Edie could hear him talking to its occupant so she couldn’t be dead after all. Neither of them was dead. That was a relief. And he’d called her a girl so presumably she wasn’t dissimilar in age to Edie. That was good, as it would be a shame to die when still young enough to be classed a ‘girl’.
Now that she knew she was definitely alive, and that her neighbour was too, she tried to remember what the doctor had just said. She was sure it had been something important but it had already slipped away, out of reach. It was like the hugest hangover she’d ever had, one of those that gets worse, not better, throughout the day and when tiny snippets of things that happened during the drunken evening keep coming back over the next hours and weeks.
‘When will they come?’
The question came from the next bed, but as soon as she heard it, Edie realised her stupidity. The doctor had said her parents were on their way and the next-door voice’s question was the one she should have asked them. She wondered who might be coming to visit the sad woman, for it had been a female voice, who she was asking about, but then decided it didn’t matter. Sleeping was the only thing that seemed to matter right now. But sleep evaded her.
Fatima
Since the fever had lifted, she had tried to piece together all the bits of what had happened from the moment Ali’s money and the documents had arrived. It had been easy, she remembered, with cash and ID papers, to get the ferry off the island they had arrived at. It would take them to another island, not the first one they got to but further along that particular chain. There were so many islands belonging to that country, each one more picture-perfect than the last, and lots of people, locals and tourists, especially young back-packers, touring from one to another. ‘Island hopping’ they called it, Fatima recalled from some article she’d read once, long ago. Jumping on a boat with a carefree spirit, the sun and the scent of the sea one’s constant companions, taking off to explore the black sand beaches or coral coves or sparkling sponge-hunters’ bays. But of course that had not been what she and Ehsan and the children had been doing; far from it.
They were fleeing for their lives and how much rather she would have been at home in the courtyard house, the way it had been before this terrible war, she could not put into words. At least now, for them, with the rediscovery of Ali, life seemed to have taken a turn for the better. For those left behind in the stinking makeshift camp, sleeping on the hard ground, surrounded by the stench of piss and faeces, consigned to grindingly awful day after grindingly awful day, waiting – to be registered, to get papers, for food, for water – Fatima could not bear to think what the future held.
When we get to Europe, she promised herself. When we get there, and we get settled, and I’ve paid Ali back all the money he’s spent on us, I’ll do something to help. Promises like that are easy to make when they are so remote that the whys and wherefores do not need to be dwelt on, but she knew she meant it.
It was ironic that it was on their journey to rescue, funded by Ali, that things had taken a turn for the worse. The excoriating wind and the sea-sickness combined with the dreadful, agonising labour pains that heralded a birth happening far too soon, a baby that, in these circumstances, could not possibly survive, meant that the rest of their peregrinations were jumbled and unclear, the details too opaque to catch hold of. She had a vague recollection of being taken to a hut on a hill, of Ali begging for her to see a doctor but his friends – the smugglers (yet more smugglers, on top of all those they had encountered along the journey) – refusing. They had said that it was too dangerous, that Fatima would be immediately detained, that their chances of getting into the EU would be over.
Fatima had been vaguely aware, even as the infection took over her body, poisoning her blood and addling her mind, that this was not the reason they wouldn’t entertain the idea of fetching medical help. The real reason was that they were frightened �
�� of the consequences of being caught, of losing both their freedom and their illegitimate income.
She was musing on that thought, on how close she had come to an ignominious death, perhaps buried at sea along with her son, when the doctor arrived by her bedside. After checking her notes and consulting with the nurse at his shoulder, he pronounced himself pleased with her progress. Fatima smiled, weakly. He told her that Ali would bring the children to see her soon. She had not even begun to process the loss of the baby. She felt the tragedy of it at the same time as feeling totally removed from it, as if it had happened to someone else. When someone mentioned her children, she thought only of Marwa and Maryam as if there had never been even the shadow of another one. She knew she had been crying, a lot, because her eyes were red and sore. But whether it was for him, her lost boy, or for her twins, or for Fayed and all the hundreds and thousands of dead and millions displaced of her country, she did not know.
She only had one question to ask the doctor, the only one that mattered.
‘When will they come?’
Edie
‘Soon,’ Edie heard the doctor answer. Did it apply to her, to her parents’ arrival? She felt too tired to ask.
The nurse drew back the curtains around the bed and Edie saw, for the first time, the woman who had wept so eloquently for so long. Even though her face was etched with pain and loss, her eyes red and sore from weeping, her skin dull and grey, she was beautiful. Beautiful and young, with long black hair that was thick and glossy despite whatever was wrong with her. There was something vaguely familiar about her but Edie couldn’t think what it was. She looks the same age as me, she thought. And we’re both waiting for people to arrive, so we’ve got that in common, too. I need to find out what she’s doing here. What’s made her so sad.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked, when the doctor and the nurse had carried on down the row to the next bed.
The woman looked at Edie. Edie wondered why she thought of her as a woman although she always saw herself as still a girl. There was something about her eyes, the way she regarded Edie now, that spoke of experiences out of Edie’s knowledge, of things that should never have been seen.
‘My name is Fatima.’ She spoke very slowly, as if having to consider each word carefully. Her English was excellent. She was sitting up on the edge of her bed as if about to go somewhere, but she didn’t leave.
‘Hi, Fatima.’ Edie tried a smile but it hurt too much. She had been propping herself up on her elbows but now let herself fall back down. It was too much effort.
‘What were you crying about earlier?’
The question was far too abrupt, too direct, for one complete stranger to ask another. But Edie wanted to know and was too weary to work out how to broach the subject tactfully.
Fatima raised her tired, swollen eyes from the floor to Edie. ‘It is a long story and at the same time a very short one. Do you really want to hear it?’
‘I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.’
In the silence that followed Edie realised that her answer had perhaps not been the most sensitive.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound rude. I’m not feeling a hundred per cent myself.’
As she spoke, Edie realised how much she ached all over, how the pain in every muscle when she shifted the tiniest micro-millimetre was greater than she had ever felt before. But none of it could be as bad as what Fatima had experienced, judging from the gut-wrenching crying of earlier.
‘I got an infection.’ Fatima was talking again. ‘The baby came too early. It – he – died and I lost a lot of blood. It was very dirty everywhere, there was no doctor and no medicine and I became very ill. An infection —’ Her voice trailed off. Her eyes searched the room, her expression distraught.
Edie watched as tears welled up in Fatima’s eyes. She dropped her head and buried it in her hands as if not seeing could take the pain away.
‘I’m sorry,’ she continued, lifting up her head and forcing back the sobs. ‘I’m not crying for myself. Nobody from my country cries for themselves anymore. We cry only for the children.’ Fatima tightened her hands into fists and ground them into her lap. ‘How many more children will we lose, how many more will die, before it’s over? What will it take for the world to help?’
Edie lay in her bed, watching the agony crossing Fatima’s face like storm clouds in a fierce wind. She had absolutely no idea what Fatima was talking about.
The ring of high-pitched voices cut through the white calm of the ward. Fatima turned towards the source of the noise and Edie saw her face transform, the darkness swept away and replaced by sunshine that spread across her countenance like the first rays of light after the storm.
Two tiny girls arrived at her bedside, so similar to Fatima with their glossy black hair and shiny black eyes, calling and shouting in another language. Fatima flung herself off the bed and onto her knees where she gathered the children in her arms and smothered them with kisses. She got into the chair that stood by the bed and pulled them on top of her, love masking the exhaustion that Edie could see threatened to engulf her. The outpouring of emotion equalled the grief of the morning. Edie knew she should not stare but could not stop.
Fatima was fumbling with something, awkwardly raising her hands above her head, trying to move without dislodging the children from her lap. She kept glancing down the long corridor of the ward; there must be someone else coming. Edie saw that she was twisting a headscarf over her hair, fixing it into place without a mirror, her hands following patterns they knew by heart and long habit.
The children were snuggled into her lap, oblivious to their mother’s actions. The two of them were complete, indivisible, two halves of a whole, one split egg making a perfect pair. Edie took in their every detail. They were obviously twins, identical Edie was sure. They’re just like me and Laura, thought Edie. Panic surged through her veins. Laura. Something had happened to Laura. These two girls still had each other but she didn’t have Laura. The aching void of loneliness left by her absent twin opened wide once more, threatening to pull her in and devour her.
Fatima had the scarf in place now, just in time; the footsteps had been fast approaching and now the visitors came into view. Edie closed her eyes then, because it was nothing to do with her and Fatima deserved some privacy. And as she did so, it all came flooding back to her. Fatima was familiar because she was the woman on the boat, the girls the two poor mites who had watched everything with their fearful gaze. She, Edie, had discovered them, had uncovered Vuk and Vlad’s evil enterprise, all because she was looking for Laura. Were she and Fatima safe now? Where were the guards, the police, to make sure that no one came in the night to murder them in their beds?
Edie tried to calm her racing pulse and pumping heart. If Fatima had been found it must mean the boat had been intercepted. Did that mean that Vuk and Vlad were under lock and key? She could not even think of Vuk, of how he had deceived her. What about Fatima? She’d never get to Europe now, she’d probably be deported. Her and the girls, the twins. If only she, Edie, were well, perhaps she could help them? Sneak them across the border in the boot of a car; it would hardly be difficult, the border officials didn’t search anyone European driving a rental car. She’d take them to the capital, or no, even better, drive them further north, across more borders, take them to one of the countries that was accepting refugees, Germany or Sweden. No, Sweden was too far, but Germany, that would be perfect, and once in Germany and established and a citizen with a passport and all that, Fatima could go where she wanted and it would all be fine; perhaps she’d choose to settle in England, which would be nice because then Edie could visit her, assuming Edie herself went back to live in England which seemed unlikely but then, where else would she go?
Edie’s head spun and she leant out of the bed and threw up on the floor, the spattering sound of her vomit hitting the cold tiles appalling and disgusting her. A nurse hurried over and admonished her in their indecipherable language, giving her a pl
astic tray in case she did it again. Someone came to clear up the sick. Edie couldn’t work out if the stench of the detergent was worse than that of the contents of her stomach. She must be going mad, truly, properly mad, to be thinking these things about facilitating Fatima’s escape.
In all honesty, what could she do to help? She didn’t even know how to drive, for Christ’s sake.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Edie
Edie must have dozed because when she woke up, Fatima and the girls weren’t there.
‘You have visitors,’ a nurse was saying.
It was much darker now; it must be getting late. Evening visiting hours. That was nice, that someone had come to see her. Then realisation dawned. She sat bolt upright.
‘My parents?’ It was unbelievable how happy she felt that they were here, euphoric even. Or maybe it was just that the drugs were good and strong.
‘No. Some other people. Do you want to see them?’
The jubilation deserted her in an instant. Maybe the drugs weren’t so great after all. She nodded, listlessly.
She looked towards the door of the ward to see who appeared. Two men were walking along the aisle between the beds. For a heart-stopping moment, Edie thought it was Vuk and Vlad. Her hands involuntarily clutched at the sheet as if holding on tight to it would prevent them from getting her.
Then she saw the men more clearly and it wasn’t Vuk and Vlad. It was Patrick and, of all people, Zayn.