On arriving at the school, Rachel saw everyone rushing around, getting ready for the inspectors on Thursday. The building had been cleaned, the paperwork had been audited, the staff had been advised to look their best, and they were particularly on the lookout for troublesome parents who could walk into the building at an inopportune moment and mess everything up. She took her place at her desk, allowing herself plenty of time to prepare. It was still half an hour before the bell. She was ready for anything.
Except the mouse.
Rachel saw something twitch out of the corner of her eye, but the movement was higher up this time, at waist height, not on the floor. She jumped and emitted a small cry. Looking around to see if anyone had heard her, Rachel stood up to investigate the area where the movement had been, by some cupboards. Picking up a ruler from her desk, she poked at the cupboard and removed a child’s coat that had been left hanging limply from a door beside it. Could a mouse climb that high? God, maybe it was a rat. It must have been a rat, she thought. She made a decision to contact the maintenance department immediately after class and tell them about this. The movement had been quick and unmistakeable. What else could it be?
The classroom door flew open.
“Are you OK? Ready for another day of shits and giggles?” It was Sally Green, Rachel’s closest friend in the school.
“Yeah, I guess,” answered Rachel. “Where’s the big boss?”
“Probably in his room, combing his ’tache; you know, doing something to really help the school pass the inspection.” Sally smiled and walked into the classroom, noticing Rachel’s uneasy bearing. “Are you OK, Rach?”
“No, I haven’t been too well; the headaches, you know… Have you seen mice in here?”
“Mice? God, no… Have you?”
“I think so…” Rachel pointed to the cupboards. “A couple of times, I saw a movement by the cupboards. I think it was a mouse – or a rat – moving about.”
“Ugh.” Sally winced. “I don’t want to be here if one of them comes out. Maybe we need a school cat; it’d be cheaper than exterminators. I’ll suggest it to Mr Andrews. See you later.” With that, she left.
Rachel watched Sally stride out of the classroom, closing the door behind her. Unexpectedly, she felt a small pain starting at her temple. It was just a tickle at first, but then it rapidly grew in intensity, accompanied by a wave of nausea. She thought the migraine had gone away. The very last thing she needed was it coming back now.
The bell went, prompting the school to begin to heave itself slowly into life, like a giant animal waking from a long slumber. Voices started to ring out from the corridors, and the clump of hundreds of feet shook the floor. Rachel watched the door fly open, followed by the customary torrent of schoolchildren flooding into the classroom. Her eyes began to water, and she felt dreadfully dizzy, so she sat down at her desk, hoping it would pass. A small-but-persistent well of panic overcame her, just briefly.
“Are you OK, miss?” asked Abbie, one of her pupils.
Rachel, determined not to make a fuss, simply replied, “Yes, I am fine.”
Abbie looked both unconvinced and concerned in equal measure. She smiled weakly, and then walked to her desk and sat down.
Everyone was sitting down now, looking at Rachel, more quietly than usual.
It came with no real warning. Akin to a bolt of lightning, tearing through the sky and striking her, almost like a physical impact or whiplash in the world’s worse car crash.
Bang!
A pain smashed through the back of her head, unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Rachel felt it pulsing through her body like a searing-hot knife. Her hand slapped instinctively to the back of her neck, and she closed her eyes against the agony. In a few nanoseconds, her brain tried to form coherent thoughts: Has the migraine come back? Have I taken too many pills to stop it? But, as the pain grew from agony to indescribable torment, she stopped thinking and just reacted. She was vaguely aware that something was very, very wrong. She tried to speak; her mouth moved but nothing came out, and her tongue felt too large for her mouth. Panic started. Pain and panic. The torture was causing waves of nausea to wrack her body.
Please make it stop. God help me, she pleaded. Rachel tried to stand up, but she could barely move. Her legs would not take the weight of her body. In spite of her profound distress, she also felt an acute pang of embarrassment, as she was making a spectacle of herself in front of the children. That was the worst thing.
The children looked horrified.
I need to stand up and get help. The pain kept growing and growing, enveloping her. She felt tears forming in her eyes and then saw them spilling onto her desk. Her frazzled mind decided to put everything it had left into an immense effort to make her body stand up, so she did.
It was the last thing that she remembered.
Chapter 3
Light was everywhere. Bright light. Sounds and smells. What’s happening? she thought. She tried to speak, but it was a wasted effort. Her brain and her mouth may as well have been in different time zones. Where am I?
There were more lights; so many lights. There was also dull pain now, in her head.
White light. Now she started remembering the torture she had experienced in the classroom.
Dead. Am I dead? Is this heaven? Rachel tried to make a noise again, but nothing happened.
Then came a face – a lady looking at her – but then the lady was gone.
Two nurses appeared at Rachel’s bedside and checked the machines beside her. “She is awake,” one of them said.
Rachel’s mind drifted away. In her dreams, she revisited the people on the cliff again, but they were closer this time. They were still watching her. They looked more or less like regular people, except they were slightly faded and dark, as if they had been drawn with a charcoal pencil. She could hear the sound of people calling to her distantly. She looked over her shoulder and saw them on the opposing cliff that was bathed in light; she then looked back at the people in front of her. They remained in the shade. They remained silent.
*
Rachel spent seven days in the intensive care unit, drifting in and out of consciousness. Now she lay in her bed, in a general ward. She often found herself ruminating over how slowly time seemed to pass. Days felt like little eternities, just watching the patients come and go. What a mixed bunch they were. Just today, she had seen a soldier in a dated military uniform, bloodied and with bandages around his head, being guided around the ward by a comrade. He looked very seriously ill, and half of his arm was missing. Then there was the young boy with callipers on his legs. Did people still wear those? she wondered. He just stood in the corner of the ward, staring into space. She would ask the doctor about him; it wasn’t right for a child to be left in a ward with seriously ill adults.
Rachel was somehow aware of her visitor before she saw him. She looked up and saw a man standing at the end of the bed, watching her closely. He was in his late forties to early fifties, slim and balding, but he still had a glint in his eye. He was very smartly dressed in pressed trousers, a slightly oversized shirt, a loose necktie, a jacket and a waistcoat, with a beard that lightly covered his chin. She knew beards had come back into fashion, but she had no idea why a doctor would sport one. He just stood there, looking at her. This must be my doctor, she presumed. He’s probably a surgeon; they’re usually eccentric, aren’t they? Why else would he wear a waistcoat and suit on a ward?
“Doctor?” said Rachel. Her speech had returned, although her voice was raspy, and it was hard to get words out.
Her visitor looked surprised. “You can see me?” he said, coming closer.
“Yes, of course… My eyes… are a bit blurry, but yes. You are a doctor?”
“Yes… yes, I am.”
“Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves?” Rachel pointed weakly to his hands.
“
I only wear gloves to the theatre; why would I wear gloves here?” He smiled again and sat down on the edge of the bed.
Oh no, a joker, thought Rachel before saying, “So what’s wrong with me? What happened?”
“You can actually see me? Properly?” he said again, waving his hand to and fro in front of her face.
“Yes, my eyes are fine, thank you. Please, what happened to me? Can you tell me?”
“Oh, that.” He paused for some time, deliberating over how best to tackle Rachel’s question. “You had a bleed in your brain. It made you faint. They call it a subarachnoid haemorrhage; it’s on your records there.” He gestured towards her file at the foot of the bed. “They stopped it so you should feel much better now, thanks to the miracle of modern surgery, I would say.”
Rachel was shocked. Was that it? She expected more from a surgeon; for instance, an account of what had happened in the operating theatre, as well as a clearer prognosis.
The lady in the bed opposite looked at her in an odd way, but said nothing.
Lowering her voice, Rachel queried, “I had a brain haemorrhage? What caused it?”
The doctor was still looking at her intently. “I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps there was a problem with your humours or possibly the hemispheres were out of synchronicity. The people here are quite skilled at fixing that sort of problem.” He got up from the bed and made to leave.
“That’s it?” she enquired.
“For now,” he replied, then he smiled and walked away.
Rachel watched him leave the ward.
Another doctor appeared, less than ten seconds after the last one had left. This one was in a blue theatre gown, with a paper mask hanging from his ear, and he was clutching papers. “Good afternoon, Miss Holloway; I am Dr Richard Brown,” he said. “How are you feeling today?” He picked up the file from the end of her bed and started reading through her medical notes.
“A bit better,” she responded. She decided that the last chap was most likely the doctor in charge of the ward, and this was the surgeon.
“You have been quite unwell,” said Dr Brown, without looking up from her file. “Do you know what happened to you?”
Rachel sighed, hoping this man was better than the first doctor. “Yes, the other doctor told me. A suber-acker-nal haemorrhage or something? Bleeding in my brain?”
He looked up from his notes. “What doctor?”
“The doctor who was just here. He was old-fashioned-looking. So, is that what happened to me?”
“Yes, that is what happened, but there is no other doctor on duty on this ward.” The doctor looked concerned.
Rachel noticed that the patient in the bed opposite hers was talking conspiratorially to one of the nurses. She pointed at Rachel in a fleeting, small way, probably hoping she wouldn’t see her doing so.
“Well, he was here and he said that is what happened; I didn’t make it up, did I? Anyway, what’s going to happen to me?” questioned Rachel.
The doctor explained, “You will stay here for another week, then you will be able to go home. You’ve suffered a significant bleed to your brain – a subarachnoid haemorrhage – and you will need medications and monitoring to ensure the best outcome possible. We had to operate to stop the bleeding, so only time will tell how your recovery will go. Do you have any questions?”
Rachel had a few, but felt too exhausted. “No, that’s fine for now, thank you,” she said.
The doctor nodded and moved on to another patient in a neighbouring bed.
As Dr Brown left the ward, Rachel saw the nurse speak furtively to him on the way out. Rachel also noticed that the woman in the opposite bed was looking at her more intently than ever.
Chapter 4
Hospital life was quite boring, though interspersed with small distractions that helped pass the time. However, the increasing strangeness of the people on the ward began to distress her. A woman in odd clothes often hurried through, muttering to herself and clutching a bag. Rachel assumed that she was a relative of a patient. What was most concerning was that she always saw her entering the ward, striding to the far end and disappearing around the corner, where the toilet and wash room facilities were. Rachel never actually saw her leave the ward. Not once. And there was only one way out of the ward, which was also the only way in. Maybe I fall asleep without realising. Maybe she leaves whilst I’m asleep. That’s got to be why I don’t see her, she pondered.
The boy in the callipers still stood in the corner, watching her mournfully. However, she didn’t see the horrifically injured soldier and his comrade again. Maybe he had been at a fancy-dress party and had a terrible accident? I bet if this had been a private hospital, I wouldn’t have had to share my space with such odd people.
Rachel decided to try to think no more about it. The pain in her head was just a dull ache now, although the doctors had told her that the discomfort may never go away completely. They had shaved a chunk of her hair off to operate and advised it might be better if she cut her hair short till it grew back. Rachel decided against this; she loved her shoulder-length hair. No, I’ll just pin my hair over the bald spot for a while.
Come what may, everything needed to get back to normal.
*
One month after ‘the event’, as Rachel called it, she was finally discharged from hospital. John was due to come at 2pm to collect her. She kept looking at her watch whilst sitting up in bed, with a plastic bag of belongings by her side that Sally had kindly gathered from her home. Just another hour and I’m out of here…
The eccentric doctor appeared again at the end of her bed; the one she had seen after she first woke up in hospital an eternity ago. “You are leaving us? That’s a shame. I shall miss you,” he declared.
Rachel regarded him cautiously. “They say I am well enough to go home now. I am sure there will be other patients to tend to.”
“Not the same as you.”
She felt uncomfortable. Is this guy trying to chat me up? She ignored him and tried to look forwards, so as not to catch his gaze. This is awkward. Time slowed down and oozed like treacle.
“Suit yourself,” said the doctor.
Rachel turned towards him, but he was gone.
The same nurse who had tended to her most of the week walked to her bedside. Her face was set and grave. “Miss Holloway,” she whispered, sitting on a chair by the bed. “Doctor has been concerned about you and about your recovery.”
“You mean him?” Rachel gestured towards the curtain where the doctor had stood moments before. “Yes, he does seem concerned about me, doesn’t he?”
“There is no one there, Miss Holloway.”
“Yes, yes, I know that. He was there… He’s gone now.” Puzzled, she looked at the nurse.
“What else do you see, Miss Holloway?”
The nurse’s repetition of her name, coupled with her authoritarian attitude, was starting to annoy her. “What are you getting at?”
“On the ward, around you, do you see anything worth mentioning? Anything unusual?”
Rachel paused, looked around, then pointed to the boy who was standing in his usual place in the far corner of the ward. “That’s pretty unusual. He should be on a children’s ward, and what’s with the vintage leg braces? Have things really got that bad for the National Health Service?”
The nurse looked up, her face frozen. “Anything else?”
“The soldier… When I first came in, there was a soldier in here as well.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course. He was wearing a dark-green uniform, and he looked like he was injured badly. Maybe it was fancy dress, but it looked pretty real to me.”
“The doctor has said he wishes you to stay in a while longer, to see our other doctor, as your brain may have suff—” The nurse reconsidered her words. “Your brain may have undergone some chan
ges that we have not taken into account.” She stood up and began to walk away from Rachel’s bedside.
“No. I want to leave. I am fine…” Rachel’s mind started to churn over the information. “What changes? What do you mean?”
“The doctor will explain,” answered the nurse over her shoulder, as she breezed out of the ward.
*
The following day, Rachel was taken to a doctor’s room that was located a short distance along a corridor near the ward (the nurse had said that another ‘health professional’ would be caring for her for a while). She found herself in a brightly lit room, looking at a poster of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse on the wall. Rachel didn’t know why a doctor would have such a poster. Maybe to entertain children? she wondered.
As she waited, she saw a nurse come in through the door behind her, who was dressed in unusual clothes. Rachel could see she was a nurse, but she noticed that the lady was wearing a very old-fashioned uniform, which consisted of a starched, blue dress that hung past her knees; an apron; and a large, white, wimple-type hat. The nurse bustled in, went to the far corner of the room, appeared to be doing something (Rachel couldn’t see what), and then walked past her and out.
As Rachel contemplated how rude it was that the nurse had ignored her, she heard a click as the door closed behind her. A man in a suit came in, who was about forty and very smartly dressed, with a bow tie on.
“Good afternoon, Miss Holloway,” he said.
“Please call me Rachel,” she offered.
“Rachel… Ah, yes.” He sat down behind the desk, which took up most of the room, and opened a brown folder full of papers. “I am Mr Lunn; did the nurse tell you why you are seeing me?”
“No… just that I might have more damage to my head than you first thought. The nurse was very vague.”
“Yes… possibly. Tell me, the nurse says you see unusual people in the ward, is that right?”
Seeing Things Page 2