“Mr Barr, I see you’re awake.”
No shit.
“Yes, the sore head. You had a very nasty knock to it when you hit the road.” He explained that I had concussion and possible brain swelling, so waking up was obviously a good thing. He said I would probably have a sore head for a week or so, and experience dizziness and loss of balance for a week or more, once the pain subsided. They were going to keep me in a couple of days and I needed to rest. Great.
“Oh, and we have called your girlfriend. She is on her way in.”
“My gir…?” The words trailed off as a picture of her pink-cheeked face filled my memories.
Not that bitch. As if this isn’t enough.
The voice caught me by surprise and I jerked my head left, looking around as far as I could. It hurt, but I just had to look behind me. Who the hell just said that?!
“Mr Barr, are you alright?” The doctor looked concerned. “Do you remember your girlfriend, Chess? You know, Francesca?” He motioned to the nurse to move towards me, but she had already second guessed his request before he had thought it, and had started to take my pulse and count on her watch in an overly dramatic fashion.
“Yes of course I remember Chess! My head just… I swear I just heard someone…” I tried to point behind me, not realising there was just a wall with sockets and buttons and an overhead lamp and TV. The doctor and nurse both looked blankly at the wall and then back to me, concern written on their faces.
“Half hourly obs,” the doctor muttered to the nurse, who nodded a reply. “I will be back in later, Mr Barr. Try to get some rest.” And he left, leaving the curtain wide open. I hated hospitals.
Well at least I can make the most of the free morphine.
Realising that was not my voice, or the nurse’s, but a voice of someone who seemed to be happy to provide sarcastic commentary in my head, I demanded, “Who?! Who said that?!” The nurse, who had finished taking my pulse and was busy recording it on the chart, looked up at me again and squinted.
“Maybe I’ll come back in 15 minutes.” She finished scrawling, hooked the chart onto the bed and left, thankfully pulling the curtains. I watched her go and waited for the voice to speak again.
It was silent. Well, when I say silent, anyone who is sound of mind that has spent any time in a general hospital ward will tell you that silence is not a luxury afforded anyone in hospital. After a few moments on my own, for the first time since being properly conscious, I became aware of a distant wailing, random beeping noises and, in the cubicle to my right, a patient feebly shouting, “Nurse, nurse! Help me! Nurse!” I wondered how long he had been calling out for; it had been going on for as long as I had been awake.
Shut. Up!
Shit, did I just say that? I wondered to myself. Okay, so that wasn’t my voice, but did I think that... did those words just come out of my mouth? No. No, I’m pretty sure they didn’t. It must have been another patient, maybe the guy in the cubicle to my left. I sniffed a laugh and smiled to myself. I was in hospital, after all. Most of the patients in the ward were probably over ninety and had no clue where they were. I decided it must be the bump on my head making my thinking go wrong. Some scientific explanation about concussion, maybe bruising of the brain. Maybe they would tell me when I was more compos mentis and not shouting at imaginary people stood behind me.
My mind drifted back over the day, starting with breakfast and trying to remember what I had. Orange juice and toast with butter. I was quite pleased I could remember that. Short term memory: check. I’d had breakfast with Chess at seven in the morning. (Eyes heavy. Drifting. Ugh my head.) Chess; we had been together for four years. I met her in the office we worked in at the time. I was an arse and made her cry, but my apology was the beginning of something special and there we were years later. (Drifting. Is the room getting warmer?) Long term memory: check.
I gave in and, falling back into sleep, I relaxed a little. I was going to be just fine I told myself.
Yeah, I will be.
I slept for almost a day and when I awoke Chess was there. She immediately stood and held my hand, telling me she was so glad she stayed, that she knew I would wake up, et cetera, et cetera. She could definitely talk, that girl, but it was one of the things I loved about her.
Dozy cow, I woke up yesterday. You weren’t there.
“Chess,” I interrupted her joyous rhetoric abruptly. “Did you hear that?” Chess froze mid-sentence and listened intently, eyes looking around, trying to source what I had heard.
“The beeping? The guy next door crying?” she ventured.
“No, the voice.” I cringed saying it out loud.
“The… nurse? The man next door?” Chess was trying to be as helpful as possible, which annoyed me a little.
“He’s not talking at the moment,” I admitted. It, or ‘He’ as I had just referred to it by, had gone silent. It wasn’t a he, it didn’t have a form. Not one I had seen yet anyway. It had an opinion, voiced it, and that was it. I didn’t answer, because then I was talking to it. Talking to it would be admitting it exists. This was starting to become a routine in my mind and I decided to believe the concussion I had suffered was more like a proper head injury. Yes, that must have been what was causing this… anomaly.
“Well, baby, if he isn’t talking at the moment, how can I hear him? You really took a bang to the head, didn’t you?” Her concern seeped out of every tiny detail of her kind face, another reason I loved her so much; she really cared. She was a great girl. She’d never get into Mensa, but was still a great girl.
“Well clearly you won’t hear him when he isn’t talking,” I snapped. I was a little irritated at this statement of the obvious, “I don’t hear him when he isn’t talking. It… it. Not him. This conversation is getting annoying.” I actually said the last bit out loud, which I had not intended. Chess looked hurt but decided to steer the conversation in a different direction.
“Okaaay. So the doctor said that I can take you home first thing in the morning. I’ll come in after breakfast tomorrow to pick you up. Do you want me to bring your jogging trousers to wear? You do realise all your clothes were cut off, right?” My face must have dropped; No, I hadn’t realised. “Yes, well, I will bring those and a t-shirt. Or how about your dressing gown? Would that be comfier for you? Should I bring slippers or your Converse? Do you know what happened to your shoes? I’m guessing they didn’t cut those off, right? Where do they put someone’s things when they come into hospital, is there a locker? Do you want something to eat or drink, you look like you’ve lost weight?”
Whatever, love, stop with the 20 questions! It’s enough to drive a person insane. Pause for breath, come up for air, fuck!
“Whatever,” I muttered, stopping myself from repeating the rest of the sarcastic spitting of the voice in my head, its annoyance obvious. Realising what I had said, I looked to Chess’s face—no reaction. I figured she didn’t hear it or she was being nice to me in my incapable, and clearly confused, state.
Chess kissed me on the forehead and left to get coffee, returning to sit with me for the rest of visiting hours. They both did. I floated from conscious to semi-conscious, the morphine melting and reforming the room around me. Chess talking, me trying to answer, the voice always answering. My mind trying to piece together reality from shards of fuzzy snapshots taken by my eyes, opening and closing straight away, unable to stay open. Although I was so grateful for her company, it was hard work not asking her every time the voice said something if she had heard it. It was even harder work not repeating what was being said. The voice favoured bad language, a lot, and the overwhelming desire to simply allow myself to vocalise the voice was almost impossible to resist. I was exhausted by the time she left.
Thank fuck for that… Was the last thing I heard before I gave in to a deep, deep sleep.
Having slept solidly again, I felt better the next day. My head was clearer and the voice seemed to have disappeared. My ribs still hurt and the bump on my head was stil
l there and throbbed if I touched it, but that was to be expected... the important thing was the voice had gone.
My journey home, in dressing gown and Chess’s pink slippers (because I forgot that I didn’t own a pair of slippers when agreeing to wear them) was uneventful and brief. Chess helped me into the house and sat me in the lounge, tucked up with a blanket on the sofa and freshly fluffed cushions that usually only the guests were allowed to use. After a small amount of faffing, she went into to kitchen to make a cup of tea.
Well, this is the bloody life, innit? Huge satellite telly, big settee, bet you got an en-suite and one of those bidet things, too; looking forward to that. You got a dog, mate?
Startled, I looked at the TV—it was definitely switched off. The radio too. I could hear Chess in the kitchen, the kettle beginning to boil and a tap running. Our front garden was at least three metres back from the road and it was a quiet little cul-de-sac, but I still looked out the window. No-one. I was feeling better. My head didn’t pound, I had slept a LOT over the last couple of days, I wasn’t taking any pain relief; so where the hell was this voice coming from?
Don’t question it, just accept it. “Resistance is futile” hahaha.
The voice laughed at its own joke. “Seriously?!” I blurted out, annoyed at the presence of the voice still and its intrusion into my thoughts. “Piss off!”
“What?” Chess was walking towards me, a cup of tea in each hand. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Sorry.” Stammering to think of an excuse for my apparently random outburst. “It’s my headache, still there a little.” That would do, I figured, even if it was a lie. I could play on the whole head injury thing for now.
“Oh, baby. You want me to get anything?” She placed the tea down and sat next to me, resting her warm hand on my blanketed knee.
Yeah, if you could get out of my face, that would be fucking great.
“No, no.” I tried to hide a smirk; it was only funny in a rebellious and sarcastic teenager kind of way, but it completely was not funny of course. “I’ll be okay, just gotta tough it out.” I felt like an idiot for saying that last bit, like I was reconfirming my manhood by gritting my teeth through a little headache and some well-placed bruises.
Tough man. Impressive stuff.
After Chess read out the ‘Get Well Soon’ cards—all two of them—she decided she would get out my hair and let me rest, but to call her if I needed anything. The front door closed. Relief. Right—I was going to sort this ‘thing’ out once and for all. ‘We’ were alone. Time to evict this squatter.
“So.” I decided I may as well speak out loud; no-one was in the house now, no doctors judging me, no concerned girlfriend. Just me… sort of. “I’m not really sure how to converse with you, actually. This isn’t something I have had a lot of experience of in my life, you know; talking to the voice in your head.” I paused, hoping that I would receive nothing but silence in response, as usual.
Not that I care, but what do you want to talk to me for anyway? I’m pretty much not interested in you, other than when you are gonna drink that tea.
Why did that make a difference? I wondered to myself.
And I can still hear you, even if you are only putting your brain in gear and not your big mouth.
I jumped to my feet at this revelation but quickly lowered myself back to a more rib-pleasing sitting position.
I don’t know why but I simply did not expect the voice to hear what I had not actually spoken out loud.
“I can talk to you without talking?”
If you must, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t. I’m not here for conversation.
“Well I may continue the traditional form of conversation for now, being that I actually have a mouth I can use, and want to… and why the hell do you want to know if I’m going to drink the tea?” The question was ridiculous, considering all questions I could have asked at that point, but still.
I prefer sugar. If there’s no sugar in it, I don’t want it.
“Well it’s my bloody body. I will drink what I damn well like!” My point had gone out the window with aghastness; how dare he! I asserted myself with a confident hand reaching out, grabbing the mug and slurping the scolding hot tea—no sugar.
You may live to regret that.
The voice sounded like a big brother who had just discovered his most prized possession in the hands of a younger sibling, totally destroyed. I recalled my older brother, Robby, who had died when we were kids—he sometimes caught me in his stuff and there was always hell to pay. I missed him. Hang on…
“Robby?” I asked.
Who? Oh. Fuck no, I’m not your dead brother. You do realise that when you’re dead, you’re dead, right?
“Great. Thanks for that.” I paused. We were getting off topic. What was the topic anyway, tea?
What do you talk about with a voice whose origin appears to be your very own head? The weather? Current affairs? I guessed that if I thought something, words or images, the voice was aware of them. “I take it you could tell there was no sugar?” I decided that the question was reasonable, considering the situation.
Yeah, as soon as it touched your fat lips.
“There’s no need to be rude.” I was getting antsy now and I decided to just come out with it, although the voice probably already knew what I was going to ask a split second before the words formed and floated through the air of my empty living room. “What exactly do you want with me?”
I don’t fucking know, I’ve only just got here. It’s been three days now and you have been in bed asleep for most of it. What I would really like is a steak. Rare sirloin with a peppercorn sauce and chips. And to be able to go for a walk.
This was the most the voice had said to me so far, I felt I had made an inch of progress. “So, you know what steak tastes like?” I ventured conversationally.
If you do, I do. I think… I dunno, I’m limited to what you do or think… for now. Can we go outside?
“Why?” I asked in absence of any other sensible question.
Because I haven’t been outside yet. I don’t count being wheeled from the waiting area to the car being outside. I need to breathe the air.
“You breathe?”
Duh. You breathing right now?
“Yes, for me!” The cheek of the voice—who else would I be breathing for?
Look, what you do, I do. Can you just get over that now? Stand up and go to the back garden, come on man.
“So, you can’t do anything but talk to, no, at me?” I triumphed as the realisation started to set in, and I felt suddenly a lot more in control. “Basically, unless I do something, you are just a voice, sitting and talking to me, trying to get me to do things or being generally rude and sarcastic.”
What the fuck is your point?!
Ah-ha, I had cracked it. It really was just a voice in my head! It must be the concussion! Great! I will just ignore the voice, hopefully it will go away over the next few days and life will be back to normal. I may even find myself telling the story of the ‘voice in my head’ as a pretty cool campfire tale and making out I totally made the whole story up. At the end I could even start pretending to talk to myself and telling myself out loud to kill everyone, grabbing at them all in a pretend maniacal way, shouting ‘RAH’ to make them all jump, you know, for dramatic effect like they do in films. Not that I ever get invited to outdoorsy events; it’s all office parties, cocktail and black tie events and meeting clients. This wasn’t the sort of small talk I could use whilst trying to win a contract.
Dramatic would be right. Especially if I stood up and ACTUALLY hacked everyone to death. They would never suspect that was coming. Ha!
Deciding that I must be a little bit warped somewhere in the recesses of my mind, to create a murder-intent voice that only I can hear, I decided it would be better for my mental health if I just ignored it and not have any further conversations with it. It, not him. It.
Good luck with that.
For the first week aft
er the accident it was there, but it was easy to ignore. Almost like office air-conditioning, you get used to certain background noises, and that is what I decided to treat the voice as, background noise. But background noise can get louder and louder until it is no longer background, and the voice soon moved itself to the very front of my mind. To start off with, I had the TV or radio on wherever I went. Chess would come home to find me asleep on the sofa (as I was always tired) and the first thing she would do is walk around the house turning everything off. I couldn’t have silence. That’s when the voice could be heard.
After a week or so, I decided to go back into the office. It was too much staying at home, being awake and alone with ‘it’, and I couldn’t sleep forever. The effort of trying to drown out the voice was ridiculous, and I figured I would start feeling better if I didn’t have all this time on my hands to do nothing but try not to listen. I was greeted by my manager, who shook me by the hand vigorously, spluttering something about how he couldn’t believe I was back and so soon; I winced a little and pulled back. My shoulders still hurt from the bruising and the shaking made my broken ribs rattle in their own cage.
Quickly letting go, my boss started some dreary rhetoric about how pleased he was to see me, how the office had not been the same without me and how so many clients had asked after me, blah, blah. It felt nice, weirdly. I almost believed it. But the nice feeling didn’t last as I opened my email inbox. 300+ emails, all unread and all needing attention last week. I wasn’t surprised; this is why I never took holiday.
Needing a break after reading the first 50 emails, headache creeping in, I decided to go get a coffee from the vending machine and stretch my legs. As I stood in the break-out area I sipped my coffee and read the bulletin board to see if I had missed anything. Incoming calls had doubled the week I was off—I sarcastically wondered why to myself. Could it be that’s because I take 20 calls a day on my own? Could be!
Trapped Within Page 17