If I Die Before I Wake

by Emily Koch

  I wasn’t getting out of this place alive, I saw that now. He was going to kill me. It must have been his plan all along. Now, if he thought I might be about to recover, he wouldn’t waste any more time. Who would stop him? Pauline? Connie? I didn’t stand a chance.

  And Bea – what was going to happen to her? Where was she? I hoped she had stayed with Rosie and Tom last night rather than going home alone. What if—

  Something shuffled in my room. A tapping, shushing noise. Enough to catch my attention. Then, silence again. The harder I listened, the louder the blood pumped in my ears. Whatever it was, it had gone quiet now. Maybe a piece of paper had fallen to the floor, or a bird had hit the window. No. The noise I heard was a human sound. Then a spicy scent reached me – black pepper, smokiness.

  I knew you’d be back.

  A noise, again. A crack, a click. Like bones in your neck when you tilt it from side to side, or the pop of knuckles.

  This is it, isn’t it? I’m out of time.

  A crack, a click, again.

  The hairs on my arms stood on end. I tried to form a word – tried to roll my tongue and push air out through my mouth.

  I hadn’t heard him come into the room, so he must have done so when I was napping. Which meant he had been here for a while, watching me as I tried to move and talk.

  I’m sorry for what happened to you.

  Had I guessed right? Was he who I thought he was?

  Killing me won’t change anything. Please don’t do this.

  Footsteps, now. Quiet. As if he didn’t want to make a noise: it was a soft tread, but audible. Soft-soled shoes. A slow, deliberate step – a creep – across the floor, coming towards my bed. Closer now, approaching along my right-hand side, until the steps stopped next to my head.

  He put a hand over mine – over the finger he saw move before.

  Still, he said nothing. I heard an occasional intake of air through his mouth, his nose. Rough, heavy.

  The door banged in the corner of the room as it was pushed open wide against the wall.

  ‘Oh. I didn’t realise.’ It was Connie, sounding flustered.

  He said nothing. I imagined a wordless exchange. A turn – a smile, perhaps? A gesture to explain what he was doing? A finger to his lips?

  She spoke again. ‘I needed to – but I can come back later. No problem.’ A silly laugh. ‘You’re ever so good to visit him, dear,’ she flirted.

  That wasn’t how she talked to doctors. Quiet Doc definitely wasn’t a doctor.

  ‘It’s what family’s for,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ Connie giggled. ‘You’re his cousin, is that right? Or uncle?’

  ‘Cousin.’

  So that’s what you’ve been telling them.

  ‘I see. I’ll leave you two to, well, catch up.’ Another silly giggle, and she left the room.

  His hand touched my lower arm and ran down away from my elbow. He twisted my wrist, and bent each of my fingers in turn, to form a fist. He did all of this silently, and slowly.

  Instinctively I went to flex the muscles to pull away.

  Just make it quick.

  He dropped my hand back on the bed, leaving my right arm twisted at an awkward angle, with my wrist facing the ceiling. He lifted the bed sheet. A chill drifted down as the cooler air reached underneath it, down my chest, stomach, legs. The sheet pulled against my toes where it was tucked in under the mattress, and caught under my arms as he lifted it up. He dropped it again, carelessly, onto my chest. He didn’t pull it back up to my chin, he didn’t rearrange it.

  Then my tracheostomy tube moved in the hole in my neck. The tube tugged against my skin and the inside of my throat.

  What are you going to do?

  I felt a wetness in my armpits. Why didn’t Connie come back to check everything was all right? It was the first time I had ever willed her to return.

  His hand scooped underneath my head, lifting it. My chin dropped down to my chest and my neck was pulled out of place. I was like a baby, in one of those moments when you see parents telling their unpractised friends to support its head as it lolls around with no muscles to keep it straight. It all happened quickly: he lifted my head, and with a smooth movement dragged the pillow out from underneath it. He let go of my head and it fell back against the mattress, rolling to the left, towards the window. I winced. Saliva escaped from my mouth and dribbled down the side of my face. My skin was hot beneath it – burning up with the humiliation, the fear, and the adrenalin.

  He grabbed my chin roughly and nails dug into my flesh. His movements became more ragged, quicker, more urgent. With one yank, he pulled my head back to a central position, the pressure of the mattress firmly on the back of my scalp.

  Connie! Someone?

  So much pain consumed me that my thoughts skewed. My mind flew from the twisting strain in my badly placed arm, to a flailing attempt to locate Cameron, back to the tilting stretch in the front of my neck making me feel like my head would fall off backwards.

  Overwhelmed by all of this, I didn’t feel the air change.

  I didn’t feel the air change around my face as he brought the pillow down onto it.

  It was cool, when he brushed it against my mouth and nose. At first, I thought it was a piece of material being draped over me: he swept it so lightly across from the right temple to the left. But then, with a gentle pressure, he held it still, and I felt its weight.

  Fuck. Get off me. HELP! Help me!

  I struggled. I took myself to the place in my head where I could push him away, where I could twist, turn, bite him. He pressed the pillow harder against my face and I tasted the starched cotton case on my tongue.

  But he had missed one thing.

  Tracheostomy. My neck. You haven’t – covered my neck – I can – still – breathe.

  And then, as if he had put the pillow on my face by accident, he lifted it off again. His heavy aniseed-tinted breath hit my face – he panted as if he was the one who had been suffocated.

  We stayed like that for several minutes, side by side, until his breathing slowed.

  Think about what you’re doing. Please. I never meant to hurt you.

  Cameron put his hand under my head again. Fingers spread wide like the claw on a digger, lifting me up as he stuffed the pillow back underneath. Again, he let my head drop, but this time he didn’t correct its position when it fell to the left.

  As I waited for him to make his next move, noise ripped into the silence. Rain began pelting the window – a sudden, heavy shower that resonated like shingle hitting the glass. It filled my ears and dulled my ability to hear what has happening – but I felt suddenly that he had moved away from me. Where to? I scanned the room, listening.

  All I heard was the creak of the door as it opened, and then a thud as it shut quickly.

  ‘Bea,’ he said.

  Bea? Here?

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he went on.

  ‘You can’t tell me what to do.’

  ‘They’ll come after you. You’re already in enough trouble as it is.’

  She was breathless. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘You need to go. Before someone sees you. We can talk later.’

  Get out of here, Bea. He’s dangerous.

  ‘We talk now. You’ve been lying to me.’ Fear and adrenalin charged her voice.

  The rain continued to attack the window. My body tightened in agony as cramps passed through my awkwardly turned right arm. More spasms came as I lay there, unable to stop them. I felt like an asylum patient strapped in for electric shock therapy, shackled at the wrists and ankles to my bed, prevented from moving, no matter how much pain I was in. I writhed around inside my body. I wished Bea would come to me and move me.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked him, again.

  35

  ‘YOU KNOW WHO I am,’ Cameron said.

  ‘You’re working with them, trying to pin this on me.’

  ‘With who? The police?’ He laughed.

&n
bsp; Bea held firm. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Come off it.’

  I felt pressure on my leg, through the sheet. From the weight of it, the broadness of the touch, I could tell it was his hand, not hers. ‘Thought I’d come and see this ex-boyfriend of yours. You talk so much about him.’ He squeezed my shin and pulled away. ‘Thought I’d check out the competition. It’s tough, you see – being the second man in a relationship.’

  ‘You don’t know him.’ Her voice moved closer to me. I smelled the cigarette smoke on her and felt soft skin brush against my upturned palm.

  ‘Maybe I do.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Both of them stood close to me now, near the right-hand side of my bed. The rain continued to beat against the window on my other side.

  He ignored her question. ‘Are you sure no one saw you come in? We could still get you out of here.’

  Do what he says. Go.

  ‘Who? Your colleagues? Admit it.’

  ‘For the last time, I’m not with the police. You’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘Okay then, but you are telling them stuff about me, aren’t you?’

  ‘You’ve got to sort out this paranoia.’

  I wanted to hit him so badly. No matter what I’d done, Bea didn’t deserve any of this. A right hook to the side of his face would be all I needed. I’d offer myself up for an extra hour of chest suctioning if I could see his pulped nose, and a few teeth spat out onto the floor. I listened to the rain and imagined the pattering noise was his bones splitting into tiny fragments.

  ‘Paranoia?’ she asked. ‘Remember yesterday? You said that I’d been seen by the Gorge on the day Alex fell.’

  ‘Yes. You can see why the police would be suspicious, to be fair to them.’

  ‘But I didn’t tell you about that.’

  ‘I’m not a policeman, a detective, or whatever you think I am. You think I’ve got an inside contact?’

  ‘Maybe. Yes.’ She hesitated.

  ‘You’re confused,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about this properly. Let’s just go home, get out of here without being seen. You go first, and I’ll follow in a minute. We’ll draw less attention that way. You’re breaching your bail conditions.’

  She wasn’t about to give up. ‘No.’

  His voice changed. He became impatient, bordering on angry. ‘Nothing’s going on.’ He almost shouted the words at her, then swiftly changed tack. ‘I love you.’

  She laughed.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Don’t change the subject.’

  ‘Bea. I’ve shown you how crazy I am about you.’

  I imagined the way he looked at her as he said this. I imagined what intimacies his words made them both remember in the moments of silence that followed. My heartbeat sped up again. The rain had stopped, and sun hit my eyelids through the window, as if it had emerged from behind a thick bank of cloud. It warmed my cheeks, spreading down to my neck. But it did not calm me as it sometimes did. Nothing could calm me right now.

  The fury crushed me, ground me up. My breaths came quicker, quicker, and my arms tingled. I heaved my legs over the side of the bed. Rolled my shoulders once, a backwards roll like someone digging their fingers deep into my back muscles, as I sat on the edge of the mattress. Cameron and Bea hadn’t seen me yet – they were busy with each other, so used to my inertness, to there being nothing of interest on this side of the room, that they didn’t even register the movement. I stood at the moment he turned and saw me, like a skeletal zombie emerging from my shallow grave. His face melted in horror, his jaw dropped, as I moved towards him. Bea whimpered, whispered my name, but I didn’t look at her. I was only interested in him. He backed away from me but had no space to move into. He pressed against the wall. I felt crooked, stooped after months of inactivity, but strangely strong. My breaths came out in rasps, and with every one more power returned to me.

  I kept stepping, slowly, across the room until we stood face-to-face. I could smell the spice of his aftershave again, a liquorice insistence on his breath. I looked into his eyes. And then I rocked back quickly, with grace, whipped my right arm behind me and snapped it forward. My clenched fist connected with his nose, the pain a shock to me as it dashed my knuckles and sent shards of sensation up to my shoulder. Cameron brought a guarding arm to his face, turned away. Blood ran down into his mouth. Bea screamed now but I pushed him to the floor and knelt on his chest, clawing my hands around his neck and pushing, squeezing, amazed at my own power and adrenalin. His eyes bulged, his face darkened into deeper and deeper shades of red, purple, blue, as he realised what I meant to do. His arms flapped at his side, scratching me, and his feet kicked at the floor. He was like a beetle on its back, flailing its limbs to try and get up. He was strong, too, and not quick to surrender. But if I had learned anything in the past two years, it was patience, and I could wait for him to go. Bea’s shrieks continued, but she didn’t try to pull me off him.

  He went slack; the tension fell away. I released my grip on his stubbled throat and stood up, wiped my hands on my pyjamas, and walked back to my bed. I lay down, pulled the sheet over me, closed my eyes.

  The sun left my face and almost immediately my skin cooled, as if the light and warmth had never been there.

  The spell cracked, then shattered, as Cameron spoke again, oblivious to his grisly fate in my mind’s cinema.

  He talked softly. ‘I’ve really fallen for you.’

  ‘Stop it. Just tell me what you’re doing.’

  ‘Fucking hell!’ he shouted. ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Yes!’

  He sighed, and when he spoke his voice had lost all its angry heat and his measured composure had returned. ‘Do you ever get the feeling that we’ve met before?’

  36

  THIS WAS THE most I had heard him say. As Quiet Doc, he’d never spoken this much. Now I knew I was right. I had heard this voice, once – a long time ago. That time, he’d been distraught, shouting, drunk – but it was definitely him.

  I had to lie there and listen as he played games with Bea and she slowly pieced it all together for herself.

  ‘What are you saying?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sorry I shouted. You see what a hold you have on me.’

  ‘Don’t touch me. Get off.’

  ‘I didn’t want to upset you. I just want to be close to you.’

  ‘You’re hurting me. Cameron, please.’

  ‘I can’t watch you cry.’

  ‘I – I’ve changed my mind. I’ll go. We can talk about this later. I’ll – I’ll meet you later. Just let me go.’

  ‘I can’t do that. You should have listened to me earlier and gone when I told you to. You can’t go now, when you’re this upset.’

  He wasn’t going to let her leave; I could see that now. Not now that he knew she wasn’t buying his lies. She was on to him.

  ‘You wanted to know why I’m here?’

  ‘I do. But – we can talk about it later.’

  ‘Why do you keep looking at the door? I don’t know why you’re suddenly so scared of me. And you don’t want to call for security, remember?’

  ‘Please. I’m not scared. I’m just tired.’

  For a moment, neither of them spoke.

  ‘You don’t remember me?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘We never met before grief counselling,’ she said, confused.

  ‘It’s true that we never spoke, and maybe you never even saw me,’ he said.

  Here it comes.

  ‘You were too busy with your work. But I saw you – beautiful Beatriz.’ He affected a Spanish accent to say her name. ‘I saw you even if you didn’t see me. You were so good with the children. They adored you. Beautiful Bea.’

  She whispered, almost silent. ‘What children?’

  ‘Abigail would come home every day, asking if she could take you gifts. She would ask: “Daddy, is everyone pretty like princesses in England? Like Bea?”’

  And then Bea was there. She had caug
ht up with me. She inhaled sharply. ‘Abigail.’

  ‘She was such an innocent little thing. Clear green eyes, like her mother.’

  Her heavy breaths quickened.

  ‘Soft blonde hair, chubby little legs, freckled skin.’

  His voice had become airy – the words emerging from a deep memory. In my own mind I saw Abigail, in a striped swimsuit. Running with her friends. Pretending to be an aeroplane, arms reaching out on both sides. Pink-cheeked and breathless. Laughing under grey skies, the promise of rain coming down from the mountains. Not a nice day for a swim.

  ‘What are you telling me?’ Bea asked.

  He’s Abigail’s father.

  ‘She would’ve been eighteen, this year.’

  It took a few seconds to sink in.

  ‘Your daughter?’ she whispered.

  ‘But he—’

  My heart jumped as Cameron shouted the words – a jolt in the calm quietness of his reminiscences.

  He continued, more quietly; coldly. ‘He killed her.’

  ‘Alex? No—’

  ‘He broke my heart.’

  Not deliberately.

  ‘What are you talking about? Alex didn’t kill her.’

  ‘First, Abigail. Then, Layla.’

  ‘Layla?’

  ‘My angel. I would’ve done anything for her. I moved to Canada for her …’

  A strong hand grabbed my shin again, digging fingers into my calf through the sheet. ‘First, Abigail. Then, Layla. When I walked into the house I couldn’t understand what I was seeing …’

  ‘I don’t understand. Layla was your wife? What has Alex got to do with her?’

  ‘… the feet hanging in mid-air, next to the banisters …’ He gripped my leg harder and pain spread up to my knee.

  Aaarrghh. Let me go.

  ‘… bare feet, red toenails. Pretty toenails. At first it just confused me. But then I started screaming and lifting her, holding her around the legs, lifting …’

  I felt Bea’s softer touch on my thigh, sliding slowly down my leg until it reached his crushing grasp. His hold released, one finger at a time, but it left behind bruised flesh. She rubbed at my leg a couple of times, up and down.