by Marc Secchia
The smell was hospital-standard. Disinfectant. Starchy sheets. Not a favourite.
“Zaranna!”
Her parents stood framed in the doorway of a sunny ward, decorated in shades of rather relentless sunshine yellow, complete with perky curtains sporting little suns, walls bright enough to spark an instant migraine, and a few cheap, bland paintings of forest scenes. Yellow? Zaranna felt nauseous, although that might be the aftereffects of whatever they had used to drug her to the eyeballs. More accurately, she felt as if she were a cowboy in the Westerns who had been pistol-whipped, tied to a horse and dragged ten miles into town to face a lynch-mob.
This last thought was still percolating through her brain when her parents swamped her with hugs and kisses and glad cries.
Her dad ruffled her fringe fondly. “Hey, scrapheap. Look at what the cat dragged in.”
“Silly faerie-face. You had us worried,” her mother chimed in.
Zaranna tried to make a goofy expression in return. Welcome to the Inglewood family tradition of making up silly nicknames for each other. Yes, they were quite mad. She rasped, “Well, if it isn’t the grumpy old troll and his sidekick the evil enchantress.”
Goodness, whatever was the matter with her throat?
She could not help but notice how her father had positioned himself so as to lean across her legs, cutting off her view of the sheet-draped lumps. She wriggled her toes. Yes, definitely a tingling down there. But the shadows in her mother’s usually vibrant green eyes… she had never been able to hide her feelings. Dad had the poker face and a grey-laser gaze. He worked for MI5, after all – at least, he called himself a ‘research fellow’. Cloak and dagger, mysterious calls at unsocial hours, unexplained business trips. Never talk about the job on pain of torture in a nameless, freezing basement somewhere in Outer Siberia. Susan was a sculptor and jeweller, the one who made the real money in the family. She was all a redhead ought to be, her father said – fiercer than a dragoness, more beautiful than a fairytale princess, and a creature of unbridled passion and enchantment.
For a spy, her father was quite the sap.
Zaranna was cast in her mother’s tall and willowy mould, but she was white-blonde rather than a redhead, and to her sister’s everlasting annoyance, fitted any pair of jeans she cared to try, no matter how skinny. Zaranna wished she had her mother’s self-confidence, however. That would have been a trick. Instead, she was the tallest, gangliest girl in her class. Taller than any boy her age. Could the school not adopt a travelling basketball team? She had also inherited her mother’s fascination with dragons. Since there happened to be a certain paucity of scaly flying lizards inhabiting either Yorkshire or Cape Town, she had settled on horses until she found herself a real dragon. Confession? She was quite dotty about horses, but not in the poster-on-the-wall way of some girls. She’d rather muck out a few stables, thank you very much. Perhaps the occasional horsey smell on her clothes put off the boys? A touch of dung in the hair?
She found herself grinning at her dad over Mom’s shoulder. She asked him, “So, secret sauce, what’s the damage report?”
“You were in a coma for four days, Zu-Zu, and under for a bit longer,” he replied, with a rakish grin Susan had once suggested, blushingly, belonged to a buccaneer carrying off his fair maiden on the cover of some sixpenny romance novel. He added, “Four broken ribs, ruptured spleen, twenty-two stitches in your forehead and a pretty decent hole behind your right ear, multiple lacerations, left arm broken above and below the elbow – hence your lovely cast – and so many bruises you could tap them for colour and paint yourself a Van Gogh.”
“Better than I thought,” she quipped.
“Doctor says you’ll be right as rain,” her father lied cheerfully.
“Having escaped the train,” said Zaranna.
“Don’t try that with a plane.”
“Riding again?”
Her mother’s shoulder stiffened against Zaranna’s chin. Then she drew back, her manner somehow suggesting a flower blossoming in reverse.
Now she was ice-in-the-veins scared. “My knees are good, right? Couple of casts?”
Susan made a sigh that communicated profound upset and whirled, reaching for the patient card at the foot of the bed. A tell-tale droplet splashed on the sleeve of another stunning garment, a high-collared, sea-green silk kimono worn over a full-length, slightly flared bolero dress with stunning, hand-stitched dragons entwined about the torso. She designed and sewed her own clothing. Zaranna had never seen its compare, attire that could have graced an elite catwalk without shame, yet her mother seemed unaware of the heads she turned, save her husband’s. Her eyes were truly for him alone, and there was something achingly beautiful, and vulnerable, in the way she depended on him.
Errant reflections danced in her mind as Zaranna studied her father. Yes. That blank face he affected so perfectly, its very absence shouting the thoughts sparking behind the mask like motes flung from a bonfire.
“We should call the doctor,” he said.
“It’s alright, Dad. I can feel my toes.” He flinched. That was the moment the ice became so cold, it burned. “I can feel my toes, can’t I? Dad?”
“Look, you’ve had a terrible shock, darling. You should rest. Take it one –”
“Dad.”
Susan gushed, “Zara, we’re just so happy to have you back with us. Your brother and sister are coming down for the weekend to see you. They wanted to come last weekend, but you were in theatre.”
In theatre? “How long have I been … out? When was the –”
“Accident? Eleven days ago.” Zaranna stared at her father, who crinkled his eyes in a genuine smile. “It’s a miracle. A ruddy, modern-day miracle, thank God. What else could’ve dragged you out of that wreck alive. Your lovely mother escaped with minor bruising – imagine?”
“I pushed her away.”
Her mother sniffled, “You were so brave, baby girl. You saw to my safety.”
No, what she remembered was swatting her mother with a wallop like a tennis forehand, her mother flying … which was impossible. Her memories must be playing her false.
Courage. Zaranna firmed her jaw. “Listen, super-spy, you have to brief me on the legs. Will I ride again?”
“That you will, honeysuckle,” he grinned.
Fake! Perhaps the pain sharpened her words more than she intended. Zaranna snapped, “When in God’s name did you take to deceit, Dad? I’m not an idiot!”
No, she was dyslexic with memory-related learning difficulties, and only half the school thought she was an idiot. She was the stupid muggins who stayed on when every other student had finished their exams, because Special Needs had assessed her as needing fifty percent longer to complete her papers. Some of the girls called her Sleeping Beauty. On the bad days, words seemed to chase each other across the pages of her textbooks like a troop of monkeys drunk on marula fruit. Numbers were worse, cheeky little tricksters that constantly evaded her grasp. Zaranna would have gladly suffered a kick from a wild stallion rather than sit a Mathematics paper.
His face crumpled. For the first time in years, she saw tears washing the roots of his eyelashes.
“Zaranna!” hissed her mother.
“No, Susan.” Her father frowned, saying, “Look, you need to take this slowly, Zara. One step at a time.”
“Dad, take off the blanket. Show me.”
His hand froze in the act of reaching out to stroke her cheek.
Unsteadily, Zaranna said, “Listen. I need to face the truth. I need to see, because I’m the one who needs to live with whatever injuries I have. And you’re freaking me out, both of you. I’m beyond freaked.”
Her mom tried again, “Zara …”
“Would you kindly shut the door, Susan?”
The adults shared an overlong glance Zaranna did not understand in the slightest. With the air of a sleep-walker, her mother moved to the door, wailing, “Peter, what have we done? We didn’t protect our baby girl. Oh, God …”<
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“You did nothing wrong, preshki.”
Her father was up on his feet, across to the door before her mother reached it. He gathered her into his arms. Zaranna wanted to tug at the blankets, but they were tucked in hospital-square, and with her left arm encased in plaster up to her armpit and bandages swathing her right flank, there was never going to be any contest. She must look a fright. Huge sobs burst out over there, a wild grief as appalling as it was unexpected, but Zaranna knew. She saw how the mounds ended at her knees, and knew why.
There was nothing past them. No lumps for calves, no peaks for toes.
Just … nothing.
Chapter 2: Dreams
STUMPS. She had a fine pair of stumps. Funny how you never thought much about your feet and toes until they were gone, but in the ultimate irony, the brain still felt them. Phantom limbs. Her sister Yolanda had been studying something to do with phantom nerve impulses last term as part of her PhD studies at Cambridge University.
Irony sufficient to stun a Blue Whale.
In broken sentences, her dad’s explanation washed over her. The plunge from the motorway had tipped the car onto its nose, punching the engine toward the passenger footwell. That pulverised both legs below the knee. Then, the force of the train’s impact had accomplished what her mother had not, which was to rip her torso and upper legs loose and fling her, by some miracle – that word again – just far enough from the tracks that the freight train had missed everything bar her left elbow. At least, that was the doctor’s verdict. The train driver had dialled the emergency number and then disappeared. No one knew his whereabouts.
The paramedics who arrived on the scene first stabilised the bleeding, then rushed her to hospital by helicopter. Her first helicopter ride. Great. She remembered zilch. This morning had been her fifth surgery, intended to construct a pad of muscle and skin over the ends of her bones, making it possible for Zaranna to use artificial limbs in the future.
Now, her parents stared at her as though expecting her to dissolve in a puddle of tears, or to start yelling, or … something. Anything. Not to stare at her lack of toes in an awkward, infinitely elastic silence.
Zaranna blurted out, “I suppose that’s a story. Girl gets legs amputated by train.”
“That one’s already been in the news.” Dad examined his fingernails. “Some photographer charmed a nurse to sneak in here and take photographs. Had the cheek to come back a second time. I’m afraid I behaved rather badly.”
“Broke his nose.”
To Zara’s astonishment, there was a clear note of pride in her mother’s voice. Taking her cue, she said drolly, “Mister Tall, Dark and Ineffably Handsome Inglewood, you’ve a peculiar way of disclosing your love.”
A slow, quirky grin spread across his face. “I guess you’re still my cheeky hamster, eh?”
“Why not? I lost my legs, not my sense of humour.”
So raw was his expression, Zaranna ducked in embarrassment. “Holy smokes,” he breathed. “Are you truly this plucky, Sprite?”
“Filthy pirate, mind your language,” admonished her mother.
“Sorry. Still behaving badly.” Holding her good hand, the one with the drip taped to the back of her knuckles, Peter said, “Zars … princess, I’m so sorry. Happy you’re alive – that’s the good bit. But if I could move heaven and earth to give you those beautiful feet back, I would. Trust me. Anything you want, anything you need, just ask. We’re here for you.”
“Thanks.” Zaranna tried to smile. It was a poor effort, for the heaviness in her legs had blossomed into a throbbing ache. “Don’t suppose you could figure out how I could get back into the saddle, one day? Even with just one functioning knee joint?” The left had been amputated two inches below the knee, the right, an inch above. “And Mom? Would you – I feel a bit silly asking this – would you mind staying tonight?”
“Your mother’s practically been living here. Every night. Comes home only when I call her ‘stinkball.’ Or worse.”
“Driving the doctors crazy,” added Mom, absently rearranging a bouquet of flowers on Zaranna’s dresser into a floral masterpiece. “Scattering modelling clay all over their pristine floors.”
“Mom, is it time for more floaty stuff?” She sucked in a ragged breath. “Legs … killing …”
The nurse came to adjust the drip. Magical. Moments later, the puffy cloud-men came to whisk Zaranna away to a place which simply had to define the expression, ‘La-La Land’. This time, she did not dream.
* * * *
Small mercies.
The following morning, the Hospital Chaplain visited. Somehow, his kindly eyes and blunt, uncomplicated Yorkshire honesty thawed places she had not known existed. Not since her childhood had she cried so hard; never so bitterly. Quite the storm in a puddle.
Before he left, he said, “When a person experiences a life-changing accident or injury, Zaranna, there’s always a feeling of before and after. There will be repeated waves of anger, denial and grief. I’d encourage you to accept those feelings. Work at them steadily. Allowing yourself to cry was a good step. Aye, in one sense everything has changed, and in another, nothing has. You’re still a living soul, one who has been granted the mercy of continued life. What matters now is how you use that gift. How you respond. I must be honest with you. Are you ready for honesty?”
Had he not been already? Zara wriggled her fingers. “Go on, Chaplain Murray.”
“I’ve visited Leeds General Infirmary many times over the years. Everyone’s really nice, which is great. You know, the rounds of flowers and kisses, the flurry of get-well cards. But what they won’t tell you is that this will be the hardest challenge you’ve ever faced in your sixteen years.” His white hair was haloed by sunshine streaming in the window behind him. If the Chaplain could have sprouted wings he would have made a Botticelli angel – well, a wrinkled one. Yes, his tone was gentle, but his words conveyed staggering force. “There’s nothing fun about the physical therapy you’ll need just to walk again, if and when you get your pins. Relying on a wheelchair is another world. You think you’ve done the hard part? You’ve only just embarked on a radically different, difficult journey. These next months will test your character, your grit and your faith, to the limit.”
For the longest time, Zaranna kept her eyes lowered, staring at the place her feet should have been. The nurse had to help her sit up or lie down. She went to the toilet in a bedpan. Her phantom feet itched unbearably. What could be worse than this? Yet she knew the elderly chaplain was right. Her heart had wept but a fraction of the tears brimming within its portals.
She let her lips curve upward. “You wouldn’t mind taking back a smidgen of that honesty, would you?”
“No returns or refunds accepted.” His blue eyes twinkled merrily. “I aim to encourage. No, Zaranna. Seeing that you’re a person of faith –”
Her eyes followed his to the well-thumbed Bible on her bedside table. “That’s my Mom’s. I lost mine in the wreck.”
“Hmm. That’s not what I heard. I’ll make inquiries.” Before she could question him further, the Chaplain stood, brushing down his faded tweed jacket with several brusque slaps. “Speaking of your mother, she’s just arrived. One more thing. I’m an old man. Been a Chaplain fifty-two years. So if you’d allow me to say so, I know a thing or two about a thing or two.”
Zaranna’s eyes flicked to the doorway where her mother had paused, seeing her busy with the Chaplain. She nodded. “And?”
“And, you have it.”
“Er … ‘it’?”
“The X-factor. Stubbornness. Spirit. The will to overcome. Unshakable faith. Whatever ‘it’ is, girl, that’s what you’ve got – in spades. Remember that. I wish you a good day.”
Doffing his battered tartan tam o’shanter, Chaplain Murray made to leave.
“Uh – Chaplain? Will you come back?”
“Depends. Would you want me to?”
He bent over Susan’s hand as if she were royalty. Zaranna’s
heart leaped as she spotted her sister peeking past the doorjamb.
“I’d want pearls of honesty,” she blurted out.
The old man chuckled dryly. “Pearls it is. See you next week in rehab, angel.”
“Angel?” said Yolanda, advancing into the room. “You’ve made a conquest, Beauty.”
“Hey, Brains. How’s the mastery of bio-fiddle-faddle treating you?”
Zaranna could not withhold a smile. Brains and beauty – their old joke. Yolanda had the brains, make no mistake. Having entered university at fifteen, she had graduated with a Masters in Biochemistry within three years, and was now working on her doctoral studies in her last year as a teenager. She loved it. That, to Zara, was weirdness personified.
Yolanda wore her brown curls scraped back into a bun that made her look like a severe headmistress twenty years her senior. She flicked crossly at a stray strand, her eyes as black and cloudy as storm-troubled skies. “About as grubby as your hair, sis. Researching refuse-eating bacteria is the topic of the week.”
“You’re digging through garbage?”
“No, working out biological processes for cleaning up all the detritus and excrement spawned by our human dominance of this mudball,” she said, acidly. “Now, I didn’t come to discuss boring work. Much more importantly, may I inquire as to the state of your withdrawal symptoms from Ferrero Rocher chocolate?”
“Ah … ghastly? Life-threatening? Oh, Yols, you’re the best!”
Yolanda deposited a square box of gold-wrapped chocolates on her lap and perched on the bed. “Can I have that in writing? No? I thought not. I guess hospital food doesn’t cover chocolate?”
Zara fiddled one-handed with the box. “They starve me.”
Her sister huffed, “You! I’ve never known anyone to out-eat a horse and still look like a starved waif. Me, I’m –”
“A dark-haired Marilyn Monroe?”
Yolanda made her unique laugh, a cross between a chuckle and a chipmunk’s chattering. “Ah, I should visit my impish little sister more often. Thank you for the ego-upper. Now, we have not descended upon you without purpose.”