When I woke up, the pavement was cold beneath my body, but my head and neck felt warm. My eyes were open, but everything looked smudged, like a swirling mist had come along and messed with the surroundings. There was someone at my side. A man, I thought. He was very short.
No. He was kneeling. His smudgy mouth moved but I couldn’t hear anything. Then voices came. But they were a long way off.
I tried to speak. ‘Tell Neil. Tell Michael and Rose I’m OK. Tell them not to worry. I won’t need any tea. I’m not hungry anymore.’
The distant voices didn’t say anything recognisable. They probably hadn’t heard me.
My forehead started climbing the temperature scale. Warm to hot. Hot to burning. Was I on fire? I didn’t want anyone to see me with my hair burned off. What about Neil? What about Michael and Rose? How would they recognise me with no hair? The fire must have burned me to sleep.
The next time I opened my eyes I was still lying on my back, but now I was rocking from side to side. The world wasn’t nearly as smudged as I remembered it. I was in an ambulance. Something cold and sharp bothered the back of my hand. I turned my head to find out what it was. A clear tube ran from the back of my hand up to a clear bag of liquid hanging above my body. Everything swung in time with the moving ambulance. But I couldn’t hear a siren. That was a good sign. A man wearing green was sitting beside me, but he wasn’t looking at me.
A smell hit me. Alcohol again. The boy on the skateboard? No this was different. I choked.
He looked then.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You’re OK. You’ve had a nasty fall. A bang to the head. We’re taking you to hospital now. But you’re OK.’
I tried to say he hit me but nothing came out. My throat was too dry, too raspy. I tried again.
‘Water?’ I said.
A better effort.
The man at my side smiled. And shook his head. ‘I can’t give you anything to drink until they’ve had a look at you. I’m sorry. The drip should help. It should ease the pain a little, and keep you hydrated until we can get you something proper to drink.’
If they wanted me to get better, why not let me have water? I knew what I needed. I tried say water again, but my voice turned to gravel. I fell asleep again.
By the time they wheeled me onto the ward I’d received twelve stitches at the back of my head and four on my forehead. They had cleaned me up a little, but dried blood cracked and itched the back of my neck, and I could feel lumps of it in my hair. The drip tube still swayed from the back of my hand. The back of my hand throbbed.
‘My car?’ I said to the man pushing my trolley bed, ‘what happened to my car?’
Of course he had no idea.
‘Don’t worry. They’ll sort all of that out for you. You just concentrate on getting better. Is anyone coming to see you?’
Of course I had no idea.
I had no idea whether Neil knew what had happened. I had no idea what the time was. Had everything happened just minutes ago? Or had I been unconscious for days?
A nurse directed my trolley to the corner of a small ward. I counted four beds, all empty. I was wheeled to one nearest the window. Three of four nurses appeared and I was moved onto the bed. Although the other beds were empty, curtains were pulled around my bed, enclosing me in a light green world of polyester. The wheels of my trolley squeaked as it was pushed away. I followed the sound along the corridor until I could no longer hear it.
My head thumped. The wounds at the back and front seared into my skin and penetrated deep inside. I lifted the hand without the tube dangling from it and touched under my right eye. It felt puffy. I touched a little harder and regretted it. From nowhere my stomach cramped, and churned and I put my hand to my mouth.
‘I think I’m going to be —’
One of the nurses grabbed a cardboard bowl from a cabinet next to my bed. But she was too slow. I threw up all over her arm and the bed. I tried to apologise but just gargled with the vomit still stuck in my throat. My puffy eyes stung even more and I started crying. The smell was awful.
A clean cardboard bowl was dumped onto my chest and I spat into it several times. Was that blood?
‘Don’t worry,’ one of the nurses said. ‘We’ll get you cleaned up. It’s the medicine making you sick. And the shock of everything. The doctor will be along shortly to have a look at you.’ She looked at one of the other nurses, who nodded. ‘And I think the police are waiting to have a word — when you’re up to it.’
At that moment I wasn’t up to anything. I wanted to sleep; to be sick; to be home; to see Neil and Michael and Rose. I wanted to be almost anywhere other than where I was.
‘Does my husband know I’m here?’ I asked the nurse with vomit still on her arm.
‘I think someone’s trying to contact him now. I’m sure he’ll be along soon. Have you got kids?’
‘Michael and Rose. He’s eleven, she’s eight.’
The nurse nodded. She seemed oblivious to the sick on her arm as she worked away at changing my bedsheets. I wanted to tell her to wash her arm. To not get any sick on my clean sheets. She bundled the dirty ones together and swished through the green curtains. One of the other nurses followed.
‘What time is it?’ I asked the one left behind.
She looked at the watch on her uniform then stuck her head out of the curtain, presumably to check with a larger clock on the wall somewhere.
‘It’s twenty to nine.’
‘Morning or night?’
‘In the evening.’
‘What day?’
‘Wednesday. Wednesday the ninth of February.’
So there I had it. A little under an hour and a half had passed since I had parked illegally at the bus stop to withdraw money from the cash machine. Since then I had been attacked; knocked unconscious; brought to hospital; had stitches put into my head and thrown up on a nurse. Inside and out my life had changed forever. Of course I didn’t know that then. But I knew the pain I was feeling. I threw up again.
This time into the bowl.
03
Inheritance Page 2