The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Thriller (Omnibus Edition containing both Book One and Book Two)

by Irvine, Ian C. P.

  Then there is the beeping sound announcing the imminent closing of the doors…

  As I step backwards onto the platform Slávka sticks her head out of the doors and kisses me gently on the side of my cheek, saying, “Thank you Andrew for wonderful evening. I enjoyed it. And I also want thank you for beautiful red roses you bought me.”

  I stare back at her, surprised. She winks at me.

  “I saw you …” She laughs, and the train doors close in front of her.

  A moment later I am left standing on the platform by myself. Slávka is gone, but for the first time since I got to London, I no longer feel alone.

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  Chapter Thirty Two

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  Guy is in his bedroom when I get home, but rushes out into the hall as soon as I walk through the front door.

  “She started moaning and making sounds!” he shouts at me, thrusting a glass of whisky at me with one hand and walloping me on my shoulder with his other hand. “I was there, talking to her about the wedding, and suddenly this sound came out of her mouth. At first I couldn’t believe it, but the nurse was in the cubicle with me at the same time, lifting Sal’s legs up and down to exercise her muscles, and she heard it too. Here, I’m celebrating! Apparently it’s another point on the Glasgow Scale.”

  He clinks his glass against mine, and swallows his in one gulp. I can tell that he has already had one or two.

  He walks back into his room and returns with the bottle of special reserve, now almost empty, topping up his glass and then mine.

  “Blast, it’s finished. That was my favourite £120 twelve year old malt. A special present from my parents.” He looks at the empty bottle and then at me. “I know they say that a good malt is so smooth that it just slips down your throat without you knowing it, but I can’t even remember drinking it. We must have been drinking an awful lot of it the other night before I went to the States…” He looks at me quizzically, then shakes his head. “Never mind, I’ll just have to buy another one. Something to celebrate with when Sal comes home. Cheers!”

  For a second or two I wonder whether or not I should own up, but I decide against it. I have another idea instead.

  “So, where have you been all night? What are you all smiles about?” Guy asks, walking into the lounge and flopping onto the sofa. I follow him through.

  “Nowhere. I just went for a long walk through town.”

  Guy looks at me, suddenly going very serious. “Listen Andrew, I’m really sorry for all this. I mean, you come to London to escape your own life, and you end up in all of this. Dealing with all my crap. It should be me that’s helping you, and instead, it's the other way around.”

  “Hey, don't worry about it. That’s what friends are for.”

  “Thanks, but I just realised how stressful this must be for you. I’m so caught up in my own world, that I’m not even thinking about you…”

  “And rightly so. Honestly, none of this is your fault. You're my best friend. And I’m here for you, and that’s all there is to be said about the matter okay?”

  He looks at me, and nods, his eyes saying all there needs to be said.

  “Cheers Amigo,” he says, clinking his glass on mine again. “You’re a good mate.”

  We drink some more whisky.

  “Listen,” I continue, changing the subject. “Tomorrow night I think it would be a good idea if you come home early and get some proper sleep. You’re looking terrible. I’ll go up to the hospital and spend the evening with her.”

  “No way pal. Every day she’s making a bit more progress. Tomorrow may be the day when she wakes up, and I want to be there when it happens. Anyway, the nurse said that tomorrow afternoon they’re going to do some more scans on her to see what the inside of her head looks like now, just to check that everything is still the same, if not better. What with the fingers moving, and now with her making sounds, maybe there will be some positive signs of improvement.”

  I consider for a moment telling him the information that I got from Slávka this evening but decide against it. After what she told me, I’m worried that the doctor may be being less than frank with Guy about Sal’s chances, and perhaps it would be better to reset his expectations more realistically. On the other hand, perhaps the doctor will do that himself when they get the test results back tomorrow.

  We talk for a little while longer, Guy getting progressively more plastered as we do, and after him showing me some more of the holiday photographs he took of Sal last summer in Greece, I help him to his feet and take him through to his bedroom. He’s asleep within minutes. I on the other hand, spend the next half an hour lying on my bed thinking about this evening, and planning when to call Slávka again. I play with my mobile for a while, writing and then re-writing several text messages to her, but not sending any of them. In the end, I just send her a simple one: “I really enjoyed this evening. Thanks for your company and advice.”

  I wait for a while, hoping that I might get a reply, but in the end none comes, and I fall asleep too.

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  The next morning, I am busy working on an Excel spreadsheet for the business plan of a future product development when a new email pops up on my screen: “Personal,” from Gail. “So...,” it reads, “...how was last night? Did it go well? Did she like your flowers?”

  “It was good. Don’t mention the flowers. It was a bit of a disaster on the flower-front. How was your date with Ben?” I reply quickly.

  Two minutes later.

  “Lunch at the café at 12.30? I want to hear all about it. I didn’t see Ben last night. He forgot that he had arranged a poker night with his ‘lads’.’

  “Sorry, Can’t do lunch today. I need to work through it so that I can leave on time to go to the hospital tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”

  A moment later the phone rings.

  “So when will I get a chance to see you?” Gail asks on the other end of the line. I look briefly at Ben only a few metres away from me and I turn towards the window. “…I want to hear all about it.”

  “Soon,” I reply. “I’m probably going to be busy this weekend, but like I said yesterday, maybe Saturday afternoon or Saturday evening?”

  “Good”, she replies, sounding pleased.

  “And you can tell me all about how it’s going with …Ben.” I say, whispering Ben’s name and cupping my hand over the receiver.

  “Okay. Although there’s not so much to tell. Speak to you later. Bye.” And she is gone again.

  I glance back over at the Ben, who is busy talking to someone on the phone. “Interesting,” I think to myself, and briefly consider asking him how it’s going with Gail. Just then though, my phone beeps and a message arrives from Slávka. I eagerly pick up the phone and read it.

  “Andrew. Thank you for taking me to concert. Very good singer. Want to buy album. I enjoy your company too. Please let me know how friend Sal is. Perhaps, if you at hospital later this week, maybe you let me know and we go coffee in canteen?”

  The urge to respond immediately is very high, but not wanting to come across too keen, I decide to wait for a few hours before I reply. Which is how precisely four minutes later I send:

  “I would like that. Looking forward to seeing you again. Andrew.”

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  The hospital is a grim and depressing place when I get there. As I walk through the hospital up to the ward I keep a keen eye open for Slávka, just in case she is here today, but with no success I arrive at Sal’s ward and am immediately hit by an atmosphere of sadness and foreboding that is so strong that it is almost tangible. The nurse sees me walking in and quickly beckons me into her glass office. I step inside, fearing the worst.

  The nurse asks me to wait for a while and she walks out of the office, returning a few minutes later with a doctor.

  “Hello, Andrew isn’t it? I’m glad you
’ve come. Your friend Guy was given some slightly bad news this afternoon and I’m afraid that he is taking it rather badly. Coupled with the fact that one of the other patients died during the night, and there were some very sad scenes this morning when the deceased’s relatives came down, I think that the seriousness of Miss Wentworth’s condition has really hit home now.”

  “What was the bad news?” I ask, looking out onto the ward towards the curtain surrounding Sal’s bed.

  “Yesterday afternoon we took Miss Wentworth back up for another scan just to check her condition and see if the recent motor responses…she moved her figures a few times…to see if they were indicative of any improvement. Unfortunately, this scan showed there was nothing new. I sat down with Guy after lunch and explained to him that since we have seen no real improvement in her condition in the past week, that we are quite concerned about the future prognosis.”

  “But I thought that her moving her fingers and making that vocal sound were really good indicators of improvement? Guy said that she has been moving up the Glasgow Scale, which was really positive.”

  “Do you know about the Glasgow Scale?” she asks.

  I nod, “ A friend of mine is a doctor and she explained it to me.”

  “Well in that case, you’ll understand that this is just a method by which we can classify the degree of coma which patients are suffering from. When a patient first comes into the ward, we try to remain as optimistic as possible for the first few weeks, because in a lot of patients this is when we see the most dramatic improvements. Some patients do not improve in the first few weeks, and with these the long term prognosis is not so good. Experience tells us that they are likely to suffer from long term damage. So the longer they are unresponsive, the greater the risk. Unfortunately, Miss Wentworth is so low down on the scale, that any improvement is significant. Moving a finger is a form of Motor Response, and making some sound is, or could potentially be classified as, a form of Verbal Response. Unfortunately, these initial movements have not been followed by any other forms of improvement, which is what we would hope for.”

  “Also, the scans we have done are still rather inconclusive, which in itself can be viewed as both positive and negative: negative because we cannot identify if there is any damage, but positive in that because we cannot identify anything we still have every reason to believe that she could make some sort of recovery, although it is really impossible to say what degree of recovery that would be.”

  Whilst he has been speaking I have moved to the chair opposite the desk and sat down, trying to absorb what is being said.

  “But Guy was sure that she could hear him, because when Sal moved her fingers, it seemed to be in direct response to his questions, almost as if she was trying to answer his questions?”

  “Which all sounds good, and it could be a really good sign. Hopefully it does mean that she can hear us, which is why we did some more tests today, but unfortunately we were not able to observe any improvement. But for that matter, we also were not able to observe any further deterioration. The thing is, as I’ve said before, we really do not know enough about the human brain, and in circumstances like this we have to draw a lot upon empirical experience. Unfortunately, as I’ve also said, this tells us that the longer she remains so unresponsive, the more likely the danger of serious and permanent brain damage, or perhaps also death.”

  “She might die?” I ask, looking up at the doctor, suddenly very worried.

  “I’m afraid this is a possibility. Which is what unfortunately happened to another one of the patients on the ward during the night. Rather unexpected, and quite suddenly.”

  I stand up, and walk towards the glass separating us from the beds on the ward.

  “So, is there anything we can do?” I ask, already thinking about the conversation I had with Slávka last night, and how she recommended that we have to somehow shock her into waking up.

  “More of the same. You are already doing everything you can. The best thing you can do though is to support your friend Guy. Be there for him when you can, and make sure he is getting enough sleep and food. The nurses are telling me that he is here all the time. The thing is that we don’t know how long Miss Wentworth will be in this condition, so your friend Guy has to adjust accordingly. He can’t give up his life. This could go on for months.”

  “I know, I know.” I say, turning away from the glass wall to the doctor. “Thank you. I’ll speak to him.”

  “I’m sorry we can’t do any more at the moment. The key is to remain hopeful, but to put that hope into perspective.”

  As I walk out of the office into the ward, I wonder what on earth that last sentence means.

  I can’t help but stare at the empty bed as I walk past it, it’s previous occupant now embarking on a journey that one day we all must take, but which we deny and refuse to consider, all of us believing that it will never happen to us. It occurs to me then that this is the first time in my life that I have associated hospitals with death: until now, a hospital was always a place where you came to get well, to get fixed, patched-up, repaired, and then ultimately set free again, refreshed and revived to enjoy the wondrous life that is only just outside the hospital door. Yet, sadly the reality is for many people that when they come through those big white glass doors at the front of the building, that they will never again see the light of day. For a second I think to myself what that would be like,…never to see the sun or a blue sky again, never to see Hannah, or the Alps, or the snow falling in the Highlands, or to see Loch Lomond, calm and still with the reflection of Ben Lomond stretching out for miles across its surface…I think all these things and others, and then like we all do all the time, every day of our life, I block out the possibility of my death, and carry on: not for me is the death that claims all others, not for me will everything just cease and disappear, not for me will everything I have achieved or strived for in my life just blow away on the wind the moment everyone forgets my name; no, I will never die, I can’t, because tomorrow I will be meeting friends, and then I must buy a flat, and then get my next promotion, and find a wife and bring up my children. Not for me will there come a day when all I am, and everything I was, will be contained within three cardboard boxes which my sister or my son will put in their attic.

  Without realising it, I am now standing outside of the dreaded green curtain that’s shuts off and conveniently locks away Sal and Guy’s suffering from the outside world. Slowly I raise my hand and gently pull back the screen, allowing myself to peer in unseen on the silent world of hell that Guy is enduring. For what seems like an age, I watch him patiently, seeing how he talks constantly to the woman he loves, how he strokes her face, and then brushes her hair with a bright yellow brush that Mandy brought from Sal’s bedroom; how he gently puts some earphones into her ears and plays her some of her favourite music from her new iPod.

  I realise now how confused my feelings towards Sal still remain. On the one hand, my heart is wrenched by the condition she is in, lying there day after day fighting for her life, a random victim of a pointless act of barbarism that could have affected anyone of us; her future and all she could be, tottering on the edge of oblivion.

  On the other hand, I still cannot help but recall the look on her face as she writhed in pleasure at the touch of another man’s hand on her breast, and yet again I feel angry and furious that Guy is breaking his heart over her, when he has no idea of the truth. He is living a lie, chasing after a dream of love and happiness that he believes was just around the corner before Sal was ripped from his outstretched arms by the bomb, and probably blaming himself for every single time he ever shouted at Sal, or has been angry at her, or made her unhappy in any way.

  It dawns on me that if Sal were to die like the occupant of the other bed, she would become a martyr in his eyes, and for the rest of his life he would pine after her, his heart broken irretrievably, and without the ability to discover the truth. For years to come he would fantasise about the day she would have w
alked up the aisle with him, about the children they could have had, and happiness that they would have shared. Over the years he may come to blame himself in a thousand different ways for her passing, and in some ways her death may lead to his own. He will become a shadow of his former self, his eyes no longer bright and sparkling, but sad and forlorn.

  Of course, there are two people who know the truth in all of this. One is asleep on the bed before me now, and the other is myself. Yet both are silenced by the situation we now find ourselves jointly in. Watching Sal lying there now, with Guy so lovingly in attendance, I know now beyond all doubt that there is no way that I can tell him the truth while she lies there at the whim of fate: I can see clearly now that Guy would never be able to listen to me describe to him how his beloved wife-to-be was in fact a two-timing cow, and how the night before he proposed to her, she probably spent the evening in bed with another man. Any attempt by me to say such things would be the seen as vile, slanderous, allegations that cannot possibly be true, and how could I, Andrew, Guy’s best friend say such vicious, deceitful things about Sal his future wife, when she is not able to defend herself in anyway? I know that it would be the end to our friendship, and then he would have lost not only Sal, but me too, leaving him even more alone than before at a time when he needs me more than ever.

  I try to imagine what it would be like if the situation was reversed? If my fiancé were to die like this, her other life hidden from me, would I prefer to imagine for the rest of my own life that once upon a time there was a woman I had met that had loved me as much as I had loved her, and who had agreed to become my wife, and love me for all the years to come? Or would I rather know the truth?

  Of course, to know the answer to that question, I would also have to know what the rest of my life would pan out like, and if after her, whether or not there would be someone else that I would meet, who I could love as much as I do the wife-to-be-lying-in-the-coma.