.
When I arrive at the hospital I walk through the hospital up to the ward where I last saw Sal, a feeling of dread and foreboding pressing down on me. As expected, when I enter the ward, I immediately see that Sal’s bed is now already filled with another poor soul lying in her place: a man, his face battered and bruised and both legs in plaster.
For a moment I hover a few feet away from the bottom of the bed, instantaneously running through the nightmare in my mind and recalling the moment when the nurse had pushed past me with the crash trolley and informed me so matter-of-factly that Sal’s heart had stopped. And that I had killed her.
A soft voice calls my name from behind me, and I turn to see Mary, one of the nurses who cared for Sal so attentively, patiently waiting for me to come out of my thoughts.
“Hello,” I say.
“How are you Andrew?” she asks, remembering my name again.
“I’m… I’m fine.”
“So, what brings you back here then, young man?”
“I …I just wanted to come by and say thank you,” I say, handing over the box of chocolates that I had brought with me. She takes it and smiles.
“Thank you. I’ll share it with the others.”
We look at each other for a few moments, not speaking.
“I was wondering,” I say, a little embarrassed. “ I know it’s only a small thing, but I was wondering if you found a book that I left here. I was reading it to Sal while she was in the coma…”
“Aha,... actually yes. It’s in the office. Come with me…”
She turns and walks back to the glass cabin at the end of the ward, and I follow her slowly into the office where she reaches into a drawer in the desk and pulls out my lost copy of ‘Marrying Slovakia.’
“It’s a shame, you know,” she says. “I’m half way through the book myself. I was almost hoping you’d have forgotten about it. I picked it up when they took Sal away, and I started reading it a few nights ago when I was bored. It’s a good book. I was really enjoying it.”
I reach out to take the book away from her outstretched hand, but pull my hand back at the last moment.
“Do you want to finish it?” I ask, almost reluctantly, feeling guilty about taking it away from someone who has tried so hard to help Guy. No matter how much I want to get on with reading the book, especially now in light of what is happening between myself and Slávka, I feel the right thing is to leave it with her until she’s finished with it.
“If it’s okay with you…If you give me your address, I’ll send it to you as soon as I’ve finished it. I promise you….or you could stop by and pick it up…?”
I shake my head.
“It’s nothing personal, but I don’t think I will be wanting to come back here again soon…at least, not unless I can help it,” I say, leaning forward to the table in her office, picking up a pen and scribbling my address on a little yellow sticky which I peel off a pad lying beside the telephone. I reach into my pocket and pull out a couple of pounds and give it to Mary with the yellow sticky. “When you’ve finished it, could you drop it into the post for me?”
As I walk out of the ward having said goodbye and thanks to the nurse for all she did for Sal, I muse to myself that in some ways I have now overtaken the character in the book in his quest for Slovakian love.
I have already been to the Tatra mountains and paddled in a mountain stream, something that the lead character in the book has not yet done. By the time I get the book back, who knows what will have happened?
The phone in my pocket rattles, vibrating against my leg and when I pull it out I find out Slávka has sent me a message. As I read it I smile.
“Oh dear, I ignore handsome man when he sends me message on mobile. Am I crazy? Very sorry, Andrew. I was out with friends (women!) last night and I left mobile at home. I only get message now. I look forward to seeing you soon. Big kiss. Thinking about what you did to me in Tatra mountains.
Slávka XX.”
I feel good about Slávka. Whenever I think of her I feel a tingle of excitement. She is passive, but dynamic. Respectful but daring. Beautiful, but unaware just how attractive she really is. Seemingly innocent, but obviously experienced in all the right ways. Naughty, but nice.
In some ways, she is old fashioned. She treats me differently than any other woman I have ever met. She is not afraid to express her emotions, to tell me what she feels. I love the way she reaches out and gently touches the side of my face while she smiles at me, her eyes twinkling. I adore the way she looks at me, instantly making me feel special, the centre of her world.
And I trust her.
.
--------------------------
.
I walk up the stairs at the end of the corridor, turning right through the large green doors, and walk to the end of the long, shiny linoleum floored corridor. When I come to the T-junction at the end, I look quickly back at the directions that Mary had quickly scribbled down for me on another sticky, and I turn left.
I am standing at the entrance to another hospital ward, nurses hurrying past me in and out of the large open doors, loud voices coming at me from all directions, the hive of activity all around me in stark contrast to the ward I just left behind.
Gritting my teeth, coughing and taking a deep breath I walk forward into the ward. Past the first three beds on my left, the fourth bed alarmingly empty.
“Andrew!” a voice shouts, coming from behind me.
I turn, spinning on the spot, the carnation flowers in my hand almost spilling out of their wrapping paper. Sal is coming towards me, only feet away now, her hands resting on what can only be described as a Zimmer frame on wheels.
“Hi!” I say, reaching out the flowers and offering them to her.
“Hi!” she replies, coming up level with me. She parks the mobile frame beside me, turns and reaches out to me, wrapping me into a warm, emotional cuddle.
“Thank you,” she says quietly, whispering into my ear. “I owe you my life.”
There are tears now. Lots. And then Sal begins to cry too.
.
--------------------------
.
She is sitting on the edge of her hospital bed, and I am sitting beside her, facing her sideways on.
“Mary told me everything that you and Guy did for me,” she says, holding my hand in hers.
“Mandy came a lot too. And so did some of your friends. It wasn’t just me.”
“But it was mostly just the two of you. And the nurse told me you were with me when I came out of the coma.”
“Guy was there too. Can you not remember? We talked for a while when you first opened your eyes.”
“Yes, I remember Guy. Of course I do. But, Andrew, when I first woke up, everything was so confusing. It was all so weird,” she says, shaking her head, her eyes misting over.
“What can you remember?” I ask, wanting to know if she could remember what I said to her just before she had the heart attack.
“About what?” she asks.
“Can you remember the conversations I had with you when you were lying unconscious? Could you hear me speaking to you?” I ask.
She thinks for a moment.
“Like I said, it was all so weird…” she pauses, her eyes searching her mind, trying to recall the experience. “…I think I can just remember the sound of your voice and how secure I felt when I could hear you speaking. It was really comforting.”
“Did you understand what I was saying.”
“Maybe…I can’t remember…I don’t think so…”, she replies, shaking her head lightly from side to side.
“Can you remember why you woke up? What it was that made you open your eyes?”
“No, I can’t. All I can remember was that I suddenly felt an overwhelming compulsion that I had to wake up. I had to. It was almost like my life depended upon it. I just suddenly knew that if I didn’t, something terrible was going to happen, and I started struggling to open my eyes, but I found
that I couldn’t. And then I started to panic, and I got scared, and …” she starts to cry and she lets go of my hand and covers her eyes. I lean forward and rest my hand on her shoulder.
“It’s okay…don’t worry about it…”
“I can’t remember anything, Andrew. It’s so scary. The last thing I can remember was walking into the tube station, and then the next thing I was in hospital with everyone staring down at me, the doctors and the nurse, and Guy in tears, with you looking whiter than a sheet.
“What, so you can remember when you woke up?”
“Wow, I just did, didn’t I? The doctor said that my memory might start to come back. Maybe it will. Shit, it’s really horrible. When I try to think about something, it’s almost like it’s on the tip of my tongue, I can almost feel whatever it is I know I should be able to remember, but then it just disappears and it’s gone. Whatever it was.”
“Did the doctor tell you what happened to you?” I ask, wanting to tell her, but not wanting to say anything the doctor might think is better to keep hidden from her just now.
“Yes. Don’t worry. He told me. Apparently I had a heart attack, or something. He thinks I may have had a very small stroke too…”
As she tells me what I already know, the guilt returns, pressing down on me from above like twenty tons of bricks and it’s all I can do just to prevent myself from getting up and running out of the ward, running away from myself, trying to find somewhere to hide. Desperate to get off the planet. Sal almost died because of what I did. I almost killed her…
“Apparently, he reckons that I suddenly wanted to wake up so much that my mind was fighting against itself, almost like one half of me was trying to wake up and the other half was trying to prevent me. The stress of it and the strain I was suddenly putting on myself forced my body into cardiac arrest, and maybe one of the small blood vessels in my brain burst or something. The amazing thing was, that when I had the heart attack, my heart stopped, and I might have been technically dead. Then the doctor gave electric shocks across my heart, and then mouth to mouth, and I came back. I opened my eyes and the first person I saw was Guy. The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.”
“Did you know who he was?”
“Absolutely. I can remember everything about my life just before I got on the tube train. But the rest, until when I got resuscitated or whatever it is called, everything else is a blur.”
“So you can’t remember all the things I said to you when you were asleep?” I ask, now both relieved and worried. “Or what we were talking about just before you woke up?”
“No… No, I can’t.” she says, and I believe her. “So, what was it about?” she asks. “What on earth where you talking about that made me want to wake up so badly?” she asks, leaning towards me, her eyes searching me for an answer of some kind.
Like a little rabbit caught in the headlights of a car which is about to run it over,…I freeze. What should I say to her? Should I tell her what happened? If ever there was a moment to come clean, then maybe this is it.
Except it isn’t. At least, not for a coward like me.
“Nothing much. I don’t think so, anyway…” I mumble back, looking hastily at my watch at about exactly the same moment the cavalry comes riding over the hill in the form of a nurse telling me that visiting time is now over. Time to go. “Ah well, I suppose I have to go to work now,” I say, rather relieved, as I get up to go. “I just wanted to pop by and say hi this morning, as soon as I got back from my little holiday away from London.”
“Where did you go? Guy said it was with some woman that you’ve started seeing recently?”
“Yes,” I reply. “I told you all about her when you were in your comma.”
“I’m sorry Andrew…'nada', 'nichts'…I can’t remember a thing. Honestly.”
“Well, maybe I’ll tell you all about her the next time I see you. I don’t want to rush a good story just now. I’d better go.”
I lean forward and kiss her on her cheek, and I am just straightening up when Sal looks at me and says, out of the blue, “Do you know that Guy has asked me to marry him?”
“Yes, I do. But I don’t know what your answer was.”
“I haven’t given it to him yet. I asked for some more time to let me think about it.”
“Why? Is there something wrong…?” I ask, immediately thinking back to the sight of her kissing the other man in the club.
“No,” she says almost hesitantly. “Well. Maybe...I don’t know. Listen, Andrew, I need some advice. Can we talk again? Maybe tomorrow morning, first thing? I need to talk to someone, and for some reason I feel that you may be just the person to help me.”
“Me? Why not Mandy?” I ask, very nervous, my heart beginning to beat uncomfortably fast.
“No. I think it’s you that can help. For some reason I feel quite close to you now. Maybe it’s the just the dreams I had when I was in the coma, but I feel, like…it’s difficult to explain. When I close my eyes and sleep now, I just have this feeling of Guy and you being with me all the time, your voices soothing me, comforting me…I need to ask some advice on something, and I can’t ask Guy, and…Listen, if it makes you feel uncomfortable, then …”
“No. No problem. But when?”
“Tomorrow morning? Guy’s coming this evening, and I need to talk to you alone.”
“It’s sounds really ominous…”
“Will you come then?”
“Yes, as long as I can get away from work again.”
Of course, the truth is, there’s no way I’m not going to be there. She’s got me hooked. Like a moth drawn unto the burning blame, whatever it is she wants to talk to me about, I can’t wait to find out.
.
--------------------------
.
James, it turns out, is in Amsterdam. No-one really notices my late arrival at the office, and by the time I have powered up my laptop in the docking station, got myself a cup of tea, and opened up Outlook to read my email, it already feels as if I had never been away.
Only Ben seems to have noticed that I was late this morning, making some half-hearted joke about ‘part-timers’ when he returns from a customer meeting about twelve o’clock.
“It takes one to know one,” I reply.
“So, listen, I was wondering if you fancy lunch today?” he asks, rather out of the blue, just as I am opening an email from Gail who is trying to arrange exactly the same thing with me, as agreed between us last night.
“I can’t. Not today,” I say. “I’ve already got other plans.” Perhaps it’s better not to mention that I will be going out with his girlfriend.
“How about a quick drink after work then?” he asks, persisting.
“Fine, but only one,” I say, opening up another email which this time is from Guy, saying that he wants to meet up with me before he goes to the hospital tonight, so that we can catch up. “I have to meet my flatmate at 7pm for a drink before he goes to see his girlfriend in hospital,” I say to Ben.
“I hear she was in a coma? How’s she doing? Why don’t you meet me afterwards in the Lemon Tree about 8pm then, and we can get something to eat together.”
“She was in a coma. She’s up and walking around now. And we’d better make it 8.30 pm.”
I’ve only been away for three working days, but there is a ton of email that I have to wade through, which takes me all of an hour. Two of which are from James, one asking me how things are going and hoping that I had a good few days off, and the other asking me to do a couple of things for him this week, one of which is going to be quite challenging although the rest should be rather simple.
By the time I get to the café around the corner at lunchtime, Gail is already sitting waiting for me, anxiously scanning the doorway for me to turn up. She seems rather agitated as she gets up from her seat and kisses me lightly on the cheek.
“So, how have you been?” I ask, but knowing that something is not right. I can see the stress on her face.
<
br /> “Not good. Ben and I are arguing all the time. I think I’m giving him a hard time, or something. At least that what he says I am doing.”
“Well, like I said before, if the whole relationship thing isn’t working any more, just chuck him.”
“Oh, that’s all right for you to say, now that you are all loved up!” she fires back, almost venomously, but immediately starts to retract it and apologise.” No, I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. I mean, I’m really happy for you with your Slovenian girlfriend…”
“Slovakian.”
“What?”
“…She’s Slovakian…”
“Yes, sorry, Slovakian. I’m really happy for you, but I think I’m in love with Ben, and I can’t decide not to see him any more just because we’ve had a few arguments. I want to see more of him, not less. But he’s always going out, and he just doesn’t seem to be interested in me as much as he was before.”
“What about yesterday? He was with you last night.”
“Yes, but only for some sex, and the meal I cooked him. Then he left and went home.”
“That’s not good.”
“I think he might be seeing someone else.”
“What? Ben? He doesn’t look like he’s got it in him!” I reply without thinking.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s so quiet in the office. He hardly speaks. He seems like a really nice guy, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to mess around behind your back.”
“How can you tell? How can you tell what anyone is really like? You know, I think he might also be taking drugs or something. He spends almost every Friday night with his mates. They go drinking, then clubbing, and then go back to someone’s house and play cards until about five o’clock in the morning. Twice I’ve been over to see him on Saturday morning after one of his nights out, and once he was still off his head on whatever it was that he’d taken…”
“Listen,” I say, thinking about my meeting with him this evening. What does he want to talk to me about? “Have you asked him about it? Straight up? Face to face?”
The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Thriller (Omnibus Edition containing both Book One and Book Two) Page 29