If You Knew Her Read online

  ‘OK, no problem,’ I answer Carol, who doesn’t notice the unusual enthusiasm to stay in my voice, and tell her to have a good evening.

  With all the curtains drawn around the beds, the ward looks ready for a secret. The portable ultrasound scanner is in its usual place, tucked in a corner. I pointed it out to Lizzie today, as I reminded her where everything is. I wouldn’t have believed I’d be using it like this just a few hours later. I roll the little machine down the corridor, the wheels squeak. It’s already nighttime-dark outside, the strip lights on the ward ceiling highlight an anaemic path before me. Carol said Paula would be half an hour, which means she’ll be forty-five minutes. The other nurses won’t look in on Cassie; they’ll be busy with their own patients and we discourage visitors so late. It’s risky, but I can’t resist having a quick look … a few seconds just to see for myself.

  I enter the room and Cassie lies just as before, the light from the bedside lamp covers her in egg-yolk yellow, her hair arranged as I left it a couple of hours earlier, stroked back over the bandage on her head. She looks like she’s drowning in her own sleep. Her eyes are open just enough to see a sliver of iris. She looks like she’s looking down at her belly, as though she was giving us a clue all along: ‘Follow my eyes! The secret is down there!’

  Leaving the scanner just inside Cassie’s curtain, I stand by her head and bend down towards her.

  ‘Cassie,’ I say, ‘I just spoke to the consultant.’ I pause, wondering how best to phrase what I need to say; if the Jensens didn’t know, then is it possible Cassie didn’t even know she was pregnant? I’m fairly sure Sharma did say twelve weeks but I’ve only heard of naive teenagers claiming they didn’t know so far into a pregnancy. I decide to risk it and say softly, ‘You’re pregnant, Cassie. You’re still pregnant. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m just going to take a quick look.’

  I open her hospital gown. As I apply the gel onto her abdomen, I notice it is a little swollen. I’d thought it was just water retention, normal after a trauma. I don’t need to apologise for the gel being cold, but I still look up to see if she reacts. She doesn’t even flicker.

  The strange film appears in grainy detail; the fallopian tubes, the uterus all measured by a heartbeat, like a little jumping rabbit, the foetus is curved like a strange shell: the brave, tiny proof. Life in this hidden halfway world!

  I stare at the image. I’m relieved I was right; Sharma must have said twelve weeks. The baby feels a little safer. The older it is, the greater the chance it’ll survive. I stroke Cassie’s arm and smile at her briefly a couple of times before voices on the ward spook me and I turn the machine off, wipe the gel off her stomach and, before anyone can see, wheel the scanner back to its place in the supply cabinet before going back to Cassie.

  I’d seen a baby. Through it all, Cassie had managed to protect her child, and I want to kiss her cheek, but instead I hold her hand again.

  ‘The baby looks fine, Cassie,’ I tell her. ‘We’ll know more tomorrow, but you should know, your baby looks fine.’ I place my right hand over her abdomen and feel the gentle curve, the hill of her belly that now seems obvious. I promise her silently that I’ll look after her, her and her baby. I stroke her dark-blonde hair, pushing strands behind her ears.

  ‘I’ll wash it for you soon, Cassie. I always feel better with clean hair. Maybe you will too.’

  I try not to be selfish, and try not to think that if Cassie’s baby survived then maybe … maybe one could survive in me? I feel my lower stomach, and feel for any change there, some hope, but it’s frozen to me, and I make myself remember my promise to David. So, as I wait for Paula to arrive, I just hold Cassie’s hand and hope she knows she’s not alone.

  5

  Frank

  Cassie’s bloke and his mum were all degrees of gutted to see their girl black and blue, pierced by tubes and surrounded by screens, only just on the right side of life’s line. They kept on hugging and whispering soft words to each other. There’s nothing performative – nothing awkward – in their intimacy. I like to think we were like that, Ange and I, as a couple, even if only for a short while.

  We met at her sister Abi’s wedding. At twenty-seven I was seven years older than Ange. Abi was marrying an old mate of mine, Phil. Me and my mates couldn’t believe Phil with his trophy ears and hook nose had bagged petite, blonde Abi. I didn’t even know she had a younger sister until an even better-looking version of Abi was in the queue next to me at the buffet table.

  ‘What’s that?’ she said pointing to a jelly dessert, wobbling with the movement of the trestle table.

  I had no idea, but didn’t want to seem thick, so I just blurted out, ‘Tiramisu.’

  She made a face. ‘Bless you!’

  I’m not sure it was even a joke, but I laughed like it was the funniest thing I’d ever heard, and she started laughing too and licked a puff of cream off her finger, which I took to be a good sign.

  ‘You’re funny!’ I said and tried to avoid looking at her breasts as I asked her to dance. Two hours later I was in the pub car park with Ange’s tongue in my mouth and her hands at my fly. Six months later and Ange and I had a smaller reception in the same pub, the life growing in Ange’s tummy, and my thinly disguised terror now undeniable. She seemed happy enough then, as if a pub car park and a half hour chat with me spilling my coke over our shared chips when she said, ‘I’m pregnant, Frank,’ was the way she always dreamed she’d start a family. I told her I’d support her through an abortion, and she’d snarled like a dog snapping at a fly and told me never to say that word again. She looked frightened, unmasked for the first time, and I thought in that moment that I loved her, but I didn’t tell her. We were always like that, Ange and I, keeping our words sealed and packaged up within our own heads, worried that if we ripped ourselves open the truth would spill out between us, make a mess that neither of us knew how to clean up.

  Without telling Ange, I gave up my place for a managerial placement with an American-based construction company. A few years later Ange called my giving up the placement her ‘first disappointment’ – she’d always wanted to move to America, apparently – but there was a baby on the way. I thought I was doing the right thing.

  That was the first time I felt it: something dark and predatory in my shadow, waiting for me to stumble so it could pounce, and when it did, I didn’t come home for three days. I ended up in Reading, miles away from home, by the bins at the back of a pub I didn’t recognise, my mouth just an inch away from a thick, acidy pool of my own vomit. Once I compressed my shame, like a wrecked car at a scrap heap, and squeezed it small enough to swallow – a painful, metallic-tasting pill down a dry throat – I thought about how close I’d come to death, how easily Lucy could have lost her dad. Anything could have happened: I could have fallen onto a train track; had I been an inch or two closer to my puke my lungs would have filled and that would have been that. I promised Ange it wouldn’t happen again and for a while I think we both tried to believe it. But being addicted to something is like being constantly stalked. It’s always there, sniffing out weakness, licking its lips, braced and ready to spring from the shadows.

  Eventually the creature would always find me. It pounced when I was made redundant. It pounced when I heard Ange telling the other hairdressers at the salon where she worked that she should never have married me. And it pounced when Ange finally chucked me out.

  After that it seemed to take up residence within me, switching places with the man I tried to be, consigning Frank to the shadows, meek and withered as the beast gnawed my bones, sucking out the marrow of my life with every bottle of whisky. I managed to keep myself away from Luce when the beast was in control; I wouldn’t let her see me rabid with booze … couldn’t do that to her. I’d watch her sometimes; I got myself on a bus to the airport when she came back from a holiday in Spain once, and a couple of times I followed her home to make sure she was safe after a night out. I think she sensed me keeping an eye on her; I watched her sto
p and listen, but she never saw me, thank god, grizzled and stinking. I wrote to her instead, told her how proud I was of her, how I was going to get better, make it up to her and her mum. I told her I was going to get myself on a detox programme as I swigged straight from the bottle.

  When my eyes first slid open after the coma, and my brain finally clicked into place with my body, it was as if the world had been submerged in water. What I soon discovered were ward lights spun a kaleidoscope of colour, until my eyes settled enough for shapes to form. Ghostly figures darted around, fast as silverfish. My body lay before me, where it should be, but it was covered in white, contours, soft as snow. The air pressed down on me, so heavy I thought it would surely crush me.

  Not dead then, but not exactly alive either.

  My mind reeled, trying to find the thread of my last conscious thought, but it was like trying to figure out where I was before I was born.

  With effort, I focused my gaze higher and I saw a bed opposite, just a few feet away. The bed had high, plastic sides and propped up in it was something that looked like it had fallen out of a formaldehyde jar. Tubes and cables cascaded out of the specimen like slides at a water park.

  Poor bugger.

  I tried to call out to the person in the bed, but it was like trying to make someone else speak. I was fairly sure I wasn’t dead because my internal voice was still clear as a bell, and my mind felt sharp, nimble with fear and confusion but my body was swollen and familiar with shame. It must have been quite a bender.

  It’s OK, I told myself, trying to abate the avalanche of panic. You’re just a bit rusty.

  I tried to talk again but I couldn’t fill my lungs enough. I couldn’t fill them at all; someone or something was pumping my lungs with air. A blue tube fell off into the abyss from the lower reaches of my line of sight, the angle of the blue thing curled directly towards my lower throat. I tried to feel my throat. It felt blocked, by something hard and cold, as if I’d swallowed a cannonball and then I heard my breathing machine, like bellows pumping at a fire, punctuated by a rude rhythmic beep. On impulse, I raised my arm to pull the cruel thing out of my throat – it felt like it was feeding on me – but I didn’t feel my arm muscles flex or my fingers wrap and tug the tube out of my throat. My arm didn’t move; it didn’t even twitch. Panic coursed through me like lava. If I could, I would have screamed, thrashed around with terror, but I didn’t even twitch a toe.

  I don’t know how long I was like that, until one of the fish, a woman in a dark-blue uniform swimming busily between me and the poor bugger opposite, noticed me. I don’t know what made her stop and look. She was holding some old sheets all bundled up in her arms. She looked busy, but something, perhaps a glint from my eye, made her look directly at me and I told her with all my being I’m here and in that moment I think Alice saw this last little grain of life behind my eyes. She dropped the sheets to the floor and came close enough for me to smell her; like apples and antibacterial alcohol gel. Her eyes were full moons; they crested as she smiled, and, for the first time, I saw that sweet little gap in her teeth.

  ‘Frank, I’m a nurse. My name is Alice. You’re in hospital. Can you hear me, Frank?’

  I tried to talk but some bastard had poured cement down my throat.

  ‘Just try and blink for me, Frank.’

  I tried to blink but it was as if my eyelid wasn’t designed to lubricate my eyeball.

  What is happening? What the fuck is happening?

  She stared into my eyes so intently that it looked as if she was planning on crawling in here with me.

  Is this some form of extreme rehab?

  ‘Frank, you’re safe. You’re in hospital. You had a stroke.’

  A stroke?

  ‘You’ve been in a coma, Frank. A coma for two months.’

  Jesus, two months?

  My mind wheeled, trying to find a recent memory to prove she was wrong as Alice called over her shoulder to someone I couldn’t see.

  I need to piss.

  ‘Carol, do you mind getting Sharma?’ Alice asked the woman.

  ‘He’s on his rounds on 9C.’

  ‘Well, can you page him? He needs to know Frank Ashcroft has opened his eyes, and if he looks blank, say Bed three, 9B.’

  I needed to piss urgently. I didn’t know how to tell her, but then the pressure just dissolved and I panicked, waited for a wet patch to appear, to creep across my crotch. Nothing. It was as if my piss just evaporated, disappeared.

  This is fucking weird.

  Alice didn’t seem to notice or care so I thought I’d got away with it; I didn’t know I was catheterised. She kept talking to me.

  ‘You’ve been doing well, Frank, although it’s a huge relief to see your eyes open.’

  She sounded excited. It was a promising start. I tried to smile at her, but it felt like some sadist had sewn my lips together. She came closer, close enough for me to feel the warm puff of her words on my cheek.

  ‘Can you blink for me, Frank?’ she asked gently.

  I’ll blink.

  I tried, but my eyeballs were stone. I saw a pulse of disappointment in Alice’s eyes. I tried again and again but I was still as a statue.

  ‘Never mind, Frank, all in good time. All in good time.’ She stroked my arm, the one without a tube running into it, and I felt a silky, tingly sensation as our skin touched.

  There! I thought, At least I felt that! At least I can feel.

  Alice turned and stood up, out of my view, my lower arm suddenly cold without her touch. She was replaced by a man’s crotch at the end of the bed. He had pristinely pressed khaki-coloured trousers.

  He peered into my face. He was Indian. I read somewhere the best doctors are Indians these days. He squinted into my eyes, puckering his face, and all of a sudden I was blinded again by a light so bright I thought I must have suddenly died after all. But then it was over and my sight returned blotchy, like a watercolour and then I heard it for the first time, that phrase, that godawful phrase that I would love to pulverise like a cigarette butt under my foot.

  ‘Involuntary spasms,’ he said. ‘Involuntary spasms.’

  ‘Really, Doctor? I’m sure there was something else there.’

  That’s right, Alice.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken. It’s easy to see what we want when looking too closely for improvement, you know that.’

  No, no, that’s bullshit. Ignore him, Alice!

  ‘He is still in a persistent coma,’ the doc continued. ‘We should probably anticipate more involuntary spasms, and look out for them around other areas of the body. It’s muscle reflex, nothing more, typical in Apallic Syndrome. His eyes may open but he won’t regain consciousness is my bet. When his eyes are open, moisten them frequently to prevent infection and let me know if he blinks on demand; then we can think about doing a PET scan.’

  Alice argued with him for a bit, but he said a scan was too expensive, so that was that. It was a relief when he left me alone with Alice again.

  She leant towards me and whispered, ‘I know this must be terrifying, Frank, but remember you’re safe and I think you’re getting better. Save your energy and when you can, try and blink, Frank, try and blink as hard as you can.’

  I saw the gap for the second time when she smiled and I thought, Of course she’s right. Of course I can’t just get up, recover straight away. This is going to take time. This is going to take effort.

  She darted around me a bit then, checking god knows what. Occasionally I heard her mumbling numbers, jotting things down in a folder, which she slotted into the frame at the end of my bed. Then she said goodbye, told me she’d be back later and she left.

  I heard her shoes squeak for the first time; they reminded me of the guinea pig Lucy had when she was little. I was left on my own again, staring at the poor bloke opposite. I listened to the old clock by his bedside tick, tick, tick, every second identical to the one before. My breathing machine beat slower but just as metronomic, and any calm I felt when A
lice was with me was immediately smothered by a panic so visceral, so charged, that I was sure it must make me twitch. But it didn’t.

  My fear woke up in me then. It crawled from the pit of my stomach, and uncurled itself. With cold tentacles it crept into the rest of my body. My mind crashed around my skull as though it was trapped in someone else. I’m stuck in a prison the exact size and shape of my body.

  What the fuck is going on? I silently screamed. Why the fuck can’t I move?

  One month on and I still haven’t blinked. I still try; my mind bleeds with frustration. I watch Alice blink, the most basic reflex, and I imagine that brief split second of black, the relief, perhaps unnoticed by Alice, as lid lubricates eyeball, something she does thousands of times a day and I’d give both testicles to do once. Sometimes even I think the doctor might be right. Perhaps I am just a husk; perhaps I am suspended between life and death. Thinking like that is dangerous though. Fear burrows into my bones and I crave relief. I long to slip permanently away, but, of course, I can’t even do that. I spent days trying to crash my mind like a computer, find some button that will release me, but my body will be pumped with nutrients and drugs, and air will be blown in and out, in, out, in, out of my lungs, Alice will carry on talking about getting better and I just lie here, inert in this body, locked in life.

  Lizzie, bless her heart, didn’t close my curtains properly this evening, and as she left me facing forward I get my first good look at Cassie. There’s one soft light on her, the darkness looks like it’s trying to swallow her up. Only two days since the accident, her first night on 9B, and she’s already starting to look rigid, brittle, like she’s holding herself up in bed. It must be her muscles tightening. I hope for her sake she’s deep wherever she is; otherwise those muscles will soon be agony, like lumps of skewered kebab meat turning over burning coals. Only her face looks serene.

  Paula must be late again. Alice should be on her way home by now, but instead I watch as she wheels a little machine down the ward in front of her. I only see it briefly but I’m sure it’s the ultrasound. It takes me a while to believe what I see in glimpses. It’s only when I hear Alice crying gently and I hear the word ‘pregnant’ that I know it’s true. Cassie’s pregnant. Pregnant?