When I first start to fall, I forget to be afraid, too busy noticing that the hand that pushed me looked so much like my own. But as I plummet into the darkness below, my worst fears follow me down. I want to scream, but I can’t, that familiar hand is now tightly clasped over my mouth. I can’t make a sound, I can barely breathe. When the terror shakes me from the recurring nightmare, I awake into another. I still don’t recall what happened to me, no matter how hard I try, no matter how badly I need to know.
People seem to come and go, a cacophony of murmurs, strange sounds and smells. Ill-defined shapes linger over and around me, as though I am under water, drowning in my own mistakes. Sometimes it feels like I am lying at the bottom of a murky pond, the weight of the dirty liquid pushing down on me, filling me up with secrets and filth. There are moments when I think it would be a relief to drown, for it all to be over. Nobody can see me down here, but then I was always rather invisible. The new world around me turns in slow motion just out of reach, while I remain perfectly still, down in the darkness.
Occasionally, I manage to resurface just long enough to focus on the sounds, to speed them up so that they become recognisable to me again, like right now. I can hear the sound of a paper page being turned, no doubt one of the silly crime novels he is so fond of. The others come and go but he is always here, I am no longer alone. I wonder why he hasn’t put the book down and rushed to my side now that I’m awake and then remember that for him I am not awake, for him nothing has changed. All sense of time has left me, it could be day or night. I am a silent, living corpse. I hear a door open and someone enters the room.
‘Hello, Mr Reynolds. You shouldn’t really be here this late but I suppose we can make an exception just this once. I was here when they brought your wife in last night.’
Last night?
It feels like I’ve been here for days.
The doctor’s voice sounds familiar, but then I suppose it would if he’s been treating me. I imagine what he looks like. I picture a serious man with tired eyes, a furrowed brow eroded into a series of lines by all the sadness he must have seen. I imagine him wearing a white coat, then I remember that they don’t do that any more, they just look like everyone else and so the man I imagined fades away.
I hear Paul drop his book and fumble around like a fool; he’s always been intimidated by medical professionals. I bet he stands to shake his hand; in fact, I know he will. I don’t need to see him to know exactly how he’ll behave, I can predict his every move.
‘Do you need someone to take a look at your hand?’ asks the doctor.
What’s wrong with his hand?
‘No, it’s fine,’ says Paul.
‘You’ve bruised it quite badly. Are you sure? It’s no trouble.’
‘It looks worse than it is but, thank you. Do you know how long she’ll be like this? Nobody will give me an answer.’ Paul’s voice sounds strange to me, small and strangled.
‘It’s very difficult to say at this stage. Your wife sustained quite serious injuries in the crash . . .’ and then I zone out for a while as his words repeat themselves in my head. I try so hard, but still nothing, no memory of any accident. I don’t even have a car.
‘You said you were here when she arrived, was there anyone else? I mean, was anyone else hurt?’ asks Paul.
‘Not that I’m aware of.’
‘So she was alone?’
‘No other vehicles were involved. It’s a difficult question for me to ask, but there are some marks on your wife’s body. Do you know how she got them?’
What marks?
‘I presumed from the accident,’ says Paul. ‘I didn’t see them before . . .’
‘I see. Has your wife ever tried to harm herself?’
‘Of course not! She’s not that sort of person.’
What sort of person am I, Paul?
Perhaps if he’d paid me a little more attention he might know.
‘You mentioned she was upset when she left home yesterday, do you know what about?’ asks the doctor.
‘Just stuff. Things have been difficult at work.’
‘And everything was all right at home?’
All three of us share an uncomfortable silence until Paul’s voice smashes it.
‘When she wakes up, will she still be herself? Will she remember everything?’ I am so focused on wondering what it is that he doesn’t want me to remember, I almost miss the answer.
‘It’s too early to tell if she will make a full recovery, her injuries are very serious. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt . . .’
I always wear a seat belt.
‘. . . she would have been travelling at some speed to have gone through the windshield like that and she sustained a serious blow to the head on impact. She’s lucky to be here at all.’
Lucky.
‘All we can do is take things one day at a time,’ says the doctor.
‘But she will wake up, won’t she?’
‘I’m sorry. Is there anyone we can call to be with you? A relative? A friend?’
‘No. She’s all I’ve got,’ says Paul.
I soften when I hear him say those words about me. They didn’t used to be true. When we met, he was so popular, everyone wanted a piece of him. His first novel was an overnight success. He hates it when I say that, always describes it as the overnight success that took him ten years. It didn’t last though. Things got even better, then they got a lot worse. He couldn’t write after that, the words wouldn’t come. His success broke him and his failure broke us.
I hear the door close and wonder if I am alone again, then I hear a faint clicking sound and picture Paul sending a text message. The image jars a little and I realise I can’t remember him texting anyone before. The only other people in his life now are his mother, who refuses to communicate other than the occasional phone call when she wants something, and his agent, who tends to email now that they don’t have much to talk about any more. Paul and I text each other but I guess I’m not there when he does that. My thoughts are so loud he hears them.
‘I’ve told them where you are.’ He sighs and comes a little closer to the bed. He must mean my family. I don’t have many friends. An inexplicable chill makes its way down my spine as the silence settles over us once more.
I feel a stab of hurt about my parents. I don’t doubt that he’s tried to contact them, but they travel a lot and can be tricky to get hold of these days. We often go weeks without speaking at all, although that isn’t always to do with their foreign trips. I wonder when they will come, then I rearrange the thought and wonder if they’ll come at all. I am not their favourite child, I am the daughter they always had.
‘Bitch,’ says Paul, in a voice I barely recognise as his. I hear the legs of his chair scrape against the floor. The shadows over my eyelids darken and I know that he is standing right over me. Once more, I feel the urge to scream and so I do. But nothing happens.
His face is so close to mine now that I can feel his hot breath on my neck as he whispers in my ear. ‘Hold on.’
I don’t know what the words mean, but the door opens and I am saved.
‘Oh, my God, Amber.’ My sister, Claire, has arrived.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ says Paul.
‘Of course I should. You should have called me sooner.’
‘I wish I hadn’t called you at all.’
I don’t understand the conflict between the two dark shadows looming over me. Claire and Paul have always got on.
‘Well, I’m here now. What happened?’ she asks, coming closer.
‘They found her a few miles from the house. The car is a wreck.’
‘Nobody cares about your bloody car.’
I never drive Paul’s car. I never drive.
‘Everything will be OK, Amber,’ says Claire, taking my hand. ‘I’m here now.’ Her cold fingers wrap themselves around my own and it takes me back to when we were young. She always liked holding hands. I didn’t.
‘She can’t hear you, she’s in a coma,’ says Paul, sounding strangely pleased.
‘A coma?’
‘Proud of yourself?’
‘I know you’re upset, but this isn’t my fault.’
‘Isn’t it? I thought you had a right to know, but you’re not welcome here.’
My mind is racing and I don’t understand anything that is being said, I feel like I’m in a parallel universe where nobody around me makes sense any more.
‘What happened to your hand?’ Claire asks.
What is wrong with his hand?
‘Nothing.’
‘You should get a doctor to look at that.’