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 Alice 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.