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?
It takes me a moment to wrap my head around that one. How can she be pregnant, here on 9B? And more to the point, she looks like a half-crushed beetle on her back; she barely survived, how could a tiny baby? Besides, medically speaking, I reckon she’s even worse off than me. Even coma patients are in a hierarchy. She’s GCS 4 so her consciousness is off on a jaunt, god knows where, but her body is here, and unless my ears are going the way of the rest of me, or unless I misheard Alice, she is pregnant. I will her to be brave, wherever she is down her rabbit hole.
Alice leaves Cassie after a few minutes, pushing the ultrasound back to its place, before going straight back to Cassie. I think I can hear Alice’s excitement ringing through her footsteps, the movement of her stride.
Be careful, Alice, look after yourself, please look after yourself.
I focus on my breathing machine, and count along with the breaths, like the sound of the sea on the shore, it calms me and I remember, all those years ago, how it was when Ange was pregnant. I was even clumsier than normal around her. Sometimes, usually if someone else was around, she’d grab my hand and I’d feel the baby kick. It made me queasy, and panic would rise up like bile as I looked up at Ange’s smiling face and the creature in my shadow would start licking its paws. Then Lucy was born, pink and squirming, and one of the nurses said, ‘She looks like you, Mr Ashcroft. She looks like her daddy.’ At that moment I felt the world slide into exquisite focus, like slotting the final colour into place on a Rubik’s Cube. The creature slept and I felt clear, organised.
‘I am your daddy,’ I said to her red, puffy little face and then she did her first pee on me, which, in years to come, would make Lucy laugh and laugh every time I told the story of her birth. I’ve been hooked ever since.
Alice told me Lucy came every day for the first few weeks, when I was like Cassie, deep somewhere I can’t explain, but Lucy can’t visit so much now. The University College London were good to her and gave her some time off during the first couple of weeks I was in here. I miss her, of course, but I’m pleased she’s back in London, focusing on her degree. She’s the first from either family to go to university. She’s studying English Literature. I want to get better to tell her I’m proud of her, of course I do, but when blinking an eyelid seems like a fantasy, the thought of saying words feels delusional.
Still, Alice always seems to think there’s hope. ‘It takes time, Frank,’ she always reminds me. ‘It takes time.’
Alice stays with Cassie, even after Paula has arrived. She massages her hand, trying to tease blood into her muscles so they don’t petrify too quickly.
I watch them, still trying to wrap my head around the news, silent as the moon, when the ward doors sigh open and I hear voices at reception, a low, urgent man’s voice first and Paula’s laconic response, lazy as chewing gum. I watch as Alice places Cassie’s hand carefully back onto her bed, alert suddenly. I haven’t heard the man’s voice before and I don’t think Alice recognises it either.
Suddenly, the floor squeals like it’s alive as a tall, fair-haired man runs down the ward and into my view. He skips to a stop outside our curtains, ignoring Paula’s shouts behind him. His hair is wild and even from here I can see that his breathing is fast and his heart is beating, like something winged and panicked. His eyes meet mine for just a second; they’re electric. He has the blanched, unpredictable look of someone who has no idea what they’re doing, like a new swimmer who’s just let go of the edge. Then he turns towards Cassie’s curtain, so I can only see the back of his head. Alice is too quick, her instinct to protect far stronger than his wired energy. She closes the curtain behind her and puts herself between the curtain and the man. Paula shouts that she’s calling security, but neither Alice or the man look at her; they’re staring at each other. Alice’s face is rigid, sharp and uncompromising as a knife. His breath is long and laboured now, like something slowly dying.
‘We need someone on nine B immediately, there’s an intruder here,’ Paula says into the receiver.
‘Let me see her,’ he says, like he’s commanding Alice, but Alice stands firm. She won’t let him any closer.
‘Security will be here any second,’ Paula shouts down the ward towards Alice.
‘Please, let me see her?’ he asks again, but this time, there’s begging in his voice.
Alice shakes her head slowly at him.
Careful, Alice.
‘My colleague told you; it’s past visiting hours. We don’t let people run onto our ward, demanding to see patients in our care. Who are you?’ Her voice is like a hand on his chest, pushing him away from getting any closer to Cassie.