In fact, she has no memory of her sleep at all.
Just blackness.
The lights are too bright as she slowly opens her eyes, they’re blinding her. Instantly she shuts her eyes again, trying to block out the bright hue from the window next to her.
‘Rebecca?’
She tries again. Only this time, she opens her eyes slowly, allowing her focus to adjust to the light before she looks around the room.
She doesn’t recognise where she is.
She’s lying in a strange, narrow bed and the room is cold and feels sterile.
And that screeching noise?
The sound of monitors bleeping all around her, she realises.
For a second, she wonders if she’s back in the psychiatric unit. But she’s somewhere else.
‘I’m in hospital?’ she says finally, her voice weak and small. Sounding, even to her own ears, as if it belongs to someone else.
She has no memory of how she got here. No record of what’s happened to her.
But she remembers her baby girl.
‘Ella? Is Ella okay? Where is she?’
‘She’s right here, Rebecca.’
Rebecca turns and takes a proper look at Lisa. Standing beside the bed, she’s cradling Ella in her arms as the child sleeps peacefully. Lisa crouches low, near to Rebecca, so that she can see her daughter properly, snuggled in her soft, pink, fleece blanket. Her thick lock of red hair peeping out.
Rebecca reaches out to take her, only the movement causes her to wince in pain.
‘She’s safe, Rebecca. You are now too. You’ve been through quite an ordeal…’ Lisa says, teary now as she places her free hand softly on Rebecca’s arm, her voice thick with concern and something else, which Rebecca can’t quite distinguish.
‘Shit. Why do I feel so weak?’ she asks, placing her arms back down on the bed either side of her, her limbs feeling as if they are weighted down.
She’s not sure how long she’s been asleep for and despite only just waking up, she feels exhausted. Her head is throbbing, her mind foggy.
‘Don’t you worry. I’ve got her. You need to get your rest. You’ll be right as rain again soon. She needs you strong again,’ Lisa says, and Rebecca sees the tears running down Lisa’s cheeks as she speaks. Unable to stop herself.
It’s only when Lisa reaches out a free hand and wipes Rebecca’s face, that Rebecca realises that she’s crying too.
‘Jamie?’ Rebecca says, but she already knows the answer. She knows he’s dead.
She remembers it all then… the image of Jamie’s unmoving body, bleeding out on the lounge floor, surrounded by a pool of deep red seeping out all around him. The lights in his eyes extinguished, replaced with a vacant empty stare as she’d looked at him.
He was gone.
And now, she can see the raw pain etched in Lisa’s eyes too.
But even so, Lisa tries to hide her own pain and console Rebecca.
‘There was nothing anyone could do, Rebecca,’ Lisa says, her body wracking with sobs, trying to comfort Rebecca. Trying so hard to be strong for her and Ella, despite the fact that she too had lost someone she loved. Her only brother. ‘He was already dead by the time the police and the paramedics arrived. But they got to you just in time. When they found you, you were unconscious. The doctors said you were critical. You’re a fighter, Rebecca…’
Her words are cut short as a nurse and Officer Blythe entered the room.
‘She certainly is. How are you, Rebecca? I’m Nurse Lorraine Rath. I’ve been taking care of you since you were admitted last night,’ the nurse said with a friendly smile, checking the monitor’s readings as she pursed her mouth and nodded her head. ‘You’re making a great recovery,’ she added, making a note of the machine’s statics on Rebecca’s personal chart. ‘You’re doing well, Rebecca. You’re a tough cookie. How are you feeling?’
‘Sick. Tired. I don’t know,’ Rebecca said, shaking her head. ‘I feel a bit lightheaded. Can I have some water?’
Rebecca wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about anything right now.
Her head was all over the place.
All she really felt was numb.
‘Of course, you can,’ Nurse Rath said, pouring out a fresh beaker of water before placing it to Rebecca’s lips so she could take a few sips.
Rebecca flinches, visions of Mark forcing her to drink down the tablets flooding her mind.
‘You’re okay, Rebecca,’ the nurse said then, sensing how out of sorts Rebecca must be feeling.
She would still be in shock.
Not only had she just lost her husband, but he’d been brutally murdered in front of her, and she’d almost been killed too.
‘You suffered quite an ordeal, Rebecca. We pumped your stomach and administrated some liquid charcoal to help lessen the amount of medication you took from getting into your bloodstream. You’ll feel a bit queasy for a while yet. And you’ll feel very drowsy too. Your body’s been through a lot. You need to get some proper rest so you recover fully,’ Nurse Rath said, aiming her last comment in the police officer’s direction.
‘So that means, Officer Blythe, you’ve got five minutes and then my patient needs her sleep.’ The officer smiled and nodded. Nurse Rath was his kind of woman. Her only concern was her patient’s welfare and Officer Blythe wasn’t going to argue with that.
Rebecca Dawson had been to hell and back the past few days. He had no intention of upsetting her further.
‘Thank you,’ he said to the nurse, before stepping forward to greet Rebecca.
‘Hi, Rebecca,’ he said before looking at Lisa and waiting as she nodded to confirm that Rebecca knew about Jamie. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. I wish we could have done more.’
Officer Blythe meant it too. They’d followed all their leads and an investigation was underway, but if he’d have just believed Rebecca in the first place about the tapes, maybe they would have carried on the search for the intruder more thoroughly, instead of just believing that Rebecca Dawson was seeing things that weren’t really there.
‘There was nothing anyone could do,’ Rebecca said with a shrug, unable to find any other words. None of them could have predicted what would happen. None of them, not even her.
‘I hate to do this so soon after you’ve woken up, but I need to take a statement from you, Rebecca. Is that okay?’
Rebecca nodded her head, before asking, ‘Is he dead?’
‘The intruder? Yes,’ Officer Blythe confirmed. ‘He died at the scene too. From a large laceration to his throat. Do you have much memory of what happened? I know it won’t be easy, but I need you to tell me everything you know.’
Rebecca paused and took a deep breath before nodding her head.
She just wanted this all to be over.
She wanted her life back.
‘I was in the office… I was looking for something that might tell me Jamie’s whereabouts. Confirmation of a hotel booking or a receipt of some sort. I can’t really remember much of what happened, but I remember feeling dizzy, I must have fainted. From the stress of the past few days, I expect. It’s all been a bit too much. And I think that when I fell, I must have banged my head. That’s when he must have got inside the house. He must have been watching me all along. He knew when to strike, because when I woke up, I was on the sofa, my hands and feet tied up. I thought at first that Jamie had come home… but he was there. This man?’
‘So, the intruder wasn’t known to yourself or your husband?’
‘No. Neither of us knew him. I’ve never seen him before. He told me he’d found me online. That he was a “Ratter”?’ she said, shaking her head and closing her eyes tightly, part of her frightened of what the officer might see if she kept her eyes open.