When she became aware of his words once more, Patrick was explaining how Dilip had pierced the bowels, and how the smell seemed to be the most recognizably human thing they had yet found in the stiffened cadaver.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Patrick!’ Sarah slapped the table, making the knives shiver. ‘We’re eating!’
‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I’ve finished.’
Sarah wanted to smack him. She could almost taste the vodka.
She stood up and banged the table again, less successfully this time – sending a fork clattering to the floor.
‘It’s not all about you. Dinner’s not over, so we’re still eating, OK?’
‘OK.’
‘And another thing. When someone gives you a present, the least you could do is say thank you! I don’t expect anything in return from you, Patrick, but I do expect manners.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
It wasn’t enough. ‘You’re just so selfish. All you ever do is take, take, take!’ She glared at him as if demanding an epiphany.
None came. He picked the fork up off the floor and placed it back on her plate, nudging it repeatedly until it was parallel with her knife.
Sarah gave up. What was the point? Nothing ever changed. Nothing ever would.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
He looked at the fridge. ‘What’s for pudding?’
She sighed. That was the thing about Patrick – he didn’t understand the sacrifices she made, but he also didn’t understand the anger and the resentment. It was good in a way, she supposed; maybe for both of them.
‘Trifle,’ she said, and cleared the table while he read his book. He only looked up when she put the bowl in front of him and sat down.
‘So,’ she started again over the hundreds and thousands, ‘this Scott and Meg and…?’
‘And what?’
‘Who are the other students you work with?’
‘Oh. Rob and Dilip.’
‘And Rob and Dilip. Are they your friends?’
‘Yes,’ he said through a mouthful of custard.
Sarah was glad she’d asked. This was new. Patrick had never openly acknowledged friends before – either his or those of other people – and it gave her that most resilient of emotions: hope.
Carefully she asked, ‘What’s Meg like?’
‘Nervous with a scalpel.’
‘I mean as a person.’
Patrick frowned hard and finally managed, ‘Sentimental.’
‘About what?’
‘She wants to give it a name.’
‘Give what a name?’
‘The cadaver.’
‘Oh,’ said Sarah, surprised they hadn’t done that on the very first day. ‘Is she pretty?’
‘It’s a man.’
‘No, I mean is Meg pretty?’
Patrick screwed up his face again and looked as if she’d asked him to summarize string theory.
‘I don’t know,’ he finally managed.
She swallowed the urge to snap at him and said brightly, ‘Well, it’s nice to hear you have friends. What do you do when you all get together? Go to parties? Or to the pub?’
Patrick shrugged and ran a finger around his bowl to capture all lingering traces of raspberry jelly.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘We just cut up the dead guy.’
18
WHARE IS MY wofe?
Tracy Evans is an idiot. God knows how she passed her nursing exams, but she has the literacy skills and attention span of a toddler on Tartrazine. How can she mistake ‘wife’ for ‘wofe’? What’s a wofe when it’s at home?
She stares at the little screen and moves her lips almost silently. ‘Whare… Ismy…’ Then she makes an unhappy face. ‘What’s a wofe?’
Exactly.
‘Do you mean wife?’
I blink.
‘Oh. She’ll be in later.’
She says it breezily, as though my wofe comes to see me all the time, but my heart just about jumps out of my chest with excitement. Alice is coming! Alice is coming to see me! Will she bring Lexi? It’s been so long! At least, it feels so long! I hope Lexi isn’t wearing make-up or anything tacky. Kids start so young nowadays – and change so fast. Has she changed? Has Alice?
Have I?
I blink rapidly to get Tracy Evans’s attention and spell out MIROR. Except I do it with two Rs and she ignores one of them.
‘You want a mirror?’ she says.
Sarcasm is so hard to do in blinks, so I play it straight.
She disappears. While I wait, I watch two nurses lift the woman opposite on to a special bed that can be tilted upright. I know now that Jesus on the cross in his pj’s was just another patient. God knows what else I hallucinated back then! I’ve been on the tilt table myself now, and it’s like a very low-grade funfair ride – the kind you could put a small child on without fear they’d be hurt. The ride my heart’s on now is far more exciting. A rollercoaster of hope and fear and anticipation. I’ll probably need a shave. Alice says facial hair makes everyone look shifty, and Lexi says it scratches when I kiss her goodnight.
Tracy Evans comes back with a mirror.
‘There,’ she says, and holds it so badly that I can only see a shaky image of half my face.
It’s enough. My stomach cramps with horror.
That’s not me. That’s not me!
The face in the mirror is of a much older man. Ten or twenty years older! I am the man in the photo beside my bed.
That’s impossible. I’m not old! I’m thirty-five and Alice is thirty-three and Lexi is twelve and Patch is seven and the goldfish – well, they’re rolling stock – but I know how old I am. I know I haven’t been asleep that long. I’m sure of it. The woman who smells of rubber said I had been in a coma for two months. Not two decades.
This is impossible.
The shaky old man blurs as my eyes overflow, and I blink like a stutterer.
‘All right?’ says Tracy cheerfully.
Yes. No. I don’t know. Call the police! Call the police! Someone has stolen great lumps of my life, and I feel the shock of its loss like an amputee.
Tracy lowers the mirror. ‘You get some sleep now,’ she says, ‘and she’ll be in later.’
I want to howl. I want to howl and scream and pound my fists on to tables and smash someone in the face. What’s happened to me? Someone must be to blame. Someone has to take responsibility. This is wrong. This is all wrong. I’ve been changed; I’ve been cheated, and nobody seems to understand or to care.
In my head I’m a vengeful dervish, an angry Hulk; Godzilla tearing down civilization.
In reality I lie there like meat.
‘Aaaaaaa! Aaaaaaa! Aaaaaaa!’ That’s not the sound of me crying, because I am not me.
And I don’t know where I’ve gone.
19
IT WAS A cold January, and the light in the dissecting room was flat and grey when they finally exposed the face of Number 19.
Hips and knuckles and stomachs were only 3D versions of Essential Clinical Anatomy. Once they’d overcome their natural aversion to cutting into a human being, those things were routine, even boring. But this was very different, and there was a long silence while they looked at the face of the person whose body they knew more intimately than a mother or a lover ever had.