‘I think it would be a black day for all of us if you were to leave, Sister Andy.’
‘Aw.’ Andy turned away, embarrassed. ‘It really wasnae me, y’know?’
He was blinking at her with the undamaged right eye. The left eye would take a while to clear. It looked like the RAF symbol, circles of red, white and blue, but not necessarily in that sequence. She’d been there the first time the good eye opened. And there to hear the first word he’d spoken when, against all the medical precedents she could recall, his brain broke surface.
He’d said, Cold.
Which was how Andy had been feeling, entirely convinced they’d lost him, the way the sun turned black fast as a shutter coming down over a camera lens.
‘How you feeling, Bobby?’
‘Strange.’ He blinked some more.
They had him in a side ward, on his own. There was always a small risk; something they might’ve missed, so Jonathan wanted to hold on to him until tomorrow, when they’d wheel him up to the men’s ward for a few days’ bedrest, observations, tests.
Andy touched her fingertips together in slightly cautious wonder. She couldn’t let him go to the men’s ward yet. Something very strange had happened here. It would never make it onto any report; the suits would see to that, but …
‘Hang on,’ Bobby said. ‘It’s Sister Andy, isn’t it?’
She went to sit on the bed. His eyes were open again.
‘Nothing wrong with the memory then, son.’
‘I can still smell cocoa.’ He smiled, all lopsided, a boxer’s smile the day after the fight.
Some fight.
He fell asleep again and the smile died on his lips.
It had looked textbook, the way he’d come out of it: a long sleep, a few words, another long sleep. The usual questions. Who’s the Prime Minister, Bobby? Neville Chamberlain, he’d said grumpily, and gone directly back to sleep. He’d seemed annoyed at being wakened. Not quite textbook.
Cold, he’d said, that first time, everybody amazed at his coming out of it enough to make a sound, let alone speak a recognizable word.
Then he’d coughed and rolled his head this way and that on the pillow, and there’d been a bit of a panic in case he was somehow choking on dust or something. He’d made small, dry spitting motions with his mouth before subsiding into an uneasy sleep.
Andy had hung around and watched and listened. Staying on for nearly two hours after her shift had finished, sitting beside his bed, talking to him softly, making notes of the things he said.
Concluding that something well outside the textbook parameters had happened to him during the minutes of his death.
Every word he’d spoken she’d written down more or less verbatim, in shorthand. Feeling it was important, somehow.
Rushing down cold tunnel.
Flushed into the street.
Everybody stuck in a smog. Don’t care. Don’t want to get out of it. Faces all squashed and smeary. Stocking masks.
Walking coma. Streets all grey and icy. People passing you either side, they don’t see you. No feeling of being here, no feeling of being…
Bus tyres sucking at the slush. Slops over the kerb onto your shoes.
February. It’s all February.
All February.
And once he’d woken up and said, quite lucidly, ‘Don’t let Riggs in.’
Shortly before midnight, Andy was finishing a cup of cocoa when Bobby Maiden appeared at the door of her office.
‘Jesus God,’ Andy said. ‘Gave me the fright of ma life.’
He stood there, shaky, in just pyjama bottoms, sweat-shine on his face and chest, eyes all over the place.
‘Let’s go back to bed, shall we, Bobby?’
‘Wha’m I doing here?’ Slurring his words, as she led him back to bed. Brain-stem damage.
‘You’re in hospital. You were in an accident.’ Telling him again because they forgot things very rapidly, head injury cases. Yesterday, he’d asked if Liz was OK, if she’d survived the accident, which ward was she on, could he go and see her? But the next time he woke up he knew well enough that they were divorced.
‘Shouldn’t be here,’ Bobby said. ‘Shouldn’t be here.’
She held back the sheets for him. ‘You can say that again, son.’
‘It’s cold,’ he said and wouldn’t get into bed. Stood there looking confused.
A warm enough night, but it was the first day of October and the autumn heating was on too, one economy the suits hadn’t got round to yet.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Can you just answer me one question?’
‘Do ma best, son.’
‘Am I fully awake?’
‘Looks that way to me,’ Andy said.
‘But you’ve got me on drugs, right? Sedatives.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Nobody. I don’t think. It just feels-’
‘It’s no true, Bobby. You’re not on any kind of medication. Last thing we’d do in your state. All you need’s sleep.’
He put a hand over his eyes. ‘Somebody say I died? I dream that?’
‘No.’ She sat on the edge of the bed, patted it for him to sit down next to her. ‘Wasnae a dream. You snuffed it, right enough. For four whole minutes. A long time. But you came back. That’s a hell of a hold on life you got there, son.’
He seemed to find this momentarily amusing.
Andy said, ‘Tell me, would you … Did you have any distinct kind of dreams?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Like … lights? You see anything like that, Bobby? Bright lights at the end of a tunnel?’
‘Not that I can remember.’
‘Colours?’
‘Too dark. Too cold for colours. Have I been to another hospital?’
‘You havenae been anywhere, Bobby. As such.’
‘Then why were they rushing me back?’
‘That would be the night they brought you in? You remember that?’
‘No, this was daytime. Thick fog, but it wasn’t quite night. Frozen, mucky slush. Like February.’
‘You said that soon after you came round. Maybe it was in your head when … whatever it was happened. You don’t remember being anywhere … you know … warm?’
‘No.’ He looked puzzled.
This is not right.
‘Bobby. Can you think back for me? What’s the first thing you can remember when … I mean, do you remember the accident?’
‘No.’ Too quickly, but she decided not to push it.
‘What do you remember before this slushy streets episode?’
His eyes flickered.
‘Can you tell me, Bobby?’
He bit his bottom lip. ‘Fear.’
‘Did you say fear?’
‘And cold. Cold fear.’
‘What were you afraid of?’
He thought about it for a few seconds, like the fear was an entity in itself, didn’t have to be because of anything.
Finally, he said, ‘I think, not waking up. Never getting out.’
‘Out of what?’ Andy said gently. ‘What were you in that you were scared of not getting out of? Was it, like … a claustrophobia type of feeling?’
She saw he was shivering. He put his hands to his eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Bobby. Get into bed. I’ll bring you some cocoa.’
But by the time she was back with the cocoa, he was asleep.
In the deep of the night, he awoke again and they sat side by side on the edge of the bed, with the bulb of the Anglepoise turned to the wall, and they drank cocoa, like old times.
She asked him if there was any pain. Only a kind of numbness, he said. Down the left side.
‘Do I have a fractured skull, anything like that?’
‘You’ll have to see a neurologist to get it hard and fast. Might be a hairline, but I don’t think so. There’s some brain-stem damage.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Neural. It’s what causes the numbness, the way your voice is slurring. And why you won’t be walking a straight line for a wee while. They’ll repair themselves, the nerves, in time. Meantime, you’ll keep forgetting things and you won’t be able to think as fast as you’d like or do things as efficiently. So take a breath before you jump in and — no offence, I tell this to everybody — you need to watch your temper. Meantime, relax. You were luckier than I can tell you. You were gone a good long time. According to the rulebook, you shouldnae be back at all, no way, know what I’m saying?’