When she woke from surgery, Leilah refused to see anyone except Seline. Medication kept the pain of the sutures and powder burns at bay, but her mind couldn’t banish the vision of Dante’s death. In her dreams he stared at her with those puppy dog eyes, always there by her side, always waiting for an opportunity. In her dreams he moved around, danced with her at parties and visited her at home but when he turned to face her, his blue eyes were dead and sightless.
“I can’t help you unless you’re candid with me.” The surgeon rested his clipboard on Leilah’s knees and pushed his bottom onto the bed, turning his spine at a practiced but awkward angle. She felt the pressure of his hand on her shin and fought not to recoil. Leilah swallowed and watched his dark eyelashes blink once, twice and then cease as he locked his gaze on her face. “You’re not improving enough, Mrs Hanover. Your body’s going through the motions like bodies do but I can’t let you go home in your current state of mind.” He fingered the clipboard. “I see in your records you spent time in the Kingston Centre after your daughter’s birth.”
Leilah sighed and turned her face away. Back to that.
“No,” he snapped.
Leilah turned back at the sharp rebuke, her eyes narrowed with fear and her body stiffening. A bolt of pain shot through her shoulder and she groaned. The doctor seemed unrepentant, his brown eyes channelling kindness heavily laced with determination. “Don’t mess with me, Mrs Hanover,” he said. “I don’t want to call the psychologist, but I’m this far away from doing it.” He raised finger and thumb, the digits almost touching. “Talk to me or talk to him, it’s your choice. Now, what do you want from me?”
Leilah swallowed and opened her mouth to speak. Her throat felt dry and cracked, the sensation of the breathing pipe still in her gullet from the operation. Her words sounded stilted, out there in the open. “Stop calling me, Mrs Hanover,” she demanded. “My name’s Deleilah Dereham.”
The doctor smiled and lifted his clipboard. With a biro he put loud and scratchy crosses through the name at the top and then stood. He licked his finger and splurged out the words on the white board above her bed, expunging the Dee Hanover and replacing it with what she’d said. He spelt Deleilah wrong but Leilah released her breath with relief. She didn’t care as long as her other self was no longer staring down at her like a curse.
“Easy enough,” the doctor said, sitting on the bed again. “What’s next?”
Leilah squeezed her eyes closed and hot tears seeped from the corners and ran down her pale cheeks. “You can’t help me with anything else. Nobody can.” Hector’s face moved across the space behind her eyelids, his expression one of concern and understanding. “I want my dad.” Leilah’s voice broke and the first of the sobs escaped. “I want my dad. I need to tell him something.”
She cried hard and long and in the end the doctor pushed a needle into the junction point of the drip and flushed sedatives into the fluid. The tears leaked out faster than her blood had and with far more vehemence. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. Leilah slept through the psychologist’s visit which was just as well. Seline gave him a wide-eyed look as a male built with Michael Hanover’s swagger searched for a woman with the name Dee Hanover, without success.
Leilah woke to the sound of talking, Seline and another familiar voice. “She’s asking for her dad.” Seline’s voice broke, stress and sleeplessness in the anxious strains of sound. “I don’t think she remembers he’s dead.”
Leilah heard fabric rustling and guessed the visitor worked to comfort her daughter. She pushed up from sleep like a free diver heading for the surface, pausing to decompress before hitting the storms above. Her eyes opened, blinking into bright sunlight pouring from a nearby window and saw the man’s bent outline, his bulky body silhouetted by the vibrant orb. “Now then, Sleeping Beauty,” he said with a chuckle. Leilah heard the sound of a chair dragging across the linoleum. “Girly says you’re asking for your pa?” He sat on the plastic, his body causing air to hiss from a hole in the surface. “Well, he’s not here, girly, but I am. Won’t I do?”
Leilah nodded, the action easier than before. Her eyes sought his, a climber clinging to the last lifeline and she heard the painful hitch in her chest. Derek reached for the hand pitted by needle marks and bruising, clasping it palm to palm and avoiding the ugly cannula and trailing, liquid filled pipes. He jerked his head towards Seline, fluffy white hair moving with the motion. “Shift yer ass, girly,” he said to her. “Bloke’s had a long drive down here from the big smoke. What’s he gotta do to get a coffee?”
Leilah heard Seline’s chair scrape back and her soft footsteps as she left the room. A sigh of relief escaped her battered chest. Derek leaned in close and she smelled coffee on his breath, something raw and strong from a motorway service station. “Talk fast,” he said, in his lilting, old town sing song voice. “If she makes coffee like her father, it’ll be shit.”