“I have a head injury,” I said, aware of the queue of people behind me, the bleeding shin of a boy about Miles’s age, a man lying on the floor whimpering, his back clearly in spasm, the arm of a toddler clutched tightly by his mother. Two paramedics passed me, heading out through the sliding double doors. I licked my lips, trying to feel emboldened as the receptionist looked at me skeptically. “I urgently need a doctor,” I said, my voice pitched too high.
The man glanced up at my head, clearly not cut, oozing, or even mildly bruised.
“I fell. Blacked out. I need a doctor urgently,” I said, the lie coming easily. I did need a doctor. And what was I meant to tell him? The truth. If I could just see a specialist, end all this while Dan was here, while everything could be fixed.
“You fell,” he shifted in his chair. I felt a tiny flush of triumph.
“I did.”
“Where did you fall?”
“In the road,” I said, waving a hand.
The receptionist looked up, alarm crossing his features. “Have you been involved in a road collision?”
“No.”
“But you fell in the road.”
“Near a road,” I corrected. “I fell near a road; I must see someone.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Did you really fall?”
I swerved the reply, “I need a head specialist. A brain specialist. A brain injury specialist. Is there anyone in the hospital that is a specialist in the brain?”
“You want an appointment with someone in neurology? Your GP will refer you to the appropriate doctor. We only see emergencies.”
“No,” I said, leaning forward and almost falling through the glass barrier that separated us. “Please, you don’t understand. It really is urgent; I really do need to see someone. I can wait. Please.”
Perhaps it was the earnest look or the desperation tingeing my voice, but I could see the man relenting. He let out the smallest of sighs before staring at the computer in front of him.
“You’ll need to fill in this form. The wait is four hours. Priority cases will be seen first which . . .” I swear he sneered, “. . . might mean your wait time is further delayed.”
“Thanks, thank you,” I placed a palm on the glass, tears pricking my eyes, as if I was in an airport lounge about to watch my one true love fly away.
The receptionist just nodded and bent to look past me.
Wandering to the row of pea-green bucket seats bolted to the floor, skirting past the groaning man with his back in spasm and trying not to see the droplets of blood on the speckled plastic linoleum beneath a man with a gashed lower leg, I sat, feeling all eyes were swiveled to me and my supposed injury. But something was going on, something had broken, a circuit in my brain or something surely that would explain the last forty-eight hours, or the fact I thought I had lived them.
Avoiding the curious glances, I settled in the seat. When the kids were young I enjoyed going anywhere sans children: GP waiting rooms, the optician, the pharmacist because they always had the longest queue like they made the drugs from scratch in the back. I’d revel in the moment to read, to think, to just be alone, without any interruptions.
I wasn’t sure any story could distract me from my thoughts today. I was the story. As I stared at the wall opposite with its endless peeling posters, reminders to Wash Your Hands, I wondered what the doctors might discover. Because they had to find something, surely? Maybe they’d give me an MRI, get the other doctors in to have a look at the results, fly in a specialist, Skype an American doctor, see if the US had any cases like mine. I’d become one of those case studies in medical magazines. My hope ignited as I stared at the clock, willing time, for once, to move faster.
People came and went, the man dripping blood, the man in spasm, all disappeared, the swish of the double doors making me look up every time. My stomach was empty, the latte and cinnamon swirl hours ago now, but I didn’t want to leave this spot, this chance to be cured. I wouldn’t just be saving myself.
Slumping in the seat, eyes sagging even under the fluorescent bar lights, I bolted to attention as I heard “Emma Jacobs?”
“Yes, yes,” I said, scurrying after her, boots slippery on the gray linoleum of the corridor.
We moved into a small square side room and she sat in a swivel chair looking at some notes.
“It says here you’ve had a head injury,” she said, a tiny frown. I wondered what else was written there.
I licked my lips. “I have, well, I think I have, you see . . . this is going to sound crazy but honestly it’s true . . . I have lived today before, twice in fact.”
The nurse’s frown deepened.
I didn’t give her time to interrupt. It was vital I got her to understand I was telling the truth, that this was serious. “I basically go to sleep and I wake up and everything is the same. Time hasn’t moved on. None of the past twenty-four hours has happened.”
I paused, my chest going up and down, up and down.
The nurse looked momentarily dumb. I was worried she was skeptical. I mean, I’d be skeptical.
“So I think someone needs to look inside my head. Maybe I’m really ill, like a tumor or something, and it’s making me believe that everything is real—it feels absolutely real—I mean it is real, you see, my husband dies. At the end of today. So he has died twice now but he is totally fine.”
The nurse took a slow breath and my eyes widened. Oh God, please let her realize I was telling the truth.
“I can absolutely see you think what you’re saying has happened but—”
“It has happened,” I didn’t mean to shout it. She flinched. “I’m sorry,” I can’t help gesturing with both hands now, “you don’t understand. Please, I promise, I can’t go out of here without seeing a doctor. Please.”
The wait felt interminable. I’d already been at the hospital for over four hours but I couldn’t leave now and give up.
“I’m not sure how to help really,” the nurse said, her gaze slightly to the right.
My shoulders slumped. Of course she didn’t believe me. I knew I hadn’t explained it well enough.
“I can refer you for psych evaluation,” she scribbled something on a form.
I would have liked a neurosurgeon or someone who spent their days opening up people’s brains, but maybe someone who had studied the brain was the answer. “Yes please. Please.” The triage nurse gave me a peculiar look; I suppose most people in for psychiatric evaluation weren’t always so keen.
I left clutching my sheet of paper like a lottery ticket, led to a different, smaller waiting area with no blood on the floor or people moaning. The whole day seemed to pass, the winter sky outside now a mass of cloud, the light fading fast. I pulled my coat around myself and rehearsed what I was going to say.
When my name was called I stood up, put my shoulders back, and followed the doctor into her consulting room. I needed to sound sensible, legitimate, level-headed, NOT crazy. She was curly-haired with a line of magenta lipstick and she seemed to take an age to settle herself in her chair.
“I’m here because I think something really serious has happened to my brain, my mind . . .” I exploded dramatically.
She tipped her head, birdlike, to one side and sucked on her pen. “Start from the beginning . . .”
She didn’t want to refer me for a scan, or any test. “Let’s see where we get to with talking.”
I tried to keep my voice even, my gaze steady. I sat on my hands to stop any wild gesticulations that would have me pegged as unstable.
She made notes and she asked whether I’d been particularly stressed at work. How were my relationships? Was there anything causing me emotional distress?
“Just seeing my husband die,” I said, almost petulantly. This was not going how I’d rehearsed. Why couldn’t she take me to an MRI scan? I asked again and she swerved the question.
“Is there a reason you’re intent on focusing on your husband’s mortality? Are you worried about your own mortality?”
I knew this was all getting me nowhere. Through the course of the consultation I sagged into my seat, the energy leaking from me. No one could help me. I suppose I’d known it really. That whatever was happening was happening. So all I could do was take control back, change the only thing that mattered. Not screw it up again.
I got up when she was mid-sentence. “I think I’ll go home,” I said.
She glanced at the notes. “I could refer you to your GP for some talking therapy?” she suggested.
I nodded mutely.
“They’ll be in touch,” she said and I thought—when?