I sit with PC Baker in a cubicle at A&E. I’m plonked on the bed, with the police officer sat in the visitor’s chair. Maeve’s body – I still don’t know her name – is in Resus, being worked on by the doctors. Since I’ve come from a psychiatric hospital, they don’t believe that I’m not hurt, and they’ve taken my bloods to make sure I haven’t overdosed or anything else that I haven’t told them about.
“Is she going to be OK?” I ask quietly.
PC Baker turns to look at me. She regards me steadily for a moment before she answers. “Well, it looks like she’s taken something,” she tells me with a frown. “So if you can tell us what that was…”
I look down at my lap. “I told you,” I say firmly. “I literally only just met her. I found her about to jump and I called you guys.”
“Hmm.” I can tell immediately that PC Baker doesn’t believe me. She thinks we’ve been sat on the end of Birnbeck Pier all night doing coke or something. Even though they’ve already tested my urine and I’m negative for everything.
They had to get a boat out to us from the Coast Guard, in the end; apparently it wouldn’t have been safe for someone to walk down the pier to get to us. In fairness, that made sense. The fact that I made it down there can only be attributed to pure luck. I can’t quite forget the moment when my foot went straight through the rotten wood.
The Coast Guard guy did have to climb up onto the island to carry Maeve down to the boat, though. Well, I say Maeve; I feel quite convinced that there was nothing of Maeve in that body by that point. She had lit up and gone.
PC Baker leans forwards. “What I’m struggling with,” she says, in a calm voice, her eyes resting on mine, “is why you climbed all the way down a rotten pier to save someone who you’d never met, and who you didn’t know needed saving.”
This is a very good point, but I try not to be fazed. “I thought it would be a good place to hide,” I lie quickly. “I saw the light down there so I thought I would just go along and see who it was and then I could just stay there. And the hospital wouldn’t find me.”
She looks at me impassively. “But when you got to the island, the young lady was about to jump.”
“Yes,” I say emphatically. We’ve been over this part of the story before; and with the amount of true crime documentaries I’ve fallen asleep to in the last few months, I know that the thing that makes you look guiltiest is changing your story.
“Hmm,” says PC Baker again. “And she wouldn’t tell you her name, or anything? How she got there?”
I shake my head. “I told you,” I say stubbornly. “I grabbed her and pulled her back and she passed out.”
Admittedly, neither Maeve nor I have thought out this part of the story very well. It’s hard to explain why someone would randomly pass out cold just from being dragged away from the edge of a wooden pier. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that the police think drugs are involved. I don’t know what on Earth is going to show up on the girl’s toxicology screen, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if it showed something. Oddly enough, I don’t think there’s a test they can do to check if someone else’s soul has been inhabiting your body.
“Your card was in her pocket,” I add, for good measure. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
PC Baker sighs, but I suspect she is running out of questions. None of this makes any sense, but is there actually anything she can ask to prove I’m lying?
“They should have your bloods back soon,” she says instead. “Then we can think about transporting you back home.”
I huff slightly before I can stop myself. “It’s not home,” I say quietly.
PC Baker tilts her head. “No, I’m sure it isn’t,” she says, a little surprised, a little more gently. “But running away isn’t going to help that.”
“I didn’t hurt myself,” I point out, finally looking back up at the police officer. I feel like this is a point that has gotten slightly lost in the drama of tonight.
She shrugs her shoulders as a way of agreeing with me. “That’s true,” she says slowly. “But… if you hadn’t found the young lady…?”
It’s almost ironic – PC Baker definitely doesn’t realise exactly what she’s asking. It’s hard to know how to answer. “I don’t know,” I say finally, though I do.
“Alright,” she says, clearly deciding not to push the point. I guess she can’t prove anything either way. “Well, I’m sure the hospital will be glad to have you safely back.”
I shrug with a little sigh. “Maybe.”
I can tell that she knows I’m not convinced. She shifts in the chair, stretching. “How you’ve managed to get involved of all of this in an hour, I don’t know,” she half-mutters, but there’s a small smile on her face. I think she likes the real person Heather more than the mentally-ill-troublemaker Heather that I’m sure the hospital has described to her.
There’s one part of her sentence that just doesn’t make sense, though. “In an hour?” I ask with a frown.
PC Baker frowns right back at me. “Yeah,” she says, looking confused as to what I’m asking. “It’s what, 4am, now? Your hospital rang about ten to three. Said you’d been gone fifteen minutes.”
It’s a physical effort not to roll my eyes. It really took that long for them to notice. It’s frustrating – if tonight was meant to matter, if tonight was meant to be a point of change, why am I now finding out that it took five hours for the nursing staff to even notice I was gone? If I’m meant to be getting better, shouldn’t the hospital be looking like a good place to go back to right now? Maybe – I guess it was never going to be perfect.
For a moment, I waver over whether or not to tell PC Baker how long I’ve really been gone. But then I decide that if I’m making a new start, it has to be made on honesty. I shake my head. “I climbed over the fence about half nine,” I correct her, a little hesitantly, with my tone one of admission. I can’t help but feel guilty that I might be dropping the staff in it (even if my head is incredulously repeating – five bloody hours?! What were they doing?!).
PC Baker stares at me for a minute before she leans her head back against the wall. She mouths something that looks like a swear word, and sighs deeply. “Are you serious?” she asks in a low voice, clearly deeply frustrated.
I nod, a small apologetic smile on my face. “Sorry,” I add helplessly.
She sighs again. “It’s not your fault, love,” she replies, more gently.
But then something seems to occur to her. She turns to me, still frowning. “What did you do for the first four hours?”
I shift around on the bed to avoid answering for a minute. “Walked around,” I say evasively at last. “Had a cider. Sat on the beach.”
I notice her glance down at the sand all over my jeans, the remnants of my walk on the beach earlier. At least that confirms my story. And, of course, why would I lie?
She stays silent for a minute. “Why did you run away in the first place?” she asks at last.
I swallow. This is a question I really didn’t want to have to answer. There’s no adventure, no crazy night with Maeve, to lie for in this. There’s just a lot of pain, that in truth I don’t want to look at just yet.
But PC Baker is sitting, waiting for an answer. Maybe I’m never going to want to address this. But right now, I have someone’s attention, and she isn’t going anywhere. This is supposed to be a new start, after all.
I look down at my lap. “I wanted to die,” I tell her honestly, even as I feel tears start to threaten to fall. For a second, the sentence hangs heavily in the air between us. When I finally look up, PC Baker is watching me with an expression that I can’t quite read.
“I’d like to come and see you,” she says suddenly. “In a week or two. To make sure the hospital is… acting more professionally.”
This isn’t the reaction I expected, and I can’t think what to say, so I nod quickly. In all honesty, I’m touched, and my heart hurts a little bit.
“Thank you,” I reply quietly, but I hold her gaze in an attempt to try and make it clear exactly what I mean. She smiles, a little sadly, and nods again. She gets me.
The next few moments pass in silence, with PC Baker looking down at her boots, maybe a little self-conscious. When my own eyes stray down to her feet, I suddenly remember that I sat under a table earlier, looking at those boots for what felt like an age. I’m not sure whether to smile or cry. Tonight has been weird.
Finally, a doctor pokes his head around the curtain. “Hello, Heather,” he says. I cringe for a second that I’ve given them my real name. When I met PC Baker after coming out of the Coast Guard boat, I briefly considered giving a fake name, just to be able to stay away longer – if I was just a random passer-by, surely I would be free to just leave? – but in the end I was just too tired.
I smile politely and nod. I feel drained.
He returns the smile, looking between myself and PC Baker. “We’ve just had your blood results back,” he says, calm doctor voice on. “Luckily they’re all normal. I think your ward are on the way to collect you.”
I sigh, deeply. I knew that this moment was coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier. For most of tonight, the worst possible outcome has been going back to the hospital with nothing changed. Going back to being locked up and isolated in my room.
If the doctor doesn’t notice the weariness in the sigh, PC Baker definitely does. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her expression soften slightly, and to my surprise, she leans over and pats my hand. Clearly this is not the part of her job that comes easiest to her, but it’s touching that she’s trying.
“Are you allowed to tell me what happens to that girl?” I ask quickly, not wanting to think about how depressed I feel right now.
She hesitates. “I don’t think so,” she says apologetically, and I’m not surprised. I have to remind myself that the girl is a stranger; she’s not Maeve and she never was. How she ended up with Maeve inside her is anyone’s guess. I highly doubt that anyone will be able to give me a satisfactory answer as to how tonight even happened. I have to just remember it, and know it was important.
I think of Maeve, and I think of Zoe, and I think of PC Baker. I think of Amelie and Mrs Fletcher. These moments with them are the things that are important; these moments are the reasons that I need to hold on to. Just because something is gone doesn’t mean that it never mattered at all.
It occurs to me that in a few hours, Katy will come onto the ward to start her day at work and will hear about tonight. How on Earth am I going to explain all of this to her? I’m going to need to decide just how far my new honesty policy stretches.
But right now, I nod, and I give PC Baker the most genuine smile I can muster. It’s not her fault. I’ve probably been a right headache for her the past hour, and she’s responded very kindly, considering.
“Thank you, anyway,” I tell her, and mean it.
PC Baker clears her throat. Have I embarrassed her a little bit? “That’s alright,” she adds quickly, maybe fronting it a bit. “I’m just glad we’re getting you safely back to your ward.”
I’m tempted to snort but I know that won’t help. “I guess,” I say tiredly.
She gives me a rueful smile. “I’ll see you in a few weeks, yeah?”
I nod. When I speak, my voice is a little stronger. “Yeah,” I confirm, holding her gaze. It can’t hurt, I suppose, to have one more person truly fighting my corner.
*
I’m waiting in reception for a support worker from the ward to come and pick me up when my phone buzzes in my pocket.
I frown, surprised. It’s barely gone 5am; who is going to be texting me right now? I assume quickly that it must be spam. But I still take my phone out of my pocket to check.
Unfortunately, at first I’m not particularly surprised; it’s just a notification telling me that my phone has connected to the hospital Wi-Fi. Why it’s suddenly done this now is beyond me, but so is most technology. I’m about to slide my phone back into my pocket when an idea pops into my head.
I tap in my passcode and open my phone. I haven’t got long before the taxi arrives. My eyes scan over my collection of apps, the usual mix of Facebook and Instagram and Minion Rush. Then my eyes land on Pokémon Go.
I look to my other side – where, to my relief, I see a door for Resus. Where the girl is still being worked on. This is a long shot, a massive long shot – but as I open the little list at the side of the screen, that lists people nearby, I feel a rush of delight when I see that a few metres from me, there is a player called EmilyRose01. I click on the user profile; and, when I look at the profile picture, it’s a picture of the girl whose body Maeve was in. PC Baker may not be able to give me updates on how this girl is, but…
I smile slightly down at my phone as I press ‘add friend’.