My family is not like other families. I think I knew that even as a child. I’ve always wished my parents would love me the way other parents loved their children. Unconditionally. Things weren’t perfect before Mum brought Claire home from the hospital, but things were better than they became. Nobody was there for me then and nobody is here for me now.
Paul has not returned. Every time the door opens, I hope it might be him, but the only people who have been to visit me since morning rounds are paid to do so. They talk to me, but they don’t tell me what I need to know. I suppose it’s hard to give someone the answers when you don’t know the questions. If Paul really has been arrested, then I need to wake up more than ever before. I have to remember what happened.
Evening rounds are brief, I’m no longer the main attraction. I’m old news now. Someone more broken than I am has come along. Even good people get tired of trying to mend what can’t be fixed. Forty-A-Day Nurse was talking about her upcoming holiday with one of the others earlier. She’s going to Rome with a man she met on the internet and seems happier than usual, a bit gentler. I wonder what her real name is: Carla, perhaps? She sounds like she could be a Carla. She’s not my favourite, but I’ll still miss her while she’s away, she’s part of my routine now and I’ve never been fond of change.
In my new world, I am dependent on complete strangers: they wash me, they change me and they feed me through a tube in my stomach. They collect my piss in a bag and they wipe my shitty arse. They do all these things to look after me, but I’m still cold, hungry, thirsty and scared. I can smell dinner on the ward outside my room. I feel the saliva congregate inside my mouth in anticipation of something that will not come. It slides its way around and down the tube in my throat, while the machine that breathes for me huffs and puffs as though bored of it all. I’d give anything to taste food again, to enjoy the feel of it on my tongue, to chew it up and swallow its heat down into my belly. I try not to think about all the things I miss eating, drinking, doing. I try not to think about anything at all.
I hear someone come in – a man, I think, based solely on the faint smell of body odour. Whoever they are, they don’t speak and I can’t tell what they are doing. I feel fingers touch my face without any warning and then someone opens my right eye, shining a bright light into it. I’m blinded by white until they let my lid close again. Just as I start to calm down, they do the same to my left eye and I feel even more disoriented than before. Whoever it is leaves shortly afterwards and I am glad. I never would have thought lying in bed could be so uncomfortable. I’ve been on my right side for over six thousand seconds, I lost count after that. They should turn me soon. Nothing good ever happens when they leave me lying on my right side, I think it might be unlucky.
I feel something drip on my face, something cold. Then it happens again. Tiny drops of water, landing on my skin. It feels like rain but that doesn’t make any sense. Instinctively, I open my eyes and see the night sky above me. It’s as though the roof has been lifted right off and it’s raining inside my room. I can open my eyes, but I can’t move. I look down to see that my hospital bed has become a boat floating on gentle waves. I tell myself not to be afraid, this is a dream, just like the others. The rain falls harder and the sheets that are pulled over my limp limbs start to feel damp and cold. The body that I am estranged from starts to shiver. Something moves beneath the sheets and it isn’t me. The girl in the pink dressing gown emerges from the covers at the foot of the bed and sits herself up so that we mirror each other. Her hair is already dripping wet and she still doesn’t have a face. She can’t speak but she doesn’t have to, silence is our common language. She chose it, I live with her choice. She points up at the black sky and I see the stars, hundreds of them, so close that I could reach up and touch them, if I could move. But they’re not real. They’re assorted luminous stickers, which start to peel off and fall down onto the bed, pointy corners of white plastic curling up at the edges. There are star-shaped holes in the sky now. The little girl starts to sing and I wish she wouldn’t.
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.
She takes her hands out from under the sheets and I see a flash of gold on her wrist.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
She grabs the sides of the bed that has become a boat and starts to swing from side to side. I try to tell her not to, but I cannot speak.
Life is but a dream.
I close my eyes before she tips us over completely. The water is cold and dark. I cannot swim because I cannot move, so I sink helplessly deeper into the black like a flesh-coloured stone. I can still hear her distorted voice beneath the waves:
Life is but a dream.
There is a loud beeping sound and a lot of watery noise but I’m no longer underwater. There are voices I recognise and faces I don’t.
My eyes are open.
I can see the doctors and nurses fussing around me.
This is real.
Then the voices are silent, except for one.
‘That’s VF, we need to shock.’
Those aren’t my initials.
‘Stand back.’
The faces disappear and all I can see is the white ceiling.
Everything is white.
I close my eyes because I’m scared of what they might see. Then I hear my dad’s voice at the end of the bed.
‘Hold on, Peanut,’ he says. It’s like hearing a ghost.
I open my eyes again and he smiles at me, I realise that I really can see him. He looks so old to me now, so frail, so tired. Everything else is white, it’s just me and my dad and I feel the tears start to roll down my cheeks.
‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ he says. I want to tell him that it’s OK but I still can’t speak. I want to hold his hand one more time, but I still can’t move.
‘If I had any idea that that would be the last time we would speak, I never would have said those things. I didn’t mean them. I love you, we both do. We always did. Life is but a dream.’ He turns to leave and he doesn’t look back. I am her again; that little girl desperately trying to keep up with her father. He’s slower than he used to be, but he still leaves me behind.