Things were slowly returning to Rachel, as if a torch was shining around a dark room, illuminating details here and there. She vaguely remembered arriving at Manchester station now, being pushed from behind in the coffee queue and another person grabbing her bag; the sensation of falling hard, that split-second moment of shock and fright before everything went black. After that, though, there was nothing until she’d come round in the ambulance, however deeply she probed the shadowy fathoms of her memory. Cinnamon, coffee, vanilla, she thought woozily. And then, boom, on the floor, out.
Since being brought to the hospital, she had been patched up physically, if not quite mentally yet: the emergency doctors had put her fractured wrist in a rough cast, bandaged her injured head and dosed her up with morphine. Tomorrow they would be wiring her jaw and operating on her wrist. So that was plenty to look forward to. Lolz, as Mabel would say, deadpan.
By late afternoon, she had managed at last to tell them, despite the broken jaw, blood oozing from her lips and the grinding pain that left her feeling faint, that her name was Rachel. It had felt like huge progress when she haltingly made the sound and the kind Glaswegian nurse replied, ‘Rachel? Rachel! Okay, great,’ back at her. ‘You’re Rachel, that’s lovely. How about your second name?’
It was the weirdest thing. She opened her mouth to reply but there was nothing there, no answer. She had stared back at the nurse in horror as her mind remained silent and stubbornly blank. ‘I . . .’ This was ridiculous. Her own name. It was on the tip of her tongue as well, just out of reach. Come on, Rachel! Of course you know your second name!
The nurse must have seen the panic in her eyes because she patted her soothingly. ‘Don’t worry, you’re concussed, that’s all. It’ll come back. I don’t suppose you can remember a contact number in the meantime, can you? People must be worrying about you.’
A contact number – yes. Absolutely. She wanted to cry with relief at the thought of a call being made, a nurse or doctor phoning home so that the children could be told what was happening. Hopefully Sara would sort something out. Rachel was not exactly pally with her but needs must when you were a single mum. She hoped the other woman would understand.
The nurse was hovering expectantly for the number, she realized, and Rachel made a gargantuan effort to form the necessary sounds with her broken mouth. ‘Oh,’ she began in a strangled voice. ‘Wuh-wuh-one.’ To think that she had taken speech for granted all these years. You just opened your mouth and out it came, long chains of words to articulate whatever tiny trivial thing you might be thinking. Now, after one hard shove, one single fall, it had become a Herculean task to make herself understood.
Then it happened again. It was so strange, as if her brain had seized up, jamming midway through. She frowned, shutting her eyes in order to concentrate, but all she could see were numbers, all shapes and sizes and colours, swinging around like a carousel in her brain, making her feel nauseous all of a sudden.
‘Keep going,’ the nurse encouraged, and Rachel opened her eyes again, the room tilting and lurching. ‘What’s the next number?’
Good question. Her mind had gone completely blank now, all numbers receding into the distance. It was as if she was searching wildly through dark empty space and nothing was there. She couldn’t remember. She just couldn’t remember!
‘Don’t worry,’ the nurse said again. ‘I find it tricky enough remembering my PIN number at the best of times, let alone when I’ve had a wallop on the head, like you. Just relax, take your time. Try again in a bit.’
She had tried – repeatedly – but the correct sequence of numbers stubbornly refused to reveal itself, jumbling and re-ordering in her mind whenever she tried to focus. She couldn’t remember Sara’s surname either, so there was no way of having someone look her up. What was it? Fitzgerald? Something fancy-sounding. Fauntleroy. Forbes. Think, Rachel. Think! But all that came to her mind through the shadowy depths were her children’s faces – Where’s Mum? – and she found herself spiralling into panic and angst, the numbers sliding ever further from her grasp. What would happen to the children if she couldn’t get in touch by this evening? Would Sara keep them with her? Luke’s lip would tremble, he would panic, Scarlet would go very quiet, bottling up her anxiety. Mabel, no doubt, would try to brazen it out. ‘Social services alert!’ she would say theatrically, as she did whenever she considered Rachel’s parenting to be below standard (often). ‘I’m phoning ChildLine!’
Wait – no. A new option struck her. Would Mabel ring Lawrence? A chill ran through her at the thought of him turning up and taking charge. Oh dear, she imagined him drawling. Talk about an unfit mother. Wait till my lawyer hears about this.
Tears trickled from her eyes, rolling sideways into her ears. Think, Rachel, think. For every minute her brain was fuzzy, that was another minute of Luke retreating into himself, Scarlet gnawing down her nails, Mabel doing her best to brazen out the situation, her resolve gradually shrinking . . .
‘Hey, come on, it’s all right.’ The nurse was back again. Rachel had lost all track of time by now, all sense of what was happening beyond the walls around her. Was it still the same day? Was it night-time? The nurse gently dabbed her eyes with a tissue and Rachel had to try very hard not to lean against her and start bawling. ‘How is your pain at the moment? I can top up your morphine again if you need it?’
Rachel nodded again. The pain was still excruciating. ‘Yes. Please,’ she managed to get out through her mangled lips. I’m Rachel, she repeated to herself, her mind starting to drift as the drug stole into her bloodstream. I’m Rachel and I’ve got to get home. I just need to remember how . . .