Then and Always (10 page)

The accident of five years ago was obviously as much in his mind again as it had been in mine.

“Memories of the accident,” I said softly.

“Accident?” he sounded puzzled. “No, love, memories of your poor mum.”

I was confused, he so rarely spoke of her. I suppose the thought of losing me had reawakened many painful recollections. I wasn’t sure how to respond but was saved from the need by the sound of the door opening and several people entering the room.

“Hello, Doctor,” said my dad. It sounded as though he knew the man who had just entered my room, knew him quite well, in fact. For the first time I thought to ask the question:

“How long have I been in here?”

“A little over thirty-six hours, young lady,” replied the doctor, in a voice that I supposed was meant to be calming. I did
not
feel calm. As though in a game played against the clock, my mind frantically tried to fit together the jigsaw pieces of what had happened to me. Like an arc of electricity between two terminals, my synapses started firing and I suddenly remembered: the cemetery, the crippling headache, my sudden virtual blindness. I remembered it all.

I lifted the arm not encumbered with hospital paraphernalia to my bandaged head.

“Have you had to operate on me, for the headaches? The blindness?”

A deeply amused chortle came from the doctor. How could there be any humor in what I’d just asked?

“Bless you, Rachel, you’re not blind.”

“But I can’t see!” I wailed.

Again that laughter; this time even Dad joined in.

“That’s because your eyes are covered with bandages. They sustained some minor scratches—you probably got those from the gravel chippings when you fell face-down. You really did take a terrible old knock on your head.”

I turned my head in the direction of the nurse’s voice. What the hell was she going on about? Clearly she either didn’t see, or chose to ignore, the look on my face that clearly said she was an idiot, for she continued:

“That’s what Dr. Tulloch is here for now, to take off the bandages and check out your sutures.”

“But I
didn’t
hit my head,” I insisted to anyone who would listen. I felt my dad once more take hold of my hand.

“Hush now, Rachel, don’t get yourself upset. Things are bound to be a little fuzzy to begin with.”

“I think I’d remember if I hit my head,” I responded, more sharply than I intended. “It was the headache, you see,” I tried to explain. “It was absolutely excruciating.”

“You have a headache now?” inquired the doctor, with keen attention.

“Well, no,” I replied, realizing for the first time that although my head hurt, the pain was different from the splitting agony of the headaches I’d been experiencing. “It just feels kind of sore …”

“I’m sure it does. It will settle down in a day or so. As the nurse said, it really was a nasty fall.”

I would have protested further but I was aware of hands reaching behind my head and beginning to release me from the swaddling bandages. With each rotation the pressure against my head lessened and my anxiety increased. When I’d finally been freed of the mummy-like wrappings, disappointment coursed through me.

“I still can’t see anything. I’m still blind!”

“Just let me remove the gauze first before you go off and get a white stick, young lady.” The doctor’s voice had a slightly more impatient edge. Clearly he now had me pigeonholed as a major drama queen. “Nurse, if you please, the blinds.”

Deciding I didn’t like the man however much my father might disagree, I nevertheless turned my face toward his voice and allowed him to lift first one, then the other circular covering from my eyelids. I blinked for the first time, enjoying the unfettered freedom of the movement. The room had been darkened by the lowering of the blinds, but enough daylight fell through the half-shut venetians for me to make out the vague shapes of four people around my bed: the doctor, a white-coated young man standing beside him, the nurse, and, on the other side of the bed, my dad.

“I can see shapes,” I declared, my voice a strange mixture of joy and disbelief. “It’s cloudy but—”

“Give it a moment. Nurse, a little more light now, I believe.”

She obliged by a further twist on the corded blinds. Suddenly things began to grow clearer and I saw the white-haired senior doctor, the young bespectacled intern, the middle-aged nurse. I began to smile broadly, a reaction they all mirrored.

I turned to my dad, my grin wide, and then froze, the look on my face unreadable.

“Rachel, what’s wrong? Doctor! Doctor, what’s the matter?”

The consultant was beside me in an instant, shining a penlight in my eyes, checking my reactions, but I fought against him to look again at my dad.

“Rachel, can you tell me what’s wrong?” urged the doctor. “Are you in pain, is your vision disturbed in any way?”

Disturbed? Well, yes, I should say. But not in any way that he meant.

“No, I can see all right. Everything’s clear now.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“It’s my dad.”

“Me?” My father sounded totally confused. Well, join the club. I forced myself to look at him slowly and with greater concentration then. But what I saw made no sense.

“What about your father?” The doctor’s voice had adopted a tone I guessed he usually reserved for those with mental illnesses.

I couldn’t find my voice.

“Rachel honey, you’re scaring me. Can’t you just tell us what’s the matter?”

“Is there something wrong with your father, Rachel?”

I turned to the doctor to reply to his question and then back at my only parent. My newly empowered eyesight took in his plump cheeks, his bright eyes—albeit clouded now in concern—the small paunch he was always planning on joining a gym to lose. There was no sign of the haggard, prematurely aged, cancer-raddled man I had last seen three weeks ago.

“No! That’s what’s the matter. There’s nothing wrong with him at all!”

THEY SEDATED ME
. I suppose they had to, although it seemed crazy waiting nearly two days for me to wake up only to put me straight back under again. And the more I struggled and begged my dad not to let them do it, the more panic and concern I could see mirrored in his eyes. As the consultant barked sharply worded instructions to the nurse to prepare
the sedative, I was still pleading with my dad to explain how he had got well again so quickly, and when he wouldn’t reply, shaking his head helplessly in confusion, I only became more distressed. It was a relief when the drug they inserted into my IV flooded into my system and my lids fell closed.

My eyes flickered open sometime later, and although the room was darkened, it seemed to be full of people. I could hear hushed whispers from voices that were tantalizingly familiar. My eyelids felt leaden, too heavy to open more than the merest slit. I couldn’t really make out who was in the room, just four or more tall shapes, all darkly clothed, I thought, or perhaps they were all just in the shadows. Sleep reclaimed me.

I woke briefly for a second period sometime later that night. The group of people, whoever they had been, were now gone. I had no idea what time it was but the room was in total darkness except for the small pool of light illuminating a chair pulled up to my bedside, in which my father sat sleeping. There was an open book lying across his lap and an empty food tray on the unit beside me. I guessed he had not left my side all day. From his slightly open mouth a soft snore emitted with each indrawn breath. He looked tired and disheveled … and yet still, unbelievably and impossibly, completely well. I needed to speak to him; I was desperate to find out what was going on, as nothing made any sense, but the struggle to stay awake was too much. Sleep overtook me once more before I could call out his name.

THE CLATTER OF
a food trolley woke me the next morning. I blinked in protest at the surprisingly bright morning light falling into my hospital room.

“Good, you’re awake in time for breakfast,” my dad announced in an overly cheery tone. I was slow in turning my head toward him, hopeful that the strange episode of the previous day had just been imagined. He must have seen the look in my eyes as I once more took in his obvious good health, for his smile faltered a little. I felt a stab of absolute mortification. Had I actually been hoping to see my only parent still in the throes of his battle with a terrible disease? What sort of a person did that make me?

I tried to smile back.

“G’morning,” I mumbled. My mouth felt as though someone had stuffed it with cotton wool in the night.

“How are you this morning? Are you ready for something to eat?”

I shook my head, the thought of food making my stomach roll in horror.

“Tea,” I croaked, my throat as parched as my tongue. I tried again with more effort. “Just some tea, please, Dad.”

His eyes never left me as I raised the utilitarian white cup to my lips and didn’t lower it until it was emptied. He seemed pleased to see me performing such a mundane function without incident or outburst. Was that a measure of my sanity? Didn’t crazy people drink tea?

“Shall I see if the nurses can get you another one?”

I nodded, and was grateful when he left to pursue a second cup, as it gave me a minute or two to collect my thoughts. He was gone nowhere near long enough for me to even begin to have sorted out my bewilderment. I drained the second cup and felt, physically at least, a little revived.

“So how is your head this morning, sweetheart?”

“Better, I think. Dad, what’s going on here?”

He looked uncomfortable, before bouncing the question back to me:

“Going on here? What do you mean?”

“Stop it, Dad. I mean it. What’s happened to you, and why haven’t you told me about it? Have they got you on some miracle drug or something? Are you in remission?”

The look on his face was tortured; he was clearly searching, and failing, to find the right answer to give me.

“Rachel love, I think you are still a little confused—”

I interrupted him, struggling to sit up more fully in bed and wincing in pain from what felt like a thousand bruises. I tried to speak slowly, articulating each word in a reasonable tone; the last thing I wanted was someone calling for me to be sedated again.

“Dad, I am not confused—well, I am, but not in the way you mean. Three weeks ago you looked … well, you looked absolutely terrible. The chemo had made you so sick and weak, and the weight you’d lost … well, just everything. And now … now it makes no sense, you look completely better.”

His dearly loved face looked troubled as he studied me, and his eyes began to well with tears.

“Rachel, I
am
completely well.”

“How can you have been cured so quickly?” This was all just too much to absorb. My father began to reach for the bell push above my bed.

“Perhaps we should ask if the doctor could come and see you again now.”

“No!” I shouted, my voice thick with the frustration I knew was on my face. Shaking his head sadly, my father lowered his arm from the emergency button and let his roughened
fingers reach for and encompass my hand, patting it soothingly.

“I haven’t ‘been cured,’ Rachel, because I’ve never been ill in the first place. I
don’t
have cancer and I can’t imagine why you thought I did.”

THE NURSES CAME
in then, one to remove the breakfast tray and another to help me to the bathroom. In truth I was glad to be taken away. For some reason my father was hiding from me what had happened to him. My sluggish mind, still addled from the sedative, couldn’t think of a single reason why he was keeping such a thing secret.

I was grateful for the nurse’s assistance in the sparse white-tiled bathroom. Thankfully, my IV had been removed sometime during the night, and although unencumbered by having to wheel a tripod around, I still couldn’t have managed either the short walk down the corridor or the removal of my hospital gown without assistance. With the ties undone, the nurse turned on the shower and, after establishing that I felt confident enough on my feet to be left alone to wash, she slipped out of the room.

Under the surprisingly forceful jets of water, I tried to clear my mind of its endless questioning, but it refused to be still. And even the innocuous act of washing myself threw up further unanswered puzzles. An unperfumed white bar sat in the soap dish, but it wasn’t until I began to revolve it slowly between my palms that I noticed the grazes upon them.

I washed off the suds and turned my hands thoughtfully this way and that under the spray. Both of them were equally grazed, as though I had fallen heavily and tried to save myself.
But for the life of me I couldn’t remember when or how I had done this. I did remember falling to the ground beside Jimmy’s grave in the churchyard, but I had landed upon grass, not concrete. The only possibility I could come up with was that I must have grazed them against a headstone when I had finally collapsed. That thought left me wondering who it was who had found me in the cemetery and brought me to hospital. In the light of the larger, more puzzling questions, I was happy to let that one go.

I wished there had been a mirror in the small utilitarian washroom so I could see if my head or face bore any signs of injury, for as I soaped and rinsed the rest of my body, I found several other places that were both grazed and bruised. Again they all looked too raw and angry to have been sustained in anything less than a very hefty fall. I was covered in injuries where there should be none, while my father had an illness that had simply disappeared. I wondered if Alice had felt this confused when she had fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

Still trying to resolve the irresolvable, I hit upon one idea suddenly as I dried myself briskly on the rough hospital towel. Perhaps the reason my father wouldn’t admit to his illness was because his treatment hadn’t been legal. I almost threw the idea out as preposterous. He was so honest I couldn’t even remember him getting so much as a parking fine in his entire life. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made—in a totally nonsensical way. Maybe he was paying privately for some unlicensed medication or treatment forbidden in the UK. And if that
was
the case, well then, he’d probably
have
to lie in order to protect whatever secret trial or doctor had helped him.