Oh, thanks, I thought. Turn the damn thing back on again.
But I also realised that pain was a good thing. My arms hurt, and my legs too, so I wasn’t paralysed. That was a huge relief.
But why did I think that I might be?
Another face appeared and I focused on it.
‘Hello,’ it said. ‘I’m Mr Constance, one of the orthopaedic consultants. You’re a lucky man — a very lucky man. We thought we’d lost you several times.’
I tried to ask where I was but again without any success.
‘You just rest,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you some more pain relief now that you’re awake. Your whole system had quite a nasty shock from the accident. And we can’t take the collar off just yet, or let you move, because your neck is totally unstable. You need another urgent operation on it.’
Another?
Did he mean after the one I’d had several years ago?
I suddenly realised I could remember that, and then all sorts of other things came flooding back in a rush, not least the awful realisation that Amelia wouldn’t be coming in to scratch my nose.
Car accident?
But she hadn’t died in a car accident.
I was still confused.
I did as the doctor had said — I rested, drifting in and out of sleep or unconsciousness — I wasn’t sure which.
When I woke for the third time, I was in a different place. The lights in the ceiling above me were round, not square, and the sounds were different too, with beeping and bells going off regularly in the background.
And there was also a large tube fixed into my mouth. I could feel it with my tongue.
I looked up at the round lights and wondered what else had changed. I still couldn’t move anything, but the collar round my neck was seemingly less tight.
My body might not be much improved but my mind definitely felt clearer.
‘Hello,’ said a voice.
I swung my eyes round to my right and they settled on the face of a nurse wearing blue scrubs. I tried to reply but without any success whatsoever, not even the internal gurgling of last time.
‘I won’t ask how you’re feeling,’ she said, ‘because you can’t answer. That’s an endotracheal tube in your throat. You were intubated to put you on a ventilator during the operation, to assist your breathing. But it can probably come out now, since you’re awake.’
That was encouraging.
So I’d had an operation. This must be the recovery ward.
After a while the nurse returned with another woman, this time in mauve scrubs, and, between them, they removed the tape around my mouth and then slid the tube out. As it passed my eyes, I was amazed how long it was. It seemed to go on forever and must have stretched all the way down into my lungs. No wonder I hadn’t been able to talk.
Boy, that felt better.
‘Take it easy at first,’ said mauve scrubs. ‘You might be a bit hoarse.’
Did she say that I was a bit of a horse? I almost laughed. Which bit?
Then I realised what she had really said and the amusement subsided. My brain obviously wasn’t completely back to normal.
‘Where am I?’ I croaked.
‘Oxford,’ she said, smiling down at me. ‘The JR.’
I looked quizzically at her.
‘The John Radcliffe Hospital. You’re in the intensive care unit.’
The John Radcliffe Hospital.
What was it I knew about the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford?
Then I remembered. But I wish I hadn’t.
The John Radcliffe Hospital was where the Home Office pathologist had done the post-mortem on Amelia. Perhaps she was still here, lying in the mortuary. Maybe she was just down the corridor.
A wave of panic rose in my chest.
Oh, Amelia.
I could feel tears running down the sides of my head and into my ears.
‘Are you in pain?’ asked mauve scrubs with a concerned look on her face. ‘Do you need something for it?’
Yes, I was in pain, but it was not the sort of pain that drugs could alleviate.
A new face came into view, one that I recognised.
‘Hello again,’ said Mr Constance, the orthopaedic surgeon. ‘How are you doing? I have managed to stabilise your neck using two small metal plates. They should hold everything in place. Your spinal cord is intact but I don’t know how much it’s been affected by the bruising. You gave it quite a clout. It’s now just a matter of time to see how you get on.’ He smiled down at me. ‘Just don’t be having any more road accidents.’
‘It wasn’t an accident,’ I croaked up at him. ‘It was done on purpose. Someone tried to kill me.’
His smile disappeared and then, after a moment or two, so did the rest of him.
When he came back he had someone else with him, as if needing a witness.
‘Now,’ Mr Constance said seriously. ‘Please say again what you said to me just now.’
‘I said that it wasn’t in an accident. Someone tried to kill me.’
And we all knew who that was, didn’t we?
28
It’s now just a matter of time to see how you get on, was what the orthopaedic man had said, and how I was getting on during the next couple of weeks was variable.
Some things had improved hugely while others remained frustratingly the same. At least physically.
I was moved out of intensive care and into a side room of a regular ward and, thanks to the electrically controlled hospital bed, I was able to sit up, which was a huge advance. It meant I could see more than just the ceiling. The cervical collar around my neck was also removed, which made talking much easier.
Doctors came and went, each of them seemingly testing something different. Neurologists came and poked and prodded me with needles and declared that, as I could feel them pricking me all down my legs and arms, there should be no reason why I couldn’t also move them.
But I couldn’t. All I could move was my eyes and my mouth, although I could also breathe on my own and swallow, but the nursing staff had to spoon-feed me, and also to deal with my other bodily functions, which was desperately humiliating.
Every moment of every day, I tried to move my arms and legs, God help me I tried, but nothing happened. It was as if I had been robbed, not of sensation, but of action.
And it made me hugely frustrated, and very angry.
More doctors came, and then some medical students too, as if I’d become something of a celebrity, or maybe it was just because I was a clinical oddity.
It was during one of these visits, when a member of the clinical teaching staff was talking about me in the third person to his students, as if I wasn’t actually there in the room with him listening, that I noticed something extraordinary.
Movement. Down by my feet.
It must be a mouse, I thought, caught under the sheet.
There, it moved again.
‘Excuse me,’ I said loudly, interrupting the medical class. ‘Can you please pull back the bedclothes?’
The teacher smiled broadly. ‘Indeed I can. I was just about to do that anyway.’
He removed the sheet with a bit of a flourish as if he were revealing some great treasure.
There was no mouse.
The movement was caused by the big toe on my right foot waving back and forth like some demented digit with a life of its own. Except that I was making it happen and I could stop and start it at will.
If anything, the poor man looked rather disappointed, as if his prized freak exhibit was now not so much of an anomaly after all.