The Girls Beneath. Ross Armstrong

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СКАЧАТЬ Warm. My thoughts run slowly like traffic jammed cars. His face comes into view.

      I’m cold. I guess I should do something. Say something maybe. Missed it. The chance has come and gone.

      We sit in silence for a while. Everything has changed.

      ‘Cold,’ I say, trying to get things moving, in my head.

      ‘Oh yes. It is a little chilly.’ He turns and nods to someone. He smiles. I lift my head to see who he’s looking at, but by the time I do they’re gone.

      Where am I? A hospital. I guess.

      ‘How’s it all feeling?’ says the man.

      ‘Unsure,’ I say.

      ‘You’re unsure how you feel? Or you feel unsure?’

      ‘The second one.’

      ‘That’s understandable. Any pain?’

      ‘A little in the head.’

      ‘Also understandable, that’s just swelling in the cranium.’

      ‘What’s the… chrysanthemum?’

      ‘It’s a flower that blooms in Autumn, but that’s not important right now. Your mental lexicon is still recovering, which I’d expect. Say after me, cranium.’

      ‘Cramiun.’

      ‘Good. Your skull. Your head. We had to get in there a little.’

      ‘In there?’

      ‘Yes, we had to remove the bone flap. But we replaced it. Everything went reasonably well.’

      ‘Re… Re… Re… Re… Reasonably?’

      ‘Well… your sort of accident isn’t the sort of thing one always recovers from. But things are looking up.’

      I’m putting it all together again. The bus. The shattered glass. The man running towards me. A man I know?

      … Doreen? … Liam … Loreen?

      ‘I assume you haven’t been told what’s happened to you then?’

      I assume I haven’t as well.

      I drifted in and out. Of the light and the grey. I don’t know what was a dream and what was… whatever this is. I’ve seen many faces hover over me. I remember being moved, I think. One second I would be one place. The next, the ceiling would tell me something else.

      I realise I have no concept of how long I’ve been here. It could be weeks. Months. Longer.

      ‘How long?’ I say.

      ‘How long what?’

      I struggle with the structure of the question. I feel my eyes rolling around in my head. With each tiny movement, there’s a crack of pain somewhere deep inside my thinking organ.

      My eyes begin to water as I strain to process the question, to hold onto my thoughts. I make some sounds from deep within me. I breathe deep, trying to speak, but I can’t. Instead. I cry.

      My nose runs. Hot tears roll down my cheeks. Big old-fashioned sobs, despite myself. I don’t feel like crying. And yet, I am crying. Every breath shudders with effort between my lungs and my mouth. I feel like a puppet controlled by an inebriate puppeteer.

      My hands scramble around for a tissue. There is one next to me but it takes me an age to drag it out from its cell.

      He waits, watching. Patient.

      ‘Tom? You asked me… how long?’

      ‘How long… from then… till now?’

      ‘Today is Sunday, you sustained the injury on Friday.’

      It seems impossible. If he’d said I’d been here a year, or two, I’d have believed him. My muscles feel brown and dappled. I grapple with the controls like a madman, a blind pilot. I must be older. Two days? They have to be lying. But to what end?

      It’s then that I notice there is someone else in the room, to my left. My neck turns so my head can look at him. He looks back. His face is difficult to read. He looks apprehensive. I look away and he does the same. Then I look back at him and he looks me in the eye. He says nothing. Just analyses me. He must be some underling. He’s younger than the other man. Although I couldn’t say how old the man in front of me is. My brain isn’t giving me all the answers I need yet. His voice interrupts us as I go to look at the silent man for a third time.

      ‘Yes, it may seem longer. That can happen. Would you say it seems longer?’

      ‘Yes. Yes.’

      ‘That’s interesting.’

      He writes that down. Out of my periphery I analyse the silent man. He faces the doctor, too, not moving a muscle.

      ‘Do you know what happened to you, Tom?’

      The question lingers in the air…

      The bus. The shattered glass. The blood. The shouts. People with their phones out. I crawl across the road. I feel sick. No pain. But I feel faint. I hear a song from a nearby car radio. The man runs towards me.

      ‘I… I… had… a stroke?’

      ‘Hmm. Interesting.’

      He writes that down. Then scratches his nose. He turns as a nurse comes into the room and hands me a glass of water and a pill.

      I take it off her. Steadily. I look at my hand and try to will it to do my bidding. I put the pill in my mouth and force the water down the dry passage of my throat. I stare back at my hand and order it to give the nurse back the glass. When I turn back to the doctor he is checking his watch. His eyes meet mine and he smiles, sunnily, full beam.

      ‘Now, how long would you say that took? That little sequence of taking your pill and drinking your water.’

      Is this a trick question? What is their game?

      ‘Ten… twenty… ten… seconds?’

      He glances to the nurse.

      ‘That took six and half minutes. But don’t worry. I’m confident things will get easier.’

      He comes a bit closer now. The man next to me does, too. It’s become intimate.

      ‘Tom. You were shot. In your head. Do you understand?’

      I want to laugh. So I do. Ha ha ha ha ha.

      There’s no gap between think and do. Ha ha ha ha ha.

      The tears roll down my face again. The others stay stock still. As I laugh and cry. I don’t know why I do either of these things. My feelings fire off in all directions like stray sparks. I laugh, СКАЧАТЬ