Then and Always (11 page)

As I waited for the nurse to return with a clean gown, I
felt happier to have found a workable solution to the mystery. Very probably, when away from the confines of the hospital, he would confess it all, when it was safe to betray his secret without others hearing. And as for secrets, I had been hiding a pretty big one of my own from him too: the recurring headaches. I just hoped I would be able to find the time to speak to the doctor in private about the symptoms that had precipitated my collapse by the church.

As she took my arm to help me back to my room, the nurse supplied another surprising piece of information.

“I’d better warn you that you have a police officer waiting in your room to talk to you now that you’re awake.”

I stopped mid-step and turned to the young nurse in consternation.

“A policeman? Why? Whatever for?”

She gave me a curious look.

“Well, they obviously need to get all the details about what happened by the church the other night.”

I looked back at her dumbly.
What happened by the church?
Were the police really so light on crime in this area that they had sent someone to question me about trespassing in the churchyard late at night? Was that really even a crime at all? It wasn’t as though I’d been vandalizing the graves. Surely I wasn’t going to be charged with some petty misdemeanor? How much weirder was this day going to get?

In my wildest of dreams, I could never have guessed.

The policeman was seated half out of sight behind the door of my room. Dad had clearly been talking about me, judging by the way he shut up like a clam as soon as I appeared at the threshold. In my peripheral vision I took in a dark uniform as the policeman rose to his feet.

“Rachel, hon, the police need some information from
you, but don’t look worried … look who they sent.” He sounded as triumphant as a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, and I turned for the first time to look at the officer.

The room swayed; I knew my face must have drained of all color. I reached out blindly for the doorframe, knowing it wasn’t going to be any use. As I crumpled to the floor, in a swoon worthy of any Victorian gentlewoman, I had time to say just one word:

“Jimmy!”

THE GOOD THING
about fainting in a hospital is that they know what to do with you right away. It was only a moment or two before I once again became aware of where I was. Seated on the chair that my father had occupied the night before, with my head stuck securely between my knees, I could feel the comforting hand of the nurse holding a cold compress against the back of my neck. I struggled to sit up.

“Don’t go rushing to get up yet, Rachel. Take a moment or two.” Then, presumably directing the next comment to my dad, “She may have been under the hot shower a wee bit too long, she’ll be fine in a moment.” I very much doubted that. I strained against her hand and sat up.

I didn’t scream or shout out or even faint again, I just stared, totally transfixed, at the face that had been missing from my life for five dreadful years. He smiled but something in my scrutiny caused it to waver and the greeting was rearranged into a look of deep concern.

“Rachel?” His voice was hesitant.

I asked the only question that came into my mind.

“Am I in heaven?”

“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody call an NHS
hospital that before!” The nurse clearly found this quite amusing.

I ignored her.

“Is this heaven? Are we all dead?” That shut the nurse up. I saw the look my dad flashed to Jimmy.
See?
it said, as plainly as if he had spoken the words out loud.
I told you she was acting strangely
.

The nurse had regained enough composure to switch back into her briskly professional role.

“Come along, back to bed now, Rachel. I think you need to have a little lie-down.” She was definitely annoying me now. Disregarding her once more, I directed my question only at Jimmy.

“Did I die in the churchyard beside the grave?”

I guess his policeman’s training was the reason he answered such a bizarre question so calmly.

“No, Rachel, you did not die in the churchyard. And beside whose grave?”

My next answer, not surprisingly, took the polish off his professional demeanor.

“Yours, of course.”

I don’t know who pushed the emergency button this time. It could have been any one of the three of them. Hell, it could even have been me. I think we all needed some medical intervention at that point.

A young doctor I hadn’t seen before came speedily into the room. There was a rapid flurry of conversation. I caught the words “delusional” and “sedative” and “tests.” They all meant nothing. I could only stare at Jimmy as they laid me back on the bed, swabbed briefly at my arm, and slid the hypodermic into my vein.

It was a much milder sedative than the day before. I guess
they couldn’t risk pumping someone with a head injury with too much sedation. Although my limbs were relaxed as though I were floating on a buoyant bed of feathers, my brain was still working. My eyes had closed, but I was still awake. It was a pleasantly drunk feeling, without the room-spinning element.

“Did she
really
mean that? Did she actually think I was dead?”

“I don’t know, son, who knows.” My father’s voice sounded broken, “She thought
I
was dying of cancer.”

There was a long silence.

“She must have hit her head harder than anyone realized. She’s not going to be answering any questions today. Nothing she tells you right now will help you catch the bastard who mugged her.”

“I realize that.”

“You probably don’t need to be hanging around here. That doctor was ordering up a whole load more tests. I can call you when she’s more … with it.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I WAS WHEELED
from department to department. I had an MRI, two further X-rays, and several other tests with electrodes affixed to my head. By then I was awake and alert enough to be asking questions. But no one was talking to me, except in soft placating tones designed not to evoke another one of my “episodes.” When I was finally taken back to my room, it was empty. The staff nurse who helped me back into bed advised me that my dad and all the rest of my guests had moved down to the canteen for a cup of tea. When I asked who the “all” referred to, she replied that she did not know.

So I sat bolt upright in bed, staring at the door, waiting to see how many more deceased visitors I would be receiving.

They entered in single file: my dad, then Jimmy, followed by Matt, Cathy, and Phil. I stared at them in turn as they arrived. I was still looking a little surprised to see the last three when Matt broke away from the others, rushed to my bedside, and kissed me tenderly on the lips. I flinched from the brush of his soft mouth upon mine, instantly looking over his shoulder to see how Cathy would react. Amazingly, her face gave away none of the rage she must surely have been feeling.

“Matt.” My eyes flashed a warning toward his girlfriend. I could suddenly remember the vow he had made when dropping me back at the hotel: that he was not going to let me get away again. Did he really think this was the appropriate place to start that campaign?

Besides, I couldn’t concentrate on anyone other than the person standing at the foot of my bed. At some point during the day, I guessed, he must have gone off duty, for he was now out of uniform, wearing jeans and a dark shirt. But the most amazing thing of all was that no one else in the room seemed in the least bit amazed that he was there. It was like that old saying about ignoring the elephant in the room. This was so enormous, so ludicrously and mind-blowingly surreal—why wasn’t everyone reacting like me?

And then the answer came to me. How could it have taken so long for me to get it? Especially when I’d seen
The Sixth Sense
so many times I knew parts of it by heart.

“Can anyone else see Jimmy in the room?”

I can’t begin to describe the pity on their faces as they all exchanged extremely meaningful looks. My dad answered for them all.

“Of course we can, love.”

“No, Dad, don’t humor me. Just be honest. I can see Jimmy’s ghost right there at the foot of my bed. Now, can anyone else see him or not?”

Dad’s pain was obvious as he tried to formulate an answer, but before he could reply, the incredibly solid-looking “ghost” of Jimmy came up to sit on the bed beside me, gently picking up my hand. I felt the mattress depress when he sat down, felt too the warmth of his fingers against my grazed skin; the ghost theory was losing ground fast.

“Rachel, just listen to me for a moment without speaking, would you?” I opened my mouth to protest but he gently pressed his forefinger across my lips. “No interruptions, right?”

God, if he
was
a ghost, he was a bloody bossy one. And that finger against my mouth had felt so strong … so real.

“You’ve taken a nasty blow to your head.” He carried on as though I was going to contradict him. “You’d traveled back here for Sarah’s wedding.”

At last, something I could agree with. “Yes, I
know
that.” There was a communal sigh of relief that I had grasped at least that one truth.

“Now, something happened, we think you were probably mugged, after leaving the station. And we think that somehow, when you were attacked, you must have hurt your head. And all these … strange … thoughts and ideas you are having right now are because of your injury.”

He might as well have saved his breath.

“Then this must all be a dream,” I announced, seizing upon the only other solution that made sense. Someone, I don’t know who, gave a loud sigh of despair. I ignored them. “This is all just a very real and very vivid dream, but it’s all in my subconscious. Any minute now I’m going to wake up.”

There was a long silence, which no one seemed to have
the words to fill. It was as though my absolute determination to stick to my own beliefs had sucked all protests clean out of the room.

Silently, Matt came up to the other side of the bed and rested his hand lightly against the back of my neck. Something flickered in Jimmy’s eyes as he immediately let go of my hand and got up from the bed. This dream was
really
peculiar; it was like going back to when we were teenagers all over again. The awkward moment was interrupted by a softly ringing bell from the nurses’ station.

“I think that’s the end of visiting,” my father announced with relief. “Perhaps you should all go now, I think Rachel could do with her rest.”

Actually, I was feeling much calmer now I’d finally worked out that none of this was really happening at all.

“Look, why don’t you go home and rest too, Tony,” offered Matt, unexpectedly. “You look really exhausted. I’ll stay with Rachel.”

Dad looked reluctant, but Dream Matt was insistent. “Go on, you go and get a few hours’ sleep.”

But my dad still appeared unwilling to go.

“I don’t know, I think I should stay. I’d feel wrong going home and leaving her.” Adding in final justification, “She’s my daughter; she needs me here.”

Matt’s response was firm.

“I understand that but you’re not much use to her if you’re dead on your feet. Go home. I’ll take good care of her, Tony. I know she’s your only daughter, but you’re not the only one who wants to look after her; after all, she is
also
my only fiancée.”

I jolted with surprise and instinctively looked over at Cathy, who was picking up her coat and handbag and getting
ready to go. Matt’s words didn’t seem to have affected her at all.

“Although right now she’s a fiancée without a ring,” observed Jimmy in an unfathomable tone.

I stupidly looked down at my left hand as if to seek confirmation. There was obviously no jewelry upon it, although as I looked more closely I could see the faint white mark where a ring had been. Also strangely, the knuckle appeared reddened and swollen, something I’d not noticed before among the others cuts and bruises. It looked as though whatever had been on my finger had been pulled off quite roughly.

I looked up, my face registering a sort of dazed surprise, and interrupted a very dark exchange of looks between Matt and Jimmy as they stood facing each other on either side of my bed. The thin veil of friendship between them looked stretched to the point of rupturing.

“Ring or no ring, she’s still my fiancée, mate.”

Ooh … this dream was getting more interesting every minute.

Sometime over the next twenty-four hours, it all stopped being quite so funny.

When does a dream become a nightmare? I’d always thought it was when the familiar suddenly becomes strange and threatening; or when you get lost somewhere you thought you knew well; or even when you feel overwhelmed by a feeling of impotence—when you know you’re speaking clearly but no one appears to be listening. And it’s true, a nightmare is all of those things. But
my
true nightmare began with the realization that I wasn’t waking up: that somehow, impossibly and unbelievably, this was all
really happening
.

This realization didn’t come all at once but slowly pricked away at my conscious mind with a questioning voice that refused to be quiet. The first indicators to concern me were the continuing and detailed vividness of the dream. There were no strange shifts in time or place; this dream had continuity and even monotony. What dream could I ever recall
having before that had incorporated the truly mundane details of day-to-day life? In this one I ate the unappetizing hospital meals, I slept (who does that in a dream?), I even visited the bathroom. None of this had any place in a “real” dream.

Of course, when Matt and I had been left alone in my room, after my other visitors had left, I was still happily ensconced in blissful ignorance. I was content to sit back and let events around me unfold like a play. This was just a dream, after all; nothing I did or said had any real consequence.

So I made no protest when Matt drew a chair up close to the bed and entwined his long tanned fingers around mine. I winced slightly as he caught the grazes on my palms, never stopping to think how odd it was to actually experience the sensation of pain in a dream. I let his lips cover mine as he bent to kiss me tenderly, whispering soft and low between kisses how frantically worried he had been about me. And when he eventually pulled back, I could feel my heart fluttering madly against my ribs like a frenzied canary. Well, that wasn’t really a surprise; it had been a long, long time since I’d been kissed like that—either in a dream or wide awake.