In Another Life (21 page)

“Yes, sweetheart, you can tell me,” Carol urged, reaching for the television remote and silencing the movie.

The sudden absence of sound drew Bill’s attention and he entered from the kitchen looking concerned.

“Marie, you need to tell your parents everything,” Sebastian urged. “You need to tell them about Azriel.”

Carol and Bill exchanged a confused look.

“Well, what is it?” Carol urged.

Marie blushed slightly beneath the sudden scrutiny.

“You can tell us anything, sweetheart,” Bill assured her. “We just want to help.”

The three of them looked expectantly at Marie and so, taking a tentative breath she commenced telling them about Azriel.

Once Marie had finished speaking a tense silence settled amongst them all. Carol and Bill Schneider tentatively exchanged worried glances, unsure what to say.

Sebastian had positioned himself upon the arm of the sofa, his body tense and stiff. He gazed at his hands which were resting on his lap with intense interest.

Nervously, Marie awaited her family’s verdict. She had been standing in the living room but her legs were beginning to ache, reminding her how of fragile her mended bones still were. Carefully she walked over to the sofa and sat down. Still no one spoke.

Carol twirled her golden wedding band round and round in a never ending cycle whilst she bit her lip and continued to offer quick glances at her husband.

“Well somebody say something,” Marie eventually prompted, unable to withstand the wall of silence any longer.

Sighing, Carol turned to her husband for instruction on how to proceed. Bill Schneider coughed awkwardly and looked across at his daughter.

To him, she was still the little girl with the pigtails who called him Daddy, the little girl who needed him to mend her doll’s house and teach her how to ride a bike. In his eyes she remained innocent and perfect. He couldn’t accept that she was broken. He couldn’t accept that the accident may have damaged her in ways he couldn’t possibly understand.

“Sweetheart,” he looked affectionately at Marie but sadness tugged at the corner of his mouth, causing it to droop.

“This place you say you went to-”

“Azriel.”

“Azriel, yes,” naming the world clearly made Bill uncomfortable. “This place that you think you went to, where you were their princess, it all sounds wonderful-”

“So wonderful,” Carol interrupted offering a bit too much enthusiasm. “It sounds just beautiful Marie! You’ve always had such a vivid imagination.”

The latter part of her statement caused Marie’s eyes to darken.

“I imagine it seemed very real to you, sweetheart,” Bill continued carefully. “But you have to understand that you never went anywhere. We were there the whole time. You never left the bed. This place, this Azriel, it exists only in your mind. You understand that, don’t you?”

Marie placed her arms across her chest, holding herself together.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” she said so quietly that her words almost went unheard.

Sebastian turned to look at her, his eyes sparkling with unshed tears.

“Marie, I know it feels very real to you,” he began softly. “But you have to understand that it was all just some wonderfully vivid dream. Apparently they are very common when people are in a coma.”

“Then why are people approaching me here, in this world?” Marie demanded tearfully. “Why do people keep telling me that I must return to Azriel, that they need me?”

Carol raised a hand to cover her mouth, her eyes wide. This was a part of the story which hadn’t previously been shared.

“People are approaching you?” Bill asked, his voice stern yet concerned.

“Yes,” Marie nodded. “They come up to me and tell me that Azriel needs me, that I must return there.”

Bill flicked his gaze over to Sebastian who just shook his head sadly.

“I’ve not seen anyone do that.”

“Because you’re not there!” Marie almost screamed at her fiancé. “They only ever approach me when I’m alone.”

“Do you think that’s because you are imaging them, sweetheart?” Carol asked as though she were questioning a child’s insistence that they had seen reindeer fly upon Christmas Eve. It was impossible and therefore only a product of an overly active imagination.

Marie scowled at her mother and hugged herself tighter. Why wouldn’t they believe her? She should have known that they would never understand. They wanted to keep her here, in this mundane world where she was nobody. They didn’t want her to fulfil her destiny of being a princess.

In a surreal contrast to the tense atmosphere of the room Christmas songs merrily played out from the television on the wall and the train continued to orbit the tree which sparkled in the early morning light, oblivious of the emotional vacuum opening up around it.

“I was there,” Marie declared with confidence. “I was there, I know I was. I don’t care what any of you say. I went there and I touched the grass, I tasted the air and I met people. I met Orion and Leo and they were real, dammit. Everything was real.”

“You never left the bed,” Bill told her again. “Every day we watched you and prayed you’d wake up. You didn’t even move.”

“You were surrounded by all these machines, Marie, that were breathing for you. You couldn’t have gone anywhere. It was all just a dream.” Carol produced a bunched up tissue from her cardigan sleeve and began to dab at her eyes.

“It’s likely that you have post-traumatic stress disorder,” Sebastian moved and sat beside Marie, gently placing a consolatory hand upon her knee.

“It’s really common in people who have been through something as traumatic as you have. You start to blur the boundaries of what is real and what isn’t. It’s like your mind’s way of coping with what happened to you.”

Marie locked in on the word disorder. They thought she was crazy. All her talk of Azriel they perceived as some product of her mind’s reaction to the accident. She should never have said anything.

“You all just think I’m mad,” she said bitterly.

“No, no of course not!” Carol immediately responded. “We just think you’re…unwell. And that you need help.”

“Help?” the only thing Marie needed help with was returning to Azriel.

“I’ll speak with Dr Colton and see what he suggests,” Sebastian was speaking to her parents now, speaking over her as though she didn’t even exist anymore, as though she was still bound to the hospital bed, paralysed by her wounds.

“I don’t need help,” Marie declared emphatically, jumping to her feet. “I need to get back to Azriel, to where I belong.”

“Marie, you belong here,” Bill snapped at her. “This is your home. You’re not some princess in an imaginary world.”

Enraged Marie ran from the room, her feet hammering up the staircase with as much speed as her healing limbs could afford her. She entered the pink hole that was her bedroom and slammed the door shut, locking out her family and their narrow minded view of her.

*

“It’s worse than we thought,” Bill sighed in the aftermath of Marie’s exit. She had not fled from his presence like that since she was a teenager. Back then he could forgive the behaviour as teenagers were known for being difficult. Marie got angry if she couldn’t stay out late with her friends or keep seeing the boy down the road who had a motorbike. Those problems were so trivial compared to what was happening now.

“She truly believes that she’s been to that place, that she’s their princess,” Sebastian stated sadly.

“It explains why she’s been so distant,” Bill ran a hand across his lined face. The physical injuries inflicted upon his little girl in the accident were so horrific that his heart struggled to bear it. Now, to discover that it wasn’t just her body that had been damaged but also her mind, it seemed too cruel a fate for a woman so young, so beautiful. It seemed horribly wrong.

“She’s our princess,” Carol whimpered tearfully, the tissue she was holding to her eyes now soaked with her despair. “But that doesn’t seem like it’s enough for her anymore.”

“She just needs help,” Bill said decisively.

“That doctor who has been seeing her, what does he say?” Bill asked his potential son in law.

“I don’t think he knows the extent of her delusional,” Sebastian admitted. “I’d need to call him and see what he suggests. I imagine he’d consider putting her in some sort of institution, at least until she was better.”

Carol let out a sob and hurriedly stood up.

“I’ll go make us all a cup of tea, and take one up to Marie, she’ll be fine, she just needs time,” she fled towards the kitchen, not wanting to hear talk of putting her daughter away.

“She’s imaging people coming up to her,” Bill noted thoughtfully. “That’s pretty extreme. She’s just not herself, you must see that?”

“No, I see it,” Sebastian agreed regrettably. “She’s not been herself since the accident. I keep hoping that my sweet, loving Marie will return to me but each day she grows more distant.”

“Then we do what needs to be done, she has to get better.” Bill folded his arms and tried to keep his head up though it threatened to buckle beneath the weight of being the family’s patriarch and having all decisions rest upon his shoulders.

“I’ll call Dr Colton,” Sebastian was already scrolling through the contact list in his phone.

“She will get better, Bill, the doctor will know what to do.”

“I hope so,” Bill sent a worried glance to the ceiling, to the pink prison above them where Marie had locked herself away.

In the kitchen the kettle screamed as the water came to the boil and Sebastian stepped outside to make the call. Beneath the Christmas tree the motorized train finally came to a standstill, its batteries having run out of energy.

*

Marie sat on her bed with her back against the wall, looking over the small room she had grown up in. Some of her once beloved stuffed toys were collected in a far corner, along with numerous photographs tacked to the walls of happier times. In all of the pictures Marie was beaming in to the camera, hugging girls who had been her friends, kissing boys who had been her lovers. Where were those people now?

Marie’s life seemed much more isolated than the life she had apparently led in her youth. She looked happy and carefree and seemed to be adored by those around her. In those pictures she could pass as a princess. In Azriel people still cared about her like that. They wanted to be near her, to share a dance, a wave, a smile. Their adoration made her feel alive. Without it she felt lost, like a leaf detached from a tree and dancing in the wind, powerless as to where it would eventually land.

There was a quick knock at the bedroom door.

“Go away,” Marie shouted sullenly. The door creaked open despite her protest. Carol came in brandishing a peace offering in the form of a fresh cup of tea.

“Mum, go away,” Marie said through gritted teeth.

“I can’t,” Carol admitted, placing the cup down on the window sill. “I can’t go away because you are my little girl and you need me.”

She placed herself down on the edge of the bed.

“You think I’m crazy, same as everyone else.”

“No, I think you are spirited and creative, you always have been. When most people would have been lost to darkness, you created this rich, sumptuous world to escape in to, and I think there is something wonderful about that.”

“I didn’t create the world, Mum. I went there, it exists.”