Seeing Other People (38 page)

They were indistinct at first. It was impossible to tell one from another let alone pick out individual words – but then I heard Penny’s voice. I could hear it as clearly as though she was whispering in my ear. She was saying: ‘Joe, please, Joe, please wake up,’ in a voice so desperate and heart-broken that I could only conclude she thought I had gone for good.

It was hard to know what to do with this new information. On the one hand I was glad to have been saved from the pain of the injuries the fall had no doubt inflicted on me but on the other it seemed odder by the moment that I should be conscious at all. While mulling over this new conundrum, slowly, very slowly, the other voices I’d heard behind Penny’s became more distinct. Now I could hear them as clearly as if I was in the same room as them. ‘Look, his eyes are moving,’ one of them said. ‘I just saw a flicker,’ said another. ‘Call a nurse,’ urged yet another and gradually I worked out that they were talking about me.

Was I alive?

Had I been given a second chance?

Penny’s voice again: ‘Joe, please, Joe, come back to me.’ How long had I waited to hear those words? How long had I dreamed of the moment when she might feel like this about me again? I had to see her. I had to. With all the strength I could muster I tried to open my eyes but it felt as though they were weighted down with lead. I tried again and this time they opened just a fraction. Light. There was light. But where was I? The light was so blinding it was impossible to tell. I struggled on, eyelids parting a fraction at a time, as all the while my irises – sluggish and lazy after their enforced respite – adjusted and focused to reveal more. Gradually the light became less intense, my vision clearer. I could make out a blurred form, a form which after some moments took on the shape and definition of a face, one whose features steadily arranged themselves into those of the only person I wanted to see: Penny.

‘It’s you,’ I said and I couldn’t help but smile. ‘You came back to me. I thought you were gone for good.’

‘I didn’t go anywhere,’ she said. ‘I’ve been right here all the time. How do you feel?’

It was a good question. I didn’t feel much of anything at all. No pain from the fall. I felt groggy but that was about it.

‘You’re really here aren’t you?’ I said, my voice slurring slightly.

‘I am,’ said Penny. ‘Yes, I am. You don’t need to worry about me. Do you know where you are?’

I looked around the room. A window. No decoration on the white wall. I wasn’t at home.

I looked at Penny and smiled. ‘I’m not dead am I?’

‘You’re in hospital, sweetheart,’ she said gently. ‘The A&E department of the Royal London Hospital. You were mugged in Cambridge Heath. The doctor thinks you were knocked out by a blow to the back of the head. Do you remember anything at all?’

How best to explain? What could I say? That I remembered being mugged but was actually more concerned about the year that followed it and how she had ended up divorcing me?

‘It’s all a bit of a blur,’ I said eventually. ‘How did I get here? Did someone find me?’

‘The guys from the shoot,’ said Penny. ‘They found you and called an ambulance.’

‘You mean Van, Paul and Stewart? They’re good guys you know. The absolute best. I never would have kept it together if it hadn’t been for them.’

‘I know,’ said Penny. ‘They acted really swiftly and called an ambulance straight away.’

This wasn’t what I meant at all. The Divorced Dads’ Club were my friends, they’d been there for me when I’d needed help most, surely I couldn’t have imagined everything we’d been through – the nights out to the pub, their help fixing up my house, the camping holiday to Suffolk. ‘I’ve known them . . . I mean, I feel like I’ve known them forever, Pen. Are they here?’

Penny gestured out of sight and then Van appeared in my line of vision.

‘Van mate, how are you?’

‘Er . . . I’m fine thanks. More’s the point, dude, how are you?’

‘I’m OK.’ I pointed to his head. ‘And your hair’s back. Or is that another one of your wigs?’

‘My hair hasn’t gone anywhere,’ said Van, confused. ‘It’s always been like this. Are you really OK, mate?’

‘Sorry, my mistake,’ I replied, feeling like every single one of the circuits inside my head was crossed.

‘No worries,’ said Van. ‘When we found you lying there, we thought you were a goner for sure. Didn’t we guys?’

Van turned to look to his left. The sound of footsteps across the linoleum flooring then Paul’s face loomed into view followed by Stewart’s.

‘We’re just glad you’re all right,’ said Paul.

‘Definitely,’ added Stewart. ‘The shoot was such a laugh. I’m just sorry it ended like this.’

‘We all got on so well that we decided to grab a beer after the shoot,’ continued Van. ‘We were on the way to the pub near the studio when we found you.’

I looked over at Penny. ‘How long have I been here?’

‘About three hours.’

‘What time is it now?’

Penny checked her watch. ‘Just coming up to midnight.’

‘That can’t be right,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t even midday when I left mine.’

‘Left your what?’

‘My house.’

‘Don’t you mean our house? You live with me and the kids, Joe.’

‘But I remember you leaving,’ I replied. ‘You, and the kids, you left. I thought you were never going to come back.’

Tears formed in the corners of Penny’s eyes but she quickly blinked them away. ‘The doctors said this might happen, sweetheart,’ said Penny. ‘It’s just the painkillers, they’re making you groggy.’ She kissed my cheek and I breathed in the wonderful scent of her. ‘You don’t have to worry,’ she continued. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’

I felt momentarily soothed even though very little seemed to be making any kind of sense right now. ‘It will won’t it?’ I replied.

‘Of course.’

I started to close my eyes. Being conscious even for such a small amount of time seemed draining, but I reopened them as I thought about the kids.

‘What about the kids?’

‘They’re fine, they’re with Mum and Tony. They don’t know what’s happened yet and I didn’t know how to tell them.’

‘They don’t need to know, do they?’ I replied.

Penny shook her head. ‘No, they don’t.’

‘They’re good kids, aren’t they?’

Penny nodded. ‘The best.’

‘And we love them, don’t we?’

‘Yes,’ said Penny patiently, ‘more than anything.’

I tried to squeeze her hand again. ‘And you love me, don’t you?’

She nodded again and leaned in closer. ‘Yes, I do, babe, I love you with my whole heart.’ She kissed my forehead. ‘Now, you just close your eyes and rest. Don’t worry about a thing.’

I didn’t manage to get much in the way of sleep because just as I began to doze off the nurse arrived with a doctor in tow and the room was cleared of all visitors including Penny while various checks were made.

‘How are you feeling?’ asked the doctor, a plumpish, middle-aged man with a beard. ‘You gave your wife quite a scare for a while earlier this evening.’

‘I feel OK,’ I replied. ‘A bit groggy though.’

‘That’s to be expected. The CAT scans we took earlier came back normal but we like to keep an eye on things when they involve head injuries. How would you say your vision is?’

‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘A bit blurry every now and again, but fine.’

The doctor held up his right hand. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

I counted them all, twice, just to be on the safe side.

‘Three?’

‘Good.’

He held out his hand and asked me to squeeze it as hard as I could. I doubt that I could have crushed a grape.

‘How was that?’ I asked.

‘Not brilliant, but I’m sure it’ll improve with time. ‘Now I need you to follow my finger with your eyes without moving your head.’

I did as requested as he moved his finger from side to side and then up and down in the air. ‘That’s excellent,’ he said. ‘You can rest now. I’m done bothering you for the time being.’

‘So does that mean I can go home?’

The doctor smiled. ‘No, it means we’re not worried about there being any lasting damage. You’ve had quite a nasty blow, Mr Clarke. If your assailant had hit you any harder we’d be looking at a completely different scenario but as it is, thankfully the worst you’ll have in the morning is a very sore head. We’ve had to put in a few stitches to close the wound which will leave a permanent scar, I’m afraid. As I’ve already said we’ve scanned you and while there is a small amount of swelling it’s nothing to be too worried about but I think it’s sensible that you remain under observation for the night at least. How does that sound?’

It didn’t sound great. I just wanted to be with Penny and the kids.

‘Are you sure there’s no way I can go home?’

‘Not tonight I’m afraid but we’ll definitely talk tomorrow and if everything’s looking shipshape you could be discharged by teatime.’ He picked up the chart from the end of my bed. ‘In the meantime try and get as must rest as you can.’ He walked towards the door.

‘Doctor, can I ask you a question?’

‘By all means.’

‘It’s a bit of a weird one . . . I was just wondering, is it normal for people knocked unconscious to suffer from hallucinations?’

‘Hallucinations?’

‘Or maybe really vivid dreams? I mean
really
vivid, with full-on HD detailing, smells, sensations, the lot.’

The doctor came and stood at the side of the bed.

‘Is that what you’re having now?’

‘No,’ I replied hurriedly, not wanting to give him a reason to keep me here any longer. ‘It’s just, while I was unconscious I . . . I mean, I keep remembering things that happened and they feel real, as real as you and I talking right now.’

‘It’s actually an incredibly interesting field,’ replied the doctor. ‘In fact only a few weeks ago I was reading a study by some researchers in Belgium who discovered that patients in a minimally conscious state showed sleep patterns very similar to those of a normal healthy subject and also the non-rapid eye movement of slow wave sleep as well as the rapid eye movement of regular sleep.’

I looked at him blankly.

‘It means that while not exactly conclusive there’s every chance that those patients were dreaming.’

There was a knock at the door and Penny came in. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. The nurse told me you were done. I’ll come back later.’

‘No, that’s fine,’ said the doctor. ‘Your husband and I were just finishing up. I suppose what I’m saying, Mr Clarke, is that given we’re still learning so much about the inner workings of the human brain, anything is possible.’

39

Despite assurances that I’d be allowed home the next day it was in fact three days before the doctor finally gave me permission to leave hospital. During this time I received numerous visits from work colleagues including Camilla and even Carl and his assistant who were mortified that they’d been in the pub getting hammered while I’d been lying unconscious less than two hundred metres away. Grateful as I was for their visits, their presence at my bedside only served to remind me that at some point I would have to go back to work, and while work itself wasn’t a problem, the fact that Bella was still interning at the paper was a very big problem indeed.

I’d been doing a great deal of thinking about Bella over the past few days, most of which had left me feeling like I’d had my insides sucked out. If, as the doctor had suggested, it was possible to have dreams so real that a year could happen in the space of a few hours then the only conclusion I could come to was that nothing I thought had happened to me from the moment I was mugged through to the moment Fiona pushed me off the edge of the car-park roof had actually occurred. It was all just a dream, the extended Technicolor vision of a troubled mind, and something that I would find extremely difficult to explain to anyone else. But while this news meant that there was a great deal to be happy about – my marriage being intact and my kids still living at home with me being chief amongst them – it also meant that the last contact I’d had with Bella was when I’d agreed by text to meet her in Soho.

I felt sick at the thought of it. If I hadn’t been mugged, there was every chance I would have jumped in a cab and met up with this woman. To what end? At the time I’d managed to convince myself that there was nothing in it. I was simply going for a drink. But in the harsh light of day and several hours spent thinking while lying in a hospital bed, not even I bought the idea that our meeting might have remained innocent. I wasn’t at all certain now that my resolution to have ‘just the one drink’ wouldn’t have melted instantaneously in the company of that face, those lips and that body. Add into the mix a handful of those ‘Oh, you’re so talented,’-type comments she’d doled out over coffee on the day I met her and I strongly suspect I’d have had trouble recalling my own name, let alone the fact that I was a married man.

So where did that leave me now? On the one hand I was a man who definitely, one hundred per cent hadn’t cheated on his wife, which was clearly a good thing. On the other there had been a time when I had seriously considered it, which obviously wasn’t quite so great. Would I have gone through with it had I not been mugged? As much as I had been drunk that night and as low in spirits as I’d felt, I wanted to believe that I still had a conscience but even if I had managed to stay strong that night who was to say I wouldn’t have succumbed to temptation on some other occasion?