Try Not to Breathe (16 page)

A
my was absolutely still now, her eyes and mouth giving nothing away. Alex was still frozen next to the clunky bed, mouth agape. Besides her heartbeat thumping in her temples, the only sound was from barely-there radio reception crackling out from the abandoned desk. Three nurses and an orderly were standing at the open curtain staring at her while in the background a middle-aged female visitor lurked, trying to look casual while straining to see what was happening.

For a moment, no one spoke. Then the orderly with the ponytail stomped away, prompting the visitor to shuffle back to her shrine.

The remaining nurses stood in height order, with dumpy Nurse Radson at the front. The other two turned to each other, muttering and commenting behind cupped hands.

“What on earth was that about?” Nurse Radson hissed, her face just a few centimeters from Alex’s collarbone.

“I’m so sorry. She was…I think she was communicating with me.”

“You what?” the tallest nurse asked, half laughing while Nurse Radson, for once, looked at Alex sympathetically.

“She, I…I’m sorry.” And with that, Alex grabbed her bag and her notepad and walked briskly out of the cubicle, out of the double doors and down the corridor.

It had all gone wrong. It had all gone horribly wrong.

Alex had behaved like a total ass, probably blowing her chances of being allowed back. Just as she was getting somewhere, she had completely embarrassed herself.

Alex rushed to the lifts, both of which had their lights parked at the top floor of the building. Keen to just keep moving until she was out of the building, Alex walked back to the stairwell and started down, careful not to slip on her flip-flops and break a toe.

The highly polished stairs were a sort of faux marble that dated this wing of the hospital firmly in the 1980s. The flecks reminded her of a suit belonging to a short-lived boyfriend of her mum, back when Alex was too small to wonder why she was calling an almost-stranger “Uncle Stephen.”

The steps felt freshly clean. Her adrenaline was seeping away, leaving the odd swoosh of hot flush and sweat licking Alex’s temples.

She could feel that dry rot creeping up the back of her throat. That desire to drown, stronger than it had been in months. The need to flood herself and to spend the afternoon with a thick inkblot over all her thoughts.

Alex needed a drink, and she needed it as soon as possible. She had to get home fast or she wouldn’t make it, and pulling her car into a pub car park and spending the afternoon raw, wasted and vulnerable was not a situation into which she wanted to return.

Her quickening footsteps slid to a stop almost immediately, as a piercing cry shot up from the stairs below her.

Alex’s first thought was
mental patient.
At one of the last outpatient appointments with her mother, they had encountered a “wandering resident” from the nearby community health ward. The confused man had been scratching at his face and muttering impenetrably. Her mum, dancing close to the rim herself, had shrieked loudly and yelled about gypsies stealing the radiators. The man in turn had started screaming. Alex had stood frozen until nurses came running.

This scream had been incredibly loud and incredibly brief. Spooked, Alex raced back up the stairs to the floor above, crashed through more double doors, skirmished through a reception area and out into another windowless corridor.

Heart thumping and feeling under siege, she skittered around oblivious outpatients, visitors and whistling orderlies until she came across another pair of lifts. She had to get home.

One set of lift doors was open, the big gray box inside empty. Alex ran in, jammed the buttons until the door closed and sank to her knees. As the lift started to move Alex gathered herself up, took a deep breath and pressed the G button.

A few people got in and out along the way, all of them ignoring the skinny woman at the back smiling nonchalantly while gripping her handbag with white knuckles.

Alex knew she was just reacting to the panic of the moment but all she cared about right now was getting out. Getting out and getting a drink. Fuck the routine.

As the lift doors opened to a secondary foyer at the back of the ground floor, Alex stepped out as lightly as she could and looked around for the exit.

Taking the visitor badge from around her neck and slipping it into her bag, she pushed through a fire escape and ignored all the signs to the car park.

Stepping onto the pavement and away from the hospital grounds was wrong. She knew that, but right now that wasn’t important. Softening the edges, stamping down on the panic, that was what she needed to do. Many years ago she could have had one brandy for shock, then a cab home. Not anymore.

Alex knew full well that the second she chose to roam around the streets, looking for the nearest pub without discrimination, she would be sunk knee-deep into a bender within the hour.

The Elephant’s Head was what her mother used to call “an estate pub.” It wasn’t actually on an estate, but it serviced a nearby block of council flats, a garage, a tire place, a builder’s merchant and, of course, exhausted hospital staff.

The floor inside was a sticky red carpet, with pre-ban cigarette burns and blackened chewing gum in abstract shapes.

The flock wallpaper helped make the optimistically named “lounge” even more suffocating and the dark wood chairs looked as inviting as a fist in the face.

Alex had ordered a double brandy as soon as she’d got to the bar. Throwing it back medicinally, she’d followed up immediately with whiskey and Diet Coke in a glass bottle, no ice.

Tipping just a thumb’s measure of Diet Coke into the cheap bourbon, she’d sunk three in quick succession, still standing at the bar.

She’d run out of cash and knew she was walking a tightrope but there was no way back now, she had to keep going and pray she didn’t fall to her death.

Trying to keep her voice level, she asked the indifferent, middle-aged landlord, “Can I put my card behind the bar? I’ll be staying a while.”

He smiled for the first time, and gestured to a more comfortable-looking chair just around the corner from an “out of order” jukebox. A familiar figure appeared in the doorway, caught her eye and waved.

Alex woke up with a start. A thick, sticky night still hung outside. She was lying on her bed with her vest and bra on, no knickers or jeans. One flip-flop sat next to her.

The room was spinning, and it took Alex five minutes of seasick crawling to find her phone. She’d almost given up, assuming she’d lost another one, when her groping thumb felt the cool of its touch screen. She pressed the round indent and the time flashed up: 4:31 a.m.

She could feel that telltale raw feeling. She wasn’t sore so much as
aware
. Her heart sank. Why did bloody Peter Haynes have to show up then? Why then?

She was coated with sweat and her heart thumped sporadically, unevenly. Eventually she found a window in the vertigo to make her way to the bathroom. She knew as soon as she sat down, the contents of her tumbling into the bowl, that she’d had unprotected sex.

A fucking doctor should have known better,
thought Alex.

Back to a pharmacist for the morning-after pill. Sober Alex would need to clean up Drunk Alex’s mess. Again.

But for now, she needed to do whatever it took to get back to sleep then wake up in the morning and not drink. Hair of the dog was a dangerous thing, the doorstep to forty-eight hours of oblivion and weeks of mess. She threw up several bowlfuls of acrid bile before swaying her wobbly way downstairs to follow the well-worn procedure of painkillers and a half pint of Berocca.

She’d done what she could for her morning self, now she just needed to sleep and feel relieved that at least she hadn’t choked on her own vomit.

Alex woke again at 6:41 a.m., eyes stinging, head humming and stomach eating itself. A brief memory bubbled up of being carried through her front door, laughing wildly. Another of the doctor’s red face above hers, sweating with concentration. Her laughing that maniac laugh and grabbing his awful, awful haircut. When had he left?

She barely had a second to wonder before running to the loo to throw up gallons of Berocca.

Considering everything, she could have felt worse. Perhaps she’d gone so far around the hangover wheel that she’d made it back to “feeling all right.” Perhaps she was still drunk.

She eased into her loosest-fitting pajama bottoms and slowly felt her way downstairs to put the kettle on. No running today. She’d had the wherewithal to plug her phone in when she’d woken at four-something. Now to perform the stomach-churning checks.

No emails sent.

No text messages sent.

She moved to her laptop. Internet banking, deep breath. Balance of bank account about £200 lighter, not great but it could have been a lot worse.

The kettle eventually reached its climax, spluttering noisily. At first more water splashed along the glossy sideboard than in the mug but eventually a cup of strong, sweet builder’s tea was ready. Coffee would be too punishing today. As she turned to put the teaspoon in the sink, Alex spotted two shot glasses on the side and realized they’d sunk the last of her emergency cistern whiskey.

The sun was smug and full, blasting orange light into every corner of the room. Most people would be leaving for work soon, and the showers up and down her road would be pumping away for the next hour. In moments like this, it was painfully clear that she could never handle an office job. Freelancing suited her lifestyle, however corrosive that may be.

Her handbag was on the arm of the sofa, purse and notepad intact. No cash, but at least all the cards were still there.

Opening her notepad, she slumped into the well-worn dip of the once-luxe cream corner sofa. Hugging her knees and sleepily reaching for the mohair throw, she started to flick through the notes.

Another wave of nausea crashed over her and she squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t getting better, she’d just mistaken survival for progress. It didn’t matter how many times Alex had convinced herself she could get well, it wasn’t actually happening. She was treading water. Or maybe wine.

“Hello, Mount Pleasant Medical Center?”

“Hello, I’d like to make an appointment to see my GP.”

“Name, please?”

“Alexandra Dale.”

“Axminster Road?”

“That’s right.”

“May I ask what the appointment’s for?”

“I had some tests taken a while ago and I think I need to do something about them.”

I
don’t know what to do. I can hear my mum sobbing but what she’s saying doesn’t make a lot of sense. She’s not a big drinker, but every Christmas she necks Babycham all day and me and Bob take the mickey out of her because she laughs at the stupidest stuff and talks nonsense. She sounds a bit like that now, but with the opposite of laughter.

“I should have got you a cat,” she’s saying. “All your life you wanted a little kitten but I always said no. Every time no. Just no, no, no. Not for any good reason, Ames, just because I didn’t want to have to look after it. I thought you’d get bored with the hassle and I’d be lumbered. And now I wish I had your cat to look after, my love. I wish I had something that you cared about, something special, so I could look after that at least.”

I don’t know what to say. I never know what to say if she’s upset. I get so choked up, and it’s like making her happy again matters so much that it freezes me to the spot. I want to make everything better so much that I can’t move.

“Oh this is pointless,” my mum says so quietly I can barely hear it.

I know she’s angry now. Unlike most mums, when she gets angry she gets quieter and quieter until I have to lean into her breath to catch what she’s saying.

“This is all completely pointless,” she says again. “It’s just pointless.”

She sobs louder than she talks and I hear the chair hiss as she moves on it. But I have no answer for her and I don’t know what I’ve done so I don’t know how to make it better. The one person I never want to upset, hate to upset. I’ll walk the other way round the earth just to avoid crossing that line in front of us. But somehow, without realizing it, I’ve done it anyway.

Does she know I lied? Does she know that I let those phone calls turn into meetings and hearing his side of the story? Even though it was short-lived, it still wasn’t right. I told her it had stopped before it got that far, that I’d listened when Bob put his foot down. I should have been honest, I should have listened to them.

She says she has to go and I call out to her, “Mum! Mum!” ’cos I can’t play it cool with her, not my mum. But her footsteps don’t stop, not even for a second, and I’m crying, “Mum! Mum!” as loud as I can, and thinking,
Shit, what the hell have I done wrong? I don’t remember anything. I’m so sorry, Mum.