Eventually she suggested I go to the ward where I had lived for half a year. I had to ask her where it was. In the end, one of the porters, perhaps taking pity on me, bustled me into a wheelchair and pushed me what seemed like miles through a bland chemical-smelling labyrinth. He helped me out of my chair when we'd reached a far outpost of the hospital. This was Death Alley. This was the place where plugs were pulled. For the first time it occurred to me that I should perhaps be grateful for Tamara's leaving when she did. Otherwise I might not be here now. She could have said the word if the doctors believed there was no way back for me. I'd have been a flatline. A black mark on a chart no longer needed.
I shuffled to the ward, suddenly feeling worse than I had since I emerged from the coma. Was that hospitals, exerting their malign presence, or just fatigue? It had been a long day. I'd done more travelling around today than in many, many months.
Another desk. Another sour-faced woman behind it pushing a pen, filing a document, wishing she was anywhere but here, having to talk to this denuded old-before-his-time wreck of a man who looked as though he should be given a permanent bed in this place.
I was about to ask her I don't know what... I thought this would be easy before I'd realised what 'this' was, and I was fumbling again for the photograph of Tamara when she said, her voice flat, her face somehow even sourer: 'Hello Paul. It's lovely to see you.'
Barbara took me through to the lounge area and made me tea. She'd built up a head of steam now and there was no point in trying to make myself understood. I was now, at least, in the company of someone who had looked in on me while I... slept, probably most days. It was a relief of sorts, though I desperately wanted to find out what had happened to Tamara. I felt closer to some kind of resolution than I had in ages.
She handed me the tea. She was talking about Angela and Catriona and Fay, nurses I did not know, who had brushed my hair and wiped my arse and chatted to me while I withered on the vine. I took the cup. It rattled in its saucer. I cried.
I liked the sour face, I decided. It did not let up. Even when she was trying to bring me round, coax a smile out of me. The tea was hot and sweet and it reminded me that I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. Toast was offered. I gobbled it down. I was
this
close to asking if I could move back in.
'What's the trouble with you?' she asked me. 'Why haven't you been back before now to say thank you for everything we did for you?'
I blew out my cheeks and ummed and ahhed, but she punched my knee. 'I'm kidding with you, you silly badger,' she said. 'I could tell, even when you were lying on that bed, yawning and dribbling away, that you were soft in the head. And a pilot. Why would I want to get on one of those massive planes knowing that they might have soft shites like you up front flying the buggers?'
It worked. I managed a little chuckle and felt better for it. I stared into the remnants of my tea and said, 'I'm trying to find my girlfriend.'
'Your girlfriend?' Barbara said, as if she couldn't believe I'd have such a thing. 'Tall girl. Dark hair. Olive skin.'
'Yes,' I said, and I was so excited the cup started rattling again. 'Do you know where she is?'
She shook her head. She seemed confused. 'We were all waiting for an invitation to the wedding.'
'What? You've lost me.'
'While you were in your coma, the girl... what was her name, now? Right, Tamara, well she wouldn't stay away from this place. We ended up putting you in a different bed, one with a pull-out cot underneath it so that she could stay with you through the night.'
'But she's gone. She left me. I'm trying to track her down.'
Barbara suddenly looked as though she wanted to be back at her desk, doing things with paper clips, fielding calls, calling for a crash team. 'Oh, God, Paul. I'm sorry. Sometimes, you know... the pressure. The day-to-day grind. The not knowing. It can wear you out. I've seen people in this hospital turned into emotional wrecks. What's the word? Wraiths. They come in all hopeful and determined and in no time at all they're grey and hopeless, and I'm talking about visitors here. Especially coma patient visitors. You're waiting for something that might never happen.'
'How long did she visit for?'
'You were in here from the April to the October. She was a fitting in your room for maybe a whole month. We just thought she'd drained her batteries. Not for a moment did we suspect... Look, she showed real devotion. You don't often find it, even in long-married couples. She was a puppy by your side. She talked to you. She held your hand.'
The pain of tears that could not come. I shook my head, trying to force it away. 'But then she left me,' I said. 'She left me.'
'I don't know what to say,' she said, spreading her hands. The sour face was gone now. I caught a hint of what she must look like when she was off duty, with friends, family. She was kind and I was grateful to her for looking after me. 'We talked about it. It seemed... unlike her. She didn't seem the quitting type. But, circumstances change. People change. I don't know what I can do.'
My mind was full of ideas. Maybe security had footage of her on the CCTV. Maybe someone talked to her about the futility of it all and she had let slip where she was going, who she was turning to. But Barbara told me to stop it.
'Maybe she just needs time,' she said. 'You've been gone for six months. She thought she was going to lose you. To all intents and purposes, you went to sleep and then woke up again. It might have felt like moments to you. But you've carved a great hole in that woman. She needs to mend, just like you. Give her a chance. Give her time. A girl like that, the way she behaved at the start... people like that don't just turn off. She'll get in touch.'
She might have said all of that, or I might have imagined much of it. It was everything I'd hoped and feared she might say, but it was what was expected of her. She was in the mending business. I still didn't feel better about things.
I said hello to other faces, people who knew me better than I knew them, made empty promises to keep in touch and let them know how things were going. They and I were forgotten as soon as we turned our backs on each other. I made my way back to the exit. Shortly before I reached it, I heard footsteps behind me.
'Need a lift home?'
Ruth always put the heating on in her car for longer than was necessary. After twenty minutes it was stifling. I wanted to open the window, but the electric control on my side was busted. She had all the power and I didn't want to ask her; although it was hot, there was frost in this car too.
We got back on the A-road and she let me have it.
'What do you think you're playing at, Paul?' she demanded. Her eyes alternated between the road in front and, via the rearview mirror, the road behind. There was a weird, concomitant feeling that nothing in this car therefore existed; she didn't look at me once. It was as if she were rehearsing lines from a play. It kind of helped. I didn't say anything.
'I'm trying to help you. We're all trying to help you. Why don't you believe me?'
'I do believe you.'
'About Tamara, I mean.'
'I doesn't matter what I believe. I have to find out for myself. I have to hear it from her. We sold our flat to be here. You don't just walk away from that kind of commitment. At the very least she'd want her share of the money.'
'You'd be best to just let her go and get on with your life. How much happiness could you have with her if she comes back to you? She left you. You wouldn't be able to bear her nipping out to the shops for fear of never seeing her again.'
I turned away to watch the traffic. 'That's not it,' I said. 'You obviously don't understand.'
'I'm not sure there's anything
to
understand, Paul.' A sigh. A tut. 'Look... I'm being unfair to you. I'm being selfish. I thought... I hoped...'
I turned back to her. The intensity was gone. She no longer shot looks at what was behind us. Now she was concentrating on what was ahead. Her look had softened. She seemed more like a lost girl. It was fascinating the way her emotions swept her, physically, from one end of the female spectrum to the other.
'You hoped what?' I asked, but I knew.
'I thought something might come of us.' Her voice changed completely. It might have been someone else now, in the car, magicked into her driving seat while I was looking the other way. She was all soft curves, her angles and arches and teeth concealed.
She'd been in to collect some of her things. She was now, officially, on maternity leave. Not seeing her in her uniform was unusual. So was seeing her without her hair pinned up. A lot of those lines around her eyes were down to me.
'That's good to know,' I said. 'Really. I just need to put this to bed. I can't function.'
'It's not just me, either, although you've come to mean a lot to me. It's others in the village. They need you too.'
'To dispose of their dirty little secrets?'
'That's one way of putting it. But not every secret is dirty. There are some desperate people around, Paul. They can't organise their own lives. They can't... you know... forge a path.'
'They can't build their own bonfires? They can't lift their own bin lids?'
'Maybe not. Maybe it's about distancing yourself from something. Not getting your hands dirty with what's been soiling your mind for so long. You're a symbol, don't you think? A white knight.'
'I'm a sin eater,' I said. 'Do you really think burning Percy Filth's porn collection is going to cure him of his habit? No. He'll be back in the newsagent's tomorrow replenishing his stock. You know, I do this shitty thing for them, not for any recognition, but because it's there, it's something to do. You say they need me, but they don't give a fuck about me, about who is doing this for them. And I can tell you, the feeling's mutual.'
I saw her wince. She breathed deeply. Her face paled a little.
'You all right?' I asked.
'A little pain,' she said. 'It's fine. It's sitting in this position for too long. Junior is making it known that he's not happy.'
'That makes two of us,' I said, and regretted it. I saw her slump a little.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'That was uncalled for. And it's not true. I was just being a smart-mouth.'
'It's all right,' she said. 'You've been through a lot. You feel free to speak your mind. I'm a nurse, you seem to forget. I can take all that and more. I've got skin thicker than a hippo's.'
'I've got a head thicker than a hippo's,' I said. 'Really, I mean it, I'm sorry. I am happy. I'm lucky to have you as a friend. You're saving me in any number of ways.'
Her grip on the steering wheel changed, became lighter. She shuffled herself upright and sighed. 'Well okay then. Let's not talk about negatives any more. You'll thrash it out with Tamara and one way or another we'll all find where we're at.'
Her voice was soothing now. All of her anger had dissipated. Perhaps she was calmer because she'd broached a subject we'd been skirting for a while. Perhaps it was because she had left work and could look forward to preparing for her baby. I felt encouraged too, and not just because I'd engineered some positive action for a change. I'd been too passive, allowed my life to follow a course it instinctively railed against, deep inside. I knew what I had to do and I was doing it, regardless of Ruth's warnings. This felt right and so it
was
right.
She was talking about painting a room for the baby, now, but I was losing focus. It really was warm in the car now, and it wasn't too bad after all. You could see how cold it was outside: the wind shearing through the trees, the sudden barrage of rain as it was turned against the windscreen. All grey and dreary. I closed my eyes for a second and the heat followed me down. The engine in the car changed its tune. It became deeper, more powerful, misfiring, making the song of metal fatigue. The heat shimmered as I grew accustomed to my surroundings. I placed a hand against the window. Windows punched along the side of a cabin. The serge of my uniform, itchy, uncomfortable. Half a dozen passengers sitting next to the wing were trapped in their seats, thrashing around, deep in fire.
Part Two
Long Haul
Flight Z
Dead Reckoning
I sit next to a ruined marionette in the bulkhead seat and cast glances over my shoulder at the fry-up the rest of the plane is turning into. A comber of thick, black smoke clings to the ceiling, uncoiling swiftly towards us like a roll of carpet kicked out across a floor. At the bulkheads it curls down and, almost tenderly, blankets us utterly. A hand finds mine, undercover of this lethal fog. All bone, hot as something left for too long on a barbecue.
You breathe and the smoke gathers in your lungs like something solid: crumbled Oxo cubes massing in the back of the throat. The heat threatens to seal your airways shut. The jet lumbers on despite the fuselage cindering. Grinds and explosions cause misfires in the engines. A body from the 747 hanging through the cabin roof of the triple-7 looks like a baby reaching out to be held; its fingers are smouldering. I ask the woman next to me where she's headed and she says Burnley, which gets her laughing but it's too harsh, hijacked by coughs. She hangs over the edge of the seat, mouth open, a thin rope of black sputum spinning from the back of her throat, black tears smudging the grey flesh of her face. Her eyes have frosted over from the chemical effects of the smoke.