What Remains (11 page)

Indie squeezed him back with her tiny arms. “See you soon, Daddy, over the moon. Will you show Jodi my trains for me? And give him the pictures I drew him?”

Rupert closed his eyes and thought of the stacks of crayon drawings he’d hidden on top of the fridge at home. “Course I will. I love you, sweetie.”

“Love you, Daddy.”

Rupert showed himself out and caught another bus to take him to Camberwell. It was a long route, taking nearly an hour, and he was half-asleep by the time it stopped across the road from the hospital. Yawning, he hauled himself off the bus and drifted to the hospital’s main entrance. He hadn’t owned a car in years, but for some reason the parking payment machines caught his eye. The screens were lit up in bright blue on black, one of Jodi’s favourite colour combinations, but it wasn’t the graphics that stopped him short, it was the date: December 26, 2014, five years to the day since he and Jodi had met, a day—or night, really—that was etched on Rupert’s heart in indelible ink. A night that had turned his sorry world upside down and made it beautiful.

A night that seemed so far out of reach now; the neon-blue digital numbers glowed belligerently and a wave of rage swept through him, heating his bones and burning his chest. The sudden need to smash something was overwhelming.

He turned away before he could punch the screen, and pushed through the hospital’s revolving entrance. Autopilot led him upstairs to Jodi’s ward. It was after nine, the time of night Jodi usually fell asleep, and for once Rupert found himself looking forward to the still quiet of his bedside, craving the familiar discomfort of the plastic chair. He was worn out, tired to the bone, and with a 6 a.m. start the following morning, a few hours’ uncomfortable kip couldn’t come soon enough.

A nurse buzzed him into the ward. He recognised her voice, but the station was empty when he tiptoed past. Jodi’s bed was in the corner with the curtains pulled around it. Rupert slipped through them. Jodi was curled on his side, eyes closed, breathing deep and even. Rupert searched out the chair, his gaze cast downward. He drew it close to the bed and sat down, retrieving his phone from his pocket. The screen was blank. Fuck it. He’d forgotten to charge it. Not that it mattered. There was no one he wanted to speak to.

He settled into his chair and finally focussed on Jodi. Gleaming dark eyes stared back at him, alive, alert, and very much awake. Rupert blinked. “
Jodi
?”

Jodi sat up slowly, like a predatory cat, ready to pounce. “Who the fuck are you?”

“What?”

“I
said
, who the fuck are you?” Jodi pulled his lips into a scowl that stilled Rupert’s heart, glancing erratically around him, staring at the drip in his arm and the ID bracelet on his wrist, before returning to Rupert, the hostility in his gaze increasing with every second. “Where’s Sophie?”

Rupert grabbed Jodi’s hand as Jodi struggled to sit up. Jodi jumped and smacked his hand away.

“Don’t touch me!”

Rupert let go and tried to calm himself with gasps of air that stuck in his chest. He counted to ten and tried again. “Jodi, look at me. Do you really not know who I am?”

“What?” Jodi blinked, then glared at Rupert for a moment that seemed to go on forever. “Nope. Sorry. I don’t know who the fuck you are. Now where the hell is Sophie?”

“Sophie?”

“Yeah,
Sophie
. Where’s my girlfriend?”

Jodi lay as still as possible, trying desperately to keep his vision under control, but his eyeballs felt like lasers, darting around the room, taking in the cacophony of medical paraphernalia—the machines, the tubes, the IVs jammed in his arms.

It’s a nightmare. It has to be.
Yeah, that was it. He was drifting in a dystopian fantasy. The woman in white at his bedside was some kind of zombie motherfucker and any minute now, he’d remember that he had a lightsabre or something awesome, rise out of the bed he seemed tied to, and cut her head off.

He looked for Sophie. She always appeared in his dreams, even the bad ones, chasing shadows away with her sherberty perfume and lilting laugh, but she wasn’t in sight, and his gut told him she was nowhere nearby. “Where’s Sophie?”

The woman patted Jodi’s hand with a palm that felt unnaturally cool. “She’s not here today, Jodi. What about Rupert? Don’t you want to see him?”

“Who?”

“Rupert, your partner—your boyfriend. You live together.”

Jodi stared and waited for the woman to crack a smile and explain the punch line of her twat-ish joke, but her face remained impassive.
Bitch.
Glowering, Jodi tried to sit up, but the one arm he could move wouldn’t take his weight. He fell back onto the bed and tried again, struggling against a wave of dizzying pain until he managed to raise his head enough to read the laminate hanging around the woman’s neck.
Dr. Rose
. “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

What do you think?
Jodi glanced down as sharp pain radiated from his palms to his shoulders. Blood oozed from his palms where he’d dug his nails in too hard. He eyed the wounds, welcoming the pain, hoping it would cut through the thick fog in his head and gift him some clarity.
Wake up, dickhead. You’ll laugh about this in the morning.
But nothing changed. The woman’s stare remained, and no one fucking laughed.

Jodi’s patience evaporated. “Stop taking the piss. It’s not funny. I don’t know anyone called Rupert, and even if I did, I’m not bloody gay.”

“No one’s saying you’re anything, Jodi, but Rupert
is
your partner. He’s been here every day since the accident.”

“Accident? What accident? Where’s Sophie? Is she okay?” Silence. Panic slammed into Jodi’s chest, forcing the air from his lungs as a machine somewhere nearby began a beeping tattoo in time with his speeding pulse. “Where’s Sophie?”

The woman leaned forward. “Sophie’s safe and well, Jodi. It was you who had an accident. I can tell you all about it, but I need you to calm down or we’ll have to come back to this later.”

“I . . . can’t breathe.”

“Would you like me to get Rupert for you?”

“No! I don’t know any fucking Rupert—” Pain roared through Jodi’s head. He fell back on the bed as the beeping went off the scale, and a deep, paralysing agony took hold, blinding him. He cried out and curled in on himself, but the sudden movement only brought more pain. “Oh God. Help me. Please.”

Something tugged at one of the tubes in Jodi’s arm. A cold sensation flooded his veins. For long moments nothing changed, then he felt it: a creeping buzz that lapped at the edge of the torture that tied him in a foetal ball on the bed.

The pain faded a little, taking with it some of the crazed panic seizing his chest, just enough for him to snatch a breath as his face seemed to melt into the scratchy sheet beneath him. “Please. I don’t know who Rupert is. He’s not my boyfriend. No one is. I want Sophie. Please. Please get Sophie for me. Please, I just need Sophie . . .”

“. . . I don’t understand.” Jodi held his head in his hands as he stared at Sophie, trying to ignore Dr. Rose taking notes in the corner. “When did we split up?”

Sophie looked at Dr. Rose, who nodded surreptitiously, or probably thought she had. Jodi frowned. There’d been a lot of that since Sophie had finally arrived. Sometime earlier, he’d told himself he would feel better if only she’d just fucking get there. That she’d explain why the last thing he clearly recalled was heading across London to meet her for dinner. That she’d know why his arm wouldn’t move and his head hurt like a bitch, that she’d know why he could hardly remember his name from one moment to the next. But so far she’d done nothing but gaze at him with a sadness he couldn’t quite decipher, and pretty much tell him that he was dumped.

A waft of fruity perfume tickled his nose, and a painful shunt in his brain brought him back to the present. He winced. Sophie squeezed his hand. “What is it?”

Jodi opened his mouth. Shut it. The words weren’t there. Sophie’s gaze darted again to the silent doctor, and Jodi bristled, confusion and frustration conflicting so loudly in his aching head he felt dizzy. “Why aren’t you my girlfriend anymore?”

“We split up years ago.”

“How many?”

“Five. You’re still my best friend in the world, though.” The first flickers of a smile Jodi recognised brightened Sophie’s features. “And I still love you to death.”

Jodi loved her too, but five years was a bloody long time to lose, with or without her, and the harder he thought about it, the less sense it made. “I don’t understand. Have I been in here since we split up?”

“No, sweet. You were in an accident five months ago, remember?”

Accident. Coma. Accident. Coma. That much was starting to sink in. “Five months . . . I’ve been out of it for five months?”

It was Sophie’s turn to frown. “No, Jodi. The doctors told you this yesterday. You’ve been awake for weeks, walking and doing rehab. You just haven’t talked. We thought you’d forgotten how, we never—” She pressed a shaky hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”

Jodi tugged her hand, forcing her to meet his gaze again. “Do what, Soph? What is it?”

“Jodi—”

“That’s enough for now,” the doctor cut in. She tucked her pen into her breast pocket. “Get some rest, Jodi. We’ll talk more tomorrow . . .”

Jodi studied the grainy images Sophie was scrolling through on her phone. He remembered this about her—that she took terrible photographs. Shame he couldn’t recall the big bay windows and sleek oak furniture she claimed were his. “How long have we lived there?”

“We?”

“Sorry. I mean me. Where do you live again?”

“Primrose Hill. Your favourite place.” Sophie sounded sarcastic, and for the first time, Jodi understood why.

“I hate that place. It’s full of wannabe Britpop wankers.”

“I know.” Sophie smiled, but it faded a touch as she seemed to remember something.

Jodi reached hesitantly for her hand.
Do we still do that?
“What is it?”

“You were on your way to me when you had the accident.”

Accident. Coma. Accident. Coma. Three days of supervised conversations came back to Jodi all at once. He pictured the stolen Astra the doctors said had hit him. No one seemed to know what colour it was, but in Jodi’s mind it was the same horrible burgundy as the ageing Vauxhall Nova he’d bought himself a week after passing his driving test. “Where was I coming from, if you live in Twatrose Hill?”

“Tottenham, hon. You were twenty feet from your own front door . . .”