onto the road.
‘Perhaps the hard road’s impossible!’ I shout as I crawl and my hand drags past more wet.
‘Take the hard road up. Anything is possible!’ I shout.
It doesn’t feel like my voice. He’s nearly with me. I see the bus has emptied and its passengers are looking at it. And me.
It’s slow motion. It’s hard tarmac broken glass music video inner city incident news commercial heartache.
That high-pitched squeal sings on and on.
A song from a passing car radio strikes up.
‘We lived in this crooked old house
some cops came over to check it out
left on the step was a little baby boy
In a soft red quilt, with a rattle and a toy.’
My hands shake beneath me like an engine does before it stalls. A guy with a busted tooth shouts something.
Before my head falls, I notice the bus has two broken windows. One on each side.
They’re all on their phones. It’s a picture that blurs.
My ears still work though. Listening to the radio song.
‘You’re my little one
Say I didn’t love in vain
Please quit crying honey
Cos it sounds like a hurricane’
I wonder how those windows got broken.
That’s my last thought for now. Before I go.
It’s just one of those things.
Some days you meet the person you were always meant to be with.
Some days you get shot in the head.
‘‘Can’t get that, dah dee dah, dah dah, my head…’
‘Good. You’re awake. Looking good,’ says the voice.
Male. Warm. My thoughts run slowly like traffic jammed cars. His face comes into view.
I’m cold. I guess I should do something. Say something maybe. Missed it. The chance has come and gone.
We sit in silence for a while. Everything has changed.
‘Cold,’ I say, trying to get things moving, in my head.
‘Oh yes. It is a little chilly.’ He turns and nods to someone. He smiles. I lift my head to see who he’s looking at, but by the time I do they’re gone.
Where am I? A hospital. I guess.
‘How’s it all feeling?’ says the man.
‘Unsure,’ I say.
‘You’re unsure how you feel? Or you feel unsure?’
‘The second one.’
‘That’s understandable. Any pain?’
‘A little in the head.’
‘Also understandable, that’s just swelling in the cranium.’
‘What’s the… chrysanthemum?’
‘It’s a flower that blooms in Autumn, but that’s not important right now. Your mental lexicon is still recovering, which I’d expect. Say after me, cranium.’
‘Cramiun.’
‘Good. Your skull. Your head. We had to get in there a little.’
‘In there?’
‘Yes, we had to remove the bone flap. But we replaced it. Everything went reasonably well.’
‘Re… Re… Re… Re… Reasonably?’
‘Well… your sort of accident isn’t the sort of thing one always recovers from. But things are looking up.’
I’m putting it all together again. The bus. The shattered glass. The man running towards me. A man I know?
… Doreen? … Liam … Loreen?
‘I assume you haven’t been told what’s happened to you then?’
I assume I haven’t as well.
I drifted in and out. Of the light and the grey. I don’t know what was a dream and what was… whatever this is. I’ve seen many faces hover over me. I remember being moved, I think. One second I would be one place. The next, the ceiling would tell me something else.
I realise I have no concept of how long I’ve been here. It could be weeks. Months. Longer.
‘How long?’ I say.
‘How long what?’
I struggle with the structure of the question. I feel my eyes rolling around in my head. With each tiny movement, there’s a crack of pain somewhere deep inside my thinking organ.
My eyes begin to water as I strain to process the question, to hold onto my thoughts. I make some sounds from deep within me. I breathe deep, trying to speak, but I can’t. Instead. I cry.
My nose runs. Hot tears roll down my cheeks. Big old-fashioned sobs, despite myself. I don’t feel like crying. And yet, I am crying. Every breath shudders with effort between my lungs and my mouth. I feel like a puppet controlled by an inebriate puppeteer.
My hands scramble around for a tissue. There is one next to me but it takes me an age to drag it out from its cell.
He waits, watching. Patient.
‘Tom? You asked me… how long?’
‘How long… from then… till now?’
‘Today is Sunday, you sustained the injury on Friday.’
It seems impossible. If he’d said I’d been here a year, or two, I’d have believed him. My muscles feel brown and dappled. I grapple with the controls like a madman, a blind pilot. I must be older. Two days? They have to be lying. But to what end?
It’s then that I notice there is someone else in the room, to my left. My neck turns so my head can look at him. He looks back. His face is difficult to read. He looks apprehensive. I look away and he does the same. Then I look back at him and he looks me in the eye. He says nothing. Just analyses me. He must be some underling. He’s younger than the other man. Although I couldn’t say how old the man in front of me is. My brain isn’t giving me all the answers I need yet. His voice interrupts us as I go to look at the silent man for a third time.
‘Yes, it may seem longer. That can happen. Would you say it seems longer?’
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘That’s interesting.’
He writes that down. Out of my periphery I analyse the silent man. He faces the doctor, too, not moving a muscle.
‘Do you know what happened to you, Tom?’
The question lingers in the air…
The bus. The shattered glass. The blood. The shouts. People with their phones out. I crawl across the road. I feel sick. No pain. But I feel faint. I hear a song from a nearby car radio. The man runs towards me.
‘I… I… had… a stroke?’
‘Hmm. Interesting.’
He writes that down. Then scratches his nose. He turns as a nurse comes into the room and hands me a glass of water and a pill.
I take it off her. Steadily.