It seemed to please the stranger who was bent over me. I’d thought at first it was a bear, which in my confused state seemed perfectly normal for a city park in the UK on a weekday morning. But my eyes were still dazzled from the light. There were swirling shapes and dots dancing across my field of vision, behind which a person – or possibly a talking bear – floated in and out of focus.
‘Okay, she’s back with us,’ the voice said, moving a little to one side, which allowed me to confirm it wasn’t a bear at all, but a man with thick curly hair and an extremely bushy beard.
‘How’s the guy doing?’ the non-bear man called out to someone unseen.
‘I still can’t get a pulse,’ called a female voice, full of fear and concern.
‘Be right with you,’ the bearded man said, glancing over his shoulder at a woman who was working on someone on the ground. I couldn’t see who the casualty was, but they were wearing white trainers. My vision was clearly still impaired, because it looked very much like the one on the left foot was smoking.
My bearded rescuer got to his feet to join his companion, who now appeared to be grunting out something that sounded curiouslylike the Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’ as she bent over the figure on the grass.
I had no idea what had happened to me or the other casualty on the ground, but I knew it was bad long before I heard the wail of approaching sirens.
I lifted my head from the sodden turf, confused to see a circle of onlookers gathered around the cluster of trees. Someone broke through their ranks, carrying an object roughly the size of carry-on luggage.
‘The café had one,’ the teenage boy said in triumph, thrusting the case towards the bearded man.
The low-level mutterings of the onlookers died away as a robotic female voice spoke from the device, giving out instructions that the bearded man and the woman dutifully followed. I still couldn’t see properly and struggled to sit up, which was a bad idea, although admittedly not as terrible as the decision to shelter beneath a tall oak tree in a thunderstorm.
A thick black velvet fog was beginning to descend. Before it engulfed me, I heard the bearded man call out ‘Clear’ and I responded with the first word I’d been able to summon up since hitting the ground.
‘Rhys!’
Chapter Two
I remember almost nothing about the ambulance ride to the hospital. Afterwards they told me I kept drifting in and out of consciousness throughout the ten-minute drive to the nearest A and E, where a small army of medics were waiting on the pavement for us to arrive. When I was awake, there was only one word in my new, limited vocabulary, which I recited like a mantra to the accompanying wail of the siren. For some reason the name of a total stranger had been seared into my brain by the lightning, and I couldn’t seem to stop myself from repeating it, with absolutely no idea why I was doing so.
The haziness continued for some time. I remember dazzling overhead lights and ceiling tiles flashing in and out of view as I was wheeled speedily down a hospital corridor. Gradually things became clear enough for me to marvel at just how many doctors were crammed into the treatment room. There was a feeling of being an exhibit in a zoo, because most of the white-coated individuals were just standing around observing me, as though I was some sort of oddity. None of it made any sense until I overheard one of the doctors explaining my condition to a new arrival.
‘ . . . struck by lightning.’
‘What?’ It was the first thing I’d said that wasn’t the name of a man I’d never met.
‘It’s okay,’ said a female doctor with a soft American accent. ‘You’re going to be fine, Ellie.’
I frowned, wondering how she knew my name, before remembering the wallet full of business cards in my bag.
She looped a stethoscope around her neck in a slick manoeuvre that suggested she’d done it a thousand times before. As most of her colleagues looked young enough to still be in school, I took comfort in her expertise.
I was wearing a hospital gown that I had no recollection of being changed into. The doctor carefully moved it aside to reveal my left shoulder, which felt sore and oddly warm. A feeling like pins and needles on overdrive was radiating down my arm.
‘You’ve been incredibly lucky today,’ the doctor said. Several people in the semicircle nodded their agreement. ‘The tree took the main strike, and you received a side flash. Thankfully that made you a secondary target; a short circuit for the lightning, if you like.’
‘Lightning?’ I said, my voice a horrified whisper. ‘I got hit by lightning?’ Each word climbed half an octave higher. The doctor slowly nodded before summoning up a comforting smile.
‘But shouldn’t I be dead now? Isn’t that what usually happens?’
For one moment I wondered if I was, and that’s why everything felt so weird and disjointed. There were an awful lot of people in the room wearing nothing but white.
Unbelievably, the doctor chuckled, but I found none of this even remotely funny. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure if I liked her, after all.
‘Actually, about ninety per cent of victims survive a lightning strike. You’re probably surprised to hear that.’ To be honest, it wasn’t a topic I’d ever given a passing thought to before. ‘I saw many people who’d been struck just like you were today, when I worked in a Houston emergency room.’
The medics in the room all craned forward, clearly hanging on her every word, but I was still struggling to get my fuzzy head around what the hell had happened to me.
‘We’re going to run a few more tests, and I’d like you to have a CT scan before we discharge you. But the good news is that your heartbeat has returned to its normal rhythm, and we believe everything else will stabilise just as effectively. You should be able to go home before the end of the day.’
‘Home?’ I said, my voice wavering as though for a moment I couldn’t remember where that might be. I corralled my scattered thoughts and managed to summon up an image of the top-floor flat in the Victorian house where I lived.