‘Everything just feels so confused and not quite real.’ I hated how helpless I sounded but was powerless to keep the tremor out of my voice.
‘That’s perfectly understandable. You’ve had a big shock. No pun intended.’
That produced smiles all round, and several of the young doctors even chuckled a little, but it was way too soon for me to appreciate that kind of black humour.
‘Is there someone we can call for you? Someone you’d like to have here with you?’
Like a wheel in a game show, my thoughts cycled through possible candidates, but each of them clicked past and the wheel never came to a stop.
‘No. I live alone.’
Did I? For a moment I couldn’t actually remember, but it felt true. Not knowing was frankly terrifying.
‘You don’t want us to call...’ The doctor hesitated and glanced down to check on a clipboard that was lying on the bed. ‘Rhys?’ she suggested with an encouraging smile.
‘Who’s Rhys?’
That wiped the smile away.
‘We assumed he might be your partner, or perhaps a friend?’
I shook my head, feeling increasingly as though I’d walked into a really confusing TV show, somewhere mid-season.
‘It’s just that you’ve been saying that name on and off ever since they brought you in.’
‘I have?’ I certainly didn’t remember doing so. I blinked several times as though it might help the cloud of crazy to drift away. It didn’t.
Perhaps the doctor meant Ash? He was my boyfriend. Almost as soon as the thought landed, I knew it was wrong. Ash and I had dated when I was in my twenties. We’d met just after I graduated and then we’d... The thoughts and memories were like wisps of smoke that slipped out of my grasp before I could secure them.
I wasn’t with Ash anymore, was I? We’d broken up. Or had we got back together again, and I’d somehow forgotten? I didn’t like the sudden panic that clutched me amidst the swirling confusion. Shouldn’t I know if I was someone’s girlfriend? Or fiancée? I snatched up my left hand. It was bare of any rings.
‘What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I remember things?’
The doctor nodded wisely. ‘Memory loss is a common symptom in cases like yours. Happily, it rarely lasts long. And, as I said before, you were one very lucky young woman today.’ Her eyes darkened for a moment, which made me think the same might not be true for everyone who’d been standing beneath that tree. The name Rhys echoed through my head like a slowly tolling bell. I bit my tongue to stop it escaping once more.
The CT was scary, and everyone involved in the scan was clearly a dab hand at poker, because I couldn’t read anything from theirfaces when it was over. If the lightning had damaged anything on its passage through my body, no one was saying.
They carried out other tests, but my mind kept wandering, as though its tether to the here and now had been severed. For someone who had turned multitasking into an art form, who could juggle two phone calls and simultaneously rattle off an email without thinking, it was all a little terrifying. Everyone was very kind, speaking to me slowly and carefully, with big round enunciated vowels, which just made me feel worse. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t who I was.
I especially hated the wheelchair they insisted I use to transport me to and from Radiology. I hated how my day had gone from one in which I was in total control to one where I was reduced to a statistic – albeit a rare and interesting one.
The nurse who accompanied me back to the treatment room politely pretended not to notice the tears that began to fall in the lift. I rarely cried, and the quiet, hitching sobs had a field day at the sudden release, wracking their way through me. She laid a hand gently on my shoulder as the lift doors slid open.
‘It’s just so... so... disorientating,’ I finished helplessly. It wasn’t exactly the right word, but it was the closest one I could find. ‘I don’t know how to explain it, but everything feels so strange and off-kilter.’
‘I’m sure it must do,’ she said, finding a folded square of tissue from somewhere and passing it to me. It took a further two before they came away without black streaks of mascara all over them. I felt wrecked, both inside and out.
‘Maybe there is something that might make you feel a little better.’
I looked up from the wheelchair, red-eyed, scarlet-nosed, but curious.
‘Okaaay,’ I said, sounding so unlike my usual confident self even my own mother wouldn’t have recognised me. The thought immediately made me feel even worse than before, which was saying something.
Like a getaway driver on a heist, the nurse pivoted the wheelchair with a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree spin. ‘We probably shouldn’t, but...’
I had no idea what she was proposing, or where she was taking me, but for a few minutes at least it distracted me from worrying about the gaps in my memory. She wheeled me down a new corridor, glancing frequently over her shoulder as though we were being pursued. I was definitely intrigued now. Then came to a stop beside a row of curtained cubicles.
‘I should probably check if he’s okay with this first,’ she said, looking like she might be regretting her impulsive decision.