Читать книгу Fragile Minds - Claire Seeber, Claire Seeber - Страница 15

I came to in St Thomas’s A&E, on a bed in a curtained cubicle, with no memory of what or who had brought me here. Concussion they said, but I’d be fine. I’d collided with a cyclist ten minutes – quite literally – after the ‘major incident’ that had apparently just shut central London. I couldn’t remember any of it, but the cyclist lay in the next cubicle with a twisted knee. My head was hurting even more than it had last night, and I kept trying to say I didn’t know what had happened, but they thought that was normal. I wasn’t sure they were listening; they kept saying it was just shock. And the pain, it was different to last night; a dull throb, and the nice nurse who had treated me delivered me to the waiting area, and patted me on the head like a well-behaved puppy. She propped me up with a print-out on concussion and a vial of painkillers, and told me to hang on, someone would be here soon.

‘You’ll be all right,’ she said, in an accent that was probably Nigerian. Her bobbed wig was slightly askew; I wanted to straighten it. ‘You got a hard head, child. Praise the Lord you were not nearer the incident.’ She glanced up to where God obviously resided. ‘Go well, Claudia. And don’t forget to ring through for your results in a few days.’

The consultant’s single concession to my confusion and mention of blinding migraines had been to give me a blood test.

‘The confusion is probably partial concussion.’ He looked about ten, slightly nervous, hardly old enough to have left school, and his ears protruded at alarming right angles. ‘Which is what you must watch for now. Tell your family, OK? Re: the migraines, well, I haven’t got time to do a full set of bloods now,’ he filled in a form, which is what he had to find time for, ‘we’re too stretched. But let me just do a test for your hormone levels. It could explain a lot. We’ll have to wait for the results of course.’

And I hadn’t been in a hospital since that terrible day two years ago, the day that Ned had finally given up on life; and it was even worse than I remembered. There was an air of flattened panic throughout the building and everyone who entered through the sliding doors seemed almost shifty; they would check the room quickly to see who else was here as if they were casing the joint: the walking wounded, the traumatised. A constant stream of ambulances arrived in the bay outside the doors; the seriously injured were whisked somewhere we were not allowed. After a while we all averted our eyes because it was simply too much.

And the sirens; the sirens were a constant chorus of the morning, screaming through the stultifying air. The doctors and nurses walked with a different tread, faster, and they seemed different to how they would be in a normal Emergency Room; quicker, more energised. Frightened.

About an hour after I had been led to that shiny orange chair, my younger sister trotted through the doors at a fair pace, like a circus pony, anxious to perform.

‘Oh, thank God!’ she said. She was almost breathless with fear and excitement, her fair hair tumbling around her broad, friendly face, only missing its circus plume. ‘Are you OK? Isn’t this awful?’

‘Thanks for coming, Nat.’ Gingerly I stood, clutching my medication and my bag. ‘I know you’re busy.’

‘Of course I’d come.’ Her face was flushed and she had put her pink lipstick on crooked. ‘Who else would? Though I didn’t want to bring Ella into the zone, you know, the danger zone,’ and I almost laughed. ‘I left her with Glynnis next door. Such a nice woman. She understood.’

What exactly Glynnis had understood, I wasn’t sure.

‘We’d better get out of here quickly.’

‘It’s not Afghanistan you know,’ I said, but perhaps it was; perhaps this crisis that I did not understand yet was the start of something truly terrible. Natalie rolled her eyes, guiding me towards the car park now.

‘Well, who knows what it is yet, Claudia? They haven’t said. They’re saying nothing on the radio, just that it was an explosion, and don’t go into town. The traffic’s appalling. Oh God I was so worried, it’s right beside your work isn’t it? Thank goodness it happened so early.’

‘I should have been there,’ I said. I should have been there, I should have been there. ‘I was on my way in.’

‘You should? Oh my goodness, Claudia!’ she exhaled noisily. ‘You must be in shock. I would be. Your poor face. I’ve got a thermos of tea in the car.’ My ever-efficient little sister, the prizewinning Girl Guide, the soloist chorister, the parent rep. ‘You know, I can’t stop watching the news. It’s so horrific. We need to ring Mum. Let’s get home.’