Sometimes I Lie(21)

I’m not like the other kids. Mum has ruined everything. Again.





Now

Wednesday, 28th December 2016


My parents have finally arrived at the hospital – I hear their voices long before they enter the room. They’ve endured a rare breed of marriage, the kind where the love lasts over thirty years. But it’s the kind of love that makes me feel sad and empty, a love based on habit and dependence, it isn’t real. The door opens and I smell my mother’s perfume; too floral, too strong. I hear my father clear his throat in that annoying way that he does. They stand at the end of my bed, keeping their distance as always.

‘She looks bad,’ says Dad.

‘It probably looks worse than it is,’ Mum replies.

It’s been almost a year since we last spoke and there is absolutely no affection in their voices.

‘I don’t think she can hear us,’ she says.

‘We should stay a while, just in case,’ says Dad, sitting down next to the bed, and I love him for that. ‘You’ll be all right, Peanut,’ he says, holding my hand. I imagine a tear rolling down his cheek, then down to his chin, where it hangs in my imagination, before dripping down onto the white hospital sheet. I’ve never seen my father cry. The feel of his fingers wrapped around my own triggers a memory of us walking hand in hand when I was five or six. Claire had yet to enter our world back then. We were going to the bank, and he was in a hurry. He was often in a hurry. His long legs took giant steps and I ran to keep up with his walk. Just before we reached the bank, I tripped and fell. There was a bloody gash on my knee and thin ribbons of blood danced their way down my leg, then joined forces to stain my white sock red. It hurt but I didn’t cry. He looked sorry but he didn’t kiss it better and I can still hear his voice:

You’ll be all right, Peanut.

Without any further words, we hurried to the bank a little more slowly.

They took much better care of Claire when she arrived. She was like a shiny new precious doll, I was already broken and scratched. My dad’s nickname for me was Peanut. His nickname for Claire was Princess. I don’t hate my parents, I just hate that they stopped loving me.

The air in the room is thick with silence and remorse, then the door opens again and everything changes.

‘How are you?’ asks my sister. I hear Paul answer and realise he’s been in the room with us the whole time. It’s even more awkward than I thought, Paul and my parents never did get along. Dad thinks writing isn’t a real job and that a man without one of those isn’t a real man. ‘Any update?’ asks Claire.

‘They said she’s stable now, but it’s still too soon to know what will happen,’ he says.

‘We just need to stay positive,’ she says.

Easy words for her to say.

There are so many questions I want to ask. If I’m stable, I presume that means I’m not going to die. Not yet anyway, we all die in the end, I suppose. Life is more terrifying than death in my experience, there’s little point fearing something so inevitable. Since I’ve been lying here, what I fear the most is never fully waking up, the horror of being trapped inside myself for ever. I try to quieten my mind and focus on their voices. Sometimes the words reach me, sometimes they get lost on the way or I can’t quite translate them into something that makes sense.

It’s been such a long time since my family were all together like this so it seems strange that we are reunited around my hospital bed. We used to spend every Christmas together, but then that stopped. I’m the centrepiece of this family gathering but I’m still invisible. Nobody is holding my hand now. Nobody is crying. Nobody is behaving as they should and it’s as though I’m not here at all.

‘You look really tired,’ says Claire, the caring daughter. ‘Maybe we should go and get some food?’ Nobody speaks and then my father’s voice breaks the spell:

‘Hold on, that’s all you have to do.’

Why does everyone insist on telling me to hold on? Hold on to what? I don’t need to hold on, I need to wake up.

Paul kisses me on the forehead. I don’t think he’ll go with them, but then I hear him walk to the door and follow them out of the room. I don’t know why I am surprised about being abandoned, I always have been. Claire takes everyone I love away from me.

I hear rain start to fall hard against the invisible window in my imaginary room. The watery lullaby helps distract my mind from my anger, but it’s not enough to silence it.

I won’t let her take anyone else away from me.

A silent rage spreads like a virus in my mind. The voice inside my head, which sounds so much like my own, is loud and clear and commanding.

I need to get out of this bed, I have to wake up.

And then I do.

I can still hear the sound of the machines that breathe for me, feed me and drug me so that I cannot feel what I must not, but the wires are gone and the tube has been removed from my throat. I open my eyes and sit up. I have to tell somebody. I get out of the bed and run to the door, fling it open and rush through, but I fall and land hard on the ground. That’s when I notice how cold I am, that’s when I feel the rain. I’m scared to open my eyes and when I do, I see her, the faceless little girl in the pink dressing gown, lying in the middle of the road with me. I can’t move my body and everything is still, like I’m looking at a painting.