Pulse(32)

He slapped me on the shoulder while the others applauded politely. I was sure I blushed a little but, rather than being congratulated for some worthy deed, I felt that I was actually being slightly reprimanded for not following the approved procedure.

‘OK,’ Adrian said, clapping his hands together. ‘This is the official stand-down for today. Let’s go and have tea.’

I placed my red treatment bag on the shelf provided for the purpose and hung up my green doctor’s coat on the appropriate peg, ready for the following day.

‘I think I’ll skip tea,’ I said to Adrian. ‘If that’s all right with you?’

‘Of course,’ he replied.

Going to tea may not have been an official part of the day but it was expected. It was when the team discussed ways in which our performance might improve. But I was eager to get off home to fix supper for Grant and the twins.

However, I never made it.





12


The doctors’ allocated parking spaces were in a corner of the jockeys’ car park, close to the north entrance to the racecourse, alongside those reserved for holders of blue disabled badges and conveniently close to the weighing room.

For the Festival meeting, though, I tended not to use them.

The roads around the racecourse were pretty busy for many hours after the last race but the main problem was actually getting to the car-park exits in the first place. The doctors’ parking was about as far from the exits as it was possible to be and, in the past, it had taken me an hour or more simply to get to the racecourse gates. So I now regularly parked in a farmyard just across the Evesham Road, from where it was much easier to drive away. The twins had been to junior school with the farmer’s son and we had been friends ever since.

I walked alongside the long queues of cars that were inching very slowly towards the exits and smiled to myself. It had been a good day and, tomorrow, I would get here early to talk to the jockeys Jason Conway and Mike Sheraton, and to find out what they had been arguing about with the unnamed man.

According to a note in the racecard, the sun set at eleven minutes past six but, on such an overcast day, it was almost pitch-black by the time I arrived at the Evesham Road only ten minutes later.

I remembered standing waiting for a break in the traffic, then the next thing I recall was being in the middle of the road with a huge bus bearing down on me. For some reason my legs and feet simply wouldn’t work. I was rooted to the spot and transfixed by the vehicle’s bright headlights as they rushed ever closer.

I heard the screech of the tyres on the wet road surface as the driver stamped on his brakes but it was too late – the bus hit me, smacking my head against its windscreen and throwing me forward into a crumpled heap on the ground.

It had all happened so fast. One second I’d been happy and content, the next I was unsure of where I was, when it was, or even who I was.

I’d have had no chance answering the Turner Questions, or of passing the Tandem Stance Test. I found I couldn’t even lift my head off the tarmac without losing my balance. So I laid it back down again and shut my eyes, hoping that the whole world would go away.

In truth, I was never completely unconscious even if I did purposely keep my eyes closed. Everything around me swayed less that way.

‘She stepped right out in front of me,’ I could hear the bus driver imploring to anyone who would listen. ‘I had no chance.’

‘Doctor coming through,’ I heard a man’s voice say loudly. ‘Please stand back and give me some room.’

Amazingly it was Adrian Kings. He must have decided to skip the tea as well.

‘Oh my God, Chris,’ he said, crouching down beside me. ‘What happened?’

There was nothing wrong with my hearing but, when I tried to reply, nothing came out. My tongue seemed to belong to someone else, moving on its own accord and not obeying my brain’s instructions.

‘She stepped right out in front of me,’ the bus driver said again.

Adrian ignored him. ‘Has anyone called an ambulance?’ he shouted at the gathering throng.

It seemed that someone had, and the police too.

Adrian removed his coat and gently slid it under my head, while someone else put another one over me.

As always, I tried to say that I was ‘fine’, but I clearly wasn’t, and it came out as little more than a croak.

‘Just lie still,’ Adrian said. ‘Help is on the way.’

Help arrived with multiple sirens and blue flashing lights and I found myself, for the second time within a few months, arriving at Cheltenham General Hospital as a patient, this time on a scoop stretcher wearing a neck collar.

Even though the surroundings were familiar, everything appeared in a bit of a haze, as if blurry round the edges.

It was good experience, I kept telling myself, but then I would forget what the experience was like. It felt like I was fighting my way through a fog, round and round on the same piece of road, getting nowhere.

As chance would have it, Jeremy Cook was again on duty and I could see him speaking to a policeman. But I could hear only snippets of what he was saying: ‘. . . mental health issues . . . psychiatric hospital . . . suicidal . . .’

‘No,’ I tried to say, ‘I am not suicidal.’ But it came out all confused and unintelligible.

But I knew.

I hadn’t been trying to kill myself by stepping in front of a bus.