Mr. Nobody(18)
* * *
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In cubical 7, Rhoda works fast. A series of actions she has gone through multiple times over the last thirty years. Pulse, blood pressure, fluids, ready for transfer.
She looks through his entry notes again. She reads the notes on his behavior in more depth: “disorientated, aggressive, highly agitated, and nonresponsive.” Excellent, what a wonderful combination to end the shift with, she thinks.
Well, we’ll just have to see what we can do with you.
The patient’s breathing changes infinitesimally in depth. Rhoda looks up from the clipboard.
Oh God.
The man begins to stir under the blankets. The notes say, “Patient has been slipping in and out of consciousness for approximately 35–40 minutes.” There might not be long to get him transferred before he wakes up again and this all gets slightly more complicated.
She pokes her head out through the cubicle curtains. “Porter, now, please,” she calls, louder this time.
Behind her the man shifts in his bed. Rhoda sighs. He’s waking, looks like it’s happening regardless. She moves around to the man’s bedside and steels herself.
He stirs again and suddenly his eyelids flick open.
He looks directly at her.
She smiles down at him. “Hello, you.” Her tone is gentle, maternal. “How are you feeling?”
The man stares up at her warm face floating above him. He takes it in, studying it. He was on the beach and now he is here.
His brow slowly knits as he looks at her, her kind eyes, the small scar hidden in her hairline. Does he know her? No. He doesn’t know her. Rhoda watches the realization flash across his face.
“My name is Rhoda. I’m a nurse. You’re in a hospital now. But there’s no need to worry, you’re fine, everything is all right. I’m just here to help you. Okay? That’s all I’m here for. Now, you’ve had a little knock to the head but we’re going to get it all sorted out. Everything is going to be just fine.”
A knock to the head? His eyelids flicker in concern.
“Nothing too serious,” Rhoda counters. “Nothing for you to worry about just now. All you need to do is lie there all cozy and let me do everything. Have a nice relax and let me do it all. Do you understand? You’re in safe hands with me.”
His muscles slacken back into the bed as he stills himself. He blinks up at her and lets out a sigh that clouds his oxygen mask.
“Trust me?” Rhoda asks.
He looks up at her and she looks straight back down, solid and safe.
His eyes fill and when he blinks, tears run in two rivulets down either side of his face. He exhales deeply again and tries to raise his arm. Rhoda rests a hand on it lightly, she feels the quivering of his muscles beneath the sheet.
“Okay, then. That’s a deal. You trust me and I’ll get you all fixed up. Shall I?”
He blinks at her slowly, consenting.
What the hell happened to you? she wonders, and moves her warm hand to his shoulder.
“Do you remember banging your head? Do you remember that?”
The man closes his eyes to concentrate, breath momentarily held. When he looks back at Rhoda, there is only thinly masked confusion. He can’t remember.
“It’s okay,” she soothes. “It’s okay if you don’t remember that. That’s perfectly normal after a bang to the head. It doesn’t mean a thing. We’re going to get you nice and warm and do a quick scan of your head to see what’s what. How does that sound? Does that sound like a good idea?”
He grimaces.
“Yeah, maybe no nodding!” Rhoda soothes. “That’s where the knock is, on the back of your head there. It’s not a big one but it’ll be a bit sore for a while. So, no more nodding, okay? You just relax.”
He blinks in acknowledgment. No more nodding.
She throws her gaze out toward the ward and seems to reach a decision.
“Right, you know what, let’s just get going without them.” She releases the footbrake on the gurney and smiles. “If there’s no porters, then I’m just going to take you over for the scan myself. If you want a job done right—”
She pulls back the curtains.
8
DR. EMMA LEWIS
DAY 6—JOE
Isn’t it funny how you can successfully not think about something for months or even years, you can almost forget, almost, and then one simple sentence or word can bring it all back with a sudden sickening immediacy?
Peter and I say our goodbyes outside the café and I head back to the hospital, my mind whirring. I need to center myself; it’s just that I wasn’t expecting that, to be confronted with the worst moments of my life. Not today, not when things seemed to be going so well.
I scan the hospital lobby as I enter—faces, so many faces, all with their lives and their own stories. I try to shake off the feeling that everyone who sees me knows, knows exactly what happened fourteen years ago. I try to shake off the sharp shame of it, the dread. The feeling I’ve managed to avoid for so long. Even if sometimes memories of it stop me in my tracks on Oxford Street, my Christmas shopping bags trembling in hand, as strangers swirl around me. Or make me fall silent mid-sentence in restaurants with countless prospective boyfriends. Even if they make me question my instincts in every aspect of my personal life, and mean my only freedom, my only escape, is through work. Even if they are the reason I have chosen to live alone, in case, just in case, somehow, I make it all happen again.