walk down the corridor or the removal of my hospital gown without assistance. With the ties undone, the nurse turned on the shower and, after establishing that I felt confident enough on my feet to be left alone to wash, she slipped out of the room.
Under the surprisingly forceful jets of water, I tried to clear my mind of its endless questioning, but it refused to be still. And even the innocuous act of washing myself threw up further unanswered puzzles. An unperfumed white bar sat in the soap dish, but it wasn’t until I began to revolve it slowly between my palms that I noticed the grazes upon them.
I washed off the suds and turned my hands thoughtfully this way and that under the spray. Both of them were equally grazed, as though I had fallen heavily and tried to save myself.But for the life of me I couldn’t remember when or how I had done this. I did remember falling to the ground beside Jimmy’s grave in the churchyard, but I had landed upon grass, not concrete. The only possibility I could come up with was that I must have grazed them against a headstone when I had finally collapsed. That thought left me wondering who it was who had found me in the cemetery and brought me to hospital. In the light of the larger, more puzzling questions, I was happy to let that one go.
I wished there had been a mirror in the small utilitarian washroom so I could see if my head or face bore any signs of injury, for as I soaped and rinsed the rest of my body, I found several other places that were both grazed and bruised. Again they all looked too raw and angry to have been sustained in anything less than a very hefty fall. I was covered in injuries where there should be none, while my father had an illness that had simply disappeared. I wondered if Alice had felt this confused when she had fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.
Still trying to resolve the irresolvable, I hit upon one idea suddenly as I dried myself briskly on the rough hospital towel. Perhaps the reason my father wouldn’t admit to his illness was because his treatment hadn’t been legal. I almost threw the idea out as preposterous. He was so honest I couldn’t even remember him getting so much as a parking fine in his entire life. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made—in a totally nonsensical way. Maybe he was paying privately for some unlicensed medication or treatment forbidden in the UK. And if that
was
the case, well then, he’d probably
have
to lie in order to protect whatever secret trial or doctor had helped him.
As I waited for the nurse to return with a clean gown, Ifelt happier to have found a workable solution to the mystery. Very probably, when away from the confines of the hospital, he would confess it all, when it was safe to betray his secret without others hearing. And as for secrets, I had been hiding a pretty big one of my own from him too: the recurring headaches. I just hoped I would be able to find the time to speak to the doctor in private about the symptoms that had precipitated my collapse by the church.
As she took my arm to help me back to my room, the nurse supplied another surprising piece of information.
“I’d better warn you that you have a police officer waiting in your room to talk to you now that you’re awake.”
I stopped mid-step and turned to the young nurse in consternation.
“A policeman? Why? Whatever for?”
She gave me a curious look.
“Well, they obviously need to get all the details about what happened by the church the other night.”
I looked back at her dumbly.
What happened by the church?
Were the police really so light on crime in this area that they had sent someone to question me about trespassing in the churchyard late at night? Was that really even a crime at all? It wasn’t as though I’d been vandalizing the graves. Surely I wasn’t going to be charged with some petty misdemeanor? How much weirder was this day going to get?
In my wildest of dreams, I could never
Under the surprisingly forceful jets of water, I tried to clear my mind of its endless questioning, but it refused to be still. And even the innocuous act of washing myself threw up further unanswered puzzles. An unperfumed white bar sat in the soap dish, but it wasn’t until I began to revolve it slowly between my palms that I noticed the grazes upon them.
I washed off the suds and turned my hands thoughtfully this way and that under the spray. Both of them were equally grazed, as though I had fallen heavily and tried to save myself.But for the life of me I couldn’t remember when or how I had done this. I did remember falling to the ground beside Jimmy’s grave in the churchyard, but I had landed upon grass, not concrete. The only possibility I could come up with was that I must have grazed them against a headstone when I had finally collapsed. That thought left me wondering who it was who had found me in the cemetery and brought me to hospital. In the light of the larger, more puzzling questions, I was happy to let that one go.
I wished there had been a mirror in the small utilitarian washroom so I could see if my head or face bore any signs of injury, for as I soaped and rinsed the rest of my body, I found several other places that were both grazed and bruised. Again they all looked too raw and angry to have been sustained in anything less than a very hefty fall. I was covered in injuries where there should be none, while my father had an illness that had simply disappeared. I wondered if Alice had felt this confused when she had fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.
Still trying to resolve the irresolvable, I hit upon one idea suddenly as I dried myself briskly on the rough hospital towel. Perhaps the reason my father wouldn’t admit to his illness was because his treatment hadn’t been legal. I almost threw the idea out as preposterous. He was so honest I couldn’t even remember him getting so much as a parking fine in his entire life. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made—in a totally nonsensical way. Maybe he was paying privately for some unlicensed medication or treatment forbidden in the UK. And if that
was
the case, well then, he’d probably
have
to lie in order to protect whatever secret trial or doctor had helped him.
As I waited for the nurse to return with a clean gown, Ifelt happier to have found a workable solution to the mystery. Very probably, when away from the confines of the hospital, he would confess it all, when it was safe to betray his secret without others hearing. And as for secrets, I had been hiding a pretty big one of my own from him too: the recurring headaches. I just hoped I would be able to find the time to speak to the doctor in private about the symptoms that had precipitated my collapse by the church.
As she took my arm to help me back to my room, the nurse supplied another surprising piece of information.
“I’d better warn you that you have a police officer waiting in your room to talk to you now that you’re awake.”
I stopped mid-step and turned to the young nurse in consternation.
“A policeman? Why? Whatever for?”
She gave me a curious look.
“Well, they obviously need to get all the details about what happened by the church the other night.”
I looked back at her dumbly.
What happened by the church?
Were the police really so light on crime in this area that they had sent someone to question me about trespassing in the churchyard late at night? Was that really even a crime at all? It wasn’t as though I’d been vandalizing the graves. Surely I wasn’t going to be charged with some petty misdemeanor? How much weirder was this day going to get?
In my wildest of dreams, I could never
Similar Books
