Belinda Bauer - Rubbernecker

‘Oh, it begins with a B,’ she giggled. ‘There are so many doctors, and then there’s juniors and students too, and I’m new on this ward, so I haven’t learned them all yet.’

‘Where were you before?’

‘Paediatrics.’

‘Did you like that?’

Did she? What would he want to hear? Tracy could have kicked herself for not checking whether the Deals had children. Even then there was no right answer. If they had children, maybe he’d rather have someone who didn’t have baggage; if they didn’t , then maybe that was Mrs Deal’s fault, and he’d be keen to start a family with somebody new.

‘Oh yes,’ she enthused. ‘But I like this just as much in a different way.’ She hoped that covered both bases. He only nodded, which gave her no clue. But the next night, he brought a small box of chocolates and told her they were just for her. Sadly, they were truffles, but she was gushing in her thanks and promised to keep them a secret. She re-gifted them for her sister’s birthday that very weekend, but took heart from the fact that she and Mr Deal were making progress.

Unlike her patients.

The most annoying bad patient had died and everything was easier without his thrashing and crying. They were all very relieved, particularly Angie, whose crooked finger was the only sign now that he had ever been there.

Still, all Tracy seemed to do was put food and fluids in at one end of the patients and clean up at the other. They were less people than simple flesh tunnels for processing calories into shit. It repulsed her.

The few patients who could communicate were painfully slow at the process. Between all her other tasks, Tracy was often required to sit and interpret their weird stretched moans, or their long-winded attempts to spell out pointless messages on the little Possum spelling gadgets.

‘T… H. Is that an H? Or a G? Can you blink if it’s an H? Was that a blink or a twitch? Try to be accurate, OK? I’m going with H.’

T… H… God, it took for ever and they never said anything interesting. It didn’t help that one of the ward Possums was a bit dodgy and sometimes needed a good shake, or to be turned off and on again to avoid scrambling to gobbledegook.

While she waited for the patient to blink her way through the alphabet, Tracy’s eyes wandered to the TV on the opposite wall. It was Bargain Hunt and the blue team were considering a hideous green vase. Her mother had one just like it, and Tracy made a mental note to admire it next time she was home; maybe her mother would give it to her. When she looked back the patient had laboriously spelled out ‘T… H… I… R… S…’

Tracy smiled. ‘Thursday? Aw, bless! No, it’s Friday today, silly. TGIF! Off to Evolution tonight for a few drinks and a dance. Better get back to work now, though. No rest for the wicked.’

She put the Possum down beside the water jug, then went over to the nurses’ station and slumped in the swivel chair. The coma ward was boring yet difficult. Like golf.

Then Tracy sat up and dug about and found a hazelnut cluster in the lower layer of the latest Terry’s All Gold.

I SURGE UP from the depths of the well like a killer whale, with everything going from dark depths to bright white as I break the surface, and open my eyes on a pair of breasts encased in blue with white trim, almost touching my nose. Her enormous name tag says, ‘Tracy Evans, RN’.

She straightens up and looks at me and says, ‘Oh!’

Help me, Tracy! Someone killed the man in the next bed . But my ears hear only ‘Aaaaaaa waaaaa aaaaaaa,’ like an annoying sheep.

‘Oh,’ she says again, ‘you’re awake.’ Then she leans down close and looks into my eyes from about six inches away, so that I can see all the little flecks in her blue irises.

‘ Are you?’ she says, suspiciously.

All I can do is blink slowly and hope she understands that I need to report a murder right now .

Instead she bustles away and I get so angry that I fall asleep…

I open my eyes again to find a woman old enough to be my mother, but who’s not my mother, weeping at my bedside. She wears blue gloves and a surgical mask. Her hair is greying and her eyes are red, and snot from her nose has made a dark patch on the front of the mask.

Why is she crying? Has something gone wrong?

For a horrible second I wonder if I ’ve gone wrong.

‘Maaaaaa!’

She stops mid-sob and looks up, gasps, then chokes a bit. ‘Doctor!’ she croaks.

I flinch inside. A doctor is the last person I want to see, but what can I do? I have to show I’m awake and in one piece or they’ll let me just slip away …

My stomach rolls in fear as a set of blue scrubs walks into my vision and looks down at me over an armful of clipboards. He’s even younger than me.

‘You awake again, mate?’ he says – and this time I do cry with happiness – and relief – because that’s such a nice friendly thing to say; not sinister or frightening.

I hope I’m nodding, but either way he turns and calls across the ward. ‘Hello? Can we have some help?’

We. Can we have some help. I’m with him now; regardless of the scrubs, we’re on the same side.

Tracy Evans with the big blue boobs comes over and it’s all bustle bustle bustle with people pinching my fingernails, requests to say my own name, establishing one blink for yes and two for no – while the young doctor announces each positive like a poo in a potty.

‘Withdrawal from pain!… No comprehensible language, but that might come… Spontaneous eye opening. Very good!’

He makes a quick calculation, then tells the weeping woman that my Glasgow score is now ten. I have no idea what he means, but ten sounds pretty perfect to me. Then he gets all serious and lowers his voice – as if I can’t hear him.

‘But I need to warn you not to get your hopes up too high. He’s not out of the woods yet. This may be as good as it gets, or he may even regress. We know so little about emergence; it’s never straightforward, and he’s still incredibly vulnerable.’

The woman nods and catches her mascara on the back of her fingers, her optimism tempered.

My optimism is sky high! He may or may not be a killer, but the doctor is my new best friend. He gave me a ten, didn’t he? I feel like a traitor, but I’m so grateful to him that I don’t care about the man in the next bed. I’ll worry about him later.

Or maybe I won’t.

He’s dead and I’m not, and that’s all that matters right now.

When Tracy Evans and the doctor finally go away, the woman in the mask lays a rubber-gloved hand on my head.

‘I knew you were in there. I knew it!’ she says like a zealot.

Then she leans down and kisses me dryly through the blue paper mask. ‘I love you, darling.’

Well, thank you , I think. But who the hell are you?

PATRICK WAS DISAPPOINTED by the heart. He wasn’t expecting an on-off switch, but he’d hoped they’d find more than a mere pump made of meat and rubbery veins, and felt deceived by popular sentiment. So far people were almost as impenetrable on the inside as he’d always found them on the outside.

Other students had discovered scars and fused toes and numerous tattoos. Number 4 had one running around his ankle – Diane and Maria, 1966 – that had provoked much speculation. The only vaguely interesting thing so far about Number 19 had been a small puckered hole in his side.

‘Feeding tube,’ Dilip had said with confidence. ‘My grandmother had one before she died.’

‘He probably died in hospital then,’ said Rob. ‘Unless it’s old.’