Liz Jensen: The Rapture

I wonder what channels she had been watching. Discovery, BBC World, Cartoon Network, News 24, CNN. But where? When? The TV in the rec room seems permanently fixed on MTV. The internet. A million websites, a zillion images — you can go anywhere, believe in anything, see carnage of every variety, scare yourself to Neptune and back. If global warming is terminal proof that we have fouled our own nest, Bethany is evidence that some human minds can draw energy from the fact.

‘You know what I mean by the Earth’s core,’ she says, touching her heart with spread fingers. Her father is a preacher: I wonder how much of her presentation comes, unconsciously, from him. Or perhaps it’s just an ability to convey conviction that she has picked up, a charisma. ‘I mean its centre. I mean its soul. I saw it when they zapped me. You’re not supposed to remember anything about the shock, right? But I do. My whole body wakes up. I came back from the dead, you know. Like Lazarus. Or Jesus Christ. I can see things, Wheels. Disasters. I’ve made notes. Dates, times, places, everything. Just like a weathergirl. They should employ me. I’d get paid a fucking fortune. I can see stuff happening before it happens. I feel it. Atoms popping about. Vibrations in your blood. These huge fucking wounds. The planet in meltdown. This freezing stuff, pouring from the cracks. Then it heats up, like some kind of magma. And whoosh. The promised land.’

She smiles, bright-eyed, and for a tiny, fleeting fraction of time, she looks ecstatically, murderously happy.

Unimaginably atrocious things have surely been done to Bethany, to make her do what she did: things that can never be undone. And she has done an unimaginably atrocious thing in return. I doubt I will ever get to the bottom of the trauma that led her to take a Phillips screwdriver to her mother, though I might take a second look at the photo of the father and hazard a guess that some of the damage came from him too. What matters now is Bethany ‘moving forward’, as the jargon goes, on a shiny conveyor belt of psychic progress. People like me are supposed to believe in repair, and I once did, until I became the object of my own clinical trial. After which—

Not any more. Damage limitation, perhaps. Sometimes. Sometimes not. When you stop being a woman, as I did on May 14th two years ago, there are things you see more clearly. Sexuality confounds matters, insinuating itself into every exchange. Freed of all that, you can see things for what they are, like kids do, and old people. That’s my theory. But it’s only a theory. And anyway, who says I am free?

‘So you see, with all that going on in my head, it’s like non-stop around here. Things to think about, things to do, that’s me,’ finishes Bethany. But after the rush of information, the burst of energy, she seems suddenly deflated, dissatisfied with herself. Her fantasies are a fertile oasis in the desert of her boredom, and a corner of her consciousness knows it.

‘Things in the self-destruction department.’

‘Things in the self-destruction department.’ She mimics me well enough to make me wince internally. ‘Bibble babble, bibble babble, bibble babble.’

I let my eyes wander around the room until I catch sight of myself in the mirror, and make a swift, stranger’s appraisal: a woman with extravagant brunette hair, who may be skilled at her work, and good-looking in a seriously-damaged-goods sort of way, but who is clearly forever dependent on others. Who will never walk again, never have sex, never give birth. Who shall remain forever beholden to others.

Bethany has stopped rocking and is looking at me intently. I don’t say anything, but an instinct makes me assess the distance between us. And the angles. When my father moved into the care home five years ago, my brother Pierre came over from Quebec and together we cleared out his bungalow. One of the souvenirs I took with me was a freak of geology known as a thunder egg which Maman kept on her dressing table: a perfect, fist-sized sphere of flint which passed down her family, along with the eccentric story that if someone sat on it for long enough, it would hatch. Maman was much attached to the thunder egg, and now I am much attached to it too, though not for the same romantic reasons. In addition to the regulation personal alarm all staff carry, and in defiance of the hospital’s strict regulations, I keep the stone ball in a hanging pouch under my seat, in case of emergencies, along with my miniature spray-can of photographic glue — also illicit — which I’ve been reliably told is as effective as mace. But if I can’t react fast enough, and Bethany reaches for a sharpened pencil and stabs me, how long will it be before Rafik — still busy — intervenes and activates his alarm? Trapped as I am, I’d be a lot quicker to kill than Mrs K.

Almost as though she has read my thoughts, with a swift movement — too sudden for me to react — Bethany has reached out and grabbed my wrist with her small, surprisingly muscled hand. Her skin is clammy, her grip too tight.

‘Let go of me, Bethany.’ I take care to say it quietly and levelly, to hide the inner scream. Rafik has jumped to intervene but I signal to him that I will deal with this for now. Still gripping my wrist, Bethany turns my hand over so that the palm is facing upwards, and puts her finger on the pulse. I feel it begin to race under the pad of her skin. ‘Let my hand go, please, Bethany.’

But she is somewhere else. Her face has a mesmerised look. ‘So someone died,’ she says, in her baby voice. ‘Someone died a horrible death .’ My breath catches roughly in my throat. ‘There’s no point telling me he didn’t,’ she continues excitedly. ‘Cos, fuck! I can feel it in your blood!’ She narrows her eyes. ‘I died once, so I know. I recognise the symptoms. Death leaves a mark. Did you know that blood has its own memory? It’s like rock, and water, and air.’ I look down at my pinioned wrist. I know my arms are stronger than hers. But when I start to pull away, she tightens her grip and I think with an inner lurch: perhaps they’re not.

With a practised movement, Rafik has swiftly grabbed her other arm. ‘Easy, Bethany. Let go of Miss Fox now.’ Smoothly, he pulls off the cap of his belt-alarm.

‘And you never got to know him properly, did you?’ Bethany is whispering. A flashing light in the corridor outside indicates the emergency call has worked. They’ll be here in seconds. Again I try to pull away, and fail. Rafik has a firm hold of her shoulders now but she’s gripped a handle of my wheelchair and barnacled herself to it. The fingers of her other hand, which Rafik is trying to prise away, now tighten further on my wrist, pressing deep into the pulse. ‘It wasn’t fair, was it? It was just the beginning of a beautiful relationship!’

‘Off her now!’ mutters Rafik, tugging so fiercely at Bethany’s arm that my wheelchair threatens to capsize. I try not to scream, try not to think, an upturned beetle.

‘Yeah, a beautiful relationship, right? The best ever!’ Bethany’s head is next to mine now and she’s whispering in my ear. I watch the lights flashing outside and listen for footsteps running. I don’t hear any. ‘But you never found out how the two of you would be together. That’s your problem. You got emptied out. You had two hearts and one was gone. Hey. That sucks. The poor tragic cripple!’

Finally, Rafik has pulled Bethany off the chair, released my wrist and forced both her hands behind her back. Roughly, he shoves her against the wall and struggles to keep her in position while waiting for backup.

I reach my hand under lily seat and flex my fingers round lily thunder egg while the pressure swells in my head. For a few seconds I am too disoriented to speak. I look out of the window. The turbines spin their slow rotations on the horizon, far out at sea. My heart hurts. No, it aches. So someone died a horrible death… You never got to know him properly. Two hearts and one was gone . Then the rage comes in, a big ugly slub of it. She has hurt me, seen things and said things she shouldn’t have, and more than anything I want to damage her. Badly. I palm the stone and consider its decisive heft. It’s aching to be thrown. Then I realise that if I don’t get away from her right now, I’ll do it. Or try to. And miss, of course, and fall out of the chair in a ridiculous lunge. And then it will be me who Rafik is restraining, and I’ll lose my job.