Gillian Jackson - The Accident

‘I thought you might like this.’ She carried a cup of tea and placed it on the table beside the bed, a cure for all ills. ‘Do you need anything else?’ She began to check the drips, touching and adjusting them very deliberately. ‘This is the pain medication and you can self-administer it, see?’ She showed Hannah the button to press which would release the morphine into her arm. ‘How bad is the pain, on a scale of one to ten?’

‘Nine, ten, I don’t know...’ Hannah sobbed.

The nurse pressed the button for her and almost instantly Hannah felt the medication flowing through her body.

‘It works pretty fast so don’t use it too much but it’s quite safe, you can’t overdose on it, although too much might make you feel nauseous.’ The nurse smiled; she looked so young, not very much older than Mel. ‘If you need anything else just press the buzzer.’

Her calm efficiency had the effect of settling Hannah down, or was it the morphine? The sobs eased and she gulped in a few deep breaths. Feeling quite light-headed now she lay back on the pillows, but a wave of nausea swept over her and she tried to reach for the bowl at the bottom of the bed. Mike realised what was happening and passed it to her just in time. She retched, but there was nothing in her stomach.

When the feeling passed Hannah studied Mike, his face was as pale as her own. He’d never been good around illness of any kind, and she was surprised to find herself thinking about how he would cope with her disability, rather than how she would.

‘Do the children know?’ she asked.

‘Yes. They’ll be here any minute.’

As the twins entered the hospital ward Hannah forced a smile, pleased to see them but still numb from the knowledge of the extent of her injuries.

Mel almost threw herself on top of her mother, tears flowing unchecked.

‘Oh, Mum, I’m so glad you’re all right; we thought we’d lost you!’

Hannah was thankful for the cage protecting her legs, or what was left of them. Sam was quieter, kissing his mother on the cheek when his sister moved away; he could find no words to say but reached for her hand and squeezed it briefly.

‘How’ve you been coping without me?’ Hannah asked, trying to pretend everything was normal, while fearing that it never would be again.

‘Okay,’ Sam offered, not terribly convincingly.

‘We’ve missed you of course, but we’ve managed, and Dad says he’s not going to be going away again for a while, so we’ll all be around to help when you come home.’ Mel smiled, her intention so obviously to reassure her mother, but the words brought a chill to Hannah’s heart. How much help would she need from her family and how readily could she accept it? She’d always been the one to do the caring, and loved the role, it didn’t seem right that her husband and children would now have to look after her.

‘I don’t know how long I’ll be in here,’ she began to explain, ‘but the doctor talked about a prosthetic leg. Maybe I’ll have that fitted when I come home?’ Really she’d not even considered the timescale of her recovery, but so desperately wanted to reassure her family, and possibly herself, that she wouldn’t be a burden to them.

The conversation was strained and Hannah was visibly tiring. Mike made the decision that they would go home and let her sleep some more. Almost as a second thought he asked, ‘Unless you’d like me to stay a little longer?’

‘No, I think I need to sleep, but you’ll all come again tomorrow?’

‘Of course we will!’ Mel spoke for them all before they kissed her goodbye, leaving her alone with a legion of troubled thoughts running through her mind.

The doctor said that Joe had had a lucky escape. An X-ray revealed that his collarbone was broken, which was the cause of his pain — even trying to lift his head to drink made him wince. But in all honesty he felt anything but lucky and would much rather be dead, like his beloved Alison. His reason for living was gone, what did that mean for him now?

Alison hadn’t deserved to die. It should have been him. She was so full of energy, a good person who loved life; he didn’t, especially a life without Alison which stretched fearfully ahead of him, void of all happiness.

It had been over two hours before someone came to tell him that she was dead, two hours during which Joe asked and asked to the point of becoming a nuisance. At first they were too busy in Accident and Emergency for anyone to break off from tending the injured to enquire about his wife; the accident was declared a major incident and stretched the hospital’s already strained and limited resources. He learned from listening to the nurses, that there were three fatalities, two women and a teenage boy, and positive identifications had to be made before informing the next of kin.

Joe was moved into a side ward where the chaplain, who’d obviously drawn the short straw, came with the ward sister to tell him that Alison was dead. The chaplain looked genuinely grieved to be bearing such news, his brow furrowed and his lips turned down at the corners as he placed his long slender fingers on Joe’s good shoulder. His touch was cold, yet his words were warm, albeit hollow.

At first Joe refused to believe it; surely it was another woman who’d died, not his wife, it couldn’t be her! But it was, and he wished with all his heart that it had been him instead of Alison.

The chaplain asked if there was anyone he wanted him to call, anyone who would come to be with him, but he could think of no one. Joe had a brother but they’d never been close and he lived somewhere on the south coast, he couldn’t even remember the name of the town now. Alison’s mother would need to be told; she’d wonder why her daughter hadn’t arrived and would be unable to reach them on the phone.

The chaplain said he’d speak to one of the police officers and they would go round to break the news. It wasn’t an ideal way for the old lady to hear that her daughter was dead, but Joe was in no fit state to go himself and as yet didn’t know how long they’d keep him in hospital. He’d given the chaplain the address and also asked him to phone his neighbours for him, to ask them to look after Liffey.

Phil and Helen Roper had moved into the house next door to the Parkers ten years ago and the two couples hit it off from day one. They were of a similar age and although they didn’t live in each other’s pockets, both couples more than filled the role of ‘good neighbours’. When Alison and Joe got Liffey, the friendship extended to dog-sitting. Phil had always wanted a dog but as he still worked and Helen had such a busy life, they felt it unfair to leave one at home all day, so they happily became sitters for Liffey and she was almost as comfortable in their home as her own. They readily looked after her when holidays came around and he knew that his dog would be fine with them.

Thinking about it now, he experienced a sudden longing for Liffey to be with him; her warm body and loving temperament would be a welcome comfort, perhaps she was the next most precious thing in his life ... after Ali.

Joe wondered if the other fatality was the woman in the Ford Focus into which his car had smashed. Surely if Alison hadn’t survived the impact, the other woman would also be dead; her car must have been squashed to an unrecognisable mass. Would she leave a husband, and children?

Joe spent an uncomfortable night in the stuffy hospital ward. A nurse gave him painkillers but they couldn’t ease the pain in his heart, the solid, painful, mass of emotion welling up in his chest at the thought of his wife, at the knowledge that he would never see her again, never hear her voice or touch her hand; it was unbearable.