Kate Atkinson - Case Histories

Theo was too hot, Laura's bench stood in a sun trap against the wall of the church. He could feel the sweat pooling in the fatty concave of his lower back. It wasn't a good day to be here. Theo was allergic to almost every living thing that grew in the churchyard, but he had prearmed himself with sunglasses and Zyrtec and had hoped to battle it out a little longer with the abundant flora of Little St. Mary's, but his eyes and nose had begun to stream with water and he knew he was going to have to make a move. He struggled to his feet. "Bye, bye, sweetheart," he said, because she was everywhere. And nowhere.

On Christ's Pieces a man was cutting the grass, sitting on one of those little tractor mowers. Theo could hardly see for the tears rolling down his face. The handkerchief he was holding up to his nose was already sodden. People were giving him odd looks but he lumbered on regardless. The buses at the Drummond Street Bus Station roared their engines like mechanical beasts, Theo swore he could taste exhaust fumes in his mouth. Who would build a bus station next to a green space? He could hear the breath in his chest, it sounded as loud as the lawn mower. To be allergic to summer seemed wrong some-how. His wife, Valerie, had never been sympathetic, she'd seen his allergies and asthma as another kind of character weakness. There'd been no pets in the house until Laura was fourteen and she'd wanted a dog so badly that he had finally given in and they drove to the dog's home and came back with Poppy. She was still only a few months old, someone had thrown her out of a moving car. How could any-one do that? What kind of person could inflict suffering like that? Laura said she was going to "smother" Poppy with love to make it up to her. And Theo had gradually grown accustomed to the dog hair, until he could even let her sit on his knee while he stroked her. He loved that dog too, it had been terrible when she was run over, a tiny premonition of what was to come.

Theo could feel his chest tightening. He began to wheeze and reached in his pocket for his Ventolin inhaler. It wasn't in the usual pocket. He tried all his pockets and then had a sudden, clear picture of his inhaler sitting on the hall table, waiting to be transferred from one jacket to another. The panic was like a punch to the heart. His legs almost went from under him and he stumbled to a bench in the Princess Diana Memorial Rose Garden, trying to keep calm, trying to keep the terror at bay. The sunny day had already grown black round the edges and spots were dancing before Theo's eyes. He could feel a knotty pain in his chest and wondered if he was having a heart attack.

He was fighting for breath. He should try and signal to someone that he needed help, that he wasn't just some fat bloke sweating on a park bench, that he was a fat bloke who was dying. The panic was screwing up his chest, wringing it hard. He could hear the terrible noises he was making as he fought to find a breath, surely someone could hear him?

This too shall pass, he thought to himself, but it didn't. He would have expected that by now he would be feeling peace and acceptance, that the oxygen deprivation would have made him ready for death, but his body was still struggling with every nerve and fiber. Whether he liked it or not he was going down fighting.

There was a dark silhouette in front of him, a person, blocking out the sunlight, and he thought it must be Laura, come to take him home. He wanted to say her name but he couldn't speak, couldn't see, couldn't breathe. She was saying something to him but the words sounded as if they were coming from underwater. She touched his arm and her fingers felt icy. He heard her say, "Can I help you?" the words booming and crashing in his ear like the surf. and part of him wanted to say, "No, I'm fine," because he didn't want to worry her, but another part, a stronger insistent part over which he had no control, was clawing at the air, trying to convey his desperation. Now he could hear voices, there were other people there and someone thrust something toward his mouth and it took him a second to realize it was an inhaler.

Then blackness. Then the ambulance, where he felt nauseous and weak, but the oxygen mask on his face was extraordinarily reassuring. The paramedic lifted it slightly so he could speak and he asked if he'd had a heart attack and the paramedic shook his head and said, "No, I don't think so." And then he slept. And woke in a bed in a side ward. There was an old man in the other bed, hooked up to a lot of tubes. Theo realized that he was hooked up to a lot of tubes as well. When he woke the next time the old man had gone and when he woke the time after that he was in a different ward and it was visiting time, people flooding into the ward with magazines and fruit and plastic carrier bags of clothes. Theo turned his head to follow the visitors' progress and saw a girl sitting on a chair next to his bed. He realized two things at the same time: first, it was the beggar girl with the custard-yellow hair, and second, it had been this girl who had helped him on Christ's Pieces. Not Laura.

She was there the next afternoon, perched cautiously on the edge of the chair as if she didn't trust it to hold her weight although she was as thin as a stick. She hadn't brought magazines or fruit or any of the things that the other visitors brought, but instead she pressed something into his closed hand, and when he opened it he saw a pebble, smooth and still warm from her own dry, grubby hand, so that it seemed like a curiously intimate gift. Theo wondered if she was simple. He was sure there was a more politically correct term but he couldn't remember what it was. His brain felt foggy and he supposed it was the drugs.

She wasn't inclined to talk but that was alright because neither was he. She did tell him though that her name was Lily-Rose, and he said, "That's a pretty name," and she smiled a small, shy smile and said, "Thank you, it's my own," which seemed an odd thing to say.

A nurse came by to take his temperature. She stuck the thermometer in Theo's mouth and, smiling at Lily-Rose, said, "I think your Dad'll be discharged tomorrow," and Lily-Rose said, "That's good," and Theo said nothing because he still had the thermometer in his mouth.

Jackson came in the evening and Theo was touched because he seemed genuinely concerned about him. "You're going to have to look after yourself, big man," he said, and he patted his hand and Theo felt tears prick his eyes because no one ever touched him except for probing medical fingers. And the cold touch of the yellow-haired girl. Lily-Rose. Jackson looked as if someone had beaten him up again and Theo said, "Are you okay, Jackson?" and Jackson looked pained and said, "That would very much depend on your definition of 'okay,' Theo."

She walked him to the taxi, holding his elbow as if she would prop him up if he fell, although she didn't look strong enough to support a lupin.

The taxi driver and a nurse helped Theo inside the taxi. The nurse held the door open for Lily-Rose. Lily-Rose's dog jumped in but jumped out again when it realized she wasn't following. Theo wanted to write down his address and telephone number for her, but he didn't have any paper. Lily-Rose said, "Here, use this," and gave him a small white card, and it was only when he'd written down his address and phone number that he turned the card over and realized it was one of Jackson's. He gave her a puzzled look and said, "You know Jackson?" and she said, "Who?" but the nurse shut the taxi door and the driver pulled away. Both the nurse and Lily-Rose stood on the pavement and waved at him. Theo waved back and thought how absurd it was that when he thought she was going to climb in the taxi with him his heart had given an extra little beat of joy.

He'd only been away for two days and yet his house had already begun to grow strange to him. His inhaler was still sitting on the hall table. The rooms smelled stale so Theo opened all the windows and thought he might buy a perfumed candle, an expensive one, not the ones that smelled of cheap vanilla and air freshener. He went upstairs to the spare bedroom, "the incident room," Jackson had called it, and saw it through the eyes of a stranger for the first time, saw how macabre and frightening it might seem.