Kevin Brooks - See Through Me

Was there anyone I wanted to call?

No.

Not even Finch?

I felt tears in my eyes then.

Of course I wanted to talk to Finch . . . there was nothing I wanted more. But I knew what would happen if I did. I knew I’d start sobbing my heart out the moment I heard his voice, and that once the tears had begun to flow, I wouldn’t be able to stop them. And all that would do was make us both feel worse. Finch would be upset because I was upset, and that would make me more upset, which in turn would make Finch more upset . . .

No.

I couldn’t speak to him . . . not yet, anyway.

But maybe . . .

I gazed down at the carrier bag.

Could I text him?

I thought about it . . .

It’s Finch , I told myself. You don’t need to think about texting Finch. Just do it.

I thought about it some more . . .

There was a good chance my phone wasn’t in the bag anyway. Someone could have found it – a nurse, a doctor, a paramedic – and put it away for safe keeping, or it could have just fallen out of my pocket somewhere . . . and if the phone wasn’t there, there was nothing to think about, was there? So I might as well have a look . . .

As I reached down for the bag – taking care not to pull out any of the tubes and wires attached to various parts of my body – I knew in my heart that I wanted the phone to be there, and I knew that I was going to text Finch if it was.

It was.

And I did.

When I opened the phone I saw that there was a message from Finch from three days ago.

hey kez, i’m here if you want to talk, but don’t worry if you don’t. i’m here for you anyway xxx

Even that was almost enough to break my heart.

I waited for the tingle to leave my eyes, then wrote back.

hi finch, how’s it going? sorry i didn’t write sooner, didn’t have my phone. are you ok? xxx

He replied almost immediately.

kenzie!! ha! my favourite big sis! i knew i’d hear from you this morning, I just KNEW it. i could feel it in the air

Then me.

how are you? everything ok?

Finch.

everything’s fine. but what about you? what’s going on, kez? are you all right?

Me.

not really

Finch.

is there anything i can do? do you want to talk about it?

Me.

not yet. maybe later. is that ok?

Finch.

no prob. whenever you’re ready. i’ll be here

Me.

thanks. i’ve got to go now. tired

Finch.

ok

Me.

love you xxx

Reasons . . .

I shouldn’t have sent that last message. Finch never liked it when I told him I loved him. He thought it was a bad omen, like saying a final goodbye. It made him think he was about to die.

Reasons don’t matter.

I’d kept myself covered up since the revelation – gown, long gloves, long socks – and I hadn’t looked at myself once. I hadn’t even taken a quick peek at anything in the hope that the transparency had gone and everything was back to normal again . . . I knew it wasn’t. I could feel it. And I knew that not looking at it wouldn’t make it go away, or make it any better . . . in fact, it might even make things worse.

But I just couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t face the hideous reality of what I’d become.

So for two days I just lay there in bed, cocooned in white in the dim grey light of the room, letting myself drift into a mindless nowhere. But then on the morning of the third day – I had no idea what day it actually was – everything became real again. I was told I was being moved to the recovery room, and that it had been decided that Dad could visit me today. It seemed a bit sudden – I was sure it was sooner than Dr Kamara had led me to believe – and I was a bit surprised that I hadn’t been asked if it was okay with me, but I didn’t say anything. Dad was going to be here at twelve o’clock, and while he was here Dr Reynolds would be sitting down with both of us to discuss my condition in detail. And that was that.

Goodbye, mindless nowhere.

Hello reality.

It wasn’t far to the recovery room. Just along a short corridor, through a secured door, then left into another corridor, and the room was tucked away at the end of a little passageway. When I got out of bed I could hardly stand up at first, let alone walk. My legs just weren’t used to it. Dr Kamara told me not to worry, that it was only to be expected after a long stay in bed, and it wasn’t a problem anyway because all I had to do was get myself into the wheelchair she’d brought with her, and she’d do the rest. I’m not sure why I wouldn’t even contemplate using the wheelchair – although I suppose it’s possible that it had something to do with Finch – but my strength of feeling must have been obvious, because Dr Kamara didn’t bother trying to change my mind. And once I’d been on my feet for a few minutes, leaning against the bed for support, my legs didn’t feel quite so wobbly anyway. I still had to stop a few times on the way to the recovery room – it felt as if I was climbing a mountain – and the two-minute journey must have taken at least fifteen minutes, but I got there in the end, and I managed to make it without falling over.

The corridors were deserted.

No doctors, no nurses, no porters . . .

No sign of anyone at all.

No windows either.

And the only thing I could hear was a faint humming sound that seemed to be coming from behind the walls.

The recovery room was nice enough. It had a small settee and a matching armchair, a table and chairs, a few cupboards, a flat screen TV, and a proper little bed ( not a hospital bed). The floor was carpeted, and there was a separate bathroom (with a bath and a shower). And on the far side of the room there was a window. It was fitted with a blackout blind to keep out the daylight, and when Dr Kamara had first shown me inside, the blind was down and the room was so dark that she’d had to turn on the lights to show me around. The lights were controlled by a dimmer switch.

‘Your dad will be here at twelve,’ Dr Kamara reminded me. ‘We’ll bring him straight here when he arrives, okay?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Is there anything you need before I go?’

Yeah , I thought, I need to not be here, I need to not be a monster, I need my ordinary life back . . . my shitty old ordinary life . . .

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ I told her.

I don’t get people sometimes. I don’t understand how their minds work. Take Dr Kamara, for instance. I’d thought at first that she was the most compassionate of the three doctors, the most perceptive, the one with the most understanding. But when I’d asked her about niqabs and burqas that time – whether or not non-Muslims could wear them – I got the impression that I’d offended her in some way, and the only explanation I could think of was that she’d thought I was only asking her because I’d assumed she was a Muslim, and that I’d based that assumption purely on her appearance and the fact that she had an ‘Asian-sounding’ name. Either that or she was a Muslim, and the idea of me wearing a niqab or a burqa was somehow offensive to her faith.

Whatever the reason, I just didn’t get it.

I didn’t say anything though. And I didn’t mention niqabs or burqas again either.

But that didn’t mean I’d changed my mind.

I still wasn’t going to let my dad see my skull.

It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to put Dad through the ordeal of trying to pretend that his daughter wasn’t repulsive, or that I didn’t want him to be so traumatised that he wouldn’t be able to cope with things anymore – although, for Finch’s sake, that was something I was desperate to avoid – I also had my own selfish reasons for not wanting Dad to see my faceless face. It felt bad enough knowing how I looked to the doctors, but they were doctors, and although they still couldn’t help staring at me now and then – their professional integrity overcome by the sheer freakishness of my condition – they were, for the most part, as restrained and objective as they could be. They were doctors, and for some reason we’ll reveal things to doctors that we wouldn’t dream of sharing with anyone else.