Life as I Know It (6 page)

The room was quiet apart from the wheezing I was making as my shoulders shook with panicked laughter. I vaguely registered that I was no longer connected to the EKG machine, which now stood silently behind my bed. I stopped laughing with a jolt, realizing that I actually remembered the nurse disconnecting my drip.

Because the room was windowless, I couldn’t judge what time it was, but I had a horrible, gnawing feeling I knew exactly what the time was, just as I feared I knew that the drip had been disconnected just after two-thirty in the morning.

Perspiration broke out on my whole body as I thought back. I’d gone to bed early, soon after eight o’clock. I’d tossed and turned for around an hour, which meant I’d probably dropped off soon after that. If it was around 9:15
P.M
. at home, did that mean it was the same time in the morning here? Twisting around, I found the buzzer and held my finger down until Nurse Sally appeared, looking flustered. “Thank goodness you’re awake at last!” she exclaimed as she bustled around me, plumping the pillows and tidying the sheets. “I was about to beep Dr. Shakir to come take a look at you. I’ve been trying to wake you for the last two hours. I’ve never known anyone to sleep so deeply, Lauren.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

She glanced down at the watch pinned to her uniform. “It’s nine-twenty already. And you haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

“What time was my drip disconnected?”

“I’m not sure exactly. The night nurse said the last of the saline had run through and she disconnected it sometime in the early hours.”

“Could you look it up in my notes?” I persisted. “Please?”

She gave me a searching look, as if wondering what my interest was, but merely nodded and hurried out. As soon as she had gone, I rummaged through the bedside cabinet, which was back where it was supposed to be on the right side of the bed, and found one of the newspapers Grant had brought in for me the previous afternoon. It was a Sunday paper, which meant that yesterday had indeed been Sunday, October 19. It ought to be Monday morning now, unless time had gone as haywire as everything else. Was this a dream? My mouth felt dry and my hands were suddenly sweaty with fear. I breathed as shallowly as I could, hoping to somehow melt into the bed and disappear from this place of nightmares.

Nurse Sally returned with a breakfast tray and the announcement that my drip had finished and been disconnected at 2:30
A.M
. by the night staff.

“Your husband is bringing the children in to see you in about half an hour,” Sally continued cheerily, unaware of the sickening feeling of inevitability that her words had invoked in me. “I was hoping to have you up and bathed this morning now that your drip is down, but I think we’ll have to postpone that until they’ve gone. You’ll be able to get up today and dispense with the monitors and bedpans. That’s a step in the right direction, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I mumbled unenthusiastically, poking at the dry toast in front of me. I wanted to shout, to tell her that in my other life I’d never been this ill to start with. The real me, Jessica, was at home and recovering. That this was a step in a direction I didn’t want to take at all.

Grant arrived while I was still brushing my teeth into a white plastic bowl on the bed table that Sally had brought in for me.

“You were so groggy yesterday, I didn’t think you’d need this,” she’d explained as she was wheeling the table in.

“And you didn’t want anything cluttering the room in case I flatlined again,” I’d murmured, thinking of the beeping monitor to which I’d been attached.

She had stared at me, hand on hip. “Well, that too, I suppose.”

“Can you fetch me a mirror?” I’d asked, moments before Grant and the children arrived. “I haven’t looked at myself since the accident, and I want to make sure I look all right… for the family.”

In the end, the family arrived before the mirror did, but it appeared Grant had been doing some homework on memory-loss patients. He walked in with a large photo album tucked under his arm. I allowed him to kiss me chastely on the cheek, and I smiled at each of the children in turn. After all, I reasoned, whatever was happening was no fault of theirs. Three of them at least thought I was their mother, and I hadn’t the heart to tell them any different—even if I could work out what was going on.

Sophie, the eldest girl, was wearing embroidered hipster trousers and a cropped top that showed her flat eight-year-old stomach. When I caught her eye she stared back almost defiantly and stuck her iPod earphones into her ears, effectively shutting
out any kind of conversation. I wondered what sort of relationship she had with her mother.

Nicole, on the other hand, hovered around me anxiously and sat as close to me as she could without actually getting into the bed next to me. If I glanced at her, she smiled hopefully as if silently begging me to remember her, and when I ran my tongue lightly over cracked lips she reached out immediately for the plastic beaker and straw.

Toby seemed like any other four-year-old boy: bored with being stuck in the bland hospital room and ready to make a game out of anything. I watched him lying on the floor opening a paper bag of sterile antiseptic wipes, which he used to scrub his sneakers before trying to cut the laces with a pair of blunt-ended suture scissors.

Teddy, I noticed, was hanging back again, still clutching the squashy ball he’d had with him yesterday. I realized he was watching his brother’s experiments with the hospital equipment, but seemed to have no desire to join in.

The girls spread themselves over the bed and snacked on the seedless white grapes they’d brought me, while Grant opened the album.

“I’ve read that memory loss can be rectified by showing images of the patient’s life, listening to your favorite music, or watching your favorite programs,” Grant explained. “Here, look, this is a picture of us on our wedding day. I didn’t bring in the whole wedding album, since there are some of the best pictures in here, plus vacations with the children…”

I had stopped listening to him, my eyes riveted on the photo of the bride and groom smiling outside an old church. Grant didn’t look hugely different, maybe a little less lined around the
eyes. The bride smiling innocently beside him was about my height and build, with golden blond hair falling in soft curls round her shoulders above the white dress. The eyes staring into the camera were a mesmerizing blue with tiny gray flecks.

“You always liked that close-up one best,” he continued when he saw me staring at it. “Of course, your hair isn’t quite that blond now, but you’re as pretty as ever, isn’t she, children?”

“Arms not blue now,” Teddy commented from the corner of the room, where until that point he’d been watching us in silence.

“Were my arms blue?” I asked Grant. I snatched at the comment as if, by thinking about that, I wouldn’t have to acknowledge the mind-blowing fact that I appeared to be sitting here in someone else’s body.

“The doctor said it happens sometimes after a high-voltage injury,” Grant said. “There’s a huge medical word for it. Apparently your upper and lower extremities were cold and mottled blue when it happened, but it cleared in a few hours.” He squeezed my hand. “You look wonderful now.”

Nurse Sally chose that moment to appear in the doorway and I glanced up and saw the mirror in her hand. My face must have blanched, because concern suddenly creased her features. I held her gaze imploringly and shook my head. She tactfully backed out of the room again and left me to my supposed family.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I asked this man, my husband, somehow recovering my voice. “And why aren’t the children in school?”

“It’s their half-term break, Lauren,” Grant told me. “We were going to take a few days off and do some day trips with them.”

I looked at the children, who were beginning to fidget in
earnest now. The girls had finished the grapes and Toby had gotten up to inspect the silent EKG machine. Teddy was still glowering at me from the doorway.

“You poor things!” I said with forced cheerfulness, wishing they would all go off and leave me alone. “Fancy having to be here visiting me instead. Grant, why don’t you go ahead and take them out to lunch or something? It’ll give me a chance to have a bath and sort myself out.”

“Lunch?” Sophie repeated, pulling out her earphones and making a “yuk” face. “I want to go to Chessington World of Adventures!”

“Yeah, me too, me too!” cried Toby, rushing over and jumping on the bed again.

“I don’t,” Teddy muttered from the corner. “I’m goin’ to wait here for Mummy to come back again.”

“I want to stay here with Mummy too,” Nicole said quietly from my side.

Grant looked uncertainly from the children to me, then seemed to come to a reluctant decision.

“Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” he said, getting to his feet. “We’ll go to Chessington and leave Mummy to have some time on her own.” He glanced at Teddy. “You too, Teddy. You’ll like it when we get there.”

“I won’t,” Teddy grumbled from the corner. He flashed me a malevolent stare as he was bodily picked up and presented for a kiss good-bye.

I smiled at them all and waved thankfully as they trooped from the room, then, as the door closed behind them, I breathed a sigh of relief and turned my attention to the photo album, which Grant had left open on the bedside table. I stared at the
lovely bride for a second or two, then pulled a tuft of my almost-shoulder-length hair in front of my face, peering at it out of the corner of my eye. Blond. Oh no.

Sally reappeared a moment later with the mirror. “I saw the family leaving,” she said. “They seemed very excited about something.”

“Grant’s taking them to Chessington World of Adventures,” I told her.

“Lucky them,” she said. “Do you want me for anything, or shall I leave you alone for a little while?”

“You can answer me one question, and then leave me alone,” I replied, holding the mirror facedown so I couldn’t see into it. “Where exactly am I?”

The nurse had the decency to look shocked. It was strange how people took for granted the obvious things, the things that made up their own little universes. They knew I’d lost my memory, but it hadn’t occurred to anyone that I might not even know where I was.

“You’re in St. Matthew’s Hospital, near Little Cranford,” she told me. “I’m sorry, Lauren, we haven’t been very understanding, have we? I’ll leave you to look at the photos and make yourself nice. The bathroom is right next door. You can just pull off the sticky pads from the monitor. Buzz if you need anything. I’m on until two.”

I was none the wiser as to my whereabouts. I had never heard of Cranford, Little or otherwise. I stared at the back of the mirror for several minutes once she had gone, willing myself to turn it over. Eventually I plucked up the courage and peeked into the glass. What I saw literally took my breath away. Whether this was a dream or not, it was certainly a nightmare, because despite all my denials, it appeared I really was sitting here in someone
else’s body. A pretty someone else, with clear English-rose skin and expensively highlighted hair, though I could see if I held the mirror up that the blond locks were singed at the top of my head.

Lauren had a cute snub nose, pouty lips, and cheekbones to die for. But the eyes, which I had expected to be the same clear blue as in the wedding photo, were a grayish green. My eyes, I realized with relief. Hazel eyes belonging to Jessica Taylor.

I remembered the old saying that a person’s eyes are the windows to their soul. Well, these windows, despite the fancy dressing, were reflecting my soul. Teddy had been right, I thought with a pang of conscience. His mother had gone, and here was I, stuck in her body, without the first idea what sort of person she was, or how the hell I had gotten here.

In the bathroom, I inspected my new body with a kind of bewildered detachment. I’d always felt my own face wasn’t unattractive, with skin that tanned easily and wavy shoulder-length brown hair. But Lauren had full breasts, a solid waist, and long legs. I ran my fingers over the silver stretch marks on her stomach and thighs—my stomach and thighs—remembering that she’d been through three pregnancies, one of which had been with twins. There was bruising to the ribs, which I assumed must be the result of having been given CPR after the cardiac arrest. I winced when I touched the livid purple marks, but at least I was alive.

Groaning, I lowered myself carefully into the bath, taking care not to get the hot water anywhere near my bandaged shoulder, then I soaped the new body wonderingly, surprised that it felt as if it belonged to me. Picking up the shampoo, I began to wash my blond hair until a stinging sensation reminded me about Lauren’s head burns. Would I feel such discomfort if this
was just a dream, I asked myself with a grimace? I felt so real. Surely this wasn’t simply some medicine-induced hallucination?

I rinsed my hair with great difficulty using a plastic container that Nurse Sally had given me. I had to tilt my head awkwardly to one side so the water wouldn’t run down onto the bandage. When I returned to the room, wearing one of Lauren’s clean nighties with a towel wrapped turbanlike around my wet hair, I climbed back into bed and closed my eyes, exhausted.

Despite my tiredness, I knew I had to methodically process all the information I had if I wasn’t going to go stark raving mad. I knew I had been given painkilling drugs, but couldn’t believe they were strong enough to have caused me to conjure up a whole new identity for myself. There was no floaty haziness to what I was experiencing. It was just too real, too solid, and so I felt I must try to put these strange events in order.

Fact: I had been struck by the lightning at around two on Saturday afternoon. I didn’t yet know much about the details of Lauren’s strike except that it appeared to have been more violent than mine, and she seemed to be more badly injured than I was. We had both been unconscious for the remainder of Saturday and into Sunday morning. Lauren had suffered a cardiac arrest, but apparently I had not.

Lauren had woken up first, or rather I had woken up in her body. But she had slept again since then, and I was still here. I glanced at the newspaper Grant had brought in along with the photo album. It was Monday’s paper, with a piece about the royal family on the front page. I pushed it away bad-temperedly. If I was really here, then the obvious question had to be, where was Lauren now? I knew she wasn’t in my body, because I’d woken up there, too, although if my suspicions were right, what appeared to be night here was day there, and vice versa.