Life as I Know It (7 page)

My first inclination was that I should ask Dr. Shakir about what might have happened. Perhaps this sort of thing had been documented before about victims of lightning strikes. I recalled reading an article once about how a lightning-strike victim had tried to kill herself after being struck. She’d been reported as saying she couldn’t live with herself after the incident, that she’d felt differently about everything. She’d even been afraid to leave her own house.

I lay and chewed my lip pensively. Could she have experienced something similar to what I was going through now? Could she have come back into a stranger’s body?

On second thought, telling anyone about what was happening was probably not such a good idea. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my days locked in a lunatic asylum, that was for sure. I imagined myself trying to explain that I was trapped in the wrong body, and how the medical profession would react to such a confession.

Sitting up, I towel-dried my hair, shaking out the damp locks and turning to rummage in my locker for Lauren’s hairbrush. No, I thought as I stroked the brush carefully through my hair, I would have to be much subtler in my quest for an answer to my present predicament.

An hour later an orderly came with a wheelchair and took me for a head MRI scan, and I’d not been back on the ward more than ten minutes when Dr. Shakir himself came to see me. He perched on the side of the bed and asked how I was feeling.

“I still feel rather… unsettled,” I told him carefully.

He nodded, patting my hand in a fatherly fashion. “You have been through a great deal, Lauren,” he said. “When part of your memories are lost, your identity seems lost with it. It’s quite understandable you should be feeling disoriented.”

“Is it usual for patients to lose all their memories?”

He hesitated and I guessed he didn’t really want to confound me with the hard medical facts, but then he continued, “Well, it’s more usual for victims of lightning strikes to suffer anterograde amnesia, losing memories of the incident and suffering problems with memory afterward. In your case you seem to be experiencing retrograde amnesia, a loss of memories before the incident.”

“I think it would help if you could answer some questions I have been worrying about,” I said carefully.

He nodded, smiling benignly at me.

“When I suffered the cardiac arrest, how long was I ‘dead’ for?”

He looked taken aback by the bluntness of my question, but answered anyway.

“We were working on you for almost forty minutes from the time you came in to when we got a sinus rhythm going. I believe the ambulance crew had been doing CPR for at least twenty minutes before that.”

“Is it unusual for someone to be ‘gone’ for that long and have no serious aftereffects?”

He smiled rather patronizingly before answering. “I don’t think you need to worry about that, Lauren. Apart from the memory loss, you seem to be recovering well.”

“But is it unusual?” I persisted, wanting desperately to know if this body should clinically be dead.

He shook his head. “People respond differently. I suppose, to be frank, I was a little concerned there may have been some brain damage after so long without oxygen to the brain, but as soon as you woke up my doubts were allayed.”

“When you were working on me,” I continued, “did you contemplate giving up on me?”

Dr. Shakir fidgeted uncomfortably and refused to meet my gaze. Instead of answering immediately he got up, lifted my notes from the foot of my bed and began leafing through them.

“At one point,” he said quietly. “I confess I thought we were struggling to resuscitate you in vain. I contemplated calling time of death. I thought you might be too badly injured to survive. But then I heard your children outside the emergency room crying for you, begging us to save their mother. One of the little boys was chanting, ‘Mummy, come back; Mummy, come back!’ We shocked you one last time, and here you are.”

Indeed, I thought wryly. Here I was. But not Lauren. Not the children’s mother.

He put down the notes and smiled at me, less disconcerted now that I wasn’t asking awkward questions and forcing him to justify his actions, which, let’s face it, could have gone badly if Lauren had woken up brain-damaged and needing permanent care. How would Grant and the children have coped then? I wondered. From what I had seen so far, Lauren was the strong one, the one who held that fragile family together. The knowledge transfixed me. Could I possibly step into her shoes? Was I strong enough? Did I even want to try?

I shook my head, realizing that I was straying into padded-cell territory again. Thinking too deeply at this point wouldn’t help anyone, least of all me.

“Dr. Shakir?” I asked, in what I perceived to be a deceptively innocent voice—Lauren’s voice, not mine, I had realized, since I was using her vocal cords and facial bone structure. “When you came to see me yesterday you said you’d looked up some stuff about lightning strikes?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes narrowing with just a smidgen of suspicion.

“Did you find anything about victims having new memories? Or people recollecting events they couldn’t account for?”

The doctor came and sat down on the bed again, trying to look concerned, though I could see the interest gleaming in his eyes.

“There’s often confusion, due to the Pat Effect I mentioned to you before, but new memories?” He shook his head. “I’ve not heard of it.” He fixed his gaze on my face. “You’re not experiencing anything like that, are you, Lauren?”

“Good heavens no!” I replied hastily with a forced laugh. “I was just wondering what you’d found out, that’s all.”

“There are many documented cases of lightning-strike victims becoming disoriented, changed in character, for example,” he replied, the gleam in his eyes evaporating as quickly as it had arrived.

“Go on.”

“The effect of lightning on the human brain is similar to that of patients who have undergone electroconvulsive therapy,” he continued. “As I said, the vast majority who survive a lightning strike are confused and suffer anterograde amnesia for several days after the strike. Loss of consciousness for varying periods is common, as are neurological complications and difficulty with memory.”

He looked at me intensely as if to check that I was keeping up with him, then he pressed on more boldly. “You have to understand that the cognitive and neurological damage caused to the brain by a lightning strike to the skull is similar to a blunt injury trauma.”

“Like being hit over the head?” I asked.

He nodded. “Exactly. You were a very lucky woman, Lauren. According to your children, the lightning hit you directly on
the head, back, and shoulders. Your hair, I hear, stood on end and actually caught fire, and there are burns consistent with this.”

“The burns aren’t deep, though, considering how hot you said lightning can get?” I probed, twisting the unaccustomed wedding band on my finger as I spoke. “Would you have expected the burns to be worse?”

Dr. Shakir smiled. “You are an inquisitive woman, Lauren. Yes, I was surprised there wasn’t more burning to your head, but in the case of your shoulder, then no, I wasn’t surprised. Skin is the primary resistor to the flow of current into the body, causing the appearance of surface burns, but preventing deep tissue damage. With lightning the current is present in the body for a very brief time, causing short-circuiting of the body’s electrical systems: cardiac arrest such as in your case, vascular spasm, neurological damage, and autonomic instability.”

“So there was nothing about my case that was out of the ordinary?”

He paused and broke eye contact before shaking his head.

“No.”

I stared at him, realizing that what he had been holding back all along was the very thing I had been desperate to discover. Had Lauren’s injuries actually killed her? From what he had told me, and from the fascinated way he looked at me, I got the very clear impression that all Dr. Shakir’s medical experience indicated that I should not be here. My living, breathing presence belied his gut instincts, confounding his diagnosis. No wonder he wouldn’t look me in the eye, I thought grimly.

I remembered suddenly what Dr. Chin had said about possible deafness and the chance of developing cataracts at a later date, and put the question to Dr. Shakir.

“You are remarkably well informed about your condition,” he said.

He seemed happier now that we were back in safe medical territory. I watched as his shoulders visibly relaxed. “This is accurate information regarding high-voltage injury, but I have checked you thoroughly, and you appear at present to be in the clear.” He paused. “In fact, when we have had the results of the MRI scan, providing everything is normal you can probably go home.”

“Today?” I asked him apprehensively.

He shook his head. “I will come and see you again tomorrow. If your scan results are available then, and you are feeling generally in good health, we may be able to let you out tomorrow. If you are still experiencing memory loss at that time we could arrange an outpatient appointment for you at our psychiatric unit. Meanwhile, I suggest you get some rest. I’m sure it will be very difficult for you to get much peace and quiet once you are home.”

Grant came to visit me alone that evening. He said the children were exhausted after their day out. He’d put them to bed early and asked a neighbor to come in and keep an eye on them for an hour or two.

“How is Teddy bearing up?” I asked him, partly to show an interest in his children’s well-being and partly because, despite my denials, I was deeply affected by Teddy’s situation.

Grant shrugged. “He’s upset, obviously. He doesn’t really understand what’s happening, Lauren. He keeps crying for his mummy.”

I avoided his gaze, thinking that Teddy seemed to have a better grasp of what was happening than anyone else did.

“Have they said when you can come home?” he asked.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said, trying to keep my mind off the hideous possibility of such a thing.

Home. Another unknown step into the dark. A place where, unless I woke up as Jessica again soon, I would be expected to play a role I would have to guess at as I went along; to live a life that simply wasn’t mine. I wanted to go home all right, but I wanted to continue with my own life, to be in control of my own destiny. I thought of my mother’s comments about not trying to be Superwoman and fought back tears of frustration. I had always been my own woman—fiercely independent and determined to do things my own way. My life might not have been perfect, but it had been mine. And now I found I wasn’t in control of anything at all. I was being swept along; a mere passenger on a roller-coaster ride that was more terrifying than anything the children could possibly have experienced at Chessington.

I yawned widely, covering my mouth. Sleep was what I needed now and what I hoped was the key to the door between these two worlds.

Grant got the message. I thought how tired he looked himself as he kissed me lightly on the forehead before heading for the door.

“Good night, sweetheart,” he whispered as he closed the door behind him. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Good night, Grant.” I sank back against the pillows, realizing with a pang of guilt as I watched his retreating back that I was fervently hoping it might be the last I ever saw of him.

When I awoke
snuggled in the double duvet in my own bed, the feeling of relief was immense. I still wasn’t convinced that my experience as Lauren was simply a normal dream—there were too many abnormalities, too many questions left unanswered—but I was awake now, I was Jessica again; my body felt physically rested and my mind relaxed as if I had merely been deeply asleep and dreaming. Yawning, I luxuriated in the knowledge that I was home and safe in my own world.

I sat up and hugged Frankie tightly. “You will never believe where I’ve been,” I told her as I slid out of bed and padded barefoot to the high window. I flung open the curtains to another glorious autumn day. “What would you say if I told you I was somewhere else all night while you were lying here keeping my feet warm for me?”

Frankie tilted her head to one side and gave a short bark.

I ran myself a hot bath, and while it was running I gave Frankie her breakfast of dry mix, put the kettle on for my morning tea, and went to the front door in my pajamas to look for the mail.

Nothing but circulars. It should have been sad, really, that few people ever wrote to me. The only mail I received on a regular basis usually came in brown envelopes, with the exception of occasional airmail letters from my brother, Simon, but I supposed that was because I was what some people might call a bit of a loner. I smiled to myself as I sifted through the junk mail. I preferred my own character description of self-sufficient, work-oriented, and perhaps a little wary of commitment. But either way, today I didn’t care. All that mattered was that I was here, back in my own body where I should be, flaws and all.

As I lay in the bath looking down at my youthful body, I smiled at the lack of stretch marks and bruises, the dark body hair in all the right places. I wondered if blondes had to shave their legs. I hoped I would never have to find out.

The thought sobered me, robbing me of the joy I’d been experiencing since I’d woken up. Grabbing the soap, I worked it to a rich lather and began to wash vigorously. I might be home now, but the nightmare clung, refusing to simply rinse away with the soapsuds. At some point this body would need to sleep, and while it was resting, the nightmare might return. I had only dreamed the dream twice, but the fact that the second dream had seemed to continue on so smoothly from the first was dreadfully worrying. Suppose I found myself struggling with that other life again?

Lying back in the warm water, my mind dwelled on the possibilities. Dream or not, while I was being Lauren, her life had seemed as real to me as my own.

And what if I had to experience going home to that family? The thought brought a rush of terror. Yesterday, when I’d been dozing, I’d been aware of Lauren having her drip disconnected. Did that mean that every time I slept, I ran the risk of returning
to continue the dream? If that were the case then I’d be constantly on the go, flitting from dream to reality without respite.