The Cold Calling

‘You’re in hospital. You were in an accident.’ Telling him again because they forgot things very rapidly, head injury cases. Yesterday, he’d asked if Liz was OK, if she’d survived the accident, which ward was she on, could he go and see her? But the next time he woke up he knew well enough that they were divorced.

‘Shouldn’t be here,’ Bobby said. ‘Shouldn’t be here.’

She held back the sheets for him. ‘You can say that again, son.’

‘It’s cold,’ he said and wouldn’t get into bed. Stood there looking confused.

A warm enough night, but it was the first day of October and the autumn heating was on too, one economy the suits hadn’t got round to yet.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Can you just answer me one question?’

‘Do ma best, son.’

‘Am I fully awake?’

‘Looks that way to me,’ Andy said.

‘But you’ve got me on drugs, right? Sedatives.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Nobody. I don’t think. It just feels-’

‘It’s no true, Bobby. You’re not on any kind of medication. Last thing we’d do in your state. All you need’s sleep.’

He put a hand over his eyes. ‘Somebody say I died? I dream that?’

‘No.’ She sat on the edge of the bed, patted it for him to sit down next to her. ‘Wasnae a dream. You snuffed it, right enough. For four whole minutes. A long time. But you came back. That’s a hell of a hold on life you got there, son.’

He seemed to find this momentarily amusing.

Andy said, ‘Tell me, would you … Did you have any distinct kind of dreams?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Like … lights? You see anything like that, Bobby? Bright lights at the end of a tunnel?’

‘Not that I can remember.’

‘Colours?’

‘Too dark. Too cold for colours. Have I been to another hospital?’

‘You havenae been anywhere, Bobby. As such.’

‘Then why were they rushing me back?’

‘That would be the night they brought you in? You remember that?’

‘No, this was daytime. Thick fog, but it wasn’t quite night. Frozen, mucky slush. Like February.’

‘You said that soon after you came round. Maybe it was in your head when … whatever it was happened. You don’t remember being anywhere … you know … warm?’

‘No.’ He looked puzzled.

This is not right.

‘Bobby. Can you think back for me? What’s the first thing you can remember when … I mean, do you remember the accident?’

‘No.’ Too quickly, but she decided not to push it.

‘What do you remember before this slushy streets episode?’

His eyes flickered.

‘Can you tell me, Bobby?’

He bit his bottom lip. ‘Fear.’

‘Did you say fear?’

‘And cold. Cold fear.’

‘What were you afraid of?’

He thought about it for a few seconds, like the fear was an entity in itself, didn’t have to be because of anything.

Finally, he said, ‘I think, not waking up. Never getting out.’

‘Out of what?’ Andy said gently. ‘What were you in that you were scared of not getting out of? Was it, like … a claustrophobia type of feeling?’

She saw he was shivering. He put his hands to his eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Bobby. Get into bed. I’ll bring you some cocoa.’

But by the time she was back with the cocoa, he was asleep.

In the deep of the night, he awoke again and they sat side by side on the edge of the bed, with the bulb of the Anglepoise turned to the wall, and they drank cocoa, like old times.

She asked him if there was any pain. Only a kind of numbness, he said. Down the left side.

‘Do I have a fractured skull, anything like that?’

‘You’ll have to see a neurologist to get it hard and fast. Might be a hairline, but I don’t think so. There’s some brain-stem damage.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Neural. It’s what causes the numbness, the way your voice is slurring. And why you won’t be walking a straight line for a wee while. They’ll repair themselves, the nerves, in time. Meantime, you’ll keep forgetting things and you won’t be able to think as fast as you’d like or do things as efficiently. So take a breath before you jump in and — no offence, I tell this to everybody — you need to watch your temper. Meantime, relax. You were luckier than I can tell you. You were gone a good long time. According to the rulebook, you shouldnae be back at all, no way, know what I’m saying?’

‘I died?’ He’d have forgotten their earlier chat; this was normal.

‘Aye, you did. You were gone … quite a while. Lucky man, eh?’

‘You think so?’ Not sounding too convinced. Oh, this is all wrong, Andy thought. This is perversely wrong.

‘How long am I going to be banged up in here?’

‘Way you’re coming along, you could be out in a week. Long as there’s no complications. But we do need to watch you. All you have to do, Bobby, is rest, rest and rest. Anybody to look after you at home? Girlfriend? Mother?’

‘Died when I was a little kid. Got knocked down in our lane.’

‘Oh.’

‘Runs in the family,’ Bobby said. ‘Getting knocked down.’

‘I’m sorry. You … you still don’t remember what happened to you?’

Bobby shook his head, with a wisp of a smile, then he pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes for a long moment. Something she’d seen him do several times before.

‘Why you keep doing that with your hands?’

‘It’s …’ He hesitated. Then talked about there being a kind of thick glass screen, between him and everything he perceived. ‘A sense of … separateness. ‘

‘Like you’re not part of what’s going on?’

Bobby Maiden looked at her out of his red white and blue eye. She was feeling her way here, going with the instincts, but she had his attention.

‘And there’s something you think you ought to be able to get through to? Because you have a feeling you could before? Don’t look so surprised, Bobby. I’ve been in this game a good long time.’

‘It’s normal?’

‘It’s no exactly normal. I’ve known it before with patients who …’

‘You had many like this? People who died and came back?’

‘Aye. And people who came close to it and then came back. Most of them …’ She looked into his eyes. ‘… most of them said it was the most wonderful thing ever happened to them.’

Thinking back to some of the patients she’d had who’d died, or almost, on the table and come back. Nothing as dramatic as Bobby, no more than a few seconds most of them. But, aye, the same story with a few variations. Maybe seeing themselves lying on the operating table. Then, often, a bright light, more glorious than anything they’d ever seen or imagined. Sometimes green fields and lovely gardens with fountains. And the famous long tunnel, the umbilicus, one end in this life, the other in …