Chapter Twenty-Eight
December 2016
Theo’s body felt heavy, as though he was under deep water and his limbs were weighted. He opened his eyes and into focus came a room he didn’t recognise. Everything was white – white sheets covering his body, white metallic finish on the wardrobe opposite, white window surrounds and downlights in the plain ceiling that had a crack in the far corner. His jaw felt heavy, his mind disorientated. He was alone and terrified. It was a Herculean effort to turn his head to the side but doing so gave him no answers and he felt his eyes roll back and his body succumb to sleep.
Theo had no concept of time, but when he opened his eyes again he heard a sound, a sound he knew but couldn’t distinguish. It was a person – female – humming away, a tune that said whoever it was, they were content. He tried to move his mouth but nothing came out and then his eyes fell back again.
Where was he? What was happening to him?
The same thing happened again and again, sometimes in the daylight hours, other times when it was so dark outside that the only company he had in the room were eerie shadows cast from the furniture or the positioning of the curtains.
And each time, he could barely move, and he couldn’t speak.
January 2017
It was happening again. Theo opened his eyes to the stark, clinical surroundings, and this time a woman moved past his bed and he smelled something: flowers? a light perfume? Whatever it was, it made him remember being a kid, those long summer evenings where he and Grace would be out in the back garden on the swing, competing to see who could jump far enough to clear his mum’s veggie patch without squashing anything. Tears pooled in his eyes at remembering this tiny piece of information, giving him a sense of who he was. Up until now he’d been so confused, had no idea where he was and what was happening to him.
He realised the woman was talking to him. She was saying what she’d done that morning: she’d been to the library and the bakery, and when he realised it was his mum he wanted to yell, find out what he was doing here. His body felt strange, like it wasn’t really his. He could move everything very slightly but it felt heavy, like he was pinned to the bed.
He opened his mouth again. He knew he wanted to speak but couldn’t form the words. He watched as his mum pulled something out of her bag. She’d looked over at him several times, unfazed his eyes were open, which was weird. If they were open, why wasn’t she talking to him and waiting for a response?
Out of her bag came something colourful, a mix of blues, but other than that he had no idea what it was. She was talking about making a jumper so he figured it was knitting although he’d rarely seen her pick up needles, not since he was a little boy. She’d loved to make them clothes until they got too old for them to be considered trendy enough.
Was she making him something? Did she think he’d want to wear an old-fashioned knitted cardigan again when he hadn’t since he was about six years old?
When she bent down to get something else, he tried again and this time his mouth did what he wanted. His jaw woke up enough to let him do what he needed to do.
‘…that for me?’ The words slurred out of him as though he’d had ten pints down the rugby club. Ah, another memory! Rugby, he played, didn’t he? And he wasn’t too bad at it either.
His mum dropped the colourful wool and was at his side in seconds. ‘Theo? Theo, can you hear me?’ But his eyes rolled back and off he went again.
Over the next few days, Theo wasn’t awake much, and when he was he could barely utter a sentence before he’d fall asleep. His mum barely left his bedside. She continued to talk to him at a rate of knots and as she did, he remembered more about his life. He remembered learning to ski, the first time he got behind the wheel of a car and he remembered his girlfriend, Lydia. He’d dreamt about her that morning and wondered why she hadn’t been in to see him but his mum explained Lydia had a new job that involved a lot of travel and she’d been unable to reach her.
The days passed by and gradually Theo had longer periods where he was awake. He could talk more, he was more coherent, and everyone assured him he’d get stronger in time. He knew he’d been in an accident and when he told his mum he felt like he’d been hit by a truck, he knew he wasn’t far off the mark when she explained the black ice, the car crash, how they thought he was going to die.
Theo succumbed to the attentiveness of the staff. He wanted to know more, so much more, but his body and his mind were working overtime as it was, trying to stay awake, trying to deal with the here and now. He had urges where he nearly demanded to know where Lydia was, but something held him back. He wanted to run up to her and wrap her in the biggest hug, but he couldn’t stand the thought of her seeing him like this, weak and pathetic.
One day, feeling more alert, he asked outright, when his mouth cooperated and he could form the words: ‘I need some answers. I don’t know what’s happening.’
‘You’re awake, that’s the main thing.’ His mum’s eyes filled with tears as they did most times she looked at him.
He sipped from the straw in the cup of water she held close to his mouth. ‘Where’s Lydia?’ He demanded.
‘I keep calling her but there’s no answer.’ She put the cup back on the bedside table. ‘She may have gone away. Perhaps she’s visiting her sister. Or maybe she’s gone away with work.’
‘She works from home.’
With a tight smile she said, ‘Lydia has a new job. I told you that.’
‘Oh.’ How long had he been here like this?
He shut his eyes; even the daylight was too much for him on occasion and after a minute or two he opened them again. He studied his mum’s face. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’ He got his words out with minimal stuttering. His speech wasn’t great but it was better every time he tried. ‘How long have I been like this? Has she been to see me at all?’
The look on his mum’s face was one he couldn’t place. Words were jumbled up in his mind but he thought she looked scared. That was it, scared and worried. But what was she worried about? He was getting better.
He watched his mum get up and walk over to the window looking out over the parked cars and the gravel driveway. He could see the outside through the low windows, even though his body was too weak to move off this bed. The physio had already suggested they get him up soon and into a wheelchair so he’d be upright, and to be honest, he couldn’t wait. He didn’t really understand what the hold up was.
‘Mum…what are you keeping from me?’ He heard his voice and a tone he barely recognised. When she muttered something he asked, ‘How long have I been here?’. Something just didn’t add up.
‘Your accident was over thirteen months ago.’
Panic almost overtook him and if he could do it, he knew he’d punch something. His breathing became erratic and he heard his mum yelling for a nurse to come and help.
When he’d calmed down and the nurse left them alone again, his eyes filled with tears. The longest lie-in he could remember having was as a teenager when it was a regular occurrence to stay in bed and watch television, especially in the school holidays when his parents were at work and the house was so quiet you’d wake to the sound of birds chirping in the trees outside. Being told he’d been asleep for thirteen months was like being run at and tackled to the ground by a New Zealand forward, pinned there unable to get up, barely able to breathe.
‘We had no idea whether you’d ever get better,’ his mum told him. ‘But I couldn’t give up on you. I know this is a lot to take in.’ She put a hand on his arm.
He stared up at the ceiling; unable to believe he’d been lying in a bed for so long, unable to even begin to comprehend what the long-term prognosis would be. He asked questions and according to the garbled descriptions his mum gave him, nobody had any idea how he’d progress long-term. The type of injury he’d sustained and the length of time he’d been lying there could mean lifelong disabilities, and trying to get his head around that was unimaginable.
‘What date is it today?’ He needed some sense of time. He was grasping at shreds of reality.
‘It’s New Year’s Day.’ She paused before she added the year and as soon as she did he shut his eyes and felt a tear trickle past his temple and down to his ear before he fell asleep again. Maybe sleep was the only way to cope with all this, because his last memory was well before the accident must have happened. Slowly things had come back to him in dribs and drabs, but he was missing a lot of pieces and he knew it, and the thought of never remembering those details was incomprehensible.
When he woke a few hours later, he wanted to know more – who was driving, where the accident happened, who was first at the hospital, what operations, if any, he had had, who’d been visiting him, how was Lydia dealing with it all, had his dad been to see him, how long he’d been in hospital and all the stages between then and now.
‘So Lydia has been to see me?’ he asked.
‘She came a lot in the beginning,’ Anita explained, ‘but it’s more difficult now because you’re in Suffolk, near home. She comes when she can.’
‘Have you called to tell her I’m awake?’
‘I tried to call when you first showed signs of consciousness, but when I didn’t get an answer I didn’t try again.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I didn’t want to give her good news and then take it away again if things didn’t improve.’
‘What, you think I’ll be in this bed forever?’
Anita smiled. ‘Not now, no. But long before you actually spoke and seemed to be aware of the people around you, I had no idea what would happen. I didn’t want her to have to deal with the situation until we knew everything. I’ve come to care a lot about Lydia, respect her, and I knew I’d rather go to her with news that you’re well and truly on your way to recovering. I didn’t want her to see you all confused, with no idea where you are or who any of us were.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t your choice to make.’
‘I know, Theo.’ She looked down at the floor but then gathered herself. ‘When you started to improve I made the call, but I still haven’t been able to get hold of her.’
He didn’t know how to feel. Part of him was angry that she’d not told Lydia he’d showed signs of waking up, the other part of him was relieved. ‘Do you want to know the last thing I remember?’ It wasn’t really a question because he was carrying on regardless of his mum’s answer. ‘I remember flying to Zurich with Lydia, I remember flying home because our luggage took forever to come through and we thought they’d lost it. But I don’t remember anything since. Not one single thing.’
‘But that was over a year before your accident.’
Fear gripped him again but this time he managed his own panic. His words may still be slurred and his body lying helplessly in a bed, but he was in charge now. He’d woken up and he wouldn’t let this break him. He’d lost over two years of his life, more than one in this bed and the other vanishing due to the brain injury. He didn’t know whether he’d ever get the memories back, he’d been robbed of all that time, but now he needed to take control.
‘I’ll try calling Lydia again.’ Anita pulled out her phone. ‘You never know, seeing her or hearing her voice could bring everything back.’ His mum did that a lot, took action rather than face up to what was really happening. ‘I honestly don’t know where she is. She’s not answering the home phone and I can’t get through to her on her mobile. I’ll have to try and contact her parents soon.’ She was babbling now.
‘No!’ He hadn’t intended to raise his voice, he didn’t even realise he was capable given how difficult speech was. ‘Do not call her.’
‘But she’ll need to know, Theo. She’ll want to be here. She was by your side every day in the hospital and she comes here as much as she can. She’ll be so pleased.’
Lydia. The girl he’d met at university and loved ever since. They lived together, he could remember that, and she was beautiful, funny, kind-hearted. But all along, he’d been the man, not a helpless invalid lying in a bed unable to even speak properly. He’d had a catheter which they’d taken out now he could use a bed pan, something called a PEG which he still didn’t fully understand, but he couldn’t even stand on his own two feet. He literally couldn’t stand up, he couldn’t walk, and he had no idea whether he would ever be able to do much at all. Right now, he couldn’t feel less of a man if he tried.
‘I can’t take her seeing me like this.’ He looked away from his mum, he didn’t want her pity or to see panic. He was desperate to see Lydia, of course he was, but he couldn’t do it. Not like this. His mum was his mum and she’d looked after him as a baby, he didn’t mind her being in the room seeing how helpless he was. He didn’t mind the staff either, it was their job, but he wanted to be able to stand and put his arms around his girl, reassure her he was here.
Over the next few days Theo alternated between being angry and being upset. On a couple of occasions he refused to see Anita and when he did he told her exactly how he felt. It was as though he no longer had a filter for what was right and what was wrong. He loathed being like this. His arms wouldn’t work, his legs certainly didn’t, and when Phil, a uni buddy, had come to see him at hospital dressed in a rugby shirt and jeans, he’d been catapulted back to his rugby days. He and Phil had talked about the game but when he left, Theo plunged into a pit of despair because he had no idea whether he would ever be the same man again.
‘I wish you’d let me die!’ He shrieked at Anita the morning after he returned from having his PEG feeding-tube removed at the hospital. ‘You and Lydia should’ve let me go!’ He roared, his voice getting as much of a workout as he could give it. His throat was sore, his mouth dry, but still the anger and frustration spilled out. He called Lydia all the names under the sun, furious at her for letting him end up like this. ‘What sort of a life am I going to have now? You both should’ve let me go when you had the chance!’
His mum wasn’t even crying anymore. It was as though she was so distraught she had no idea how to process her emotions. Yeah, join the club, Mum. I don’t know how to fucking feel either!
He was still yelling at her a few days later, frustrated and bitter. ‘I can’t eat without you putting a spoon to my mouth!’ He yelled at her the day after that too, and eventually it got to the point where she fled from the room and didn’t come back for hours.
He continuously thought about his days as a student, mucking around on the rugby pitch, his thrill at learning to drive for the first time, skiing over in New Zealand. Part of him would be missing if he never got to do those things again and he didn’t know if he wanted to learn how to be anyone else other than the man he’d once been.
And then there was Lydia, beautiful Lydia, the woman he lived with and loved with his whole heart. He shut his eyes and thought back to the early days with her, when she’d agreed to go out with him, how lucky he’d felt. But she hadn’t been attracted to this man, had she? The man lying in a bed or the man he was when the staff helped him into a wheelchair and pushed him around. His heart ached to see her again but at the same time he couldn’t bear the idea of putting her through any more of this.
That afternoon after his mum left, a nurse came in. She did the necessary checks and then sat down in the chair beside the bed. She’d told him about her day, about news snippets she could remember over the time he’d been in hospital, the care home and now here. And at the end, when she’d finally seen him smile, she said ‘One day at a time, Theo. One day at a time.’
His mum returned that evening and had transformed from the weak, downtrodden, abused-by-her-own-son mother to a headstrong, I-won’t-take-your-shit-anymore woman.
‘Theo,’ she began, ‘I understand it’s a shock to wake up and realise what you’ve missed. You must be incredibly upset and frustrated.’ She had her arms folded across her chest and it made him grin because that’s how she’d looked when she’d found him and the next door neighbour, Zac, setting tiny fires in the garage, or when she’d found him and Grace using chalk to colour in the kerbside all around the street. She’d kept her arms folded in the exact same way as she was doing now as he and Grace had got down on their hands and knees and scrubbed the kerb clean again that day.
‘I don’t know why you’re grinning,’ she said now. ‘And I have to point out that no mother would’ve wanted to let you die without at least trying. The doctors had no idea whether you’d ever get any better, neither did we. I trusted my instincts.’ His silence pushed her on. ‘And I don’t ever want to hear you use those adjectives about Lydia, ever again, do you hear me?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Lydia, for your information, made it clear how you felt about being incapacitated and your views on what was a life worth living.’
Her voice broke but it was only for a second before she carried on. Theo realised he wasn’t the only one who’d lost more than a year of his life. His mum, and Lydia, had been in their own private hell alongside him.
‘Theo, you need to know that it was me, I pushed to keep you alive, refused to contemplate anything else. Lydia tried to put across your point of view and I shut her down. In fact, I think I made that girl’s life much harder than it needed to be and I feel awful. I wouldn’t have any of it, I wouldn’t listen to her, so don’t you ever blame her for any of this. It’s my fault, and do you know what? I’m not sorry for standing by what I believed in. I probably wouldn’t even be sorry if you were still unconscious because no mother in their right mind would want to kill their son if there was a chance he could live.
‘Are you finished?’ He asked, his voice the softest it had been in days.
‘Not yet.’ She shook her head and this time wagged a finger at him. ‘Don’t you ever talk to me like that again. I won’t have it. Dealing with everything that happened has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and that includes picking up the pieces when your father upped and left. Are we clear?’
‘Crystal.’ It was a rebuke he’d used in his teenage years when she’d reprimanded him and he’d huffed and walked away and it hadn’t gone down well then, but this time she managed a smile. ‘Mum?’
‘Yes, Theo.’
‘Come here and give me a hug.’
*
As the weeks moved on, so did Theo’s determination and progress. He spent most of the daylight hours in a wheelchair very soon after he’d lost the defensive, angry attitude, and it had made a huge difference. His vantage point had changed and instead of the plain ceiling with its dimmed lighting and cracks that nobody else could see unless you were in his lucky position, he could now be moved to beside the window and look out over the gravel driveway and the trees that would soon show signs of coming into spring bloom.
Grace had been in to see him several times and it had broken the monotony of seeing only his mum, but every time either of them mentioned Lydia he changed the subject. He’d thought about calling her, and if he’d had a phone in his room he may have done it. He harrumphed as he sat in his chair looking out at the rain one day. The only way he’d ever call would be if he could pick up the phone himself and dial numbers, which he wasn’t sure he could do yet. And besides, what was her phone number anyway? He had no bloody idea. It was another thing that had fallen out of his head somewhere along the way.
The next few weeks evolved with continuous therapy. He heard how he’d been in a care home for some of the time and he was glad he couldn’t remember it because it sounded terrible. And if he’d woken up in there, surrounded by old folk, he may just have shut his eyes and never bothered to wake up again. But this place was much more suitable for him and he often had a bit of a laugh and joke with the staff who were encouraging rather than patronising. He guessed a lot of it had to do with his attitude now.
In therapy sessions they got his limbs moving. With the dietician they gradually introduced solids and liquids so he could begin to eat normally again. He talked with another therapist about using yoga for strengthening, and when Theo had laughed and said yoga was for girls, the therapist had shown him a video of another patient’s progress and strength returning. The man was an ex-marine and well-built and seeing the masculine images propelled Theo into wanting to achieve the same improvements.
Two months after Theo began to speak again, he was doing well, defying all the medical suggestions that he may have difficulty learning to walk again, talk, do lots of things he’d taken for granted. True, he wasn’t walking normally on his own yet and his speech faltered sometimes, but by the day he’d told his mum she could call Lydia – he’d figured it’d be too much of a shock for him to make the call himself – he was able to walk slowly with crutches for a few metres, and more than that, he felt triumphant. He was on his way back.
Anita had at last made the call she’d wanted to make for a long time, and Lydia had apparently been so shocked she’d hung up. But later she’d texted Anita to say that yes, of course, she’d be on her way up the following day. That news was given to Theo this morning as he’d been able to eat his breakfast, a task he’d only managed to relearn in the last week.
So now, he was waiting in his room where he’d stay until Lydia got to the rehab centre. He’d told the nurse on reception he wanted to see Lydia in the lounge downstairs, not his room. He didn’t want her to see him lying in his bed or anywhere near it. Not anymore. He wanted her in the lounge, beside the fireplace so he could walk in upright and show her he was on his way back to the man he had been before. The nurse was to settle Lydia on one of the comfy sofas and then come to get him and take him downstairs. The rest he could manage on his own.
On this freezing cold March day with snow on the ground outside, Lydia was on her way to see him, finally. And Theo was as nervous as he’d be if it were a first date. He was waiting to see the woman he hadn’t seen for more than a year and the woman he last remembered from a holiday they’d taken a long time before that. And when he saw a car pull up at the end of the gravel driveway and Lydia climb out, he had to remind himself how to breathe in and out again. He watched her discreetly from the window upstairs, the way she moved, the beautiful brown-as-a-berry skin on her face, the hair he longed to run his fingers through. He watched the boots on her feet as they crunched through the snow and she tentatively climbed the steps up to the house. And then she disappeared out of sight. And he knew it was time.
It was time to see the love of his life.