Fractured(22)

‘Bless you, Rachel, you’re not blind.’

‘But I can’t see!’ I wailed.

Again that laughter; this time even Dad joined in.

‘That’s because your eyes are covered with bandages. They sustained some minor scratches – you probably got those from the gravel chippings when you fell face down. You really did take a terrible old knock on your head.’

I turned my head in the direction of the nurse’s voice. What the hell was she going on about? Clearly she either didn’t see, or chose to ignore, the look on my face which clearly said she was an idiot, for she continued:

‘That’s what Dr Tulloch is here for now, to take off the bandages and check out your sutures.’

‘But I didn’t hit my head,’ I insisted to anyone who would listen. I felt my dad once more take hold of my hand.

‘Hush now, Rachel, don’t get yourself upset. Things are bound to be a little fuzzy to begin with.’

‘I think I’d remember if I hit my head,’ I responded, more sharply than I intended. ‘It was the headache, you see,’ I tried to explain. ‘It was absolutely excruciating.’

‘You have a headache now?’ enquired the doctor, with keen attention.

‘Well no,’ I replied, realising for the first time that although my head hurt, the pain was different from the splitting agony of the headaches I’d been experiencing. ‘It just feels kind of sore…’

‘I’m sure it does. It will settle down in a day or so. As the nurse said, it really was a nasty fall.’

I would have protested further but I was aware of hands reaching behind my head and beginning to release me from the swaddling bandages. With each rotation the pressure against my head lessened and my anxiety increased. When finally relieved from my mummy-like accessories, disappointment coursed through me.

‘I still can’t see anything. I’m still blind!’

The doctor’s voice had a slightly more impatient edge. Clearly he now had me pigeon-holed as a major drama queen.

‘Just let me remove the gauze first before you go off and get a white stick, young lady. Nurse, if you please, the blinds.’

Deciding I didn’t like the man, however much my father might disagree, I nevertheless turned my face towards his voice and allowed him to lift first one then the other circular coverings from my eyelids. I blinked for the first time, enjoying the unfettered freedom of the movement. The room had been darkened by the lowering of the blinds but enough daylight fell through the half-shut venetians for me to make out the vague shapes of four people around my bed: the doctor, a white-coated young man standing beside him, the nurse and, on the other side of the bed, my dad.

‘I can see shapes,’ I declared, my voice a strange mixture of joy and disbelief. ‘It’s cloudy but—’

‘Give it a moment. Nurse, a little more light now, I believe.’

She obliged by a further twist on the corded blinds. Suddenly things began to clear and I saw the white-haired senior doctor, the young bespectacled intern, the middle-aged nurse. I began to smile broadly, a reaction they all mirrored.

I turned to my dad, my grin wide, and then froze, the look on my face unreadable.

‘Rachel, what’s wrong? Doctor! Doctor what’s the matter?’

The consultant was beside me in an instant, flashing a small torch in my eyes, checking my reactions, but I fought against him to look again at my dad.

‘Rachel, can you tell me what’s wrong?’ urged the doctor. ‘Are you in pain, is your vision disturbed in any way?’

Disturbed? Well yes, I should say. But not in any way that he meant.

‘No, I can see all right. Everything’s clear now.’

‘Then what’s wrong?’

‘It’s my dad.’

‘Me?’ My father sounded totally confused. Well, join the club. I forced myself to look at him slowly and with greater concentration then. But what I saw made no sense. The doctor’s voice had adopted a tone I guessed he usually reserved for those with mental illnesses.

‘What about your father?’

I couldn’t find my voice.

‘Rachel honey, you’re scaring me. Can’t you just tell us what’s the matter?’

‘Is there something wrong with your father, Rachel?’

I turned to the doctor to reply to his question and then back at my only parent. My newly empowered eyesight took in his plump cheeks, his bright eyes – albeit clouded now in concern – the small paunch he was always planning on joining a gym to lose. There was no sign of the haggard, prematurely aged, cancer-raddled man I had last seen three weeks ago.

‘No! That’s what’s the matter. There’s nothing wrong with him at all!’