Page 4 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
Fern gets me to stretch out my fingers and then curl my hands into fists, then the same with my toes. She lifts one leg up at a time and bends it at the knee. She’s stronger than she looks. All the time, she talks about what we’re doing and why. It’s so that my muscles won’t seize up when I’m ready to try walking. It’s not as simple as just standing up and setting off, she says. When you’ve been lying down for a long time, you have to take things slowly. Step by step. Which raises the question I steel myself to ask next. ‘How long have I been here?’
‘A few days,’ Fern says. ‘Three or four.’
‘When will I be ready to go home?’ I ask.
And I know she’s not the right person to ask but the thought has only just occurred to me. When will I be able to get back to running the pub? And who’s doing it now? Is it closed? Dee will have taken over, I’m sure. But she won’t want to manage on her own for long.
Fern looks a bit uncomfortable. ‘That’s not for me to say. You’ll have to talk to one of the doctors.’
I turn my face away from her so that she won’t see my frustrated tears, and I don’t know whether that’s why, but she brings the session to a close.
‘I’ll be back later,’ she says. ‘It’s good to get you moving at least twice a day. Anything you can do in between visits is great, too. All of that will help with your recovery.’
Recovery. It’s a word I associate with alcoholics and drug addicts. But I suppose it applies to me too, now. It all feels overwhelming, and then I feel sleep coming over me gently like a blanket being laid by a friend.
The doctor is a tall, thin woman with cropped hair. She looks like a pencil with a rubber on the end. She introduces herself as Dr Jenkins.
‘Do you remember meeting me before?’ she asks.
I shake my head. She’s distinctive. I’d remember her.
She lists my injuries, most of which aren’t serious. Cuts and bruises. It’s the brain that’s the problem.
‘We can do scans, but we never know for sure how someone is going to recover after a brain injury,’ she says.
It feels wrong. How can they just not know?
‘So it’s just a case of wait and see?’ I ask.
‘Pretty much. You have what’s called a subdural haematoma, which is a bleed on the brain. It’s very small, and we think you might get away without having surgery, but we’re keeping a close eye on it.’
A bleed. On the brain. It feels like a punch. But I should have known by the fact that I’m in Intensive Care. You don’t end up here from cuts and bruises.
‘Do you have any questions for me?’ she asks. ‘I know it’s a lot to take in, but I’ll come to see you every day and you can ask me anything you think of.’
I feel like I have questions, but I can’t quite grasp them. I’m sliding towards sleep again. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘No questions.’
And I don’t remember her walking away.
When I wake up, David is on my mind. I haven’t let myself think about him, not properly, but I close my eyes and let it in, knowing I’ll have to eventually. We’re in our bedroom and he’s standing over me, shouting and swearing, and I’m trying to get him to understand, to look at me and talk to me rationally, but he’s too wound up. There’s no talking to him when he gets like this. I know, by now, that it will end in some form of violence. That he will hit me, or kick me, and I’ve had enough of taking it, so I turn my back on him and storm out of the room. I haven’t done that before, and he doesn’t like it. He likes having all the power, being in control. He likes to see me cowering. So he comes after me, still hurling abuse, and it’s funny but it’s like I go into a trance and I notice these tiny things I haven’t ever seen before, like a little pull on the landing carpet and a mark on the wall where someone’s hand has been. But I can feel him behindme, his breath on my neck, the bulk of him getting ready to strike me, and I am determined not to curl inwards, not to show him I’m scared.
‘You’re a fucking liar, Shelley!’
I could tell him no, I could defend myself, but it’s never got me anywhere in the past. If I can just get away from him, get down the stairs to the pub, he won’t follow me down there and he certainly won’t do anything while other people are watching. So I hurry, one foot in front of the other, ignoring the stream of vicious words he’s spewing. And I almost make it, I really do. I’m at the top of the stairs when I feel him shove me, and I remember thinking,I didn’t think he would go that far. I didn’t think he would do something that could kill me. But he has.
I lie there, tears streaming down my cheeks. It was too much, to let it all in like that. I need to go more slowly, like Angela said. I need to let the memories in bit by bit. Starting with what I’m sure of, what I know.
4
THEN
‘I don’t like broccoli,’ I say.
Mum laughs, but it’s brittle. ‘Of course you do, don’t be silly.’
When I keep pushing it around my plate, her face gets stormy. ‘This isn’t like you,’ she says.
She means that I usually eat what she puts in front of me and do what she says. But I can’t do that tonight. I can sense that Mum’s nervous but I don’t really understand why. Is it because of this man, this Mick, she’s brought round to meet me and Granny Rose? I’m not keen. He’s not very tall and he has too much hair. On his arms, his hands, everywhere. It’s gross. I can tell, too, that he isn’t kind. I won’t say that to Mum, because I know exactly what will happen if I do. Mum will sigh and say that you shouldn’t judge people on first impressions, or on what they look like, and that you need to take the time to get to know someone. She will ask me to ‘just this once, give me a break’. But there’s something about his eyes, which are brown and normal-sized but not spaced correctly. Slightly too close together. I push the chicken around my plate, not really hungry. I cannot tell Mum that I don’t like Mick because his eyes are too closetogether, so I say nothing, try to focus on the fact that I know there’s ice cream for pudding.
