Waking Up Sideways

 

  start of  ***WAKING  UP  SIDEWAYS***

🐲 If ever any circumstance could relate to the things that you see on TV from films or drama's, here it was: quick marching it into casualty at the side of a wheeled stretcher, a team of surgical and medical staff awaiting the victim, spilling numbers and stats, while nurses sidelined to help deal with the turmoil, shock and confusion.  

   'Where is she going?' Neil said aloud, watching her being hurried on along a corridor and out of sight. He kept looking around him, twisting and muttering as if trying to convince himself he was actually here, this was happening now.  Immediately he turned at a touch to his shoulder.

   'Did you travel in the ambulance with her?'  

   'Yes' 

   The nurse gave a sorrowful nod and rubbed his shoulder. 'Just follow us into the family room, bit more private in there. We'll get you a tea or coffee.'  People waiting in casualty had automatically clapped eyes onto the dramatic entrance, and he felt engulfed in this nightmare. 

   'Aye, aye. Thanks.'

   The old, greying nurse waited until he sat down and did likewise across from him, clipboard in hand, awaiting information. She had long since abandoned the comforting clichés of 'being in good hands,' knowing they do little to alleviate concern.  A junior nurse entered with his coffee and placed it on the low table in front of him, and it wasn't until he struggled to open the sugar sachet that he realised he was trembling.  

   'Here,' she whispered. 'I'll do that for you. Just the one?'

   'One, aye'.   

   They gave him a minute to try to compose himself, but for them it was another night of business as usual. Neil's head jerked up when he heard a pen clicking rapidly. 

   'I know this must be a shock, but we need to file some information, is that okay?'

   He nodded, a sickly feeling was accompanying every sip of the cheap coffee he took.

   'We've had some details from the hotel radioed in, could you just confirm them few for us?'

   'I'll try, but I don't really know what happened...there, there was a crowd gathered and someone said... ' He closed his eyes, took a few breaths, '... she'd jumped from a window—'

   ''Okay, okay. I know it's quite daunting, but it's just a few personal details we need for now, like her date of birth, address, next of kin, that sort of thing, so her name's Saskia Reymarr and she lives at.....

   Furtham Road?'

   'Aye'

   'Date of birth?'

   Neil brows furrowed. 'Ah, it's February 7th, 19... uh... sorry.'

   'And you're her father?'

   He swiped a nervous hand across his mouth and chin. 'Yes... no... sort of... ' 

   The nurses exchanged glances, often facing complexities in relationships, so they refrained from pressing further; he looked too visually traumatised to continue efficiently.

    'Is there a mother we could contact, or have you already—?'

    'Beverly... Christ!' He cradled his head in his hands - that would be a no, then.

    'Maybe best to let her know, we could be doing with her here. Is there a number for her?'

    'I may still have one listed, can I try to call her first?' 

    'Sure... but if there's no answer and no other point of contact we'll probably have to send the police to collect her.' They stood to leave, giving him some space. 

    Rendering his number private, he felt a mixture of relief and horror when she answered. 

    'Beverly, it's Neil...do not hang up. Saskia's had an accident, she's in St. Luke's, and it's not looking good. Get yourself here right away.'  With Beverly in instant panic mode, he cut her off. The stark reality that Saskia could die, hit him. God, what had he done? He felt it as good as having pushed her himself.

    

Arriving shortly after 10 p.m. Beverly, in great distress, gave the more important details (medical history and such) to the hospital staff.  Saskia had been taken straight to surgery after her CT scan to relieve swelling and a bleed on the brain. That was about as much update as they had to give.

   Neil was asked to remain in the building. With police involvement, this incident was classed as suspicious or untoward, and a full understanding of the night's events was imperative. 

   He had been waiting for Beverly's confrontation, but was still startled when she walked through the door; eyes bloodshot, complexion pale, all cried out. She sat down across from him and waited until the door clicked shut before speaking.

   'Well, this is the last place I thought I'd be tonight. I can't believe this... '

   'Have they said how's she's doing?'

   'Hardly anything. All they've said is that she's still in surgery before ushering me in here to wait for news, so I guess it falls upon you to share what you know... how bad is she, Neil?'

   'Really bad.' There was no point in lying. 'I only saw her for myself as she was taken into the ambulance unconscious. I don't know how severe the head injury is, but her hair was all covered in blood. She's got broken bones and deep lacerations in her side, possible ruptures and internal bleeding.'  He remembered the ambulance crew's judgement and update over the radio on the journey to hospital, and they were forthright enough to say things were looking grim. 'The paramedics weren't sure if she'd pull through when I asked them what her chances were.'

   'So, she could die?'

   Neil couldn't bear to affirm such a possibility aloud, so nodded lightly, and this instantly triggering her own fear as she stood then started to take a few paces back and forth.

   'Take a seat, Beverly, This is a lot to take in.'

   'You don't say... '

   'Look, the doctors will be coming at some point to give us a clearer picture. Please, just sit down.'

   'Sit down? I should be sitting my arse down at home right now, and not worried to fuck like this. Jesus Christ... why was Saskia with you tonight, anyway?' 

   Neil sighed, woeful. 'Because I asked her to meet me.' Had he not, then things wouldn't be like so.

   'Why, for God's sake? I thought she'd be the last person you'd want to see... '

   Neil smiled, then sneered sardonically; 'Maybe I should ask you why she was ever in my life to start with?' 

   That question held her to silence for a few moments, until her cold, don't give a toss nerve kicked in.  'You found out why... so what real need to you is she now?'

     Shaking a slow head at her arrogance. Beverly was never one to keep your cool with for long once bad feeling surfaced.  'Look... my head's been all over the place with this shit. I still needed answers -  ones I may not have gotten from you.'

  'Like what? What bloody else do you need to know, apart from it being an attempt to stiff you over.'

  'You've got a damned cheek talking to me like this, Beverly, I could have sued the fucking arse off you for attempted fraud!' Although knowing she was lucky he hadn't taken the legal route, she also had an advantage over him in that respect. The papers getting a whiff of such a story would have crippled him; a man's liaisons with someone whom he thought was his daughter was still sick enough.

   'Maybe you should have... ' Beverly stated, and sounding as if it had been said with conviction.

   Neil eyed her cautiously; he'd be curious to hear her version, what the original source had to say. 'I know we didn't know each other too long, but I never thought in a million years you would be clever enough to come up with something as elaborate as you did. I mean, what was it all about, really? My father and some thirty year old grudge!?'

    Beverly jutted her chin up, frowning. Not sure how much he knew.

    'Saskia told me all about it, Bev. My award, your father dying, all this pent up hatred over what you feel is owed to you.' It had been bad timing for the newspaper article covering his business award to find its way to the room her father died in, untimely and portentous indeed. But to come up with an assiduous plan, incited by her cancer-stricken friend, was evil genius. 'What a payback, you got me good and proper... both of you.... I wonder what your father would have made of it?'

  His voice started to sound peevish to her as thoughts travelled decades back. Staring downwards her eyes tightened into slits as angry tears threatened to spill.

 'You and your father stung my dad, hustled him over on that French deal and left us with hardly anything.'

   'That was my father's doing, not mine. He only made me aware of what he'd done years down the line, and I had I'd moved on with my own career by then.'

 'Yes... to a huge bloody empire. My father's money was your father's starting block - you used  us!  You never loved me. I was just another link, a safety catch, the supposed makings of some future family business. Funny how it all seemed to collapse at the same time.'

   'Not true, I did love you, but fell out of love with you in the same degree. And your father could be overbearing at times, too, Beverly, but us splitting up... had nothing to do with mine.'  Despite the vast passing of time, he still remembered his father's hey-ho attitude to the break up. He could also recall feeling smothered through overworking back then too.  'I'm sorry if I hurt you, Beverly, but that was nearly 30 years ago!'

   She needed help; that was his conclusion. If everything that had ensued was down to historic events that she  allowed to fetter her present life, then she needed help. Since her father had passed, she appeared to be coping, but although she carried a persona of happiness, she felt dead on the inside, lost in her own prison of hatred.

   'Don't you realise what your madcap idea's have led to, what kind of hellish payback you've caused? From the moment I saw that scarf round your head, and the back story you concocted, I fell for every word, didn't think for one second that Saskia wasn't mine... I mean, the lengths you went to to pretend you have cancer!' His face was contorting at this ridiculous ruse. 'What a sick fuck!'

   'A sick fuck,... sick fuck....?' Beverly repeated, tapping her chin with a finger and frowning. ' Oh, you mean like the first time you lay with her!' 

  Touche! It was a quick-witted, stabbing homonym that had them staring at each other, only hers with a ghost of a smile flickering on her lips.

    Neil bore his eyes deeper into hers, not commenting on that jibe, just making his fingertips into a steeple gesture and tapping them rapidly off each other. What a bitch. It seemed her best tact of defence was to abase.

   It had been hard for her to accept that her deplorable scheme had backfired in the most contemptible manner. Even now, with her daughter's life hanging in the balance, Neil could tell it was still all about her and this long awaited obsession of getting even, while the whole time since entering this small room he'd been silently trying to broker a deal with God for her to live. 

   'Why the fuck did you both have to come into my life,' he sighed, mentally crippled.  It was more a statement to himself than a question to her. The vision of her accident (even with not having seen the worst of it) would haunt him for life. 'D'you wanna know what's really ironic in all of this? As I said to Saskia... I'm not my bloody father, I'd have given you the money, all you needed to do was ask, and I would have helped.'

   Beverly raised both eyebrows, and wriggled her shoulders in a display of false modesty. 'Would you, now?' she said. But before a word passed from either's lips there was a tap on the door and a nurse peeked round. From over her shoulder, Neil saw a police constable peering at him. 

   'Mr. Balfour, the police would like a word with you now, if that's okay?'

   Neil stood up. 'Of course.' 

   As he shuffled past the low-sitting coffee table, he leaned over, peering right into Beverly's face, whispering an ultimate, stark truth. 'We better hope that convincing little actress pulls through, for, like it or not, if she doesn't, her death will be on both our hands.'

As painstakingly absurd as tonight's events turned out to be, retelling the absurdness of his connection to Saskia again to the police (for he knew him being questioned was coming at some point) was daunting.  He'd already been through hell with the incest and fraud inquest - he and Saskia had been inculpated in a story with enough bite to it to feed the thousands had it gone public. Heaven knows what they'd be asking him this time round. But he got a bit of a shock and a surprise at the same time. 

   The police weren't so interested in ongoing arguments from past relationships bursting back to life - they saw time and again that some people never learn - but were informing him of a crucial development.

   After some routine questions (times, whereabouts, connections, etc) had been tended with, footage from the young lad's phone had been viewed and the receptionist at the hotel questioned - the incident was effectively deemed an unfortunate, booze-soaked accident. Possible foul play or suicide attempt were highly likely to be ruled out once the case moved through the right channels. That didn't, however, take the sting out of Neil's guilt -  he stupidly went and dipped the brush in the paint again.

   He asked the constable if he'd accompany him back into the room to let Beverly know.  The information was about to be given to her anyway, but he wanted to be there when they told her. And just as the news was relayed to Beverly, yet another nurse entered the room to tell them that a consultant was on route with the results of Saskia's CAT scan.  

    

From the look on the consultant's face, bad news was about to hit with hurricane force. Dr. Rossiter assumed they were man and wife, not sworn enemies, but as detested to the other as they were, in a obscure way they needed not to hear such news alone. No one took a seat after the introductions and the doctor got down to serious business.

   'Your daughter has had her CAT scan and it looks like she had a linear fracture. The blood coming from her head was due to the skin being split open and it needed a few simple stitches. There is no compression of the brain or distortion to the bone of the skull but that could change overnight.' 

   'And if it does?' Neil asked.

   'There is no sign of any hematoma, bleeding or clots on the brain, but we'd have to perform a craniotomy, either open up or drill into the skull if that develops.'

    Beverly raised a hand to her mouth, eyes flitting side to side at the thought.  

    'So, she's not still in surgery, then?' asked Neil, in a mixture of relief and disbelief.

    'No, but she is badly concussed, still unconscious. I know it's a medical cliché we say all the time, and glad for it, but she really is lucky it wasn't worse. Had it been the back of the head... ' The tilt of his own head spoke the rest of the sentence for him - she was more or less one lucky pup. 'The fracture should heal itself in around a week or so, providing there are no follow on complications. We've given her something for the pain and a sedative to keep her comfortable through the night.' 

   The surgeon kept silent for a few moments to let them digest his words, gave an ominous sigh. 'Please... ' he gestured for them both to sit, 'there's more.'  Only the accompanying nurse stood rigid in her place.

    'I'm afraid her other injuries are intense. She's has an intertrochanteric region fracture of the hip, of the worst kind, and she has broken her right fibula. There is also damage done by the glass bottle she was holding during her fall. It somehow smashed on the rock and got embedded into the flesh just above her hip. It has torn muscles and taken quite a large scoop from her side. We have another blessing in that the glass didn't do any damage to innards or organs, but we can't assess any nerve damage yet.'

   An uncomfortable quiet settled in the room, the unspoken words hanging heavily above like a dark cloud, until Neil spoke. ' So, what happens now?' 

   'Now,' the doctor repeated, 'we wait till morning when all the alcohol is out of her system and give her another CAT scan and run more blood and other tests.  Ultimately, she will need major surgery to repair the vast damage. Because the break is bad we will need to incorporate, plates, rods and screws into the hip as it will require remodelling. Mr. Johnson, the orthopaedic surgeon will asses the extent of the damage and decide the best procedure for her.'

   'Jesus.' Neil ran a hand through his hair, knowing this would be one hell of a complex job to fix. 'When will this be done?'

   'As I said, we'll scan again tomorrow and as long as there are no complications with her skull fracture, we'll at best be looking within the week.'

   'And afterwards? How long will she take to recover?' Beverly queried. 

   'Please understand.... Saskia, isn't it? ' He double checked his notes; bad news always sounds better when personal first names are used. 'Saskia will need extensive physiotherapy afterwards if the operation goes well.'

   Neil loathed that word if  with its costly two letters, and went straight to the point.. 'But she will walk again?'

   Dr. Rossiter's gaze dropped to his lap for a few seconds, before exchanging a glance with the nurse. Information asked in this manner promised no happy ending, and it was always risky as to how people react when it's not the news they hoped for; doctors were not always miracle workers.  He tried to explain with as much humility as possible.  'I really can't answer that for sure as there are so many factors to consider. Nerve damage and paralysis, clotting even may be a danger... it all stems from how the surgery goes in accordance to her state of injury. I'm sorry you've had to hear this but we'll have a clearer understanding in a day or two. I'm sorry I can't help further.'

   'Can we see her?' Beverly asked quietly, the full force of worry kicking in.

   'There really is no point as she's heavily sedated... and it's getting late.'

   'I need to see her.'

   'She'll be monitored closely overnight.' The nurse added from behind Beverly's shoulder.

   'Not even for a... '

   'Beverly,' Neil cut in, and she drew him a disagreeable look, 'let's just leave it for tonight shall we?'

   The doctor stood, solidifying the end of the matter. 'I know it won't be easy, but try to get some sleep.   Goodnight.'

   The nurse didn't want to appear rude, but they were having a rather busy night and knew she'd be needed elsewhere.  'Would you like me do anything before you go?'

   'Yes,' Neil said, 'could you find me a local taxi phone number please?'

   'That's okay. I'll drive him home.' Beverly said out of the blue; an undeniably remarkable offer considering the circumstances.

   'No need, really.'

   'No point in an extra wait till one comes. You're not far away, are you?'

   'About 15 mins.'

   'Well, then?'

   'Okay.'

   The nurse showed them to the doors and bid them a sympathising goodnight and Beverly led him to her car.  They didn't converse at all, apart from Neil pointing out his directions home. It felt surreal to be sitting next to her, after the damage she'd done. But neither had the strength nor inclination to fight anymore. The sight of Saskia and the horror she was about to endure seemed to bury any meantime hatred. 

   Once they'd reached his building, Neil thanked her for the lift and reached for the door handle to vacate the car. but then pulled his hand back again.

   'Let me pay for Saskia to have private treatment.' 

   'What?' She was astounded with his offer. Surely he'd want to still distance himself from the woman who tried to rip him off for thousands, not throw more money her way. 'You can't be serious?'

   'I think I owe her that much. She wouldn't be in hospital right now if I hadn't arranged to meet her.'

   'Maybe, Neil,  but she's there because she was drunk and careless, too.'

   Whether her comment was to try and ease his guilt he wasn't sure. Even if it were, she still wouldn't hold her own hands up to any wrongdoing; Saskia had veered way-off the plan of her own accord, hadn't she? 'How would that work, though, she's already in hospital awaiting surgery.'

   'I mean afterwards, for when she needs rehabilitation and physio.' 

   Beverly looked ahead in thought, still fearing that Saskia might not have a chance at an afterwards, but then told him,

   'You're forgetting Neil... I'm not her mother. It'd be up to her to let you.'  

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She still hadn't shown signs of total consciousness from both the painkillers and sedation although they had been reducing overnight meds. The past two times he had visited she had been asleep, but he sat there nonetheless, quietly talking to her in hushed tones. He was lucky, in a sense, that he was allowed to visit her out of hours ( the  ICU ward nurses used their discretion for him to do so since she was in a side-room). Beverly was sticking to regular visiting hours, and so far they hadn't crossed hospital paths;

he would remain polite enough if they did, but wouldn't want any form of civility misinterpreted as forgiveness. There wasn't an inkling of that in him for her.

   

As he walked into her room she was yet again asleep - laying there in a bed with perfectly tucked-in sheets; as if comfort mattered to someone who'd been lost in near-comatose. He did notice, however, a reduction in wires and tubing, although some patches remained to a monitor that bipped and beeped.  But her porcelain-skinned face was marred and scraped raw, though the purple bruising had faded on her right eye and cheekbone, it was still very much swollen. His insides twisted at the sight of the lost splendour that used to be his.  He pulled a chair over and sat by her bed, holding his cold clammy hand around her peachy warm one.

   'I'm sorry, kiddo.' he whispered, and raised her hand to give it a rough, chin-bristled kiss. Careful not to put weight upon any part of her, he folded his arms on the edge of the bed and settled his head on them. The lack of quality rest was catching up with him, and he felt too warm and serene for any nugatory babbling, so closed his eyes to the lack of white noise and slept within minutes.

The wriggling sensation from Saskia's movement roused him and his head lifting up sharply.  Her eyes were open, but she squinted from the light and pulsation in her head, taking a short dizzy moment to work out where she was.  

   'Hey, Saskia... ' He grinned and sat upright, dragging the chair to the top of the bed. 'Thank God you're back... '

   While smacking her lips from a dry mouth, she reached up trying to pull out her nasal cannula, to which Neil stopped her from doing.  'Uh... let's leave that there for now, shall we...?

   Looking towards him, managing only to raise her lips a little on her left side, she croaked,

          'You need a shave, Raptor.' 

          ' Aye, aye, I do...' he agreed, through light laughter and utter relief.

    He wiped misted tears away as the nursing team entered her room and shooed him away to let them get on with the necessary. In a day or two he hoped she'd be well enough to take him up on that rehabilitating offer. 

   end of  ***WAKING  UP  SIDEWAYS***