I woke up in a cold sweat, my flannel pyjamas stuck to my skin. I looked around the room for a familiar face ready to console me. But I was alone. It was a cold evening and I realised I hadn’t turned the heating on. Helen used to do that, she hated being cold. I was forever telling her to turn it off and put on a jacket instead of hiking up the price of the gas bill. I wandered into the kitchen to get a tea-towel to dry my face off with. There was a picture of us on the fridge; we were on a boat on holiday. I stared at it for a moment until the sound of a light flicking on behind me made me turn around.
“Are you ok?” A pretty woman with ebony hair and flushed cheeks stood in the kitchen doorway in a silk nightdress.
“I’m fine.” I said, throwing down the towel next to the sink, lowering my head trying to remember who this woman was.
“If you need anything, I’ll be upstairs. I can’t sleep either.”
I looked at the clock. It was barely three in the morning. I went back to my bed, made up on the couch. It was the only place I’d wanted to sleep these days. I didn’t want to stay in my bed. It didn’t feel right sleeping there now, not on my own. Next to me on the side table was another photograph, this time of a little girl. Petite with long blonde hair, right down her back, wearing a green Alice band and a matching green dress; she had huge blue eyes and a cheeky smile that showed a gap in her teeth. I wracked my brains. Think Daniel, think I muttered to myself. I closed my eyes. I could see a little blonde haired girl sitting on the floor, crying and clutching her knee. She looked up at me with those beautiful but teary eyes. Lily.
I traced the outline of her face on the photograph and smiled. I took it with me upstairs and opened the door into a bedroom. Painted in pale pinks and purples with butterfly stickers stuck around the window I saw her; tucked up in her bed, breathing softly. I sat beside her and watched her chest heave up and down, her eyelashes flickering ever so slightly. It was her; she was still here. I kissed the top of her forehead before heading back downstairs.
I didn’t want to fall asleep again. I was tired of having the same dream over and over again. It was like an explosion of noise in my head that I couldn’t stop. I sat and tried to remember the name of the woman that came into the kitchen. I knew her, I knew that I knew her, I just couldn’t remember how or why. No memories were coming to me; perhaps she would remind me in the morning. As I tried to remember, the sleep overwhelmed me and I lay back under the blanket and closed my eyes, hoping that the screams would give me some peace.
***
It was a Friday night and Helen and I were having a rare night out together. Nothing special, we were just booked in for a meal at a restaurant in town but it was something different. We kissed Lily goodbye and made our way to the car. Our friend Denise had offered to look after her for the evening. Lily loved Denise, they were as thick as thieves and I knew that I would probably come home to a house covered in cake mix and paint.
“I think I’m going to get the herb chicken.” Helen said as we sped along the motorway.
“I know what I’m getting.” I replied.
“Steak again perhaps? You should get something different, live a little.”
“But I like steak.”
She tutted and proceeded to look out of her window. Up ahead I could see a line of stationary lights.
“Oh great, traffic. We’re going to miss our reservation at this rate.” I mumbled, looking at the glaring orange numbers of the car’s clock.
“Take the shortcut.”
“I’d rather wait in the traffic.”
“Oh come on, I’m starving.”
I turned off at the next junction and found the turn for the shortcut. I hated this shortcut, I rarely ever used it. I loved the countryside, the fields and all. But not at night, at night they terrified me. When I was a teenager, some friends and I had been driving down a lane very similar to this one, one night and an old man had appeared apparently from nowhere with his dog, right in front of the car. We hit him and although he turned out to be ok, it put us right off ever going down there again. Now every time I took this shortcut in the dark, I just envisaged that man crossing the road in front of me, hearing that thud as his body hit the bonnet.
Trees lined the road, casting eerie shadows over the car as it dodged in and out of the moonlight.
“How much longer are we going to be?” asked Helen as she re-applied her lip gloss.
“Another five minutes. I’m sure they won’t mind if we’re a little bit late.”
Suddenly I heard something on the windscreen; three quick but loud taps.
“What the hell was that?” I said looking behind me through my window. Probably just loose gravel I thought to myself.
“Daniel!” Helen shrieked. I turned my head back quickly but not in time. Before I had a chance to blink, I saw a car, its lights beaming straight at us. I tried to turn off the road, thinking crashing into a bush was better than crashing into an oncoming vehicle. But I was too late. There was a screech as I slammed on the brakes and attempted to turn the car more to my side instead of Helen’s. The other car had had the same idea however, and it came crashing into the passenger side. There was a sickening crunching of metal, a flash of red light as our car hurtled upwards. It was like slow-motion, the car spinning uncontrollably through the air. It seemed like a lifetime, I remember looking over at Helen who was screaming although by now I had somehow blocked it out, blocked out all noise. She took one last look at me before we hit the ground with a deafening bang. Then everything was silent and he car was upright again. I sat for a few seconds trying to catch my breath, feeling the warm trickling of blood down my forehead. I looked back at Helen. She wasn’t screaming anymore. In fact, she wasn’t doing anything anymore. She was slumped forwards in her seat, perfectly still.
“Helen.” I whispered. I tried to reach out to touch her but I couldn’t move. I whispered her name again. When she didn’t answer, I started to get a horrible feeling in my gut. She was really hurt. I needed to call an ambulance. Before I could even attempt to manoeuvre my arms to get my phone from my pocket, I heard sirens and a blue flashing light reflected of the windscreen which was now almost shattered completely.
They took me out first, much to my blatant annoyance.
“No, get her out first, she’s hurt. I’m fine, get her, please.” I begged the paramedics. They said I was the easiest to get out, that they would need to wait for the fire brigade to cut Helen out of her side. They turned up a few minutes after the ambulance did.
I stood back watching the machine cutting the metal, sparking as it did so. A paramedic kept trying to inspect my cuts, saying I could have a head injury and that I needed to sit down. My head was pounding and my vision was blurry but I wasn’t going to sit down, I wanted to watch them take Helen out of the car so I could check she was ok.
It took them about fifteen minutes. The paramedics ran over to her with a stretcher. I watched in dismay as they lifted her out and lay her down. I ran over to her, barely able to see through the ever increasing pain in my head.
“Helen!” I yelled. And then I collapsed onto the grass.
I woke up to the smell of disinfectant and a faint bleeping sound. I opened my eyes slowly, looking around in confusion. I had no idea where I was, what I was doing; even who I was. At that moment, a nurse walked in carrying a jug of water.
“Hello Mr Wright, I wasn’t expecting you to be awake.” She smiled. I examined her face, which was long and square but friendly. She had her hair tied up into a ponytail. She set the jug down on the table next to the bed.
“How’re you feeling?” She continued, looking at me concerned.
“Ok, I guess. Where am I? What happened?”
“You were in a car accident. You hit your head quite badly; you’ve been in hospital for a couple of days now.” She started to jot something down on a clipboard she’d retrieved from the bottom of my bed.
“A car accident? But I-“ I paused.
“The doctor says you’ll be fine, don’t worry. He said you may have some memory loss, trouble remembering things but it shouldn’t be permanent.”
“Was I on my own?” I couldn’t think back to what had happened or who was with me.
The nurse set the clipboard back and came to sit beside me on the bed. She took my hand and then a deep breath.
“No, you were with your wife, Helen.”
Helen. I had a wife called Helen.
“Helen? Is she ok?”
“I’m afraid not.” The nurse lowered her head.
“Oh...”
She picked something up off the table and handed it to me.
“We thought this might help you remember.” It was a wallet sized photograph of a woman. She was pretty, short blonde hair cut into a bob, smiling with a row of white teeth, her big blue eyes sparkling. I knew this woman, I knew her name. In a flooding of memory, I suddenly remembered our wedding day, waking up next to her in the mornings, her sitting in the passenger seat of the car as it tumbled through the air like an angrily-thrown child’s toy.
“Is she... dead?”
“I’m so sorry.” The nurse squeezed my hand.
It took a minute to register. She was gone. My wife was dead. I took another look at the photograph and set it onto the bed sheets. Then, when it had sunk it, I ripped out my catheter and attempted to jump out of bed.
“Mr Wright, please. You have to stay in bed.” The nurse tried tackling me but she would never win, I had to see Helen, she must be here in the hospital somewhere, laid up just like me, covered in wires and surrounded by machines; still alive.
“I have to see her, I want to see Helen. Get off me.” I shoved her out of the way but found I couldn’t walk any further. Instead, I dropped to my knees on the cold floor, yelling Helen’s name and crying so hard that I thought I might never be able to stop.
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