Chapter 1 #2
No matter how reassuring the doctor was trying to be, and River judged from his facial expressions that he was trying not to upset him, River could feel himself panicking.
Was he trying to speak the same weird language as the doctor and nurse?
If so, why couldn’t he understand them? If he couldn’t communicate, how could he find out why he was in hospital?
Why he couldn’t move? His arms and legs felt so heavy and there was an elephant sitting on his chest. Oh God.
Something in my dick. No air was going into his lungs.
He needed that tube back in his mouth. I don’t want to die!
He found himself thrown back to the worst night of his life.
Trapped, terrified. He didn’t want to remember.
There was a flurry of activity. The nurse injected something into the cannula on the back of his hand, a plastic mask was put on his face and like his name, he flowed away, straight out to sea.
When he washed ashore, he was afraid to open his eyes, afraid to try and speak in case more crap came out.
But what was he going to do? Just lie there?
He opened his eyes—at least they worked—and saw Max, his agent and a whole lot more, sitting by the bed, busy on his phone.
The relief in seeing someone he knew made River suck in a breath.
Max heard him, looked across and an expression of relief swept across his face.
“Heen! Arn youb. Thep roc…”
River gasped. He wanted to cry. Max was speaking the same rubbish. “Erl,” River said, not Max as he intended, then pressed his lips together.
Not a dream. Something really bad had happened to him.
Max kept talking and River couldn’t understand a word.
Slowing down made no difference and Max was swallowing hard, wringing his hands, looking worried.
Please don’t look worried. You’re scaring me.
I’m breathing too fast. River tried to speak, stutteringly repeating the same non-sensical word, which was supposed to be please but not coming out that way. “Keb…keb…keb.”
He grew more and more upset until Max pressed his finger against River’s lips and shook his head.
He stared at River, then made a zipping motion across his mouth.
Right. He didn’t want River to try and talk.
He got that. He understood something at least. River didn’t want to talk until he made sense.
He always did as Max said. After River’s parents had died, Max had looked after him, given him a home, helped launch his career.
Max tapped into his phone, then showed him the screen.
He couldn’t read it. What the fuck? I can’t read either?
Then Max drew something and showed him. A hill?
A mountain? He added a stick figure climbing and pointed to River.
River could guess where this was going. He’d fallen?
He didn’t remember falling. He didn’t remember climbing.
Why would he climb? He was terrified of heights.
Even seeing a video of someone high up made him feel ill.
Max erased the figure on the rock and drew one at the bottom, pointing to River, then to his head.
River slowly lifted his hand and felt the bandage.
He had casts on both arms from below the elbow.
He suspected his legs were in casts too.
He had little choice but to accept what Max was trying to tell him.
He’d been climbing, he’d fallen and hurt his head and presumably his arms and legs. Please not my spine.
He knew his name. Names. His real one and the one he used now.
He knew he was an actor. He had a home in Kent.
He’d bought it a few years ago. He had a past no one knew about apart from Max.
He had a girlfriend except she wasn’t really his girlfriend.
He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to see anyone.
Right at that moment, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be alive.
Max gently squeezed his hand and made the OK sign with his fingers. River wasn’t reassured.
It was easy to slip into depression. It was like some comforting monster holding its arms open for him.
River let the medical staff do what they wanted, but he hated every moment of it, the indignity… He kept his eyes closed even if he was awake.
He didn’t want to eat, but they made him, spoon fed slop into his mouth because he couldn’t feed himself. This was his life. And it was wrecked. Misery clawed at his heart, ripped at him constantly every time he tried to speak and couldn’t make himself understood.
He stopped trying.
Wires were attached to his chest, blood taken time after time, his skin pricked at various points to see if it hurt.
Yes, it fucking did. At least a yelp was universal.
His eyes were examined. His reflexes tested and no one could tell him what was going on.
Well, they tried and failed, then stopped trying when it agitated him.
When he was wheeled out of the room by a porter, he thought for a few joyous moments he was going home.
He wasn’t. He ended up in a room with what River thought was a scanner; a large circular machine with a hole in the middle, like a giant metal donut.
He sort of wished it was a portal to another world.
There was more scrambled speech from a technician who mimed holding still by standing stiff, then pointed all the way round to the next number on a clock.
River got that, though he couldn’t read the numbers.
He had to keep still for an hour. Fucking hell. Really? An hour?
They inserted earplugs and he immediately felt calm.
No one was talking in a language he couldn’t understand.
He closed his eyes, and when he felt the bed beneath him move, he tried not to think about being enclosed in a claustrophobically small space, particularly when he had no means of calling for help.
They’d put some sort of buzzer thing in his hand, but it had slipped from his fingers as he slid inside and now, he was afraid to move.
The clanging of the machine jarred him into opening his eyes.
Even the earplugs couldn’t hide that. When he saw the scant inches between him and the top of the machine, he slammed them shut again.
He didn’t need them to tell him they were scanning his head, inspecting his poor battered brain.
He’d worked that out for himself. He’d fallen—still didn’t remember—and he’d been injured—badly, but at least he wasn’t completely paralysed.
He could move bits of himself. Lying there gave him plenty of time to work himself back into a state of acute anxiety.
What did they think was actually wrong? Could they give him drugs and make him better?
Maybe an operation was possible. If something had gotten fucked up in his brain, because he knew it had to be something to do with his brain, they could unfuck it because he couldn’t stay like this. I’m an actor. My voice is my life.
Except…maybe he’d never be better than this.
Never be able to walk or talk or wank or…
Oh fuck. Whatever he’d done to his brain had stopped him speaking or understanding.
He couldn’t read or write. He still had the words in his head, but on the way out of his mouth they got muddled.
He wanted to ask when he’d get better and he couldn’t.
What if I don’t get better lingered like a stain.
Max kept coming back. One time, the police came with him.
Croatian Police. He knew they weren’t British from their uniforms. When it was clear River couldn’t communicate, they left.
Barney visited too. River wondered why when the guy didn’t like him.
Maybe he felt guilty. Clearly, his stunt double hadn’t climbed for some reason and this was the result.
River closed his eyes when Barney talked to him.
It wasn’t Barney’s fault he’d fallen, but even so…
He was still walking and talking and River wasn’t.
Sometimes River closed his eyes when he saw Max opening the door of his room.
But Max sat with him, held his hand, and for a while, River didn’t feel so scared and lonely.
When his world had fallen apart, Max had been his saviour.
Now it had fallen apart again. The only person he could trust was Max.
River couldn’t keep his eyes closed forever.
The nursing staff wouldn’t let him. He didn’t know how they knew he was awake.
The machines he was linked to? Or maybe they woke him checking his pulse and blood pressure.
His entire body was inspected. At least he could see he was all there, including his important bits, except the skin he could see was one giant bruise.
He had broken legs and broken arms. It felt as if his ribs were broken too and there were dressings on his body, bandages around his head.
River wanted all this to go away, to rewind to the moment before he was on that rockface.
He didn’t climb. Why hadn’t Barney climbed?
Why were some memories there and others not?
River should have said no to climbing. How had he been talked into it?
He wished he had his laptop so he could google what had happened until he remembered using it would be impossible.
He couldn’t read. He couldn’t listen to the TV whether it was Croatian or English, it didn’t matter.
He couldn’t understand. He couldn’t fucking do anything.
Even music didn’t make sense. If this was his life going forward, did he want it?
But he was a fighter. He’d had to be. He’d fought off panic attacks and nightmares since that horrible night when he was a teenager. Until he knew for certain his life was fucked, he’d try to beat this.