Chapter 20
TWENTY
LUNA
I drop the pillow as Sadie tries to sit up, looking confused, disoriented and basically like somebody who has just woken up from a coma and has no idea that they went into one in the first place.
No sooner have I done that than I hear the door open behind me and I spin around to see two nurses entering the room, both looking incredibly anxious to find out what is happening with all the alarms now blaring on this ward.
They get their answer when they see what I see, which is Sadie sitting up in bed, wide awake but still seemingly unaware of what has happened to her.
That might be lucky for me, but I can’t be sure that she didn’t register the fact that I was just about to suffocate her with her own pillow, so I stand back, afraid of what might happen next.
That gives the nurses space to do their work, and while one of them settles Sadie down, the other frantically reattaches all the things I unattached when I first came in here.
I consider trying to slip out of the room then, as if there is any way I can leave this scene unnoticed, but I know that I would be incredibly stupid to do so.
I have already been seen, not just by Sadie but the responding nurses, so there’s no chance of me not having to explain my presence here at some point.
My chances of escape only dwindle further when two more nurses arrive into the room to offer their help, and as they all fuss over the patient, I realise I am going to have to think very fast to come up with a good reason as to why I am in here and, more specifically, why I was here at the exact moment Sadie not only woke up but seemed to be at risk of losing her life.
There aren’t any questions being asked of me yet.
That’s because the priority is on saving the patient and, to my dismay, it looks like the panic is now over.
Sadie is lying down again in her bed and all the machines are back to doing what they were doing when I first walked in.
Sadie is trying to speak, although her voice is dry and muffled, and words seem a bit of a struggle for her at the moment.
The nurses are telling her to relax and that they will explain everything to her shortly.
They say a doctor will be here to do that and I prepare myself for yet another person coming in this room any moment now.
Before that can happen, I notice that a couple of the nurses are now turning their attention away from the woman in the bed and towards me, the woman cowering in the corner.
‘What are you doing in here?’ a nurse asks me.
‘Erm, I… erm…’ I begin weakly.
‘Who are you?’ another nurse wants to know.
That should be an easier question to answer, but I’m still struggling to find the words.
This is looking bad for me. Really, really bad. How am I going to explain this? How am I going to talk my way out of this situation? How am I ever going to go back to making people think that I am just an innocent woman and Sadie is the real danger here?
And then my survival instincts kick in and I start talking.
‘I’m a patient here. I’m staying on another ward, but I couldn’t sleep, and I knew Sadie was here, so I came to see her.
We know each other. My partner is her ex-husband.
She was actually at our house when she had the accident that put her in that coma.
Her children have been so worried about her, but it seemed like she was never going to wake up.
So I came here to talk to her. I’d been reading that coma patients can sometimes hear what people are saying to them and I wondered if I could help.
I wondered if by telling Sadie that I forgave her for what she did before her coma, she might hear it and it might give her some peace.
I thought it might give me some peace too.
I’m so sorry, I know I shouldn’t have just come in here, but I did, and I’d only just started talking when Sadie woke up. ’
That’s the lie that my brain has been able to concoct under pressure, and as I watch the nurses’ faces to see how it lands with them, I feel like it is the best I could come up with under the circumstances. But will they believe it?
‘Wait there,’ one of them tells me, a sure sign that I’m going to need to explain myself further soon and possibly have to repeat what I just said to somebody with more authority than them.
That’s okay, I can do that. What is not okay is that Sadie is awake now.
What if she starts talking too? If she does, all she has to say is what she was saying to me before her accident.
All she has to say is that she knows what I’ve done.
So far, Sadie is not saying anything. She seems too weak to use her voice, or possibly her throat is just too dry or her vocal cords too underused to string some sentences together.
That’s lucky for me, but I’ve got a feeling that luck won’t hold.
She’ll surely regain her voice soon, and when she does, I bet she won’t shut up then and will go from mute to spontaneously spilling secrets with effortless ease.
How much does she know about what I did to her tonight? Did she feel me unplugging all the wires from her skin? Did she sense that I was about to suffocate her with the pillow? Does she know that she is supposed to be dead now?
I have no answers to any of those questions, but the nurses don’t seem as clueless as I am. They are all busy doing their jobs, and as a doctor enters the room, I hear one of the nurses say something that tells me this room is about to get even busier soon.
‘I’ll call her parents and let them know that she is awake,’ the nurse says before exiting to go and make that call to Sadie’s mum and dad.
I have no doubt that they will be overjoyed to hear that their daughter is out of her coma, just like Arthur and Ruby will be overjoyed to hear the news too.
Soon, they will all be crowded around this bed, telling Sadie how much they love her and are glad to have her back with them and, once again, I’ll feel like I’m pushed to the fringes as the children focus more on their real mother rather than me.
At least I’ll still have Jude. And Reid, of course.
What will his reaction be to this news that Sadie is awake? Will he be happy that his ex-wife is out of her coma, not just for their children’s sakes but happy for his now too? Or will he be worried more about me now and how I’ll react to this?
Only time will tell what impact Sadie waking up is going to have on all of our lives. But I feel it’s going to have the biggest impact on my life. Surely nobody can stand to lose more by Sadie being awake than me.
I could lose everything now this woman is back.
I could lose my partner, my baby, my family life, my home and my freedom.
That’s why Sadie had to die.
But she is still here.
So now what?