Chapter Two
I remember almost nothing about the ambulance ride to the hospital.
Afterwards they told me I kept drifting in and out of consciousness throughout the ten-minute drive to the nearest A and E, where a small army of medics were waiting on the pavement for us to arrive.
When I was awake, there was only one word in my new, limited vocabulary, which I recited like a mantra to the accompanying wail of the siren.
For some reason the name of a total stranger had been seared into my brain by the lightning, and I couldn’t seem to stop myself from repeating it, with absolutely no idea why I was doing so.
The haziness continued for some time. I remember dazzling overhead lights and ceiling tiles flashing in and out of view as I was wheeled speedily down a hospital corridor.
Gradually things became clear enough for me to marvel at just how many doctors were crammed into the treatment room.
There was a feeling of being an exhibit in a zoo, because most of the white-coated individuals were just standing around observing me, as though I was some sort of oddity.
None of it made any sense until I overheard one of the doctors explaining my condition to a new arrival.
‘ . . . struck by lightning.’
‘What?’ It was the first thing I’d said that wasn’t the name of a man I’d never met.
‘It’s okay,’ said a female doctor with a soft American accent. ‘You’re going to be fine, Ellie.’
I frowned, wondering how she knew my name, before remembering the wallet full of business cards in my bag.
She looped a stethoscope around her neck in a slick manoeuvre that suggested she’d done it a thousand times before. As most of her colleagues looked young enough to still be in school, I took comfort in her expertise.
I was wearing a hospital gown that I had no recollection of being changed into. The doctor carefully moved it aside to reveal my left shoulder, which felt sore and oddly warm. A feeling like pins and needles on overdrive was radiating down my arm.
‘You’ve been incredibly lucky today,’ the doctor said. Several people in the semicircle nodded their agreement. ‘The tree took the main strike, and you received a side flash. Thankfully that made you a secondary target; a short circuit for the lightning, if you like.’
‘Lightning?’ I said, my voice a horrified whisper. ‘I got hit by lightning?’ Each word climbed half an octave higher. The doctor slowly nodded before summoning up a comforting smile.
‘But shouldn’t I be dead now? Isn’t that what usually happens?’
For one moment I wondered if I was, and that’s why everything felt so weird and disjointed. There were an awful lot of people in the room wearing nothing but white.
Unbelievably, the doctor chuckled, but I found none of this even remotely funny. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure if I liked her, after all.
‘Actually, about ninety per cent of victims survive a lightning strike. You’re probably surprised to hear that.’ To be honest, it wasn’t a topic I’d ever given a passing thought to before. ‘I saw many people who’d been struck just like you were today, when I worked in a Houston emergency room.’
The medics in the room all craned forward, clearly hanging on her every word, but I was still struggling to get my fuzzy head around what the hell had happened to me.
‘We’re going to run a few more tests, and I’d like you to have a CT scan before we discharge you. But the good news is that your heartbeat has returned to its normal rhythm, and we believe everything else will stabilise just as effectively. You should be able to go home before the end of the day.’
‘Home?’ I said, my voice wavering as though for a moment I couldn’t remember where that might be. I corralled my scattered thoughts and managed to summon up an image of the top-floor flat in the Victorian house where I lived.
‘Everything just feels so confused and not quite real.’ I hated how helpless I sounded but was powerless to keep the tremor out of my voice.
‘That’s perfectly understandable. You’ve had a big shock. No pun intended.’
That produced smiles all round, and several of the young doctors even chuckled a little, but it was way too soon for me to appreciate that kind of black humour.
‘Is there someone we can call for you? Someone you’d like to have here with you?’
Like a wheel in a game show, my thoughts cycled through possible candidates, but each of them clicked past and the wheel never came to a stop.
‘No. I live alone.’
Did I? For a moment I couldn’t actually remember, but it felt true. Not knowing was frankly terrifying.
‘You don’t want us to call . . .’ The doctor hesitated and glanced down to check on a clipboard that was lying on the bed. ‘Rhys?’ she suggested with an encouraging smile.
‘Who’s Rhys?’
That wiped the smile away.
‘We assumed he might be your partner, or perhaps a friend?’
I shook my head, feeling increasingly as though I’d walked into a really confusing TV show, somewhere mid-season.
‘It’s just that you’ve been saying that name on and off ever since they brought you in.’
‘I have?’ I certainly didn’t remember doing so. I blinked several times as though it might help the cloud of crazy to drift away. It didn’t.
Perhaps the doctor meant Ash? He was my boyfriend.
Almost as soon as the thought landed, I knew it was wrong.
Ash and I had dated when I was in my twenties.
We’d met just after I graduated and then we’d .
. . The thoughts and memories were like wisps of smoke that slipped out of my grasp before I could secure them.
I wasn’t with Ash anymore, was I? We’d broken up.
Or had we got back together again, and I’d somehow forgotten?
I didn’t like the sudden panic that clutched me amidst the swirling confusion.
Shouldn’t I know if I was someone’s girlfriend?
Or fiancée? I snatched up my left hand. It was bare of any rings.
‘What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I remember things?’
The doctor nodded wisely. ‘Memory loss is a common symptom in cases like yours. Happily, it rarely lasts long. And, as I said before, you were one very lucky young woman today.’ Her eyes darkened for a moment, which made me think the same might not be true for everyone who’d been standing beneath that tree.
The name Rhys echoed through my head like a slowly tolling bell.
I bit my tongue to stop it escaping once more.
The CT was scary, and everyone involved in the scan was clearly a dab hand at poker, because I couldn’t read anything from their faces when it was over. If the lightning had damaged anything on its passage through my body, no one was saying.
They carried out other tests, but my mind kept wandering, as though its tether to the here and now had been severed.
For someone who had turned multitasking into an art form, who could juggle two phone calls and simultaneously rattle off an email without thinking, it was all a little terrifying.
Everyone was very kind, speaking to me slowly and carefully, with big round enunciated vowels, which just made me feel worse. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t who I was.
I especially hated the wheelchair they insisted I use to transport me to and from Radiology. I hated how my day had gone from one in which I was in total control to one where I was reduced to a statistic – albeit a rare and interesting one.
The nurse who accompanied me back to the treatment room politely pretended not to notice the tears that began to fall in the lift.
I rarely cried, and the quiet, hitching sobs had a field day at the sudden release, wracking their way through me.
She laid a hand gently on my shoulder as the lift doors slid open.
‘It’s just so . . . so . . . disorientating,’ I finished helplessly. It wasn’t exactly the right word, but it was the closest one I could find. ‘I don’t know how to explain it, but everything feels so strange and off-kilter.’
‘I’m sure it must do,’ she said, finding a folded square of tissue from somewhere and passing it to me. It took a further two before they came away without black streaks of mascara all over them. I felt wrecked, both inside and out.
‘Maybe there is something that might make you feel a little better.’
I looked up from the wheelchair, red-eyed, scarlet-nosed, but curious.
‘Okaaay,’ I said, sounding so unlike my usual confident self even my own mother wouldn’t have recognised me. The thought immediately made me feel even worse than before, which was saying something.
Like a getaway driver on a heist, the nurse pivoted the wheelchair with a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree spin. ‘We probably shouldn’t, but . . .’
I had no idea what she was proposing, or where she was taking me, but for a few minutes at least it distracted me from worrying about the gaps in my memory.
She wheeled me down a new corridor, glancing frequently over her shoulder as though we were being pursued.
I was definitely intrigued now. Then came to a stop beside a row of curtained cubicles.
‘I should probably check if he’s okay with this first,’ she said, looking like she might be regretting her impulsive decision.
‘Who?’ I asked, but I think part of me already knew the answer.
My heart, which had been beating perfectly satisfactorily – according to the monitors – suddenly picked up its pace.
The tingling in my arms intensified, and I saw the fine downy hair covering them was standing on end, as though electricity was once again travelling through my body.
The air certainly felt charged as the nurse reached for the curtains.
Through a gap in the fabric I saw a bare arm, attached to a drip.
But it wasn’t the medical paraphernalia that caught my attention.
It was the intricate and detailed tattoo that was etched onto the skin of the man’s arm.