Chapter Three
You can find me on Insta.
The words circled in my head for about the fiftieth time in the two hours since I’d said them.
It was no good, they still sounded as laughably pathetic as they’d done when I’d uttered them in the hospital corridor.
What an idiot, I thought as I flopped back on hospital pillows so hard they could probably double up as sandbags.
‘Do you need help getting dressed?’ the kindly nurse had asked. I think she felt sorry for me. After all, how many people successfully cheat death by lightning strike and don’t have a single friend or family member at their bedside to accompany them home?
‘My sister will be coming to stay with me for a few days,’ I’d lied to the doctor when she’d expressed concern about me going home alone. ‘It’ll take her a couple of hours to get there, but she’s already on her way.’
The doctor had looked relieved, and I was glad that whatever else I’d forgotten, I didn’t appear to have lost the ability to creatively embellish the truth. My days as a successful real estate agent could well have been numbered if I had.
Of course, this was more than just a little bending of the facts, because there was no sister.
I was an only child, something I’d always felt was my fault.
‘It was a difficult birth,’ I could remember overhearing my mother tell someone, when I was still too young to know the facts of life, much less what a birth – easy or otherwise – had been.
‘She was such a fretful baby that I never felt the need to go through that again.’ It had taken me until my mid-teens before I stopped feeling guilty about all the little Harker siblings that never were, because of me.
Of course I thought about phoning my mum from the hospital.
I even got so far as scrolling through my mobile for her phone number, but something stopped me from making the call.
Would she insist on coming to stay to look after me?
Or worse, that I move in with her until I’d fully recovered?
I shivered at that thought despite the near tropical temperature of the hospital ward.
We didn’t do well under the same roof, my mother and I.
Things got uncomfortable whenever the space between us was reduced to partition walls.
And as I lay on the hospital bed, with my mobile in my hand, I was shocked to realise I couldn’t actually remember the last time we’d spoken.
The memory of it was something else that had been seared away by the lightning.
Were we currently at odds with each other?
Had there been another disagreement about something that probably, in hindsight, had never been worth arguing over?
I couldn’t remember, and so I didn’t call Mum, because there was no casual way of saying, ‘Hey, guess what? I got hit by lightning today. Just thought you might like to know.’ Because the biggest fear, the one that really crippled me, was what if she didn’t?
‘Have you got everything?’ asked the nurse, looping the strap of my bag over my good shoulder, mindful of the neat white dressing applied to the minor burn on my other one.
‘I think so,’ I said, bending down to slip my feet back into my shoes. As I did, my thoughts took a brief detour back to Rhys calling me ‘the girl with the shoes in her hand’. A smile settled on my lips. Perhaps that Insta comment hadn’t been so awful after all.
‘Are you sure you don’t want us to call you a taxi? It’s no trouble.’
I glanced towards the window. The afternoon had slipped into early evening by the time they’d finally said I could leave.
This morning’s rain had long since dried up and the sun was now hanging low in the sky, painting everything in warm, golden hues.
I had an uncharacteristic urge to find an empty bench somewhere and just sit quietly, doing absolutely nothing except enjoying the warmth of the sun on my skin.
‘I’ll call an Uber when I’m ready. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me today,’ I said, feeling strangely unsure of the correct protocol here.
A handshake felt too cold, a hug too intimate.
I usually knew exactly how to navigate my way through any social situation, and this uncertainty was almost as unsettling as the memory loss.
‘You take care now,’ the nurse said with a smile. ‘And stay away from tall trees in thunderstorms.’
‘I will.’
‘I tell you something else you might want to stay away from,’ said a passing colleague. ‘And that’s the front entrance. There’s a bunch of journalists and photographers waiting to speak to the lightning-strike victims.’
‘There’s paparazzi?’ exclaimed my nurse. ‘Oh, that’s a bit exciting, isn’t it? Kind of like being a celebrity.’
A senior member of the ward, who everyone appeared to be a little scared of, looked up from the chart she was reading and gave a scornful laugh.
‘I don’t think anyone who works for the Gazette or the Chronicle can justifiably call themselves a pap.
But you might want to avoid going out right now; unless you want to be interviewed, that is. ’
Did I? For someone who spent an awful lot of time curating a social media presence, I was weirdly reluctant to share what had happened and see it splashed across the local paper.
‘It’s not just the local rags,’ added my nurse, who’d gone to a window that afforded a better view. ‘There’s a van from the regional TV news station.’
Her colleague nodded. ‘They’re quizzing anyone in a uniform if they know the names of the two people hit by lightning this morning.’
With legs that no longer felt steady, I sank back down on the bed and pulled out my phone. I went straight to the most popular social media sites and keyed in the words ‘lightning victims’.
It didn’t take long before phone footage, taken by various members of the crowd who’d gathered in the park, was playing on my screen.
As luck would have it, the torrential rain had made it difficult for clear images to be obtained, but the videos were sharp enough to see two figures lying on the ground, both being worked on by two off-duty paramedics, one of whom bore a striking resemblance to a grizzly bear.
I set aside the phone with a feeling of distaste. Those filming the scene and posting the images hadn’t known there’d be a positive outcome. How could they? And yet they’d happily continued recording, as though the internet had a right to see the moment when we could easily have died.
But we didn’t die, a voice in my head reminded me, a voice belonging to a man with brilliant green eyes.
‘Why don’t I make you a nice cup of tea?’ suggested my favourite nurse, giving my uninjured shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘Then maybe by the time you’re done, they’ll all have packed up and gone home for the day.’
I didn’t think journalists – even local ones – gave up on a story quite that easily, but she was being so kind I took her up on the offer.
There were a couple of mouthfuls still left in my cup when a tall male nurse strode purposefully onto the ward and approached the clerk at the desk.
I was too far away to hear their conversation, but I knew he was asking about me even before the clerk pointed in my direction.
By the time he reached my bay, I was already on my feet.
‘Ellie Harker?’
‘Yes.’ There were threads of reticence in my voice, as though everything today might be open for debate. I couldn’t remember a single time in my life when I’d felt less certain about absolutely everything.
He smiled, instantly diluting the adrenaline flooding my veins.
‘This is for you.’ He held out a folded square of paper that looked as though it had been hastily torn from a lined pad. I looked up, my eyes full of questions and my fingers trembling as I reached for the note.
Two words, written in bold strokes on one side of the missive, answered one question, but raised a whole lot more.
Shoe Girl
I’d told Rhys my name, but the jokey title hit the exact tone that I imagined he’d intended. My fingers were still a little unsteady, but now for a totally different reason.
I unfolded the note.
Hello Ellie. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it seems we’re kind of minor celebrities after what happened today, and there’s a bunch of people waiting outside to interview us.
If that’s your thing, then great. But it’s definitely not mine, and my good mate Olly – who’s standing in front of you – has offered to sneak me out of a service entrance at the back of the hospital, and I wondered if you wanted to come with us?
If you do and fancy sharing a taxi, just let him know.
If not, make sure they spell your name right in the papers! R.
I read it twice before looking up at the man Rhys had sent to find me.
It wasn’t a big deal, just a small act of kindness, but try telling that to my eyes, which were suddenly full of tears.
Was I stuck in Rhys’s head in the same inexplicable way he was lodged in mine?
Was this a result of the lightning, because I really didn’t think I’d be acting so weirdly if I’d met him under normal circumstances.
But nothing about today had been normal.
And opting to escape from the hospital with him certainly wasn’t, but just seconds later that’s exactly what I agreed to do.
It was only a ten-minute walk to where Rhys was waiting, but it was long enough for me to know that I really liked his friend.
Olly filled every second with irreverent, humorous chatter, which was entertaining but also a little frustrating as it gave me no chance to shoehorn in a quick question or two about Rhys.
When the lift doors slid open, Olly stuck his head out first, comedically checking the corridor as though we were about to be ambushed.
‘It’s like breaking Bonnie and Clyde out of prison,’ he said with a grin that I had a feeling scarcely ever left his lips.