New Life

He blew in with the spring. Budding daffodils, crisp skies, or so I’d heard from those who cared. I hadn’t bothered to look out of the window. I spent all my time in bed, refusing to get up, to speak even.
He found me on a Tuesday. I knew it was Tuesday because there were boiled eggs and toast on my breakfast tray. I was suffering my regular rotation, being turned, like a hog on a spit; suspended in mid-air looking down at the blind white sheets of my bed. The turning stops the bed sores, apparently.
‘I can see your knickers,’ said a male voice.
‘Good for you,’ I said, annoyed, because I hadn’t meant to reply. I’d been silent for days. Perhaps it was his belligerent tone.
‘You’re not bothered then? That anyone gliding by can see your pants.’
‘I couldn’t give a damn. Are you always this rude?’
‘You’re pretty.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve a lovely face. What’s your name?’ he said.
‘Get stuffed.’ In my head I heard my mother tut-tutting.
‘Mine’s Nigel,’ he said. ‘Nice to meet you too.’
Such an ordinary name.
The next time he came I was sat up in bed, pretending to read one of my set books. I couldn’t see the point in studying for A’ levels now, but I kept up appearances to stop my mum nagging at me. The squeak of tyres splintered the hushed hospital air, and I knew it was him. I kept my eyes locked to the page.
‘Hello, beautiful. What you reading?’
‘None of your business.’ I could see the bottom of his wheels in my peripheral vision, smell his aftershave.
‘I’d love to read a book, a magazine, anything, but it’s difficult to hold things between your teeth and focus.’ He had my attention now; I looked up.
His eyes were green, his hair a murky strawberry blonde. He was older than me by five or six years: twenty-two or three. Not what you’d call good-looking, but interesting, you know, unusual. And quadriplegic. It should have made me feel better, someone worse off than me, but it made me angry, though that was okay. At least I was feeling something other than self-pity.
He looked like he was waiting for a reply, and I realised I’d been staring. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks.
‘What happened to you?’ he said, breaking the silence.
‘I came off my motorbike.’
‘How?’
‘I dunno. It was dark, I hit the brakes too hard, maybe there was oil on the road.’
‘Was it like being in slow motion?’
‘Was it hell. I always thought people were talking shit about that, and they are.’
‘What do you remember?’ he asked.
I have no idea why I told him. I’d not spoken to anyone about it, until then. I was thrown over a cliff and into the branch of a tree. A battered, hillside tree that saved my life and broke my spine. At the waist. No hope of repair. I remembered dangling there, looking at my feet, one boot missing. The other is probably still lying where it fell. Leather moulding and disintegrating, returning to the land.
Time rolled on; the dawn broke. Then: ‘Helloooooo? Hellooooo? Anybody there?’ A strong Welsh accent pattered down the hillside, like spring rain.
‘I’m in a tree, I came off my bike.’
‘I know love, I saw it, on the verge, I did. Wondered where it came from. Thought someone might be hurt I did, I was driving down to the market I was…’
‘Get help,’ I yelled, cutting straight across him.
‘Okay, lovey. I’ll call the fire brigade I will. Straight away, right now. You sit tight. No need to worry. An ambulance too I think.’
‘Yes, and get a bloody move on you stupid old bugger.’ I didn’t say the last bit out loud of course. I saw him as a middle-aged farmer, ruddy of cheek, quick of hand and slow of mind.
‘Were you always so angry?’ Nigel asked. He looked real neat in a pink shirt with pin-tuck pleats running down his broad chest, dark denim jeans with white stitching, and Cuban-heeled black boots. I wondered how tall he was, and tried to imagine him standing upright, but couldn’t.
He said, ‘What did it feel like? Did you know?’
I said, ‘I think so, yeah. I knew my life was over. I felt a thud in my back, then a lunging forwards and backwards, bouncing. I felt the branch adjusting to the weight of its new leaf.’
‘You’re very poetic. Must be all that reading,’ he said.
‘What happened to you?’ I asked, throwing my hair over my shoulders, suddenly conscious of my shapeless hospital gown.
‘I dived into a wave at Abersoch.’
‘No kidding.’
‘Yeah, unbelievable isn’t it? If the force is just so, and if it hits your neck in just the right spot, then, bingo! You lose the use of everything from the shoulders down. I am a talking head.’ He didn’t sound bitter, though I knew he must have been. I asked how long he’d been here. Five months, almost twice as long as me.
‘What on earth possessed you to go swimming in Tremadog Bay in October?’ I said. ’It must have been freezing.’
‘I was practising for a channel swim. I had a wet suit on - they’re supposed to protect you.’ He smiled, and I noticed that his teeth were really white, like an angel’s. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Siân.’
‘Mine’s Nigel.’
‘You said.’
‘So you were listening.’ He winked.
‘Nice to meet you, Nigel,’ I said. And I meant it.
He came to see me every day. Not always at the same time, so I lived with a permanent air of expectation. The waiting was such an intense form of pleasure it felt like pain. Even the dozy nurses noticed the difference in me. I stopped cutting.
I’d been in hospital six weeks before I looked at my legs. When I did, I was surprised they hadn’t altered. I’d expected them to wither instantly, to look crumbled and useless. I poked them repeatedly, willing a response, and when it never came I took to cutting my thighs. Small cuts at first, then deeper and deeper, as if I was digging for treasure, the jewel: sensation. Stealing the knife was easier than it should have been.
The blood startled me at first. I hadn’t expected those pathetic limbs to bleed. The cutting was another thing I found myself telling Nigel.
The nurses couldn’t believe it when I said I’d like to get up, and when they started teasing me I told them to shut it otherwise they could say goodbye to me getting out of bed.
‘I preferred it when you were mute, Siân,’ said one of them, trying to be funny. She reminded me of my mother: always fussing, incessant chatter. The only person I felt normal with was Nigel.
The weeks rolled by. We were in the day room, frittering time.
‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘c’,’ Nigel said.
‘Cripple!’ I shouted, and an orderly fiddling with the telly remote glared at me.
‘What are you staring at?’ I barked. ‘I can call myself whatever I sodding well like, it’s only you lot who can walk who can’t say cripple – cripple! Cripples! We’re all bloody cripples!’ A few inmates chuckled.
‘Leave it, Siân,’ Nigel said.
Some days I felt like a piece of bread floating in a dirty puddle, slowly disintegrating. Even Nigel found it difficult to make me smile then, and self-absorbed as I was it didn’t occur to me that he might feel the same.
Easter came. He brought me an enormous chocolate bunny.
‘I’ll get fat,’ I said, embarrassed, and wishing I’d asked Mum to get an extra egg for him.
‘You’ll suit a size twelve chair,’ he said, before tipping his chin to the chair control pad. ‘Thanks,’ I said, as he whizzed away.
We spent more and more time together. We didn’t always talk; we’d watch telly, play stupid guessing games, or simply park our chairs outside and stare at the clouds. He allowed me to rage, to rail against suffocating kindness, pity and hope.
Family and friends found it difficult when I tried to talk about how useless and cheated I felt. I couldn’t moan about anything; I had to be the cheerful little cripple, grateful to be alive when most of the time I wished I was dead. That the bloody tree hadn’t caught me.
But Nigel understood. He was my comrade fighting off the cloying love of the able-bodied army. He rode with me into battle; we flew along endless corridors, channelling rage through our wheels. I laughed when Nigel said to disapproving staff, ‘What’s the worst that can happen? I break my neck?’
And Nigel’s discharge day crept closer. Mine would follow soon enough, but I was frightened. How would I cope here without him?
Two days before he was due to leave we sat on the lawn counting daisies. We had a bet. It was windy and the rush of air, swirling around my head, reminded me of riding my bike.
‘Bloody wind,’ said Nigel.
Sorrow and loss clutched my throat and held tight, squeezing harder and harder. I thought of everything I’d miss: independence, climbing stairs two at a time, the sting in the thighs afterwards, warm sand running through my toes. I had not cried. I had cradled and nurtured my anger; I’d forgotten how to be sad. Or maybe the fury had burnt the reservoir dry. And I had not seen Nigel cry or confess that he had, even after the visit from his girlfriend when she finally confessed that she’d met someone else.
‘I’ve got a hair in my eye – bloody wind!’ he said, moving his head from side to side like a dog with a bucket on its head trying to lick a wound on its haunches.
I couldn’t speak.
There were no nurses around. I circled round until my back wheel was flush against his front. I looked into his eye, framed by sandy lashes, and then into his face. He was so vulnerable. I’d never seen him like that. He always appeared so robust, so vital. He reminded me of a Norseman: a Viking. I could see him rampaging his way across unknown lands. Red veins cracked along the whites of his watering eye. The iris was clear and green and lovely, and as I pulled at the rogue hair my hand brushed his cheek and the tears came. And I couldn’t stop them.
I wanted to pull away, but I couldn’t tear my face from his. His eyes beckoned me in and I leant forward. Forehead to forehead we grieved our first lives. I felt his coarse skin against the tip of my nose and though our lips touched we didn’t kiss.
The next day we sat at the back of the day room pretending to watch some shitty soap opera. Nigel whispered, ’On the lawn yesterd-’
‘Sorry about that. I was a bit of an idiot.’
‘I was dying to kiss you, Siân.’
I wished he had; I’d wanted it so badly it hurt. But I said, ‘You’re kidding me?’
‘No, I’m not. But I’m glad I didn’t.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Going down the relationship route would be disastrous for our friendship, and you need a friend more than you need a lover.’ I felt sure that had he been able, he’d have shrugged.
I said, ‘Too right.’ We turned back to the telly.
‘Something’s changed for me,’ I said. ‘A new beginning, life feels like life again.’
‘Right,’ he said, not looking at me.
‘A new life. It began yesterday,’ I said, smiling.
‘No, it didn’t. It began the second you hit the branch. It began the second you decided not to fall from that tree, to hang on, to live. You just didn’t know it till now.’
I kissed him on the cheek.
‘Steady, girl. Steady.’
‘We’ll stay mates, won’t we?’ He didn’t reply and I said, ’I’m going to learn how to drive, get a special car. I’ll visit.’
‘Until you meet the right man.’ He stared straight ahead then turned his chair to leave.
‘Or you find another girlfriend,’ I called after him, pushing at my wheels.
I caught up with him in the corridor.
‘I’ll find another girl. Maybe not as pretty as you, but she’ll be sunnier, nowhere near as crabby.’
‘You cheeky sod.’
He sped up, and I let him go. We’d see each other again.