Trauma

Prologue

1993

John Main climbed to the top of the hill and turned to look out over the city to the Firth of Forth and the hills of Fife beyond. He was out of breath from the climb and his hands were muddy from the hard scramble over wet ground. It had started to rain again but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for up here, but it had something to do with perspective. The only other thing he knew was that he hadn’t found it.

In his heart he knew that he wouldn’t find it here, but he had to go along with his instincts. He found a boulder and sat down. It was wet and covered with moss, but that didn’t matter either. Slowly the Forth and the hills disappeared from view as rain clouds drifted in from the west to obscure the horizon and foreshorten his view. Colours were lost as a universal greyness crept over the city. From here he could see the hospital that had played such a major role in his tragedy.

Tragedy? Was that the right word? Was there a right word for what he was feeling? If there was, he couldn’t think of it. Words described events that could be defined. He needed something to describe the complete destruction of his life, his family and all he held dear in the world.

He couldn’t see the A&.E department of the hospital from his view point — it was on the other side of the building and it was too far away — but he knew it was there and it would be busy because it always was. Ambulances would be coming and going, trolleys would be taking breaks and fractures to X-Ray. Cubicle curtains would hide stitching and dressing from anxious relatives. Why? Why hadn’t it all stopped after that awful night when the ambulance had brought the three of them in from the cold, wet motorway with Mary’s beautiful body broken beyond repair, Simon deeply unconscious and he himself with... cuts and bruises. He had been the driver, and all he had sustained were cuts and bruises. He lifted his face to the sky at the almost unbearable thought. Was that some unseen deity’s idea of a sick joke? He could still see the consultant’s face when he had told him formally that Mary was dead. The man hadn’t known it, but he was pronouncing a death sentence on John himself. He was condemning him to a living death, a living hell of loneliness and pointlessness stretching out before him like an endless desert.

“And Simon?” he had asked. “He’s very ill. It’ll be a couple of weeks before we can say for sure.”

The weeks had passed and fate had played the final joke on him. It had invited him personally to take the final irrevocable step in the completion of his agony. The man in the white coat, a different one this time, had told him gravely that Simon had no discernible brain function. Machines were keeping his three-year-old body ventilated and nourished but Simon was, to all intents and purposes, dead. Could they turn the machines off?

“Yes.” The word echoed through Main’s head like an accusation. Such a small word: it was what Mary had said when he’d asked her to marry him. It was the word that had brought them both such joy when he asked her if she was pregnant. It was what the bank manager had said when they wanted to move to a bigger house, and what his sister had said when he asked her if she and her husband would look after Simon for a few days to let him take Mary off to Paris to celebrate their wedding anniversary in a few weeks’ time. Now, the word had changed: he had just killed his son with it.

Two crows fluttered down to earth some thirty feet away and captured his attention. It soon became apparent that they had returned to the body of a dead rabbit. Main remembered them rising from the hill when he’d arrived at the summit. They had been waiting to return to the feast and had now decided, in spite of his continuing presence, that it was safe. Main watched as they pecked at the body, spreading their wings to maintain balance as they grew in confidence and increased their efforts to eviscerate the corpse. Two more birds swooped down on the scene like collapsing umbrellas and a squabble broke out. How different it all was from the Disney scenes depicted on Simon’s wallpaper at home — anthropomorphic rubbish which they’d all embraced happily in their ignorance of what was about to happen. That must be why everything was going on as normal down in the city, thought Main.

They didn’t know what reality was all about. His looked again to that part of the city where the hospital was situated. He knew that the staff there meant well and did their best. None of this was their fault. In fact, when it came right down to it, he couldn’t really understand why he hated everything and everyone.