The Cold Calling

V

The sky was boiling over.

A finger of lightning prodding almost languidly out of the deep, dark, sweating clouds as if it was attached to the arm of a vengeful god. There was a flock of sheep, several already struck down, a heavy tumble of bodies, milk-eyed heads flat to the plain.

A few yards away, the shepherd lay dead. His dog, back arched, howling a pitiful protest at the heavens.

Terror, death.

And only the great stones in their element. Whitened, as if they were lit from within by electric filaments, the stones exulted in the lightning.

Energy. The horrific energy of death.

The sky boiled over and yet it was cold. So cold.

All through the night, he cowered in terror on the plain as the frigid lightning struck and struck again, like a white snake.

Sister Andy had hardly slept, feeling close to feverish. And in the morning, when she ought to have been totally clapped-out, she felt stronger and years younger. There was a polish on the world. The colours were brighter.

Very much like the time when she herself was cured. What was this saying to her?

Don’t dwell on it. At the best of times, Sister Andy was ever a fatalist. It cannae last, hen.

Coming on nightshift, she dumped her bags in the office and went straight to find Jonathan.

‘So. How is he tonight?’

‘Your miracle?’ Jonathan beamed at her. ‘He wakes up. He looks bemused. He drinks half a cup of tea and he goes back to sleep. He’s fine. He’s restored all our faith.’

Andy shook her head, looked down at her hands. All worn and scoured, the texture of grade four sandpaper.

Something moved in mysterious ways.

‘He saying much?’

‘Not a great deal.’

‘It’s a bloody miracle he can even activate his lips. Four minutes gone? Jesus God.’

‘Maybe it just seemed like four minutes,’ Jonathan said. ‘We were all a little …’

‘Hysterical? I don’t think so, Jonathan.’

They’d all be backtracking now, of course. The paramedics saying maybe we were wrong, maybe he was alive when we brought him in. Debbie Barnes saying maybe he wasn’t flatlining three minutes plus. Well it couldn’t have been that long could it, or he’d have come round as a cabbage; you could turn him into coleslaw and he wouldn’t notice.

‘You think it was mass hysteria, Jonathan?’

‘I think it would be a black day for all of us if you were to leave, Sister Andy.’

‘Aw.’ Andy turned away, embarrassed. ‘It really wasnae me, y’know?’

He was blinking at her with the undamaged right eye. The left eye would take a while to clear. It looked like the RAF symbol, circles of red, white and blue, but not necessarily in that sequence. She’d been there the first time the good eye opened. And there to hear the first word he’d spoken when, against all the medical precedents she could recall, his brain broke surface.

He’d said, Cold.

Which was how Andy had been feeling, entirely convinced they’d lost him, the way the sun turned black fast as a shutter coming down over a camera lens.

‘How you feeling, Bobby?’

‘Strange.’ He blinked some more.

They had him in a side ward, on his own. There was always a small risk; something they might’ve missed, so Jonathan wanted to hold on to him until tomorrow, when they’d wheel him up to the men’s ward for a few days’ bedrest, observations, tests.

Andy touched her fingertips together in slightly cautious wonder. She couldn’t let him go to the men’s ward yet. Something very strange had happened here. It would never make it onto any report; the suits would see to that, but …

‘Hang on,’ Bobby said. ‘It’s Sister Andy, isn’t it?’

She went to sit on the bed. His eyes were open again.

‘Nothing wrong with the memory then, son.’

‘I can still smell cocoa.’ He smiled, all lopsided, a boxer’s smile the day after the fight.

Some fight.

He fell asleep again and the smile died on his lips.

It had looked textbook, the way he’d come out of it: a long sleep, a few words, another long sleep. The usual questions. Who’s the Prime Minister, Bobby? Neville Chamberlain, he’d said grumpily, and gone directly back to sleep. He’d seemed annoyed at being wakened. Not quite textbook.

Cold, he’d said, that first time, everybody amazed at his coming out of it enough to make a sound, let alone speak a recognizable word.

Then he’d coughed and rolled his head this way and that on the pillow, and there’d been a bit of a panic in case he was somehow choking on dust or something. He’d made small, dry spitting motions with his mouth before subsiding into an uneasy sleep.

Andy had hung around and watched and listened. Staying on for nearly two hours after her shift had finished, sitting beside his bed, talking to him softly, making notes of the things he said.

Concluding that something well outside the textbook parameters had happened to him during the minutes of his death.

Every word he’d spoken she’d written down more or less verbatim, in shorthand. Feeling it was important, somehow.

Rushing down cold tunnel.

Flushed into the street.

Everybody stuck in a smog. Don’t care. Don’t want to get out of it. Faces all squashed and smeary. Stocking masks.

Walking coma. Streets all grey and icy. People passing you either side, they don’t see you. No feeling of being here, no feeling of being…

Bus tyres sucking at the slush. Slops over the kerb onto your shoes.

February. It’s all February.

All February.

And once he’d woken up and said, quite lucidly, ‘Don’t let Riggs in.’

Shortly before midnight, Andy was finishing a cup of cocoa when Bobby Maiden appeared at the door of her office.

‘Jesus God,’ Andy said. ‘Gave me the fright of ma life.’

He stood there, shaky, in just pyjama bottoms, sweat-shine on his face and chest, eyes all over the place.

‘Let’s go back to bed, shall we, Bobby?’

‘Wha’m I doing here?’ Slurring his words, as she led him back to bed. Brain-stem damage.

‘You’re in hospital. You were in an accident.’ Telling him again because they forgot things very rapidly, head injury cases. Yesterday, he’d asked if Liz was OK, if she’d survived the accident, which ward was she on, could he go and see her? But the next time he woke up he knew well enough that they were divorced.

‘Shouldn’t be here,’ Bobby said. ‘Shouldn’t be here.’

She held back the sheets for him. ‘You can say that again, son.’

‘It’s cold,’ he said and wouldn’t get into bed. Stood there looking confused.

A warm enough night, but it was the first day of October and the autumn heating was on too, one economy the suits hadn’t got round to yet.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Can you just answer me one question?’

‘Do ma best, son.’

‘Am I fully awake?’

‘Looks that way to me,’ Andy said.

‘But you’ve got me on drugs, right? Sedatives.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Nobody. I don’t think. It just feels-’

‘It’s no true, Bobby. You’re not on any kind of medication. Last thing we’d do in your state. All you need’s sleep.’

He put a hand over his eyes. ‘Somebody say I died? I dream that?’

‘No.’ She sat on the edge of the bed, patted it for him to sit down next to her. ‘Wasnae a dream. You snuffed it, right enough. For four whole minutes. A long time. But you came back. That’s a hell of a hold on life you got there, son.’

He seemed to find this momentarily amusing.

Andy said, ‘Tell me, would you … Did you have any distinct kind of dreams?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Like … lights? You see anything like that, Bobby? Bright lights at the end of a tunnel?’

‘Not that I can remember.’

‘Colours?’

‘Too dark. Too cold for colours. Have I been to another hospital?’

‘You havenae been anywhere, Bobby. As such.’

‘Then why were they rushing me back?’

‘That would be the night they brought you in? You remember that?’

‘No, this was daytime. Thick fog, but it wasn’t quite night. Frozen, mucky slush. Like February.’

‘You said that soon after you came round. Maybe it was in your head when … whatever it was happened. You don’t remember being anywhere … you know … warm?’

‘No.’ He looked puzzled.

This is not right.

‘Bobby. Can you think back for me? What’s the first thing you can remember when … I mean, do you remember the accident?’

‘No.’ Too quickly, but she decided not to push it.

‘What do you remember before this slushy streets episode?’

His eyes flickered.

‘Can you tell me, Bobby?’

He bit his bottom lip. ‘Fear.’

‘Did you say fear?’

‘And cold. Cold fear.’

‘What were you afraid of?’

He thought about it for a few seconds, like the fear was an entity in itself, didn’t have to be because of anything.

Finally, he said, ‘I think, not waking up. Never getting out.’

‘Out of what?’ Andy said gently. ‘What were you in that you were scared of not getting out of? Was it, like … a claustrophobia type of feeling?’

She saw he was shivering. He put his hands to his eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Bobby. Get into bed. I’ll bring you some cocoa.’

But by the time she was back with the cocoa, he was asleep.

In the deep of the night, he awoke again and they sat side by side on the edge of the bed, with the bulb of the Anglepoise turned to the wall, and they drank cocoa, like old times.

She asked him if there was any pain. Only a kind of numbness, he said. Down the left side.

‘Do I have a fractured skull, anything like that?’

‘You’ll have to see a neurologist to get it hard and fast. Might be a hairline, but I don’t think so. There’s some brain-stem damage.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Neural. It’s what causes the numbness, the way your voice is slurring. And why you won’t be walking a straight line for a wee while. They’ll repair themselves, the nerves, in time. Meantime, you’ll keep forgetting things and you won’t be able to think as fast as you’d like or do things as efficiently. So take a breath before you jump in and — no offence, I tell this to everybody — you need to watch your temper. Meantime, relax. You were luckier than I can tell you. You were gone a good long time. According to the rulebook, you shouldnae be back at all, no way, know what I’m saying?’

‘I died?’ He’d have forgotten their earlier chat; this was normal.

‘Aye, you did. You were gone … quite a while. Lucky man, eh?’

‘You think so?’ Not sounding too convinced. Oh, this is all wrong, Andy thought. This is perversely wrong.

‘How long am I going to be banged up in here?’

‘Way you’re coming along, you could be out in a week. Long as there’s no complications. But we do need to watch you. All you have to do, Bobby, is rest, rest and rest. Anybody to look after you at home? Girlfriend? Mother?’

‘Died when I was a little kid. Got knocked down in our lane.’

‘Oh.’

‘Runs in the family,’ Bobby said. ‘Getting knocked down.’

‘I’m sorry. You … you still don’t remember what happened to you?’

Bobby shook his head, with a wisp of a smile, then he pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes for a long moment. Something she’d seen him do several times before.

‘Why you keep doing that with your hands?’

‘It’s …’ He hesitated. Then talked about there being a kind of thick glass screen, between him and everything he perceived. ‘A sense of … separateness. ‘

‘Like you’re not part of what’s going on?’

Bobby Maiden looked at her out of his red white and blue eye. She was feeling her way here, going with the instincts, but she had his attention.

‘And there’s something you think you ought to be able to get through to? Because you have a feeling you could before? Don’t look so surprised, Bobby. I’ve been in this game a good long time.’

‘It’s normal?’

‘It’s no exactly normal. I’ve known it before with patients who …’

‘You had many like this? People who died and came back?’

‘Aye. And people who came close to it and then came back. Most of them …’ She looked into his eyes. ‘… most of them said it was the most wonderful thing ever happened to them.’

Thinking back to some of the patients she’d had who’d died, or almost, on the table and come back. Nothing as dramatic as Bobby, no more than a few seconds most of them. But, aye, the same story with a few variations. Maybe seeing themselves lying on the operating table. Then, often, a bright light, more glorious than anything they’d ever seen or imagined. Sometimes green fields and lovely gardens with fountains. And the famous long tunnel, the umbilicus, one end in this life, the other in …

Chemicals. Most neurologists were agreed that this was brain chemicals, the more optimistic of them suggesting there was obviously some shutdown mechanism in the brain that was triggered by the death process. The brain turning on the soft lights and sweet music. Departure lounge stuff.

And when they came out of it, the world could seem, for a short while, a hard, bright and fairly brutal place — maybe Bobby’s slushy, February streets had covered that aspect.

And yet, for almost all of them, there was this lingering memory of the glorious light, something they’d hold on to the rest of their lives. More than a hope … a certainty. That everything, in the end, would be very much OK.

While this guy, who’d had more opportunity than any of them to bask in the paradise vision …

‘Bobby, are you religious at all?’

‘Well …’ He thought about it. ‘Kind of knocks it out of you, being in the Job.’

‘Was it ever there?’

He did it again with his hands, palms squashed into the eyes. Must surely hurt him to do that. Maybe that was what he wanted.

Pulling his hands away, he looked like a child waking up in the middle of the night and finding itself not in its cosy room but on some bare hillside.

‘I was never that scared of death. Scared of dying, maybe. But that’s how most people are I suppose.’

‘Dying’s usually no that bad, these days,’ Andy said. ‘Any nurse’ll tell you that.’

‘I am now.’

‘What?’

‘Scared. Shit-scared. Don’t know where the hell you go, but I’m buggered if I’m going back. I mean, OK, I realize one day, but … Oh, shit. ‘

The tremble was so prolonged it was like his skin rippled.

‘Bobby, let me get this right …’

Andy felt cold just looking at him. Got the feeling it was only the separateness, caused by the slight brain damage, that was stopping him from turning into a basket case.

‘… this has left you with a fear of death?’

His face was so white, his bad eye was like a target in the snow.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I don’t even want to think about it.’