There’s No Place Like Here

19

“Sandy.” I could hear my name being called and felt a warm breath on my face. The smell was familiar; sweet coffee that sent my heart into its usual flutter, fanning my body and causing excited chills to chase one another just below the surface of my skin.

Gregory’s hand softly brushed back strands of hair from my face as though gently brushing away sand on an excavation site to reveal something far more precious than me. But that’s what he was, my excavator, the one who unearthed all that was buried beneath to discover my hidden thoughts. One hand was placed at the back of my neck as though I was the most fragile thing he’d ever held; the other softly traced the line of my jaw, occasionally running up my cheeks and through my hair.

“Sandy, honey, open your eyes,” the voice whispered close to my ear.

“Move back, everybody!” a louder and more aggressive voice shouted nearby. “Is she OK?” His voice got louder, closer.

The comforting hand moved from my hair to my hand and grasped it tightly, his thumb soothingly stroking my skin as he spoke quietly, “She’s not responding, call an ambulance.” His voice was distorted and it echoed in my head. My head hurt.

“Oh, mother of Jesus,” the voice muttered.

“Sean, get the kids back into the school, don’t let them watch this,” my savior said calmly.

Sean, Sean, Sean. I knew that name. Knew that voice.

“Where’s that blood coming from?” he panicked.

“Her head. Get the kids away.” My hand was held tighter.

“He hit her hard, the bastard.”

“I know, I saw. I was watching her from the window. Call the ambulance.”

Sean’s shouts to the kids to go inside moved farther away and I was left in the echoing silence with the angel. I felt soft lips on my hand.

“Open your eyes, Sandy,” he whispered. “Please.”

I tried to but they felt as if they were glued together, like a lotus nestled in the mud forced to open its petals ahead of time. My head was heavy, my thoughts clumsy and slow, as it throbbed and pulsated repeatedly with abnormally strong force in the protective hand that cradled it. The ground felt cold and rough beneath me. Concrete. Why was I on the ground? I struggled to get up but my body resisted the action, my eyes wouldn’t open.

I heard the ambulance in the distance and I fought to open my eyes. They opened just a slit. Ah. Mr. Burton. My savior. He held me in his arms, looking down at me as though he’d just discovered gold in the Leitrim roadway. He had blood on his shirt. He was hurt? His eyes looked hurt as they searched my face. I suddenly remembered the great big pimple on my chin that I wished all day I’d popped that morning. I tried to move my hand to cover it but it felt like my hand had been dipped in concrete and left to dry. “Oh, thank god,” he whispered, his hand holding mine tighter. “Don’t move yet, the ambulance is almost here.”

I had to cover my pimple. I was finally this close to Mr. Burton after four years and I looked a mess, my seventeen-year-old hormones were ruining the moment I’d been dreaming of. Hold on, he’d said “ambulance.” What had happened? I tried to speak and a croak passed my lips.

“It’s going to be OK.” He hushed me, his face close to mine.

I believed him and forgot my pain for a moment while I once again self-consciously felt my face.

“I know what you’re trying to do, Sandy, so stop it.” Gregory attempted to laugh lightly while carefully removing my arm from my face.

I groaned, words still not coming to me.

“He’s not so awful, you know. His name is Henry. He’s been keeping me company while you’ve been so rudely passed out. Henry, meet Sandy, Sandy, meet Henry, although I don’t think you’re a very welcome guest here.” Gregory ran his finger across my chin, lightly brushing the blemish as though it were the most beautiful thing about me.

So there I was with blood running from my head, a pimple named Henry on my chin, and a face so aflame it could have powered the entire town. I began to close my eyes again, the sky seemed so bright it pierced my pupils and sent spears of pain through my sockets and into my already throbbing head.

“Don’t close your eyes, Sandy,” Gregory said more loudly.

I opened them and caught the worry in his face before he had a chance to hide it.

“I’m tired,” I finally whispered.

“I know you are”-he held me tighter-“but stay awake with me for a while, keep me company until the ambulance gets here,” he pleaded. “Promise me.”

“Promise,” I whispered before shutting my eyes again.

A second siren arrived on the scene, a car pulled up nearby, I could feel the vibrations on the concrete near my head and I feared the tires would run over me. Doors opened and slammed.

“He’s over there, Garda,” Sean was back, shouting. “He drove straight into her, wasn’t even looking,” he said, panicked. “This man here saw it.”

Sean was quieted down, I heard a man crying. Heard garda voices trying to comfort, radios crackling and beeping, Sean being led away. Footsteps came closer to me, there was mumbling above my head of concerned voices. All the time Gregory whispered in my ear words that sounded pretty, the vowels easy in my ringing ears. The sounds shut out the sirens, the cries of fear, the shouts of panic and anger, the feel of the cold concrete and the sticky wet trickling down my ear.

As the ambulance sirens got louder, Gregory’s tones became more urgent as I began to drift away in his arms.

“Welcome back,” I heard as I awoke to see a worried Helena wafting a fan in my face.

I groaned and my hand flew to my head.

“You’ve got a nasty bump so I’d advise you not to touch it,” she said gently.

My arm kept moving.

“I said don-”

“Ouch.”

“Serves you right,” she said haughtily and walked away.

I squinted around the unfamiliar room, feeling the egg-sized bump that had formed above my temple. I was on a couch; Helena was at a sink facing a window. The light was bright and illuminated her, blurring her around the edges as though she were a holy vision.

“Where are we?”

“My home.” She didn’t turn around, continued rinsing a cloth.

I looked around. “Why do you have a couch in the kitchen?”

Helena laughed lightly. “Of all the questions you could have asked, that is the first one you chose.”

I was silent.

“It’s not a kitchen, it’s a family room,” was her reply. “I don’t cook here.”

“I don’t suppose you have electricity.”

She grunted, “Once you get a chance to look around outside you’ll see we have a system of what we call solar panels.” She dragged out the words as though I was slow. “They’re similar to the ones found on pocket calculators and they generate electricity from the sun. Each house has its own power voltage system,” she said excitedly.

I lay back in the couch, feeling dizzy and closed my eyes. “I’m aware of how solar panels work.”

“They exist there, too?” She was surprised.

I ignored her question. “How did I get here?”

“My husband carried you.”

My eyes flew open and I winced with the pain. Helena still didn’t turn around and the water still flowed.

“Your husband? You can get married here?”

“You can get married anywhere.”

“Not technically true,” I protested meekly. “My god, electricity and marriage? This is too much for me,” I mumbled, the ceiling beginning to swirl above me.

Helena sat beside me on the couch and held a cold washcloth over my forehead and eyes. It felt soothing on my throbbing, burning head.

“I had the most awful dream that I was in a bizarre place where all the missing things and people in the world go,” I grumbled. “Please tell me that was a dream, or at least a nervous breakdown. I can handle a nervous breakdown.”

“Well, if you can handle that, then you can handle the truth.”

“What is the truth?” I opened my eyes.

She was silent as she stared at me and sighed. “You know the truth.”

I closed my eyes and fought the urge to cry.

Helena grabbed my arm, squeezed it, and leaned in with urgency in her voice. “Hang in there, Sandy, it will make sense to you after a while.”

I didn’t think that possible.

“If it makes you feel better, I haven’t told anybody else what you’ve told me. No one.”

It did make me feel better. I could figure out in my own time whatever it was I had to do.

“Who is Jenny-May?” Helena asked curiously.

I closed my eyes and groaned, remembering the scene at the registry. “Nobody. Well, not nobody, she’s somebody. I thought I saw her in the registry, that’s all.”

“It wasn’t her?”

“Not unless she stopped aging the day she arrived here. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Frowning, I reached to my pounding head again.

There was a light tap on the door and it was gently opened by a man so tall and broad he filled the door frame. White light impatiently squeezed itself through the small spaces he didn’t fill, shooting into my eyes like spears of fire direct from the sun. He was of similar age to Helena, with shining ebony skin and intense black eyes. He stood well over my six-foot-two height and for that reason alone I immediately liked him. His figure dominated the room yet brought with it a feeling of safety. A small smile revealed snow-white teeth, while eyeballs like purified sugar melted around pupils of black coffee. He was hard, but softened around the edges. His cheekbones sat high and proud on his face, his jaw square yet, above it, cushioned lips for his words to bounce from and launch themselves into the world.

“How is our kipepeo girl doing?” The rhythmic sound of his words revealed his African roots.

In confusion I looked to Helena, who was looking at the man in surprise, the surprise, I could tell, not for his sudden presence but for the words he had spoken. She knew this man and I assumed knew his words. I didn’t know what the words meant but I guessed the speaker of them, her husband. Our eyes met and I felt drawn to his gaze, trapped in his and he trapped in mine as though a magnet drew us together. He held a plank of wood in his large hands; sawdust covered his white linen clothes.

“What does kipepeo mean?” I asked the room. The room didn’t answer, but knew.

“Sandy, this is my husband, Joseph.” Helena introduced us. “He’s a carpenter,” she added, referring to the plank of wood in his hands.

My unusual introduction to Joseph the carpenter was interrupted by a little girl who entered the kitchen through Joseph’s legs, giggling while her curly black hair bounced with each childish skip. She ran to Helena and grabbed onto her leg.

“And who’s this, the Immaculate Conception?” I asked, the little girl’s shrieks sounding like wails in my pounding head.

“Almost.” Helena smiled. “She’s our daughter’s Immaculate Conception. Say hello, Wanda.” She ran her hand through the little girl’s hair.

A toothless smile greeted me before she shyly ran out of the room under her grandfather’s legs. I looked up from where she had disappeared, to Joseph’s eyes again. He was still watching me. Helena looked from him back to me, not with suspicion but with…I couldn’t quite figure it out.

“You must sleep.” He gave a single nod.

Under the gaze of Helena and Joseph, I placed the washcloth over my eyes and allowed myself to drift. For once I was too tired to ask questions.

“Ah, there she is now.” The sound of my father’s voice greeted me as though I was suddenly pulled up out of the water. Muffled sounds gradually became audible, faces eventually recognizable. It was as though I was reborn into the world, facing my loved ones from a hospital bed once again.

“Hello, honey.” My mother rushed to my side and took my hand. Her face appeared close to mine, too close for me to focus and so she remained a lavender-scented blur with four eyes. “How do you feel?”

I hadn’t yet had time to feel before I was asked, and so concentrated on it before answering. I didn’t feel very good.

“OK,” I responded.

“Oh, my poor baby.” Her cleavage dominated my view as she leaned over to kiss my forehead, glossy lips leaving my skin sticky and ticklish. I looked around the room after she’d moved and saw my father, scrunched cap in hand and looking older than I remembered. Perhaps I had been underwater longer than I’d thought. I winked, he smiled, relief written all over his face. Funny how it was the job of the patient to make the visitors feel better. It was as though I was on stage and it was my turn to entertain. The walls of the hospital had rendered everyone speechless and awkward as though we had met that day for the very first time.

“What happened?” I asked after sipping water through a straw from a cup that had been thrust at me by a nurse.

They looked nervously at each other. Mum decided to do the honors.

“A car hit you, honey, just as you were walking across the road from the school. He came around the corner…he was just a young lad only on his provisional license, his mother didn’t know he’d taken the car, bless her heart. Luckily Mr. Burton saw it all happen and could give the Gardaí an eyewitness report. He’s a good man is Mr. Burton,” she said as she smiled. “Gregory,” she added to me a bit more quietly.

I smiled too.

“He stayed with you all the way into the hospital.”

“My head,” I whispered, the pain suddenly entering my body as though hearing the story had reminded it it needed to do its job.

“Your left arm is broken.” Mum’s glossy lips glistened in the light as they opened and closed. “And your left leg.” Her voice shook lightly. “But apart from that, you’re very lucky.”

It was only then I noticed my arm in a sling and my left leg in a cast and found it amusing that they thought I was lucky even after being hit by a car. I started to laugh but the pain stopped me.

“Oh, yes, and you’ve a cracked rib,” my father added quickly, looking apologetic for the lack of warning.

When they had left, Gregory rapped lightly on the door. He looked more gorgeous than ever with his tired, concerned eyes and messy hair that I could imagine he ruffled as he paced with worry. He always did that.

“Hi.” He smiled walking in and kissed me on the forehead.

“Hi,” I whispered back.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been hit by a bus.”

“Nah, it was only a mini. Stop looking for attention,” he said as a smile tickled the sides of his lips. “You’ve heard the bad news, I assume?”

“That I have to do my final exams orally?” I lifted up the cast covering my left arm. “I think the guards will still accept me,” I said.

“No,” he said seriously and took a seat on the bed. “We lost Henry in the ambulance. I think it’s the oxygen mask that took him out.”

I started laughing but had to stop.

“Oh, shit, sorry.” He immediately stopped joking around at seeing me in pain.

“Thanks for staying with me.”

“Thanks for staying with me,” he replied.

“Well, I did promise.” I smiled. “And I’m not planning on disappearing anywhere anytime soon.”