They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

105 December 2017

Murmured voices intermittently intruded into the constant loop of weird movies playing inside my head.

I repeatedly heard the kind-sounding voice of a man who told me he was Dr Stockerl. I was under his care.

I wasn’t able to open my eyes or move anything, but I could hear them, and piece together, bit by bit, what had happened. I was in a coma, I heard them say. Apparently no one had told them that people in comas could hear everything that was going on. Well, I could.

The narrative went that I had stepped out in front of a taxi. It had hurled me 10 metres along the road. As I lay there, some bastard on a motorbike had stopped, grabbed my handbag and ridden off.

Another time, I heard them talking about a small boy.

I wanted to open my eyes and tell them. This was my boy, my son. But they wouldn’t open. My mouth wouldn’t work. Nothing worked. I was like a corpse but still alive inside my dead body. I had the sensation of being underwater, in a swimming pool, and there were people on the surface totally disconnected to me. But I could hear them. Every word.

They were saying a small boy, upset that his mother had not turned up to collect him from football, had gone to stay the night with a friend.

That would be Erik.

Erik’s mother had come to the hospital the next day and identified me as her friend. Frau Lohmann.

Then I heard them talking about the police. That Frau Lohmann was not my real name. That I seemed to have several names and was connected to a missing Greek drug dealer who had lived in Jersey. Gossip was I might have been involved in his disappearance.

I so much wanted to wake — and see Bruno — and tell them the truth.

One nice lady, who told me she was a nurse, talked to me every time she was on shift. I had the sense she knew I could hear her. She told me I was in the Intensive Care Unit of the Klinikum München Schwabing.

At some point when she was talking I did open my eyes, blinking against the light, and saw a woman in hospital scrubs looking down at me. The badge on her chest read, Stationsschwester Frau Koti Fekete.

But my eyes closed again almost immediately.

‘Come back to us,’ she said, quietly. ‘Wake up! Your son needs you!’

My son. Bruno. Roy’s son.

I needed her to tell Roy. Desperately needed her to do that. To tell him so much. But it took all my strength to say just one thing.

‘Tell him I forgive him,’ I murmured.

‘Tell who?’ she replied.