Free Fractured by Dani Atkins Page A

ever going to be strong enough to hear the news that your best friend had died, while saving your life?
    The accident of five years ago was obviously as much in his mind again as it had been in mine.
    ‘Memories of the accident,’ I said softly.
    ‘Accident?’ he sounded puzzled. ‘No, love; memories of your poor mum.’
    I was confused, he so rarely spoke of her. I suppose the thought of losing me had reawakened many painful recollections. I wasn’t sure how to respond but was saved from the need by the sound of the door opening and several people entering the room.
    ‘Hello, doctor,’ greeted my dad. It sounded as though he knew the man who had just entered my room, knew him quite well, in fact. For the first time I thought to ask the question:
    ‘How long have I been in here?’
    ‘A little over thirty-six hours, young lady,’ replied the doctor, in a voice that I supposed was meant to be calming. I did not feel calm. As though in a game played against the clock, my mind frantically tried to fit together the jigsaw pieces of what had happened to me. Like an arc of electricity between two terminals, I suddenly remembered: the cemetery; the crippling headache; my sudden virtual blindness. I remembered it all.
    I lifted the arm not encumbered with hospital paraphernalia to my bandaged head.
    ‘Have you had to operate on me, for the headaches? The blindness?’
    A deeply amused chortle came from the doctor. How could there be any humour in what I’d just asked?
    ‘Bless you, Rachel, you’re not blind.’
    ‘But I can’t see!’ I wailed.
    Again that laughter; this time even Dad joined in.
    ‘That’s because your eyes are covered with bandages. They sustained some minor scratches – you probably got those from the gravel chippings when you fell face down. You really did take a terrible old knock on your head.’
    I turned my head in the direction of the nurse’s voice. What the hell was she going on about? Clearly she either didn’t see, or chose to ignore, the look on my face which clearly said she was an idiot, for she continued:
    ‘That’s what Dr Tulloch is here for now, to take off the bandages and check out your sutures.’
    ‘But I didn’t hit my head,’ I insisted to anyone who would listen. I felt my dad once more take hold of my hand.
    ‘Hush now, Rachel, don’t get yourself upset. Things are bound to be a little fuzzy to begin with.’
    ‘I think I’d remember if I hit my head,’ I responded, more sharply than I intended. ‘It was the headache, you see,’ I tried to explain. ‘It was absolutely excruciating.’
    ‘You have a headache now?’ enquired the doctor, with keen attention.
    ‘Well no,’ I replied, realising for the first time that although my head hurt, the pain was different from the splitting agony of the headaches I’d been experiencing. ‘It just feels kind of sore…’
    ‘I’m sure it does. It will settle down in a day or so. As the nurse said, it really was a nasty fall.’
    I would have protested further but I was aware of hands reaching behind my head and beginning to release me from the swaddling bandages. With each rotation the pressure against my head lessened and my anxiety increased. When finally relieved from my mummy-like accessories, disappointment coursed through me.
    ‘I still can’t see anything. I’m still blind!’
    The doctor’s voice had a slightly more impatient edge. Clearly he now had me pigeon-holed as a major drama queen.
    ‘Just let me remove the gauze first before you go off and get a white stick, young lady. Nurse, if you please, the blinds.’
    Deciding I didn’t like the man, however much my father might disagree, I nevertheless turned my face towards his voice and allowed him to lift first one then the other circular coverings from my eyelids. I blinked for the first time, enjoying the unfettered freedom of the movement. The room had been darkened by the lowering of the blinds but enough daylight fell through the half-shut