Free Unspoken by Sam Hayes

perhaps.’
    I don’t grunt or squeal, I yell in my head so it aches. My farm animals grunt and squeal.
    ‘She whimpered when I lifted her out of the chair on Christmas Day. I think I hurt her arms. But nothing else. Not a sound.’
    Julia glances at me, praying I’m suddenly going to join in their repartee. They are talking about me as if I’m not here, which certainly makes my feeling of not being real all the more tangible.
    ‘And what about your mother’s movements? Does her physical ability seem impaired in any way? Does she limp? Is there any sign of paralysis?’
    Julia pauses and thinks for a moment. In my head I interrupt, try to whisper the truth, but she can’t hear me. Frustrated, I turn to Radcliffe and silently mouth the answer he requires. Like Julia, I doubt he will believe me.
    To begin with, Doctor, my mobility was perfectly normal. After several hours had passed, I somehow got myself home from Dr Carlyle’s surgery. It wasn’t until it all . . . sank in . . . until I understood what was now going on . . . that my joints gradually stiffened and my tendons creaked as they slid across my bones. Once released, the poison that I’d worked hard to contain for thirty years spread quickly through my body. It reached every part of me. Several days later, my eyes became gritty and dry, my heart barely beat in my chest and my skin started to peel. Walking crushed every joint in my body and eating felt as if I was swallowing thorns. Tell me, Mr Radcliffe, what is wrong with me?
    ‘It’s so weird. Mum’s always been full of energy. She’s fantastic for her age. She eats healthily and keeps fit on the farm. So to see her like this, it’s impossible to say she hasn’t been affected physically. Of course she has. Whether she’s capable of moving more, well, I don’t know. My guess is no, she is not choosing to be taken to the toilet and bathed by me. If she could do it, she would. Whatever it is has hit her entire body.’
    My entire soul.
     
    ‘Mr Radcliffe said the MRI scan is booked for Monday, Mum. That’s good news, isn’t it?’ Julia is driving me home. ‘We just have to stop by Nadine’s house to pick up Alex and Flora.’ She’s being how I used to be with her – patient, understanding, driven to the ends of the earth with exasperation.
    I think about the MRI scan. The doctor explained that I will be slid into a tube, where the machine will image my entire body, map my brain, my internal organs and trace the path of my blood vessels to make sure they are not bleeding inside my head. I will be slammed by noise as the machine goes about its business, probing a magnetic field into parts of me that no one has ever seen. Mr Radcliffe will study the results and report back what’s wrong. What they don’t yet know is that the scan, the precision picture of my entire being, will not show up a thing.
    Outside Nadine’s house, Flora and Alex climb into Julia’s car. They smell of Coke and sticky sweets. Normally I would remind Julia to tell her sister-in-law not to fill my grandchildren with junk. She would eye me in a way that told me not to interfere, and then explain why Ed and Nadine enjoy spoiling their niece and nephew. Later, we would laugh about it and I would apologise.
    But things are far from normal, and as we drive back to Northmire, Alex bombards his mother with news of Ed’s new case. The boy is clearly obsessed by his uncle’s job and talks nonstop about how he has to make sure no more women are hurt.
    ‘Uncle Ed is in charge of the case, Mum. He says I can go down to the station and interview the officers for a school report.’ I can’t see him sitting behind me but instinctively I know that he is beaming, already planning the questions. Alex is set on joining the police force when he is old enough. He looks up to Ed almost as much as to his father. Then I’m thinking about Murray and wishing he was here for Julia; to hold her and support her through the inevitable, because