a baby. She wouldnât remember how we all shared a tin of Quality Street chocolates while the pediatrician came in to check Madison. He flipped her this way and that, and held her in one palm with casual expertise, like a basketballer spinning a ball, and Alice and Nick blurted out in unison, âCareful!â and we all laughed and the pediatrician smiled and said, âYour daughter gets ten out of ten, an A-plus.â We all applauded and âwhoo-hooâdâ Madison for her first-ever good mark, while he wrapped her back up in her white blanket, a neat packet of fish-and-chips, and ceremonially presented her to Alice.
I was just starting to consider the enormity of all the things that had happened to Alice over the last ten years when I found her ward number, and as I glanced through the door, I saw her in the first curtained-off cubicle, propped up against pillows, her hands resting on her lap and her eyes staring straight ahead. There was no color to her. She was wearing a white hospital gown, lying against a white pillow with a white gauze bandage wrapped around her head, and even her face was dead white. It was strange to see her so still; Alice is all about sharp, quick movement. Sheâs texting on her mobile, jangling her car keys, grabbing one of the kids by the elbow and saying something stern in their ear. Sheâs fingernail-tapping busy, busy, busy.
(Ten years ago she was nothing like that. She and Nick slept till noon every Sunday morning. âHow will they ever find time to renovate that enormous house!â clucked Mum and Frannie and me, like elderly aunts.)
She didnât see me at first and as I walked up to her, her eyes flickered, and they looked so big and blue in her pale face, but more importantly, she was looking at me in a different, but familiar, way. I donât know how to describe it, except that the strange thought came into my head, âYouâre back.â
You want to know the first thing she said to me, Dr. Hodges?
She said, âOh Libby, what happened to you?â
I told you, it defines me.
Alice had finally been moved up to a ward and given a hospital gown and a remote for the television and a white chest of drawers. A lady wheeling a trolley brought her a cup of weak tea and four tiny triangular curried-egg sandwiches. The nurse was right; the tea and sandwiches had made her feel better, except they hadnât done anything about the huge gaping crevasse in her memory.
When sheâd heard Elisabethâs voice on the mobile phone, it was just like each time sheâd called home on that disastrous trip around Europe when she was nineteen and trying to pretend she had a different personalityâan adventurous, extroverted sort of personality; the sort of person who loves exploring cathedrals and ruins all day on her own and talking to drunk boys from Brisbane in youth hostels at nightâwhen really she was homesick and lonely and often bored, and couldnât make head or tail of the train timetables. The sound of Elisabethâs voice, loud and clear in a strange phone box on the other side of the world, always made Aliceâs knees buckle with relief, and sheâd press her forehead against the glass and think, Thatâs right; I am a real person.
âMy sister is coming right now,â she told the nurse when she hung up, as if giving her credentials as a proper person with a family; a family she recognized.
Although, when Elisabeth first walked toward her bed, she actually didnât recognize her. She vaguely assumed that this woman in the cream suit with the glasses and the swinging shoulder-length hair must be a hospital administrator coming to do something administrative, but then something about the womanâs straight-backed âIâll take you onâ posture, something essentially Elisabeth, gave her away.
It was a shock, because it seemed that overnight Elisabeth had put on a lot of weight. Sheâd