The One Who Got Away

Chapter One
Sitting on the bus she watches the faces smear across the glass of the rainy window as they pass and is surprised momentarily by the sudden illumination that these are solid, individual people with real lives, a direction, a purpose. They are engaging in meaningful or mundane activities, and this thought seems so incredible that for a moment it pierces the mist in which she is enveloped and she is startled by the lucidity of her mind. It is a brief second of understanding, this feeling that there exists a reality for these others, one that she is locked out of, but which is there in their minds and their actions.
The bus moves on and the whirl of thoughts clouds her brain again and she becomes blank as before.
It took a long time to decide to get on the bus. In the end it was not a decision as such, merely an acceptance of the fact that she hasn't the strength to walk, to carry herself any distance. The vagueness is a blessing and a relief and she slumps into the furthest corner of her brain, retreating from the turmoil, pulling up her knees to her chest and burying her head in them. Her arms hurt and she feels a twinge of satisfaction.
She presses the bell automatically at the precise moment that the bus passes through the green light, compulsively following the routine as she always does. As she steps off the bus she puts a cigarette between her lips and struggles against the wind to light it, drawing in the bitter smoke without pleasure. Her feet carry her thoughtlessly down the street and she stands outside the house smoking. When she lets herself in and closes the door on the world of reality, shutting herself in with her unquiet mind, she feels the panic begin to rise and stands for a moment staring at the face in the mirror. Another ritual. Now she is alone and lost in the space between again. The thoughts crowd in and she cannot remember what she is supposed to do now, how she is to survive the next hour until she can break up the evening with a cigarette. She sits in the hard kitchen chair and reaches for the remote control. A wry smile doesn't quite make it to her lips as she passes her husband's favourite shows on the listings, and she deliberately chooses a cookery programme that she knows will make her feel worse.

The weeks and months that have led her to this place of refuge stretch tentacles around her, ensnaring her, pulling her back to the brink. Deliberately she places the box of pills on the table next to her glass. She doesn’t touch the packet, not yet, but she draws a bitter comfort from their presence, their nearness, their solidity. Like Alice poised on the edge of the rabbit hole, she can choose to slip into the vortex and leave this world behind, a world on which her grip has become so tenuous that she no longer feels any sense of being tied to it. Rather she inhabits an internal existence, removed from the physical, a place of constant pain, like being flayed. It is a bodily pain and so much more, not only emotional, mental but a pain of the soul, which occupies her absolutely. Every waking thought, every dream, tears away the substance of herself. It is like an unending scream inside her head, like burning nails in the flesh of her mind. It is inescapable, unbearable, eternal. She is exhausted and without conscious decision, without those mental processes by which we reason, her fingers have already withdrawn the foil from the box and popped out the little pink pills. She cups them in her palm for a moment, not even looking at them, she is vacant now, she opens and swallows. Now she moves calmly through the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, gathering every box she can find. Sleeping pills, headache pills, old medication hidden in the backs of wardrobes, unlabelled packets, they are assembled and dispatched without hesitation. There is no sense of desperation, of panic, it is a slow yet urgent ritual. When they are all gone she hides the packets automatically at the bottom of the rubbish in the kitchen bin. She switches off the lights, closes the curtains, locks the doors. Leaving the television talking, talking, she has no idea what show is on, but she fixes her eyes on the blue light on the screen and dozes.

A little later. She has no idea how much time has passed. It is still dark. She crosses to the table and with some effort writes a few lines on a pad of paper. Then she picks up her phone, types a message, pauses, presses Send. Lies back on the sofa and closes her eyes again.

It is still dark. The light from the television still flickering blue. But outside there is a noise, it has been there for some time and it is gathering momentum. It moves all around her, from the garden at the back of the house to the front, through the side windows. She is sleeping on the sofa which is in the room opening onto the garden. Voices. And knocking. Now at the front. Now at the back again. Calling. Knocking. Now there is the sound of something heavy against the windows. Banging. Hard. She closes her eyes and drifts away again. But it continues in her mind as she slips in and out of consciousness. Now the sound of breaking glass. She knows she must move, she must hide herself in some dark place, but her body will not react. She is too heavy and sleepy and inert. She cannot drag herself back from this place to that. She sees a new light, this one shines yellow through her eyelids. Hands. Voices.

She slowly, reluctantly admits to awareness again. This place is too bright. It is filled with the quiet bustle of many people around her. A terrible overwhelming sense of doom, of panic floods through her.

This time when she wakes she allows herself to open her eyes, pulls herself numbly up to sitting. Registers the lines running into her arm. Registers the open curtain. Carefully eases herself onto her other side and gently unpicks the sticky square covering the cannula, glances around to check she is unobserved, slides the sharp end of the tube out of her vein. Blood and fluid pool on the floor, absorbing into the sheet, the gown covering her. She knows she must be quick and although the surface of her mind is as blank and slippery as a sheet of glass, a deeper instinct propels her into action. First of all she reaches up to the machine attached to the drip stand and presses the Off button. She gathers her clothes into a bundle on the bed and surreptitiously slides into underwear, jeans and t-shirt, re-tying the gown around her neck to hide them. Then she lies back on the bed, as plans and possibilities cascade through her mind and, like viewing a computer screen, she scrolls through her options, utterly without emotion yet absolutely focused. The cubicles are arranged around the walls of the large ward, with the doctors and nurses at the central station, paramedics, porters and security guards continually passing through. Cubicle number 5, in which she now lies poised, is halfway along the west side. She spends a few minutes watching the nurses and the doctors. She can hear their conversations as they discuss symptoms, diagnoses, treatments, there is no privacy or confidentiality. She reaches down under the bed and her fingers find her bag. Without taking her eyes off the nurses’ station she gropes through the jumble of packets of tissues, wet wipes, biros until she has located her phone, her wallet, her cigarettes, lighter and a packet of razorblades. The phone, cigarettes, cash and bank card are carefully transferred into her jeans pocket, the blades and lighter into her bra. Shoes on. Now her hand gently pulls the dangling end of the drip back up towards her. She cuts off the flow easily and carefully detaches the cannula which she hides under the edge of the sheet. There is a spare dressing on the shelf, maybe three feet from the bed, but to reach it she will need to stand and cross the cubicle, and she mustn’t draw attention to herself so she eases herself slowly up and, keeping her eyes on the nurses, takes the few steps there and back, resting on the bed again, heart thudding. Once she has stuck the now-defunct tube back onto her arm it looks at a glance as if it has not been tampered with, but will come away in an instant. Now she feels her heart pounding in her chest and her stomach churns as she prepares herself for the next stage. She pauses, sweat trickling down her back, She is aware of seconds ticking past and she knows that to wait is to risk discovery. But her plan is a frail one and she is only too familiar with the disasters that could rain down upon her should she fail. She hesitates and for a moment her mind is a tumult of images from the past- and possibly the future. She swallows hard and takes 3 measured, deliberate breaths, then pushes herself up and away from the bed. Rolling the drip stand alongside her she walks as if casually towards the large doorway opening onto the corridor. Passing the nurses’ station she notices heads glance up but she keeps walking.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ The nurse’s voice is suspicious but not confrontational.
Without pausing she answers evenly. ‘I’m just going for a cigarette. I’ll be right back. I’ve left all my things in the cubicle.’
‘No, you can’t do that…’ The nurse starts to move round from behind the station. So far it is just the two of them.
Decision time.
With a single quick movement the dressing is pulled away and the drip left dangling absurdly in the middle of the floor as she sprints towards the door. Behind her she tries to hear details but she is weaker and more unsteady than she had anticipated and needs to concentrate on controlling her limbs. She is out of the Majors ward, turns left, passes Minors, round the corner, through Reception, is surprised to register that it is daylight, feels the air on her face, down the ramp, shit, which way at the bottom? Left or right? Left is instinctive, towards home but also into the town centre, crowds, anonymity, familiar places. Right and she could hide out in the playing fields and allotments till she feels safer and stronger. She feels as if she has been running for hours, expecting a hand on her shoulder any moment, she can’t afford to check behind her so she simply keeps moving forward, at the bottom of the ramp she reaches back and yanks at the strings of the gown, throwing it in the road, now she is on the street, officially off hospital property, she reaches the corner of the road, slows to a walk, pushed to her limit, and finally she sees ahead of her the great green space, she thought she would never make it. Eyes quickly scan the perimeter and she heads for an area where the trees and shrubs seem densest. She pushes under the branches into a dusty, prickly, dark, safe place between the trees and the fence and leans back.

It takes a long time before she is able to order her thoughts into anything resembling coherence. At first she simply crouches in the undergrowth, peering through the leaves at the few young people, mothers with small children and dog-walkers. No police is all she thinks during this time.
Then, what now?
She has enough money to last for a while. What are her priorities? To buy time, to put as much distance as possible between herself and this place. Stupid. She left her passport at the hospital. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Damn, bloody hell. Nothing she can do now. So..?
She fishes out the little white plastic box of razorblades from her bra and slides out a blade in a paper wrapper. Opening it she holds it between the thumb & forefinger of her right hand and pauses, looking down at her outstretched left arm. Scars, old and recent, line her inner arm from wrist to armpit. The old ones are white, raised, overlaid with pink and brown lines, themselves interwoven with red and blue cuts made in the last few days. She raises the blade and slashes again and again, starting at the top of her arm, moving down in parallel lines a few centimeters apart until she reaches her wrist, then back up again. The blood begins to bead, then trickle down her arm. It tickles. She swaps the blade from right hand to left and repeats the process, avoiding cutting the beautiful tattoo on her inner forearm. The one she got done to stop herself from doing precisely this. Not enough ink, she thinks, and smiles a self-conscious, twisted smile.
She wraps up the blade in its little square of paper and slides it back into the box. She wouldn’t want a child to find it. Now she can put it in her pocket.
Next she lights a cigarette, though warily, she doesn’t want anyone to see smoke seeping from her hiding place. She hasn’t had a smoke for hours and tries to savour it but it goes down fast. Now she starts to think, to plan. Her mind has been hazy, as though switched off, for days, but now she feels alert.
She decides to wait until it is dark. Checking the time on her phone she is surprised to find that it is already past 4 o’clock.

By six the park is beginning to darken and she achingly, warily. pushes aside the branches and stands, still concealed in the shadows, surveying the scene.
The field is deserted for the moment. She skirts around the edge- well aware that one of her closest friends is living in a house only a few feet away, an impossible possibility- and makes her way back out onto the dirty road. There is a bus stop right here, but she has decided that the light and the enclosed space on the bus would be a foolish risk and anyway she has left her bus pass behind with her passport, so she crosses the road and passes the great grey hulk of the hospital as quickly as possible, head down, shoulders scrunched up.
She reaches the corner and turns up the next road, though it is not the most direct route, but it is quieter and if she needs to run there are alleyways, woods and places to hide or escape. She walks fast but the road feels endless. Finally she comes to the junction and heads along the main road, keeping to the edge where she hopes the shadows will help conceal her from the headlights. A police car passes and she stiffens; even after it has disappeared from sight she feels her shoulders tense and high. She moves on, quickly and, she hopes, anonymously.
Now she has reached the edges of the centre of town, there are more lights here, more people, but she hopes that will work to her advantage. Checking the time she is disappointed to note that the coffee shops will be closed, so instead she heads for a bar, one she has never been in before. Despite being a week night it is busy enough that she can blend into the crowd. She orders a glass of wine and takes it outside to the beer garden, which she checked out before deciding it offers a perfect opportunity both to hide in and to escape from, if necessary. She sits at a table in the corner, separated from both the bar and the road by the fence, but right next to the exit. Perfect. The wine hitting her empty stomach makes it burn but when she finishes it she orders another and sits drinking and smoking almost like a real person. She is aware though of the enormous gulf between herself and the other clientele. The girls in make-up and bright clothes, orange skin and highlighted hair. The men, lounging, leering, confidently male and predatory. The interchange, the giggling, hair-tossing, pouting, leaning in, arms around shoulders, letting inhibitions slide away like the condensation on a glass, like the smoke from her own cigarette, spiraling upwards to be lost in the black night air.

After 4 glasses of wine- that was her self-imposed limit- she decided that it was imperative to find a place to sleep. It was not late, though she had made those 4 glasses last as long as she was able, but it was dark, and in spite of the fact that she had spent most of the previous 24 hours unconscious, she felt exhausted, drained.
There was a place she knew which came immediately to mind. In fact, she had foreseen its possibilities after another occasion, an occasion on which she had also ended up in the Major A&E ward, though she had only disjointed memories… She recalled saying ‘I wish I had the courage to jump’ just before she had actually launched herself out into the dark space beneath her, but after that nothing until maybe a day, maybe two days, maybe several, later, when she had come to in a hospital bed with stitches in her head and her arm in a sling.
Anyway, the point now was that there was a ledge, a walkway, two or three floors up on the outside of the multi-storey car park, which served as a fire exit. It was separated from public access by a gate and railings which protruded from the side, but as she had gained access previously she knew she was capable of doing so again, so long as she avoided detection, and thought it would offer her a sheletered place to sleep, away from not only the police but also anyone who might wish to take advantage of her current state.
It was easy enough to make her way through the town centre, even now populated by drunken teenage girls in search of taxis or nightclubs or men or money, and climb the steps to the bridge that led to the car park and shopping centre. Easy enough to climb onto the wall and swing herself out into space around the railings. Easy enough to check that she hadn’t been spotted and that the CCTV cameras were not pointing in her direction. But not so easy to actually sleep. For one thing, it was still relatively early- for an insomniac. Secondly, despite having taken enough pills to stop a carthorse in its tracks, she had no tranquilisers. Mostly though, it was bloody uncomfortable sleeping on concrete with nothing to cushion her sharp bones, not even a jacket. She was cold, she was hungry and she was keyed up. Even without the chill of the night air and the gnawing of her empty stomach, her mind was racing from one thought to the next. The fear of discovery. What she would do in the morning. How she could ever make anyone see the reasoning, the logic, the justness of her actions. She knew it was hopeless. There would never be peace, there would never be rest, there would never be an end until The End. But for tonight it was enough to be miserable, physically and mentally uncomfortable.

During the night, through the interminable sleepless hours, she formed a plan. Day broke and she huddled in her corner, smoking the last few cigarettes, until she realized she had better abandon her perch before people started their day. So she climbed back into civilization and took the backstreets to her house. Barely bothering to register if she was observed, she used the broken window- from how long ago now, she vaguely wondered- and went to her chest of drawers. Her heart blossomed in gratitude toward herself for her previously unformed patience, her unforeseen plan, her self-denial, her fortitude as she extracted from beneath her underwear three separate prescriptions for strong tranquilizers. She left, after a short period of peeking out from the curtains of the front window, and wandered drearily by the river until she saw that the time was late enough for shops to start opening. She walked back into town and bought a pack of cigarettes. My last, she thought. Then she went to her favourite coffee bar and bought a large steaming hot cup of milky coffee with caramel syrup, and sat at a table window, defying the police to come now. In a daze of warmth and that lovely haziness which descends upon the mind when it is no longer able to process rational thought, she sat and drank. When the cup was long empty and had grown cold she visited the three chemists in town and at each handed over one copy of the prescription. With her booty in a paper bag, she went to the bank and withdrew £20, caught a tube train to the next stop and then stood and waited for the National Express. After a long while during which her mind registered nothing, it seemed to her, the bus arrived and she paid her fare and went to the very back. Sliding into the seat she almost laughed aloud at the sign declaring all passengers must wear seat belts. Leaving hers ostentatiously undone she emptied the packets of pills and, with a bottle of water she had bought somewhere along the way, though she had no recollection of doing so, she swallowed her entire stash.

This time when she opens her eyes she has absolutely no idea where she is.