I tentatively open my eyes – but only a little in case someone is watching – and stay in my state of pretended sleep. The strangers are still there across the room, drinking coffee with their backs towards me so I can’t hear what they’re saying. Talking about me like they always do.
Don’t they have lives of their own to live?
She’s Chinese-Australian with big black eyes perpetually on the edge of tears. I call her Ming Zu and him Donis. He’s younger than her, in his late forties I think, possibly the most beautiful man I have ever seen: high cheekbones, deep, soulful eyes, a wide smile like a sunburst with perfect teeth; exquisite, alluring, feminine.
They’re watchful, polite and attendant, slaves to my every whim. Except my freedom, on which they defer to ‘the doctor’.
They call me Jane, which is all right with me. It’s a perfectly nice and serviceable name. They probably have their reasons to avoid using my real one.
I have lost all sense of time. They say it’s been three months since ‘the accident’ and that Zoe – whoever she is – sat by my bed every day until she had to go back to New York. Such a long way for someone to come. There has been another visitor, a reticent young woman with pale skin, a ring in her nose and bright blue hair. A volunteer, no doubt, organised by the hospital.
Everyone is trying to be so nice. Sickeningly nice. Smotheringly nice. I want to escape and go to a club with live music or a pub with no responsible alcohol policy. I want someone to pick me up and take me back to a dodgy motel and give me drugs until I get my old life back. I want to jump from an aeroplane with Javier Bardem and free fall until he pulls the ripcord and saves us both from crashing into the sea.
But I won’t of course, I’m too well brought up. Too obediently middle class…
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