Read an Exclusive Extract From All of Them Lied by Gill Perdue
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They’d kept me sedated for the flight home and the transfer to the Irish hospital. And on day fifty-nine – the day they brought me out of the coma in ICU – a shorn, skinny guy with three-day-old stubble stood at the foot of my bed, staring at me like I was an apparition. I knew it was Will – or at least, I thought he looked like my boyfriend Will – but older, thinner. He looked like what you’d imagine Will’s older, sadder brother would look like, if he had one. He doesn’t.
The guy – older Will – stood there like a shipwreck survivor. The nurses all thought I was overwhelmed, and I was – but the shock of seeing him – it was intense. Adrenalin surged through my body and my heart raced. I remembered him along with a kind of panic.
'Oh my God, Thea! Thea!'
He lunged towards the bed, grabbing hold of both my hands and kissing them, saying, Oh, thank God! Thank God! – like a bad actor.
'Will.' I tried out my voice. The nurse who’d been standing beside me squeezed my shoulder.
'Good woman,' she said.
And that I recognized – the voice, the gentle squeeze, the good woman. I’d turned my face to look at her – waiting for the pain on movement – but it wasn’t too bad.
'I’m Sally,' she’d said, in answer to the question in my eyes. 'I’ve been looking after you since you got here – and that’s nearly a month ago now.'
She patted my hand and nodded at Will, who was still staring at me.
'Go easy now.’ She eyeballed him. ‘As we discussed. Keep it light, okay? I’ll leave you to it.'
That first day was like – it was like we were on a blind date or something. Will and I stared at each other. He was talking, but his words sort of clattered to the floor – bouncing off an invisible screen. He looked so scared. So broken.
'I’ve been so worried, Thea. I thought you were going to die. I didn’t know what to do.'
While his words tumbled, I studied him. Darts of memory – not darts, more like shards, little memory shards of our life together, of 'us' – pierced the fog of my brain. I saw us on Sandymount Strand, the wind whipping his dark curls. An image of him, framed against a big picture window, his face in shadow. I saw us in a car – I was driving – and we were laughing. That’s right. He kept on changing the song and I kept changing it back.
I was to learn later that these are 'brain shuffles' – your poor confused brain trying to organize your memories, assembling them to help you make sense of the world. Like rummaging through your handbag looking for something. Or a dog sniffing a pile of leaves, looking for its ball.
Will – the Will standing in front of me – looked nothing like the one in my haphazard glimpses of memory. He even smelt wrong – a lemon-and-basil aftershave like something you’d smell in a bathroom cleaning product. Although I discovered within days that my sense of smell and taste was banjaxed too. Mostly everything smells and tastes of lemons now. Professor Rosalind says that’s normal too. He’d laid his hand on top of mine. It was damp and clammy. Surely, I – did I have a boyfriend with clammy hands? I think I’d remember that.
'Thank God you’re back – I’ve missed you,' he said, eventually. And his words hung in the air. Because I hadn’t missed him. I barely knew him.
