Page 79 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
There’s a hand on her cheek.
‘Darling, darling, darling.’ It’s her mother, so close to her. Too close. Josie wants to tell her to get off. Get away.
What’s happened to me?
‘There she is.’ A more cheerful voice belonging to a smiling woman in a uniform.
Josie turns her head toward the beeping sound and sees her father, and machines, and a drip attached to her arm. The last – and first – time she had a drip was when she was a child and she had an ear infection that got out of control.
So the woman in the uniform is a nurse.
‘Do you know where you are, Josie?’ the nurse asks.
How would I know?she wants to say.I’ve just woken up!
‘You’re in hospital, love. You’ve had an accident.’
The bend. The car. The nothingness. Of course. An accident.
She has to get out of here. She has to check on the car. What happened to the car? She needs that car. It’s her freedom.
Her job. She needs to get to work. So she needs to get out of this bed.
She moves.
But she can’t. Her legs are too heavy. This thing is attached to her arm. It needs to come out!
‘Darling, your legs are broken,’ her mother says, stroking her forearm. ‘And you’ve fractured your pelvis.’
‘What?’ That can’t be right. She tries to move again but the heaviness is still there.
‘You’re in casts, Josie,’ the nurse says and she makes it sound as if it’s a great thing. ‘You’ll be stuck with them for a while.’ The nurse is looking at the drip. ‘I’ll get the doctor,’ she says. ‘He’ll want to know you’re awake.’
After the nurse leaves Josie’s parents crowd in and she wants to tell them to get away, but she has no power to make them go. No power to do anything. She’s stuck. Trapped. Right where they want her.
‘We love you so much,’ her father says.
‘Paolo, you’re holding her hand too tightly,’ her mother chides.
Josie hadn’t noticed, though. There are so many sensations now: her legs that feel like lead, the twinges of pain she is aware of in her pelvis, her arm with a drip attached.
Oh god, how is she weeing? Is there … There’s a bag at the end of the bed. Oh god.Oh god. It’s so embarrassing.
She starts crying, and that’s embarrassing too, but her parents are kissing her head and it feels comforting and she wants them there but she doesn’t want them there. There’s only one person she wants.
‘Brett,’ she whispers.
Her mother pulls back. ‘Who?’
‘Brett,’ she says more firmly. ‘I want to see him.’
‘No one by that name has enquired after you,’ her mother says.
Stop it!she wants to scream.Stop acting like my school principal instead of my mother!
A wave of nausea hits her. She wants to vomit and she looks around desperately.
The nurse, who has just returned, holds a plastic tray under her. ‘You’re all right, darling,’ she says. ‘It’s the morphine.’
