Always and Only You

Chapter Thirty-Eight

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Present Day

Just like the haze over the River Dart on a summer’s day, the mist burns away. I begin to understand what has happened to me. There is no big moment of revelation. After repeated conversations, most of which I don’t remember, the facts sink in and stick. Mostly.

I’m pretty sure they’re telling me the bare minimum, but I gather that the night before the wedding, I slipped and hit my head in the hotel garden. Nobody knows exactly how long I was lying there before somebody found me.

I was rushed to hospital in Torquay, where they did various scans and tests. My brain was swelling, so they used medication to sedate me – putting me into a coma, effectively – for a couple of days, and then gradually withdrew the medication as the swelling went down.

Every day since I regained consciousness, one of the hospital psychiatrists has asked me questions. Apparently I got quite irritated with her for bothering me and I refused to answer them sometimes. What I understand now is that these questions were designed to see if I was emerging from post-trauma amnesia. Yesterday, I answered them all correctly for the first time. I am now officially fully awake.

But it doesn’t feel like it sometimes. Over the last week or two I’ve had numerous tests. People came to visit. I don’t remember any of that happening, although I remember Simon and my mum being here. The doctors have reassured me this is completely normal for someone who was as deeply unconscious as I was. It still doesn’t make it any easier to grasp.

There is one thing I remember for sure. Something so vivid, so real, that it makes the current impressions of the world around me seem flimsy and transparent in comparison.

I remember getting married.

To a man I hate.