The Woman Who Stole My Life Read online

  Behind him, Mannix Taylor hoved into view.

  ‘“Flesh. Fleish. A Teutonic truth,”’ Dad read on. ‘“Meat. All that we are and all that we will be. Thin skin-sacks of red water and marbled muscle. Gristle-people –”’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Mannix Taylor sounded annoyed.

  Dad jumped off his chair and turned around.

  ‘Mannix Taylor, Stella’s neurologist.’ Mannix offered his hand.

  ‘Bert Locke, Stella’s father.’ Dad reluctantly accepted the handshake. ‘And Stella wants to be read to.’

  ‘She’s not strong. She needs her energy to heal her body. I’m serious. This stuff …’ Mannix waved his hand at the novel. ‘It sounds heavy. Too much for her.’

  Silently, I sighed. He was so high-handed, Mannix Taylor, he made enemies without even breaking a sweat.

  ‘So what should I read to her?’ Dad asked, sarcastically. ‘Harry Potter?’

  I was chopping an onion. Even if I do say so myself, I was utterly brilliant, like a chef in one of those shows. My nimble fingers were flying along, wielding my very expensive Japanese knife, flashing blue steel through the air. There were people all around me; their faces were blurry but they were oohing and aahing in extreme admiration. With great confidence I shifted my onion ninety degrees and commenced another flurry of chopping, almost too fast for the human eye to see, then I put down my very expensive Japanese knife.

  Now for the money shot. My hands were cupped around the onion, almost in prayer. I gently moved them apart as if they had taken flight and – voilà! – the onion just collapsed, chopped into tiny, perfect pieces. Everyone clapped.

  Then suddenly I was awake. And in my hospital bed, in my immobile body where my fingers were completely useless.

  Something had woken me.

  Someone. Mannix Taylor. Standing at the bottom of my bed, watching me.

  He was silent for so long I wondered if he’d been struck dumb, making a pair of us. Finally he spoke, ‘Do you ever think, “Why me?”’

  I looked at him with contempt. What was up with him? Was Saoirse, his imaginary dyslexic daughter, not performing in the top five percentile, despite the extra tuition?

  ‘I’m not talking about me,’ Mannix Taylor said. ‘I’m talking about you.’ He gestured around at all the hospital paraphernalia. ‘You contracted this extraordinary disease. You can’t imagine how rare it is. And it’s a cruel one … Being unable to speak, being unable to move, it’s most people’s worst nightmare. So. What I’m asking is, do you ever think, “Why me?”’

  I took a moment and I blinked. No. I thought lots of things, but not that.

  Mannix Taylor reached into the sterilizer beside my bed and took out a pen and a notebook, which someone – maybe him? – had brought in.

  ‘Really no?’ he asked. ‘Why not?’

  ‘WHY NOT ME?’

  ‘Go on.’ He seemed genuinely interested.

  ‘WHY AM I SO SPECIAL? TRAGEDIES HAVE TO HAPPEN. A CERTAIN NUMBER HAVE TO HAPPEN EVERY DAY. IT’S LIKE RAINFALL. I GOT RAINED ON.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You’re a better person than me.’

  I wasn’t. It was down to my dad – when I was growing up, he’d totally disabled my self-pity app. Any time I’d tried it, he’d given me a clip on the ear and said, ‘Stop it. Think about someone else.’

  ‘Ow!’ I’d howl, and he’d say, ‘Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. Plato said that. Greek chap.’

  Then I’d say, ‘Well, you aren’t very kind, giving me a clip on the ear!’

  ‘While I remember …’ Mannix Taylor produced a book from the pocket of his white coat. ‘I asked my wife to recommend something. She says it’s light, but well written.’ He placed the book into the sterilizer and flicked me a tongue-in-cheek look. ‘See what your dad thinks.’

  Ah, don’t make fun of my dad.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, though I hadn’t actually spoken.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in contact with two neurologists in Texas who’ve worked directly with Guillain-Barré and I’ve information. When your nerve coverings start growing back – and we don’t know when that will be – you may be itchy or tingly or you could be in pain, which might be acute. In which case we’ll look at pain management.’ He paused and said, sounding exasperated, ‘By that, I mean, we’ll give you drugs. I don’t know why we just can’t say that … Anyway. When your movement returns, your muscles will have atrophied from lack of use, so you’ll have to do intensive physical therapy. But your energy will be low so you’ll be able for only small amounts every day. It will take several months before your body and your life feels normal again. Your sister said I was cruel to tell you the truth. I think not telling you the truth is cruel.

  ‘One other thing,’ he said. ‘There’s a test called an EMG that can tell us how badly damaged the sheaths are. It would give a real measure of how long your recovery will take. But the machine in this hospital is broken. I do clinics in another hospital which has a working machine.’

  Hope jumped in me.

  ‘But,’ he said, ‘because you’re in ICU you can’t be taken to another hospital – bureaucracy, insurance, the usual. They won’t discharge you from here, even for a couple of hours. And no other hospital will take responsibility for you.’

  A great wail of anguish rose up in me, but it had no place to go so it got shoved back down into my cells. I’d always heard about how crap the medical system was but it was only now that I was caught up in it that I realized how true it was.

  ‘I’m seeing what I can do,’ he said. ‘But you need to know that an EMG is nasty. Not dangerous, but painful. A series of electric shocks are sent along your nerve lines to measure your responses. From a medical point of view, the pain is a positive; it shows your nervous system is functioning.’

  Okay …

  ‘Do you want me to keep trying?’

  I blinked my right eye.

  ‘You understand it’ll be painful? You can’t be given painkillers beforehand because they’ll compromise precisely what we’re trying to measure. You understand?’

  Yes! Feck’s sake, yes! I understand.

  ‘You understand?’

  I shut my eyes because now he was just being a smart-arse.

  ‘Come out,’ he said. ‘Talk to me. I was just joking.’

  I opened my eyes and glared at him.

  ‘Is there anything you want to ask me?’

  I should be using my precious energy to ask him more about the test or about my illness but for the moment I was sick of the whole business. I bit the bullet and blinked something I’d been curious about since he’d first mentioned his brother. ‘TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FAMILY.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘PLEASE.’

  ‘Okay. Seeing as you asked so nicely.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Well, looking at it from the outside, my upbringing was …’ Tone of heavy sarcasm. ‘Gilded. My father was a doctor, my mother was a looker. Sociable types, both of them, they were always going to parties and to the races – especially the races – and being in the papers. I’ve one brother – Roland, whom you know about, who got the burden of Dad’s expectations. Dad wanted him to be a doctor, like he was himself, but Roland didn’t get the grades. I wanted to be a doctor but I also hoped it would take the burden off my brother. But it hasn’t worked. Roland’s always felt like a failure.’

  I thought of the man I’d seen on the telly, being so nice and funny, and I felt sad for him.

  ‘I’ve two younger sisters,’ Mannix Taylor said. ‘Rosa and Hero, they’re twins. We all went to posh schools and we lived in a big house in Rathfarnham. Sometimes the electricity would be cut off but we weren’t allowed to tell anybody.’

  What! I hadn’t seen that one coming.

  ‘… There was money … weirdness. One day I opened a drawer and there was a fat bundle of cash in it, like thousands. I said nothing and a day later it was gone. Or people would come to the door and you’d hear
these tense muffled conversations being held outside on the gravel.’

  This was utterly riveting.

  ‘People think it’s glamorous, going to the races and putting ten grand on a horse.’

  I didn’t. The very thought made me feel sick with anxiety.

  ‘But if the horse doesn’t win …’

  Exactly!

  ‘Stuff was always arriving into the house, then disappearing.’ He stopped, deep in thought, then continued. ‘One Christmas Eve my parents came home with a massive painting. They’d been at an auction and they burst in, full of excitement. They couldn’t stop talking about the bidding and how they’d held their nerve and how they’d won. “Never show fear, son,” Dad said. “That’s the key.” They said it was a genuine Jack Yeats and maybe it was … They cleared a place and hung it above the living-room mantelpiece. Two days later a van drew up outside the house and a couple of silent men came and took it away. It was never mentioned again.’

  Cripes. Well …

  ‘They live in Nice now, my parents. The south of France. Less glamorous than it sounds but they make the most of it. They’re a blast.’

  More sarcasm?

  ‘Ah, no, they are a blast,’ he said. ‘They love a party. A word of advice – never accept a gin and tonic made by my mum: it’ll kill you.’

  18.49

  I’m in my office, on Twitter, when Jeffrey arrives home with some ‘mates’ – three young men who won’t look me in the eye. They go to Jeffrey’s room. The door closes firmly in my face and I know instinctively that they’re looking at online pornography and that soon they’ll be ringing for pizzas. It’s only a matter of time before the floor is littered with massive pizza boxes.

  We are acting like normal people! I am immensely cheered!

  Nevertheless, in the event of being offered some of their pizza, I cannot permit myself to eat it. It would be an excellent bonding exercise, but after Karen’s earlier cheerleading visit, I went out and purchased a fridge-full of high-protein food. I am committed to losing weight. As yet, I haven’t been able to throw my beloved Jaffa Cakes in the bin, but I’m working up to it. Soon, I will do it soon.

  As I sit at my desk, I become aware of a low droney noise. Wasps, I think, suddenly fearful. Or bees, perhaps. A nest of bees. A hive … whatever they’re called. Please God, don’t let me have a bees’ nest in my attic.

  The noise dies away and I tell myself I imagined it.

  Then the droning starts again, louder this time. It sounds like they’re massing for an attack. Maybe the nest is attached to the outside wall; gingerly I open the window and stick my head out. I see no sign of any bees, but I can still hear the noise. They must be in the attic. I stare fearfully at the ceiling.

  Who can I ask for help? Ryan is useless, and so is Jeffrey. Enda Mulreid would probably squeeze the life out of a bees’ nest with his bare hands, but I limit my interactions with Enda. He’s a good man, but I never know what to say to him.

  However, there are some young men in the house right now – perhaps some of the ‘mates’ are braver than Jeffrey. I should ask them to help. Yes, I will!

  I step out onto the landing and hover outside Jeffrey’s room – I don’t want to barge in while they’re looking at the pornography. I’ll knock, I decide, then wait five seconds, then knock again. Yes, this is the best way to proceed.

  But as I stand at Jeffrey’s door, I realize something dreadful – the droney noise is coming from in there. Maybe the bees had arrived because they heard pizza was on the way? Do bees like pizza? Or pornography?

  Then I admit the dreadful truth – there are no bees in that room. Jeffrey and his mates are the ones making the noise. At a guess, I’d say they’re meditating.

  This is a blow.

  A bad blow.

  A very bad blow.

  ‘No one ever said life was fair.’

  Extract from One Blink at a Time

  ‘… So if you look here,’ Ryan positioned the bill in front of my face and jabbed with his finger, ‘it says we’re €1.91 in credit. What’s going on there? And what am I meant to pay them?’

  How could I explain that we paid a monthly standing order to our gas supplier to avoid being hit with big bills during the winter?

  I’d always done the family finances, but as my time in hospital had mounted up – I was now into my seventh week – Ryan was having to wrestle with them.

  I started blinking, trying to spell out ‘standing order’.

  ‘First letter?’ Ryan said. ‘Vowel? No? Consonant? First half of the alphabet? No? P? Q? R? S?’

  I blinked but he didn’t notice.

  ‘T? V? W?’

  Stop, stop!

  I fluttered my lashes wildly to get his attention.

  ‘It’s T?’

  No!

  ‘I missed it?’ He sighed heavily. ‘Okay, back to the start. Is it P? Q? R? S? Yes, S. Okay.’ He wrote it down. ‘Second letter. Vowel? No? Consonant? First half of the alphabet? No. Is it P? Q? R? S? T?’

  I blinked and he missed it.

  ‘V? W? X? Y? Z?’ He stared accusingly at me. ‘It must be one of them, Stella! Jesus Christ. You can tell your Mannix Taylor that this is one shitty system. You know what?’ He crumpled up the bill and threw it on the floor. ‘Who cares? Let them cut us off.’

  I couldn’t see the nurses sniggering but I felt them at it.

  Poor Ryan. He was frustrated and confused and sick of it all. He’d had to go to the Isle of Man four times in the past two weeks, pitching for this new project, and he was exhausted.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He took a breath. ‘I apologize. Jeffrey, pick that up and put it in the bin.’

  ‘Pick it up yourself. You threw it, you pick it up. Consequences, Dad, consequences.’

  ‘I’ll consequence you! Pick it the feck up!’

  Another wave of nurse-sniggering moved across the ward. The Sweeney Family Show was proving quite a hit.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Betsy said.

  ‘I told him to do it,’ Ryan said.

  God, it was so embarrassing.

  Jeffrey and Ryan locked themselves into a long stare-off and eventually Jeffrey broke. ‘Ooookay.’

  He picked up the crumpled ball of paper, threw it at the nurses’ station and yelped, ‘Catch!’

  Several nurses leapt back in exaggerated alarm and startled cries and tut-tuts reached me. I was mortified.

  Jeffrey was getting worse; he was becoming more defiant and it was my fault. I’d abandoned him by getting sick and I needed to get home and be a proper mother to him.

  As if I wasn’t already feeling deeply despondent, Ryan produced another piece of paper. ‘I’ve been looking at our bank statement. Why are we paying a tenner a month to Oxfam?’

  I don’t know. To build wells in Ghana?

  ‘We could do with that money,’ he said. ‘Especially now. How do I stop it?’

  I didn’t think he could. As far as I remembered it too was a standing order; it had been set up for a year. But I hadn’t the energy to even try to explain.

  ‘She doesn’t know,’ Jeffrey said, dismissively. ‘My turn now. Mom, do you know where my hockey socks are?’

  … But how would I know? I haven’t been at home in seven weeks.

  ‘Dad can’t find them,’ he said. ‘I thought you might know.’

  But … but how could I? Even though it was mad, I felt guilty, because I should know. They could be in his drawer, in the washing machine, the tumble dryer, his kit bag, his locker at school, they could have got jumbled up with Betsy’s laundry. But I couldn’t blink all that – it would take the entire day.

  ‘Can I talk now, please?’ Betsy said, haughtily. ‘Mom, where’s my bunny rabbit onesie?’

  I don’t fecking well know. Where did you last see it?

  ‘I need it,’ she said. ‘We’re going for a sleepover in Birgitte’s house and we made a pinky-promise that we’d all wear our onesies.’

  Who was this Birgitte that she was going f
or a sleepover with? I’d never heard of her before. Had Ryan spoken to the parents? Had he checked that everything was –

  ‘And another thing,’ Ryan said. ‘The tenants in Sandycove have given notice.’

  My heart sank. Our investment property was proving to be an absolute curse. We needed to rent it out so we could cover the mortgage payments but no one ever stayed longer than six months. I seemed to spend my life doing inventories and changing bank details and – toughest of all – trying to find tenants who wouldn’t trash the place.

  ‘What am I to do about it?’ Ryan asked.

  … Surely visiting time was up? But I’d noticed that the nurses had taken to letting my visitors stay for longer than the recommended fifteen minutes. I suspected that they were delighted that Mannix Taylor’s Blinking Code was proving to be such a burden to me.

  Finally Ryan and the kids left and I was on my own once more. The funny thing, I thought, was that people paid fortunes to go on retreats where they weren’t allowed to speak or read or watch telly. They had to spend the whole time trapped with their thoughts and feelings, no matter how uncomfortable.

  It was remarkably similar to what I was doing right here in my hospital bed and it really was a colossal pity that I’d never been interested in any of those soul-searchy kind of things.

  I was jolted out of my thoughts by the sight of Mannix Taylor walking towards me. What was he doing here? We’d already had our daily session.

  He got the pen and notebook from the sterilizer and he pulled up a chair.

  ‘Hello.’ He looked at me, lying motionless on my side, and said, ‘You know, the gas thing is that people pay for this kind of lark – silence, sensory deprivation …’ He waved his hand dismissively. ‘They do it to get to know themselves.’

  ‘I WAS JUST THINKING THAT.’

  ‘And is it working? Are you, Stella Sweeney, getting to know yourself?’

  ‘I DON’T NEED TO KNOW MYSELF. I KNOW ENOUGH PEOPLE.’

  He laughed. There was something about him – he was skittish, almost giddy. Something good must have happened.