He held me in his arms at last, wrapped me in his solid warmth. And at last I could close my eyes and rest because I had reached the end and come home.

Chapter Thirty-Two

It didn’t feel good to be dead, not the way it should have done. There were bits of me that hurt and bits of me that felt sticky and bits that were bent in different directions and there was something over my face and there was an insistent electric noise that went on and on and wouldn’t stop. Everything was dim and far away and becoming dimmer. I felt something from outside and there were presences close to me and hands on me, voices. I was being roughly handled. Didn’t they know I was fragile? That I was broken inside? I tried to protest that I wanted to be left alone so I could sleep, but something was forced into my mouth and I couldn’t speak. I felt cold air on my skin and then I was inside once more and I felt jostling. Something was shouted in my ear that I couldn’t recognize, and then I did recognize it. It was my name. How did they know? And then I sank without fear or regret into darkness. Not sleep but a state of nonbeing with no dreams, no thoughts.

I didn’t wake up from that nothingness. I gradually found myself in an existence of feverish semi-sleep in which I sometimes saw faces around me, flickering and unsteady, like candle flames. Some were familiar: Mary, Fergus, Gwen. I tried to say sorry about her car but my mouth was full and the words wouldn’t come. Once my eyes opened to see a policeman looming over me. It took an effort to put a name to the face. Ramsay. At first I wasn’t sure if he was real. I mumbled things to him and when he had gone I couldn’t remember what I had said.

The sign of my gradual return to life, to reality, was that I started to hurt in almost every part of my body. In that period when I could still barely tell night from day, sleep from wakefulness, a doctor came and sat by my bed and talked to me slowly and patiently. He talked about fractures and rib damage and a punctured spleen and operations and about gradual recovery and patience and determination. When he had finished he paused as if he was waiting for me to ask some question. It took an enormous effort.

“Joe,” I said.

“What?” said the doctor.

“In the car,” I said.

His expression changed to one of professional sadness. He started talking about how they had tried to revive him and how, unfortunately, they hadn’t succeeded and how they had been waiting until I was strong enough to bear the shock.