Small Steps in Short Spaces of Time

“That’s what this is going to take, you know. Small steps in short spaces of time. No rush, no hurry. Just small steps and we’ll get there.”

She didn’t seem to be listening. He sighed. This had been going on for days now. He would say something, and she wouldn’t respond. He took a sip of his water and looked at her. It was still her, he knew that it was still her. She was still in there, listening to him. He looked at her lying peacefully in that hospital bed, for all the world as though she were merely sleeping. Sleeping it off. As though she’d had too much to drink.

He looked at her, the way her dark hair fanned out on the pillow, framing her face, which was pale and freckled, clean of make-up. Her lips were pink and full, her chin impish. Her closed eyes were overarched by strong dark brows, neatly shaped but full for a woman. He liked that though. Couldn’t stand those wispy pale affairs.

He took another sip of water and looked at the tubes going in and out of her body. While she was asleep like this, she needed help with all sorts of things, he supposed. At least she didn’t need help with breathing, though. That was one thing. She didn’t seem to be paralysed, as long as she was breathing on her own. Of course, they wouldn’t know until she woke up whether she could move her arms and legs, but breathing on her own, that was a good sign.

She had been here for nine days so far. Nine days since the accident. As soon as he had heard that this was where she had been brought, he had come. He couldn’t not come. He came every night, straight from work, and stayed for as long as the nurses would let him.

He would go home to the empty house and sit quietly before the tv, letting the programmes wash over him, thinking about her alone in that hospital bed. He would sit and think until he felt his eyes grow heavy with sleep, then he would go to bed.

It was good to have a routine, he thought, for him as well as her. So he went to work every day and carried on as though nothing in his life was any different to how it had been 9 days ago,

He took the newspaper with him every night, the Sale and Altrincham Messenger, and sometimes the Metro from the train station. He would read to her, keeping her up to date with the local news and the pick of the day’s national news as chosen by the Metro. He didn’t want her to feel lonely or out of touch while she was having this long sleep.

He started to read to her now, telling her about the opposition to the waste management centre they wanted to build in Partington. A nurse came in.

“You here again, love?” she smiled at him.

He stopped reading and smiled back.

“Oh, you carry on reading, love. I’m sure it’s doing her good. Don’t mind me, I just need to check her IV lines and take a few readings.” The nurse bustled about her work.

He took up the paper again and carried on reading, but more self-consciously now that the nurse was present. He had never been the strongest reader, and hated to have an audience. He didn’t mind so much thinking that she was listening to him, as she lay there in the hospital bed. Reading aloud to her was different.

The nurse finished what she was doing and smiled at him on her way out. He smiled back, then turned further into the newspaper, trying to find something that would interest her.

Every so often, he paused in his reading to look at her, check she was still breathing.

“I’m daft, aren’t I?” he said, smiling indulgently at himself. “Because, those machines they’ve got you hooked up to, they’ll soon let us know if anything’s wrong, won’t they?”

He thought for a moment that she had heard him, because her eyelids fluttered slightly, then he reminded himself that it was probably just muscle spasms.

He could hear talking out in the corridor. He looked up, through the window in the door. The nurse was in the corridor talking to someone who looked official. Not a doctor, probably an administrator. She looked his way a couple of times while she was talking. He frowned to himself, wondering what was being said.

“Ah, who cares what they’re saying, eh?” he asked her, sitting forward slightly in his chair. “We just need to concentrate on getting you better. Small steps in short spaces of time, remember?” He sat back again and looked out through the window in the door, but the corridor was empty. Something and nothing, probably, but he couldn’t help feeling slightly uneasy. The nurse had definitely been talking about him, he could tell.

He looked at his watch. It was almost 9. He would have to be making a move soon.

“Almost time for me to be going again,” he told her. “They kick me out at 9, you know, and it’s almost that now. But I’ll be back tomorrow night, and you’ll have to make do with the staff in the meantime.” He tried to laugh, sound light-hearted, but it was hard with her lying there so still and silent.

He folded up the paper and dropped it into the bin. There was nothing much worth reading in it tonight. He stood up and looked down at her, then pulled on his coat. Opening the door, he stepped out into the corridor. It was deserted. He turned in the doorway and said goodnight to her. He decided to leave tonight before the nurse returned to throw him out, with her “Don’t you have a home to go to?”

He walked steadily down the corridor to the main exit, past other side wards like the one she occupied. He was surprised that there had so far not been any other patients in there with her, but supposed it was probably best to keep her quiet. He walked past the reception desk and said goodnight to the woman who sat there night after night. He supposed a nurse took over for the night shift. You wouldn’t need admin staff to be on duty when there were no visitors.

The automatic doors swooshed apart and he stepped out into the frosty autumnal air. Late October. The seasons were changing. It was dark now when he got to the hospital from work, since the clocks had gone back that weekend.

He walked across the hospital forecourt to the car park. As he approached his car, he was puzzled to see two men standing by it, expectantly. He thought about walking past, afraid of being attacked, then one of them said his name.

“Andrew David Rowbotham?”

“Yes,” he replied, pausing a few steps from his car, keys in hand.

“Is this your vehicle, sir?”

Police. He sighed. Of course.

“Yes, it is,” he said, relaxing slightly.

“Were you driving this vehicle on Sunday 19 October along Wilbraham Road in the Chorlton area of Manchester, Mr Rowbotham?”

He thought for a moment. He never knew why, whether it was for effect, or whether he had genuinely forgotten for one brief moment that he had been on Wilbraham Road just over a week ago.

“Yes,” he finally said.

“Mr Rowbotham, a car matching your vehicle’s description and registration was witnessed to be involved in a hit and run accident at 18.15 on Sunday 19 October on Wilbraham Road, Chorlton. A young woman was seriously injured in that accident.”

“Yes,” he said again.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind accompanying us to the station, Mr Rowbotham, so that we can take some details from you.”

He stayed silent for a moment, looking down at his feet. It was pointless denying anything. Especially with her lying there in the hospital behind him.

“Of course,” he said, moving towards the two policemen. “I’ll be glad to help with your enquiries. Anything at all to help.”

He was assisted into the back of the police car, the way he had seen criminals being assisted in early evening dramas. Hand on top of his head, a slight push down, he wondered whether he ought to hold his hands behind his back, although he hadn’t been cuffed.

As he sat in the back seat of the police car, being driven away from the hospital, he thought about her lying there. He thought about the way her body had crumpled against the front of his car, and the way he had panicked and driven off, not knowing what else he could do. He stared out of the car window, a police officer sitting beside him. He supposed it was normal not to make conversation in situations like this. He wouldn’t know what to say, anyway. He stared at the houses as the car sped along from the hospital to the police station.

The other officer stopped the car outside the building. He wondered whether to open the car door and step out, but then thought that there was probably some sort of locking mechanism that meant the door could only be opened from the outside, like when you had a child in the back of the car. While he was thinking this, the office who had been sitting beside him had got out of the car and come round to his door and was opening it.

“Step outside, please, sir,” he said, not looking at him. He was young. Younger than him. Young and hard and cynical.

He stepped out of the car and the two officers accompanied him into the station. It was all very civil. He felt very meek. He searched for a word, something grand sounding, something that would take away the dry bitterness of fear from his mouth. His mind settled on chagrined, and he was satisfied with that. His mouth still tasted burnt, though. He would have liked a cup of tea.

Inside the station, he was left at the desk with the younger of the officers, who took down all his details. He wondered whether he would be expected to hand over his watch and his wallet and other personal effects. His tie and his shoelaces. That was the sort of thing they did in the tv programmes.

The young officer directed him to a small room, however. He didn’t want his personal effects yet. Maybe that came later, after he had been charged, when they locked him up in a cell. He walked into the room, it was just like the ones on tv. Bare and clinical, with a single table, four chairs and a recording device on one wall. Somehow he felt reassured by this. For all the bizarreness of the situation, it was oddly familiar.

The interview started. A detective and a police officer. Not one of the ones who had brought him to the station. Had he been arrested? He couldn’t remember. He thought not. He thought he had come of his own free will. He rolled the phrase around his head, smiling slightly. Of his own free will. He liked that phrase.

The two police officers were looking at him. He shook himself mentally. What were they expecting him to say, he wondered. He looked back at them blankly.

“What is your name?” the detective asked, coldly.

“Andrew David Rowbotham,” he replied.

And so it began. He answered their questions calmly, mechanically, and described the accident with precision. He had been driving. His phone had gone off. He couldn’t find it. He was scrabbling, trying to find it, one hand on the wheel, one eye on the road ahead, then he had looked away. Had he had a drink? No, he hadn’t been drinking. He didn’t drink during the day. Didn’t drink and drive. He had looked away, because he thought he had felt his phone and just for a split second he needed to look to make sure. He caught hold of it then, once he saw it, and pulled it out of his overcoat pocket, and looked back up at the road. He was at a zebra crossing and a young woman, her, the young woman in the hospital, she was looking at him as he drove towards her. Then, he shuddered, put his head in his hands, covered his eyes as if he thought he could block out the image of her.

“Boof!” he said.

The police officers remained impassive.

“Boof!” he repeated. “Boof against my windscreen. I could see the shock in her eyes. She sort of crumpled against the glass.”

“Could you take your hands away from your face, please sir, so that the tape recorder can catch your words,” the detective said calmly.

He lowered his hands from his face and looked past the two officers, unable to look at them. Ashamed. Chagrined. Meek.

“Could you please repeat your last sentence, for the tape, sir,” the detective said.

He swallowed, his throat dry. He couldn’t bring himself to repeat his last sentence, so he tried to say it a different way, a calmer way.

“I hit her. She sort of sprang up, landed against the windscreen. Her body crumpled. She was looking at me, shocked. Then her body sort of jerked, like a puppet. Her arms. Her legs. They sort of flew out from her body. She was looking at me. Then she sort of slid along the bonnet. I think I was still driving. I don’t remember. I must have hit the brakes. But she slid away and I couldn’t see her any more. She wasn’t looking at me any more.”

He stopped. Not sure what to say, or how to go on. She must have gone under the front wheels of the car. He couldn’t remember whether she slipped sideways or off the front of the bonnet. He stared at his hands.

“That’s it,” he whispered.

“For the tape, please, sir,” said the detective.

He looked up. “Sorry,” he said. “That’s it,” he repeated, more loudly, towards the tape machine. “That’s all I remember. I drove off. I panicked. I drove off. Oh god.”

His head went down again, his hands rising to meet it.

The room was silent.

© J R Hargreaves 2004