Omega

He donned his vest and underpants. Everything had been freshly laundered. I knew that he was intending to dress and go out, but suddenly he felt weak and sat down on the bed.

A tumbler of orange juice had been put on the bedside table while he was showering. He picked it up and drained it. The juice was thin and from a can; but it took the sour taste from his mouth. He rose again and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

The toiletries were his own: a bag bearing the initials O.M. sat on the shelf. I knew instantly his name was the same as mine. A plain white tube had FLUORIDE stencilled along it in black. The toothpaste tasted like mashed minted chalk, but he even scrubbed his tongue, probing so deeply I was amazed he didn’t gag.

As we emerged from the bathroom the woman entered. She was plainly surprised to find us out of our bed and in our underwear.

“What is this?” she said in her accented English. “No getting up yet! Back to bed.”

His inclination was to ignore her, but he couldn’t deny the weakness he felt.

“You will land us in bad trouble!” the woman said, scuttling forward and taking him by the elbow. “No getting up today. You must rest. Plenty of resting.”

He let her lead him back to the bed, though he insisted on getting into it himself. She tucked him in as one might do a child, though he noticed that never once did she look directly at him.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Here,” she said, folding under the bottom edges of the quilt. “I live here.”

“I mean originally.”

She gave no answer, still busy with the sheets.

“Are you Polish?”

She made a noise that sounded like an expletive, and left without another word.

THREE

The white hospital room. I was back. Through the window I could see dingy clouds scudding across a blue sky.

There was no sensation of transition. I had simply switched in an instant from one place to another. From another mind and body back to my own.

Unable to raise myself from the pillow, I felt both dull-witted and incredulous. I couldn’t begin to imagine what was happening to me.

I heard a rustling sound, managed to turn my head a little.

Tanya was sitting at the side of the bed.

Tanya! She was the auburn-haired woman I had dreamt was watching over me. Once, in our university days, we had been lovers.

She was wearing reading glasses, a hardback on her lap. Under her brown suede coat shewore a print silk skirt with calf-length boots. Her hair, cropped as a student, was now free-flowing to her shoulders but still the deep red-brown it had always been. She looked prosperous, but not showily so. Her very presence at my bedside meant something dreadful had happened.

Lyneth and the girls had been injured in the explosion, or worse. Tanya wouldn’t have been here otherwise. I had no family apart from my errant brother and my father, who was in a nursing home. Perhaps they’d been unable to contact Rees, who had a habit of dropping out of sight. Somehow Tanya must have heard the news and come to my bedside to be there when I woke. It had to be serious: of her own choice Lyneth wouldn’t have allowed Tanya anywhere near me.

Sara and Bethany. My mind rebelled at the very idea that anything could have happened to them. Perhaps they were all in intensive care, somewhere in the very same hospital, mere wards away. They would be clinging on to life, surviving as I’d survived. Or perhaps the girls had suffered minor injuries and were being tended by Lyneth while I recuperated.

I tried calling out to Tanya, demanding to know what had become of them. But nothing would emerge. Here, unlike in the other world, I had a distinct and proper sense of my own physicality; but my body was refusing to cooperate.

Could it have been a terrorist attack? A suicide bomber, even? Or something as banal as a leaky gas main? How many people had been caught up in the explosion? How many were dead?

My thoughts raced like pond skaters over the surface of these questions, but whatever drugs I’d been given muted my reactions to a dreamy bewilderment.

Tanya turned a page of her book. I willed her to look up, to notice I was awake. This wasn’t happening. I couldn’t allow it to have happened.

“So,” said a gruff male voice, “you’ve been playing with fire again, eh?”

My uncle was short and stocky, with a genial expression on his rubicund face. His epaulettes and scarlet gorget collars bore the insignia of his rank, gold oakleaf embroidery enclosing wreathed batons, a lion rampant within its ring of stars. He pulled a chair up to my bedside and gently pushed me back when I tried to sit up.

“No, no, just lie there,” he said. “The doctor tells me you need to have a good rest, so let’s not have any standing on ceremony.”

I had the immediate sense that he was speaking in another language, lilting and glottal. Apart from a smattering of French, English was the only language I knew, yet I understood him perfectly.