Alicia was lost.
When we spoke, I felt like I was in correspondence with two people. There was Alicia; my wife, my conspirator-in-life. Then, there was the woman in the hospital bed before me. She, the second woman, was the one my wife had become since an insidious illness had robbed her of herself, some unwelcome and unknown caller. It was as if her brain had defected, turned against her.
To be without one’s own self; to be somehow apart from one’s own self, is a horror one can witness and but only seek to imagine. We clung to each other whilst my wife, not really knowing whether her thoughts and feelings were real because she did not know herself, searched valiantly for her truth.
At her worst, it was awful for us both. She was not Alicia; but some lesser avatar. I often thought how terrified she must have been: untethered. It was too hurtful to contemplate, and yet, I knew she battled. Some visits, I saw her sweating with the sheer effort of simply trying to remember something … anything.
They ran so many tests. And then, came the conversation with the clinical psychiatrist, who showed me the papers I would have to sign to have Alicia committed, to have her sectioned. I refused to countenance the idea; it would be a betrayal. I denied the possibility.
Later that night, I found myself at home, having somehow polished off two bottles of red. I had been smoking, though I had quit a decade previous. In my intoxicated haze, I cried out, my bleary voice the vanguard of pain.
At that exact moment, in the wee hours, the phone rang. I lifted the receiver, confused, and listened to a crackle.
“Hello, dear, you poor dear,” a faint voice echoed.
“Hello, sorry … I can hardly hear you. Who is this?”
“It’s your Aunt Agatha dear, calling from over the water.”
My brain reeled. Agatha was my wife’s Aunt – she had been part of a mass exodus of that side of the family to Canada back in the seventies. Alicia loved Agatha terribly. Hearing her voice brought my defences down and it took me some moments to remember that she had died four years ago. I blurted out soft sobs, realising I was hearing things. I hung up; and with shaking hands tried to light another cigarette.
The phone rang again, the tone insistent, chiding somehow.
“It’s me dear, don’t hang up. It’s your Aunt Agatha. I’m worried about you.”
“But – you can’t be,” I sobbed. Yet, the voice was so familiar and real. The Scots accent had that Canadian inflection – her about was aboot.
“I’m over the water now, dear, over the far water. I’ve heard about these troubles Alicia is having and, well, I can’t reach her.”
“They won’t allow calls without approval,” I said, matter-of-factly, whilst rubbing my face. My mouth was speaking as if this were all normal, as if I wasn’t talking to a dead woman.
“You must be her beacon, my dear. I see her … lost … out in a little paddle boat in dark waters. She is looking for you, searching for you. You must make yourself a beacon, and make sure your light is brighter than the sun.”
“But this just can’t be … how can you be talking to me?”
“Never mind that dear. Just you do what your old Aunt Agatha says. Keep shining that light. I promise, Alicia will find her way back to you.”
Though my mind was disturbed, the sound of that old woman’s voice filled me with such a comfort my heart could barely stand it. I set aside my disbelief, and allowed her words to wash over me like dopamine.
“Dear, dear, dear. What a pickle this is for you both. But even though I’m over the far water now, I can still give you a wee nudge, my lad. You buckle up, and you help Alicia find her way back.”
The line was crackling again; and then, there was no more.
As I placed the receiver down I looked over at little table next to our bay window where the detritus of my solitary existence was piling up: a pile of reality. In my self-induced fugue, I decided I must have made the whole thing up. Perhaps I had dozed off, or simply allowed my own consciousness to entertain a fever dream.
But then I looked at the digital display on the handset. There, on the screen, was evidence I could not accept. “Unknown Caller”, 01.35am. Confused, aching with grief, I mumbled about losing my own mind instead of Alicia’s, and staggered to bed.
The next morning, as I nursed my hangover, I contemplated the bizarre phone call. The unknown caller must, I reasoned, have been a figment. I kept all this from Alicia, of course.
At this point, her short-term memory was so badly corrupted she could barely remember, if at all, who had been to see her that day. And yet, as ever, when I walked through the door of her ward and saw her, I knew, each of us knew, that we were for each other, and despite it all, I took great solace that being together was healing for us both.
This evening, however, she was particularly frantic. The doctors had been round to run more tests. She could not say who the Prime Minister was. She could not say what day it was or what month, though she knew it was winter-time, as the snow had started to fall outside. She was crying, stuttering about losing everything.
She began to look around her bed and pillows, looking for a lavender doll which had been a gift from Aunt Agatha: a tiny fabric doll with a cloth bag of lavender to soothe her sleep. With Aunt Agatha gone, the doll had taken on greater significance. We searched high and low, but it was nowhere to be found. Alicia was inconsolable. She always had a very keen sense of smell, and an unnerving ability to recall past events based on smell alone. The lavender doll had been something to cling to; now it was lost.
Later that evening, new doctors arrived to conduct new tests; there was still no diagnosis. They showed her images in a flick-book. She knew what the images were, but could not get the word out. She was fighting her own brain; instead of knife, she would say sword. Then they asked her to draw a clock face. She tried, but all the numbers were scrunched up in the right-hand corner. As she drew, she shook with sheer effort. Alicia knew her clock was warped; warped like her own mind. And then, sharing that realisation, our hearts broke all over again.
It was extremely hard to leave her that night. I felt like I was abandoning her every time I left the ward. The snow was falling quite heavily now, and passing the pub at the bottom of our street I knew the crutch of some warm company was calling. I stood at the bar, sending text messages to family and friends about Alicia, downing pint after pint.
Staggering home, I had one eye on the telephone as soon as I got in. I lifted the receiver and left it off the hook, and collapsed into bed.
Later, I was dragged from my own subconscious by an insistent ringing. It seemed to yell at me, telling me to do better, to be better. I staggered into the hall and the receiver was on the handset. I was sure I had left it off. I picked up.
“My dear lad, don’t you keep me waiting when I call, especially as I am calling you from such a distance. I want to know about my Alicia.”
Hearing Aunt Agatha’s voice again made me laugh manically, tears forming on my cheeks. On the one hand, I was desperate for her to soothe me, to tell me everything was going to be alright. On the other, I wondered if I was descending into my own madness, my own maelstrom, taking advice from a phantom.
“This can’t be real,” I sobbed.
“My dear boy, you must keep strong. I may be far, far away now, but I’m with you both. Alicia is coming home, I promise. And you my lad, I believe in you. You’ll help her recover.”
“Please, Aunt Agatha, tell me, tell me she’ll be okay,” I cried.
“Dear boy, I promise. I may be over the far water, but I can … see things from this strange distance.”
“She lost your doll. Your little lavender doll…and now I’m losing my mind.”
“I’ll have none of that nonsense my boy. She’ll be out soon. Help her get her will back, her self-belief.”
The line was crackling again.
“Aunt Agatha don’t leave me. When I get her home, will you call us? Please …. please will you call us?”
“I can’t, lad. They have rules about that sort of thing. Och, I love you both. But I’m over the far water now, and I’m afraid my credit has run out. Take my love to Alicia, my lad. And remember to look behind as well as forward. You need to see where you’ve both been, to know where you’re going.”
And, at that, the line went dead. Defeated, despairing, I crawled back to bed and somehow fell asleep. Then … again with the ringing! The phone was ringing! Blearily, I catapulted myself out into the hall and knocked the phone over in my haste. Though a wintry darkness pervaded outside, it was morning.
“Agatha?!”
“Erm … no. It’s Dr Hastie. I need you to come up to the hospital straight away. We have a diagnosis. We have a diagnosis and we have a treatment. Today is a good day.”
As I replaced the receiver, my mind buzzing, I peered at the digital display. And there, on the list of calls received just above the number for the hospital, it said “Unknown Caller”, 03:21.
We learned, together, Alicia and I, that she had contracted a rare form of encephalitis. Her ailment had a name. The doctors explained that there was a new treatment involving plasma exchange, but there would be permanent scarring on her brain from the antibodies which had been attacking her from within. There was a lot of work ahead; but now that we knew what it was, Alicia could get home.
As I helped her into the car, I sat and got my bearings. I checked the rear view mirror to reverse. Hanging from the mirror was the little lavender doll. Alicia had forgotten that she’d lost it, and simply plucked it down. She held it to her nose and breathed deeply. As I shook with surprise and – I admit – mild terror, my wonderful wife visibly relaxed. The smell of the doll had reminded her of her Aunt Agatha, and that memory was enough to still the turmoil.
I thought of my calls with Aunt Agatha. Whilst my beloved Alicia had been wandering in the fog, I had been out there somewhere with her. Those late-night calls with Aunt Agatha had surely been figments of my own imagination, creations to cope. But I simply could not explain the doll.
Alicia leaned over, and kissed my cheek. As we drove through wintry streets, I glanced over at the doll in my wife’s hands. With the snow falling heavily around us, we came to a stop at traffic lights. “Thank you, Aunt Agatha,” I said aloud, without meaning to. “Thank you for being there for us, even though you're gone.”
Alicia turned her head to smile at me, and rubbed the little doll in her hands.
“I love you, honey. Take me home,” she said.
And it was her speaking, it was my Alicia. The lights changed to green, and we moved off, knowing everything was going to be okay.
About the author
JS Apsley is a fantasy and thriller author based in Glasgow, Scotland. He won the Ringwood Short Story Prize for "Immersion" which was published in January 2025.
Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the writers and half towards supporting the project (web site maintenance, preparing the next Best of book etc.)
No comments:
Post a Comment