“you are a lover of the words

a soul mate to the story

everything becomes a part of you

from my fingertips to your eyes

from my heart to yours”

― Amanda Linsmeier, Like Waves

Prologue

                I stood at the threshold of the room and gazed at the sole occupant lying on the bed. My teeth danced over my bottom lip and my heart trembled. I was stuck somewhere between coming and going, frightened to stay, terrified to leave. The nurse eased around me as if to show that it was safe to enter the room. He didn’t know, of course, that this was not the first time I’d stepped foot in an ICU ward in the last twelve months. In fact, the way all hospitals seemed to be painted the same kind of beige and white and smelt of disinfectant, brought it all back to me with alarming clarity.

                “She’s not in any pain.” The nurse said kindly.

                “Yeah…” I swallowed, took a deep breath and stepped into the room. A panel of machines beeped and glowed in the diffused light. I approached the bed and braved a look into the face of the woman who lay like the dead.

                Her eyes were closed, her expression, despite the oxygen mask over her mouth, was almost serene. Though she was in her mid forties, there had been so much laughter, love and kindness in her soul that she could have been mistaken for being in her thirties. The only hints of a mid-century in her near future was a little silver at her temples, shining against the dark brown of her hair.

                Her body was mostly covered in a white blanket, her arms resting on top, drips and monitors plugged into her in every conceivable way.

                “Has she…” My voice croaked softly. I had to swallow and try again. “Has she been like this the whole time?”

                “That’s what the chart says.” The nurse explained. “If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll get the doctor and she’ll be able to explain what happened.” He pushed a chair close to the bed. “If you want to talk to her, go ahead. She could use a familiar voice.”

                I sank onto the chair, my overnight bag clutched in my hands as if it would offer some comfort.

“Hey…Aunt Jo.” I managed to say in a whisper. “Long time, no see huh?” My aunt’s face remained impassive. There wasn’t any eye movement beneath the lids either, like the kind of motion when someone dreams when they slept. She was very, very still except for the slight rise and fall of her chest. “I know I’ve been saying I’ll visit for ages…but did you have to go and get yourself hospitalised for me to do so?” My joke fell flat in the seriousness of the nature of the room. “Sorry…that was a dumb thing to say.” I looked at my aunt’s fingers and reached out tentatively to take her hand. It was cool but not cold. I had to be careful not to dislodge any of the drips. “Oh Aunt Jo…what happened to you?”

It was nearly half an hour later before the door to the room opened. I stood up and greeted a woman of Indian heritage yet, despite her accent, I could understand her perfectly.

“Miss St James?”

“Bethany is fine.”

“Bethany.” The doctor smiled in that warm, practiced way to put people at ease. “I’m Doctor Ishani. You are Johanne West’s niece I understand?”

“Yes. She’s my mother’s sister.” I paused, dreading asking the question as much as I was dreading the answer. “What happened to her?”

“I wish I could tell you.” Ishani said sincerely. “I was on shift when your aunt was brought in three days ago.”

“Three days…” I looked at the body in the bed, my heart sinking into my feet. “She’s been like this for three days?”

“Yes.” Doctor Ishani picked up the chart and glanced over it as though to refresh her memory. “The police responded to an emergency call, saying that your aunt was unresponsive. We do not know how long she was that way before she was brought in but since being monitored, there has been only the most minimal neural activity.”

“Minimal neural…” I had to wrack my brain to recall what little I retained from biology at school…or the scarce amount of truth I’d absorbed from streaming hospital dramas. “She’s in a coma?”

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“Yes.” Ishani nodded. “Your aunt does not respond to external stimuli. We have oxygen feeding into her as well as a drip for fluids and essential vitamins, her heartrate and blood pressure are monitored…”

“Did she fall? Hit her head?”

“There were no extraneous injuries when she was brought to us and no bruising has presented since.” The doctor took out a pen to write on the chart. “Do you know if your aunt was an alcoholic?”

A snort left my body before I had a chance to restrain it. “Definitely not. I mean, she liked the odd glass…but she preferred coffee.”

“Does diabetes run in the family?” I shook her head, with more confidence than I felt. “I did not think so.” Ishani sighed. “We have run our own tests, including CAT scans and MRIs and a whole host of bloodwork but we haven’t found any definitive reason for the coma. It is possible she suffered a stroke that we have not been able to detect…”

“A stroke severe enough to put her into a coma?” I was a bit doubtful on that one.

“Exactly,” Ishani shook her head, “I wish we had more information for you.”

“I wish I had more to give.”

“What about family? She is your mother’s sister?”

I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “My mum died six months ago.”

“I’m so sorry.” Ishani seemed genuinely grieved which only made holding myself together that much harder. “Can I ask how?”

“An aggressive cancer.”

“How aggressive?”

“From diagnosis to death…six months.” I licked my lips. “Could that be…” My eyes flickered to Aunt Jo.

“It’s highly unlikely but we’ll check just the same. If you could fill in these forms, to the best of your knowledge,” Ishani lay a tablet on the little table on wheels, “any information you can provide will help.” I leaned over the table and began to tap in the details I knew. “Of course, all of this would have been filled in by her partner or friend…or a relative but we had nothing to go on except her name.”

“No one thought to grab her purse?”

“The house was locked after retrieving your aunt. We don’t even have her medi database number.”

“I don’t know it, sorry.” I filled in what I could then held out the tablet.

“At least she’s no longer alone.” Ishani smiled encouragingly though I knew the information I’d provided was less than detailed. “You’ve put yourself down as a medical contact?” It was the least I could do. “Your address…it’s in the city?”

“Yes, but I’ll stay at my aunt’s house for a few days at least.”

Ishani closed the cover over the tablet. “We’ll put you down on the visitors list. I know it’s hard to believe, but coma patients often recall the voices of those who visited when they wake up.”

“So…you think she will?”

“I…let’s hope for the best.”

I paused. “That’s usually followed with, plan for the worst…”

Ishani shook her head. “It’s not something you need to think about yet. Most comas are very short. She may yet wake up with no ill effects whatsoever.”

“Knowing Aunt Jo, that wouldn’t surprise me.” I picked up my overnight bag, knowing there was little more I could do there. “Thank you. I’ll come by tomorrow with any medical information I can find.”

We left the room together but as I did, I cast a glance back at my aunt, feeling as though I was abandoning her.

“We’ll take good care of her.” Ishani said. Years of anxious relative experience had probably made it easy to read my mind. I nodded, shouldered her overnight bag, clutched my handbag and headed for the ICU exit. “Miss St James?”

“Yes?”

“How did you know? About your aunt’s condition? We haven’t contacted anyone and real estate records don’t have emergency contacts listed…”

“I got a parcel from her a few days ago…probably the same day she was brought here.” If only I’d thought to come racing up here sooner instead of wallowing in guilt, sending a few unanswered messages as if that accomplished anything.

“A parcel?”

I drew the key out of my pocket, dangling from an ornate keychain. “It’s the key to her café.”

“Nothing else? No letter?” I shook my head. Ishani pursed her lips. “That’s…unusual…but she must trust you to have sent it to you.”

“I guess.” I pocketed it. “See you tomorrow.”

I’d lived in Glenwilde for half of my life and knew the vague layout of the township tucked into the base of the mountains. However, having been a city girl resident for ten years, six of them navigating public transport on my own as I commuted to and from school and uni, I decided to attempt to reach my aunt’s home without paying for a taxi. A bus was cheaper and I was on a budget.

However, the township in which I found myself in on a day in midwinter with the sky quickly darkening was not what anyone would call…modern. In fact, when I had lived there, it had been called a town, not a township. The only reason it was called that was because its outskirts were pegged out to include small communities and villages, bumping up the population count at a time when the economy was booming. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was technically a ‘city’ going by the numbers alone, however, that would have taken away its touristy, homey appeal so they left it at township.

That alone, should have been a clue to me.

I mean, the hospital was by far the most modern building, begrudgingly designed and built only a few years earlier so that there was somewhere for the residents to go for medical help that wasn’t four hours to reach by car. But apart from that and a few petrol stations, nothing new had been built in Glenwilde for many years. It was a town made up almost entirely of heritage buildings and homes of rambling, original design. There wasn’t a single housing estate with copy and paste homes anywhere. There was a train station which I had come into town on only two hours earlier. The train itself was new, however, if the residents had been able to orchestrate it, I believe it still would have been drawn by an old steam engine, in keeping with the quaint atmosphere.

Despite the reliability of the train timetable, not much else was the same and though the app on my phone insisted a bus ran past the bus stop I was sitting at every five minutes that would take me in the direction I needed, after half an hour I switched modes of transport to walking.

Apparently it was only a forty five minute walk.

What it didn’t say was, due to the city being draped over the base of mountains, most of that walk was up one incline and down the next. I had my inhaler out several times, feeling my chest tighten as my lungs got quite the workout.

My overnight bag was getting heavier by the second and my feet ached relentlessly by the time the ‘House of Figs’ came into view.