Lucy Lockhart: The Awakening Read online

  Lucy Lockhart

  the awakening

  by

  Bryce Thomas

  Also by Bryce Thomas

  Rhamin

  Coming soon

  Rhamin II: Blue Tooth

  Lucy Lockhart: Wall of Silence

  THOMAS HAMILTON & CO.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

  The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead; events; organizations including companies and domains formed during or after the writing and publication of this book; or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First published in Great Britain 2011

  Thomas Hamilton & Co Publishers

  80 Warham Road, Harrow HA3 7HZ

  Copyright © Bryce Thomas 2008

  Cover design by Helena Thomas © 2008

  Cover artwork by Neil Booth

  Bryce Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from The British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-907696-06-0

  Electronic Digital Edition

  Produced by

  THOMAS HAMILTON PUBLISHERS

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may

  be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  FIRST DIGITAL EDITION

  www.thomashamilton.co.uk

  Acknowledgements

  I am indebted to my wife June without whose support none of my stories would have ever been completed.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Can she be trusted?’ asked a man’s voice, one that she recognized.

  ‘I don’t know,’ a woman replied. Her voice also seemed familiar.

  ‘When is she going to come round?’

  ‘Soon.’

  Then silence. She was left with just the sound of her own thoughts in the cold and chilling darkness.

  Am I still alive? she wondered. But the silence and the blackness continued, for how long, there was no telling. It could have been an hour. It could have been a second. It could have been a lifetime.

  –––––––

  At first, waking up felt strange. She was emerging from a black mist of unconsciousness and was starting to dream. A fresh breeze caressed her face as she steered her horse first one way and then the other. It felt good to be alive. Breathing the clean, fresh air seemed so easy.

  ‘She’s smiling,’ exclaimed an unfamiliar man’s voice.

  It was detached as if, somehow, she were hearing someone speaking at the far side of a vast and empty arena.

  Revolver, her seven year old gelding, was performing immaculately in the ring, jumping each obstacle perfectly. He couldn’t have done it better. ‘Concentrate,’ the rider said quietly to herself as she fought to stop her thoughts being drawn away like dust on an invisible stream of air.

  More remote and indistinct voices broke in. Distracted now, slowly her dream began to evaporate like dew in the heat of an early morning sun.

  ‘She’s coming to,’ the man’s voice proclaimed. His voice seemed close. ‘She’s waking up,’ he said with a sound of urgency.

  There was a bustle of activity around her and she could hear more voices nearby. She felt herself breathing. It felt good as the cool, clean air filled her lungs.

  Now that the blackness had gone, she could see the light through her eyelids and she could hear every voice and every sound so crisply and so clearly that, in the beginning, it hurt her ear drums. She had never awakened like this before. Her heart seemed to be beating in her ears as it sent blood coursing through her brain. She sucked in air, controlling each breath for what seemed like minutes, tasting, feeling the refreshing, cooling air. Each time, she exhaled slowly, struggling to steady her metabolism.

  A damp cloth soothingly wiped her eyelids and, little by little, she opened her left eye. Nothing focussed. She prized opened the right eye. Everything was a mixture of light and shadows. She wondered where she was and why she was there, but strangely, she couldn’t remember.

  There was a gradual fading in and out of a pale background until, finally, it became a ceiling holding a bright light dome. For an instant, she was afraid to try and move her eyes for fear of what she might see, but after several minutes of breathing and getting used to being alive again, she moved her head ever so slightly and ever so slowly. First she looked to one side and then, steadying her head as it rolled weakly on the pillow, she looked to the other side, trying to make out the objects that faded in and out of her vision in front of her eyes. Blurred at first, three faces gradually came into focus. They were peering down at her.

  A woman came close to her and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ her voice said softly, tears filling her eyes. She had a kind face, pale as milk and slightly creased but at the same time, crumpled with a look of sadness. A pair of very watery hazel eyes framed by a short cut bob of beautiful, soft auburn hair completed the portrait.

  Then gentle fingers caressed her cheek and moved a fallen tress of hair from near her eyes.

  ‘She’s going to be fine.’ Another face came into view. Two dark brown eyes looked down at her from the concerned face of a man who carried a blue shadow on his cheeks and chin. The thick, straight, black hair was brushed back off his forehead. Beneath his face was a white collar broken by the large, neat knot of a burgundy tie. Slowly, his shoulders became visible and she could see that he was wearing a white coat. Her eyes were beginning to work better now and, as she focussed them, she was able to make out the words on an identity tag. Doctor J. M. Murray.

  Behind one of his shoulders another face came into focus. This one was round and soft, not unlike the first in shape, but with a freckled complexion and, instead of a short bobbed haircut, this face wore a frizzy mop of dark brown hair pinned down under a nurse’s cap.

  ‘Where am I?’ a strange voice croaked.

  ‘You’re in hospital, sweetheart,’ the first face stated.

  ‘You had an accident.’ A hand caressed her cheek again and the face looked down into her dark blue eyes before saying, ‘But you’re going to be alright now, Lucy.’

  Lucy frowned.

  Doctor Murray stepped closer. ‘Can you tell us your name?’

  Lucy still frowned.

  ‘How old are you?’

  Lucy opened her mouth slightly. Her lips pouted as if to form a word, but then the world began to spin around her. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply for a long minute and then, when her heart seemed to calm a little, she opened her eyes again. All was still. Slowly, and with her heartbeat still drumming in her ears, she lifted her head slightly and dropped her gaze to the bed sheets. Her right arm lay along her side on top of white, crisp, cotton sheets. A needle protruded from the back of her right hand, and from it, a tube led upwards to a plastic pouch suspended on a stainless steel hanger. She followed the tube with her eyes, first upwards to the saline drip and then down again to her arm and hand. It was a thin arm. A young arm.

  How old am I? She tried to think. Her mouth remained slightly open. She didn’t speak. Perhaps her arm had atrophied? How long had she slept? The three faces hovered expectantly, wide eyed and motionless.

  ‘Can you confirm your name?’ Doctor Murray asked after a long silence. The man’s soft yet deep voice seemed to reassure her a little.

  ‘Lucy?’ She was still frowning. Her voice seemed shaky. Wasn’t that what the first face had called her?

  ‘Lucy what?’ His face looked determined.

&nbs
p; Lucy Watt? She seemed unsure. Was he telling her or asking her?

  ‘Of course she knows her name,’ the woman behind the first face interposed. A pale, soft hand lifted a small and totally inadequate handkerchief to soak up the tears that were spilling from her eyes. ‘She’s not likely to have forgotten that, is she?’

  ‘Please,’ the doctor said gently. With two firm hands, he gripped the woman’s shoulders and eased her back away from the bed. ‘Please,’ he said again with more of an air of authority than he had the first time, ‘this is important.’ He put his arm around her and led her away from the bed. He whispered something in her ear, but Lucy could hear every word he said. ‘Your daughter has been in a coma for five weeks. Now that she’s awake, we have to do the tests in a proper order. Besides testing her reflexes, we have to establish if she has any loss of memory from before the time of her accident. It’s not unusual for patients who have been unconscious for a considerable length of time to take a few hours or a few days, even, to remember who they are and what they were doing before they lost consciousness. It is up to us to prompt them into using their brains again. After all, in Lucy’s case it has lain dormant for some time. We must give her the stimulus to think.’

  The woman nodded, dabbed her eyes with the soggy handkerchief and, with a sniffle, she and the doctor turned back to the bed where the third face, the nurse, had been helping Lucy to sit up against an escarpment of pillows. She was busy plumping them up behind Lucy’s shoulders. ‘There we are, dear,’ the nurse said quietly.

  ‘We’ve been waiting quite a long time for you to wake up. Don’t you worry yourself about anything for the time being.’ She plumped up the pillows a little more and, turning to Doctor Murray, she said, ‘She’s moving her legs all right, Doctor.’ Then, looking back to Lucy, she said, ‘Now you just get used to being well again.’ Busily, she turned away and checked the suspended tube and then adjusted the drip.

  Like the doctor, the nurse wore a name tag. Nurse L.P Lever. She saw that Lucy was trying to read it. ‘I’m Pamela,’ she stated matter of factly. No formality, no surname, just ‘I’m Pamela.’ It was clear she intended being on first name terms. As if to explain the woman’s behaviour, she said, ‘Your mummy has been really worried.’

  Mummy!

  Then she added as she gently brushed a wisp of hair from Lucy’s eyes with a single finger, ‘We all have.’

  Lucy smiled weakly. ‘Hi,’ she said almost imperceptibly. She looked steadily at the nurse. She reckoned she would be about the same age as herself, around the twenty-nine mark. The other lady was probably about the same, or possibly a little older.

  ‘You know, when you smile, you light up the whole room,’ Nurse Lever stated. ‘I can see you bringing some cheer into our gloomy lives. It’s moments like this that make my job really worthwhile.’

  ‘And I’m Doctor Murray,’ the man said, obviously deciding it was time he took over the conversation, what there was of it. He needed to get everybody away from the patient so that he could go about his work uninterrupted.

  ‘We’re going to let you rest now for a while, young lady. Nurse Lever will bring you some soup in a while. Then we can disconnect you from all your tubes.’

  Young lady? Lucy thought that he couldn’t have been much older than she was. She smiled again, rather more feebly this time, closing her eyes briefly and then opening them again. She was feeling tired already and she had only been awake five minutes.

  ‘Your heart has got to get used to working harder again,’ Dr. Murray said, as if reading her thoughts. He took hold of Lucy’s wrist and concentrated for a while. Then, having checked her pulse, he continued. ‘Just think of yourself as an astronaut who has been weightless for a month or more. Now you have to get used to gravity again. Even sitting up will seem hard work for a short while, but you’ll soon recover now.’ He put her arm gently back at her side and patted her hand. ‘I’ll be back to check on you in a short while.’ He placed his hand on the woman’s shoulder, saying nothing, but meaning that she should leave also. They all departed through a light grey, glass-panelled door that faced the bed.

  A minute later Lucy lay alone, watching the drip, drip, drip of the saline as heavy weights pulled at her eyelids.

  CHAPTER TWO

  She must have nodded off. There had been no dreams. Her heart had stopped racing and she was breathing more steadily now. She felt cooler than before; a refreshing breeze was blowing air gently over her face. Slowly, she lifted her eyes and focussed them once more, only to see that she was entirely alone in a quiet room. While she had slept, someone had placed a fan on the cabinet beside the bed, or at least she thought someone had. She hadn’t noticed it there before. Across from the bed was the door with a glass panel that allowed hospital personnel to see into the room. It was closed. A nurse passed by and glanced in, and then another, and then a passage of words rumbled incoherently as they got further away.

  On the right side of the room a window looked out to somewhere beyond her field of vision, but through the open vertical blind she could see a cloudy, blue sky. The mere sight of the world beyond the walls released a feeling of overwhelming gratitude to be alive. She almost let out a sob of relief. Turning her face to the cool fanned air, she breathed it in and out slowly. Yes, it was good to be alive!

  Gradually, she returned to the task of examining her surroundings. A single chair was situated to the left side of the bed and a light green curtain was tucked behind the single drawer cabinet that stood to the right. On the cabinet, a bowl of soup stood next to the fan. A spoon lay beside it. The contents of the bowl were still steaming so it couldn’t have been there long. She looked down at her arm again. How long had she been asleep? Five weeks? Could her arm go so thin in such a short length of time?

  She didn’t have time to consider before Nurse Lever appeared outside the door again. She bustled in busily, carrying a portable bed table. ‘You’re looking better every minute,’ she said, and then carried on telling Lucy just how everyone had been so worried about her; and how now they could all stop worrying because Lucy was fine and getting better after all this time; and how Mrs. Lockhart had been so worried; and how Doctor Murray was the best doctor in the world, and had taken care of Mrs. Lockhart as well as Lucy. Still talking, she unfolded the legs of the device and placed it across the front of her patient. ‘You had forty winks,’ she said smiling. ‘Your colour is returning already.’ She helped Lucy sit up a little straighter, plumping one of the pillows so that it would support her back, and then placed the bowl of soup on the table and handed her the spoon. Gingerly, her hand trembling slightly with the effort, Lucy scooped up the first spoonful of golden liquid and put it to her lips. All the time, with nurse Lever’s voice in the background like the music and chatter from a familiar radio, she was looking at what she could see of her body. She regarded the shape of her arm and her hand. They looked totally unfamiliar, but she carried on scooping the liquid with it all the same. The soup tasted salty, but it was good. Nurse Lever just stood and supervised, still chatting incessantly, paper napkin at the ready, dabbing at Lucy’s chin occasionally as the odd dribble of warm liquid escaped from her lips, and talking about the soup as enthusiastically as if she had made it herself. Lucy didn’t speak until she’d eaten her fill. She leaned back on her pillows and, sensing that Nurse Lever was about to take a breath, said, ‘Thank you.’

  Nurse Lever paused from speaking ever so slightly, a faint look of surprise on her face, though Lucy wasn’t sure why. Then she continued talking, more slowly at first, as if trying to recover her train of thought and, then as she gained momentum, got up to full talking speed again.

  Feeling warmer now, Lucy closed her eyes again as the nurse gently wiped her mouth with the napkin and took the table and its contents away, her voice fading into the distance with every step like an express locomotive rattling away on a long empty track in the quiet countryside. A moment or two later Lucy heard the door close and the room became silent once more exc
ept for the cool, rushing sound of air wafting from the slowly rotating fan.

  She was alone again but she was no longer afraid. The feeling of relief at being alive was still washing over her. And besides, she was used to being alone. However, despite feeling safe, she was puzzled. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t remember anything that would help sort it out in her mind. In fact, Doctor Murray had started the ball rolling by asking what her name was and how old she was. She just couldn’t remember, and what the people at her bedside had said just seemed to confuse her even more. Without exception, they had been complete strangers. And why were they talking to her as if she were a child? She opened her eyes and lifted both her hands again, turning them over and regarding them closely. Then she looked down at her chest. There was nothing there. With her left hand she pulled the nightgown away from her neck and peered down inside. She shook her head in disbelief. How old are you? The words rang in her mind. Her breasts had hardly started to develop. At first she had suspected that the people in the ward had been under an illusion and that perhaps they had got her mixed up with another patient. But now, looking at herself, or what she could see up to now, it appeared that she was young! She shook her head. No, she must have withered away whilst she was in a coma. There was no other explanation.

  When Doctor Murray came into the room only a few minutes after Nurse Lever had left, his first words were,

  ‘Can you tell me what your name is?’

  Here we go again. What is my name, she thought. She shook her head. ‘You called me Lucy?’