Cold.
Unaware of
almost every part of her body, not yet feeling the pain that would soon seep
through her like some slow acting poison, all she felt was searing, frightening
cold. Her body tightened, as though trying to move less to conserve what little
heat it had, but the cold pierced her, making even her fast, raspy breaths burn
in her chest. Her fingers were aching with the overwhelming chill and her legs,
held in place by the manacles she had been put in, felt like old rusty hinges
if she even attempted to alter their position. The cold was already inside her
brain, slowing her thoughts and muting the pain that would inevitably kill her.
Strangely,
even though she had been left outside for such a dangerous amount of time, and
even in her clogged mind she knew that death was close, her consciousness was
quietly coming back to her. Awareness tugged at the corners of her brain,
forcing her to move, trying to push an empty, hollow croak from deep inside her
belly up through her already raw throat, and although no sound would come, part
of her was trying. Another part despaired, seeing the darkness in the corner of
her vision, feeling her own stomach spasm violently. She was sensitive to the
fact that at some point, she had been sick, but her senses were so dulled that
she could no longer smell its stench or feel the wetness upon her skin as she
had when it had first happened.
She didn’t know where she was. She knew that
it had been a long and painful struggle to get here, and that the suffering she
had endured would be all over the news when she was found. In some deep and
quiet part of her mind, she thought of her parents, of what it would be like
for them to know exactly what had happened to her. She didn’t want that, but
the voice in her mind was so quiet, so very far away, that it wasn’t long
before she forgot it had spoken at all.
Slowly, and
to her immense surprise, her body was taken over by pain. Every inch of her
body began to ache, not only with the disfiguring cold, but with the multitude
of injuries that she had sustained over the course of her murder. She felt the
low, dark pain of her broken arm, the splintered bone just visible under the
waxy skin. Her body heaved forward, overcome with the agony of death and she
closed her eyes, willing it to be over now. This was the first time she had
entertained the thought, but now it danced before her eyes, light at the end of
the darkest tunnel. Surely it wouldn’t be long now.
Each time
her body lurched forward in its death throes, a new wave of pain overcame her,
a new memory of what had happened to bring her here. She felt betrayed;
deceived by a world and by people she thought would protect her. She was so
young, not even begun her life, and here she was dying before her very eyes.
The death she was praying for seemed to come more quickly, and panic rose in
her. She did not want this. She never had. The consciousness that had been
finding its way back to her now frightened her in its clarity. She was not
finished. She couldn’t be.
She heard
her own breath forcing its way through her lungs and her beaten body,
struggling to stay awake. The pain was fading now, receding almost as quickly
as it had thrown itself upon her. Her hair was wet, plastered against her
alabaster cheek, almost frozen to her skin. A sob heaved in her chest,
remembering how she had loved her hair once, how important it had been. Now it
was the only sensation she had, her tangled hair pushed against her to remind
her that although she was still alive, she wouldn’t be for much longer.
An alarm
began to ring in her mind, urgent and loud and her consciousness laughed at the
absurdity of that, that her brain had chosen the last sound it ever heard to be
an alarm, what sounded to her like an air-raid siren. It rose and fell, terrifying,
the call of death. Her tired body ached and began to fit. She could hear the
snow crumbling underneath her face as she convulsed, and she felt renewed pain
as she broken bones tried to move as quickly as her brain was telling them to.
She cried then, deep inside her mind, cried in her last moments as death
reached forward to take her from her unendurable suffering. It was too much. It
was always going to be too much. With one final cry, she closed her eyes and
did what she never believed she would do. She succumbed.
When they found her, there was no
great fanfare, barely any sound to accompany the discovery of the girl they had
traveled so far to find. There was a gentle crunch of snow under the thick
boots of the young policeman as he rounded the corner. He looked, as he had
with every other mass of snow he had looked at since they arrived, swept his
eyes over the scene and saw nothing. He sighed. He began to walk, tragically
slowly, to where she lay, even though he of course did not know. He did not
know he was inches away from the discovery that would change his life, alter
his career, and haunt him for the rest of his days. He perhaps would never have
known, never have taken those last few steps to a point where she was in view,
but it was at that moment that she uttered her final cry, her acceptance of
death. He whipped his head around, trying to locate the brief and quiet noise.
He began to run, and it was seconds before he stumbled, almost literally upon
her twisted body. He exhaled, frightened hot air creating a cloud before his
eyes.
“Jesus,”
He knelt
down, pulling at the thick padded gloves upon his hands. When they would not
easily slide off his fingers, he bit them, yanking hard between his teeth until
the hand came free. Not pausing, he pulled off the second glove and threw them both
into the snow.
“I’ve found
her! Get an ambulance!! I found her!” his voice rose to a cackle, and he heard
the snow around him being trampled as his colleagues rushed to the sound of his
voice. He pushed his fingers into the waxy, slightly wet hollow of her neck,
feeling desperately for a pulse, but there was none. Fear flushed through him;
he had heard her cry out, she had to be alive.
He leaned
her as flat he could with her broken bones and chained hands and feet, and
began to methodically pump on her naked chest. He felt her ribs crack
underneath him, a wet, sickening sound, but he did not relent. Every few beats,
he would lean forwards and breathe his own hot air into her cold mouth, willing
her to breathe. Eventually, another policeman knelt beside him, and breathed
into her mouth continuously. The cold made her skin difficult to grip, but her
pumped on her beaten and bruised chest as much as he could. He reached to her
throat again. The pulse was there, barely there, and desperately slow, but she
was alive. He resumed his pumping until the ambulance crew arrived. They fought
for her hard, sending an electric shock through her chest within seconds of
arriving. As they lifted her to transfer her limp body to the waiting
helicopter, her heart stopped, and they once again knelt in the snow, fighting
to start her failing heart as precious seconds flew by. The policeman who had
found her watched silently, begging her to respond. After an agonising ten minutes,
they once again lifted her and ran as quickly as the monitors keeping her alive
would allow, to the waiting helicopter. The policeman stood and watched them
fly away, and he wished she lived, wished he had found her quickly enough,
wished with all his soul that he got the bastard who had done such sadistic
things to that young girl.
The slow,
unremitting beep filled her brain, the only sound that she could ever hear,
might ever hear again. She was dead, she had died in the cold, and the beep was
a sound that would accompany her through eternity.
Beep, beep, beep
Slowly, as
the pain that had encompassed her in the cold had come slowly, agony overcame
her. She remembered only pain. There was a dull, sick feeling in her chest,
which ached as though it had been split open. Her head throbbed ominously, as
though waiting to haemorrhage at any moment, and her eyes would not open. This
could not be heaven. This was worse than anything she had experienced in life.
Beep, beep, beep
Suddenly, with a cacophonous
roar, thousands of other sounds assaulted her ears. There was a hum of noise
she could not identify, a dull, metallic drone that hovered in the background
of her consciousness, screaming for identification, but she had none. She heard
voices; they were far away and sounded as though they were under water. She
heard the sounds, but no words, and her brain howled, trying to desperately
make sense of what was happening. The pain rose inside her, increasing as her
panic did. Her blindness was terrifying, she was trying to open her eyes, but
nothing would happen. She wanted to see where she had come. Suddenly there was
a sound beside her, and she felt contact on her skin. Something had grabbed her
hand, but she had neither the strength nor the will to pull herself away. She
tried to cry out, but her throat felt blocked, as though someone had deigned
she would be both blinded and silent forever. This time, as the fear rose, she
let it overcome her, and she fell into oblivion, a sweet dark reprieve from the
terror that threatened her.
“Alisa?
Alisa, can you hear me? I want you to blink if you can hear me.”
This was
easy. The voice was so warm, so reassuring, and yet authoritarian. Her body
responded before her brain had a chance to remember what it was trying to
escape from, what had happened to her before. She wasn’t even aware that she had blinked.
“That’s
good. Do you know where you are? I want you to blink once for yes, and twice
for no.”
She did not
know. She did not want to know. She could still hear the relentless beeping, the
metallic hum and the fear was seeping back into her veins quickly, reminding
her of every moment of terror.
“Alisa, you
haven’t answered my question. Do you know where you are? Blink once for yes,
and twice for no.”
Her eyes
were open wide now, and she saw for the first time where she was. Directly in
front of her was nothing, just enveloping whiteness tinted with garish yellow.
She could see nothing else, no source of this voice demanding information, and
somewhere in the back of her brain was a dark memory of the last time she had
been in a situation like this, and how it had ended. Was she still there? Had
she not even escaped in death?
“Ok, Alisa,
because you haven’t answered me, I’m going to assumed you don’t know. You’re in
a hospital in North London . You have been here
for the past three months. You were very, very sick when you got here, but
you’re going to be ok. For the most part. You are safe here, I promise. Do you
understand me? Blink once if you do.”
She
blinked. As the voice had been talking, she’d swivelled her eyes around the
room, and relief had poured over her. She’d seen medical equipment, posters,
and a chair, but not much else. Her movement was severely hindered, and she
couldn't understand why. The pain was still there, worse than ever before,
worse than when she had been dying in the cold.
“My name is
Doctor Aidan Willis. I've been treating you, and as I say, you haven’t been
well at all. Now, since you’re conscious, and you’re breathing on your own, I'm
going to remove your breathing tube soon. But you won’t be able to speak for a
little while, and I have to warn you, breathing will be painful. When you were
first brought in, your heart stopped several times, and we had to cut your
chest open and manually make your heart move. Not only that, the policeman who
saved your life broke your ribs as he performed CPR, and your body hasn’t been
in the best state to be knitting itself together as efficiently as it could.
But now you’re awake, this will all happen much more quickly.”
23.07.06 © Nicola Pearce
