The Stuff of Legend
an excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

It was the turn of the millennium and Eva was going out with Elvis.
At least, this was the thought that swam around in her brain as she gradually climbed out of her sleepy state and lifted herself into consciousness. Her eyes gingerly began to adjust to the fluorescent strip lighting above her head that was humming self-righteously, unaware of the harshness of the illumination that it was carelessly brandishing throughout the room. A sterile smell crept into her nostrils and attempted to cleanse her olfactory using miniscule airborne particles of bleach. Eva’s eyes slid to the left and right, blearily surveying seven other high-rise steel beds with lifeless bedding on top of them in. Some beds contained women like her, in varying stages of consciousness, but none of them were talking or even aware of her. There was an eerie sense of silence in the small ward, as though whatever had happened to all of them had also made them mute.
As she shifted on her thin mattress, she became aware of three things. One was that her mouth tasted bitterly like a cat’s backside and her tongue was lined with a thick layer of sleepy mucus. The combination of this with the smell of bleach made her feel like drinking an entire ocean’s worth of water. Secondly, she had a dull ache deep down below her stomach, which felt like a fist tightening around her organs and squeezing them incredibly hard every time that she moved. As well as the pain, this gave her the overwhelming sensation that she needed to pee, despite the dehydration evident in her mouth, Finally, she realised that it had actually been several years after the turn of the millennium when she was going out with Elvis.
‘Your mum’s just popped out to get something to eat,’ a nurse announced, having snuck up next to Eva’s bed. She gesticulated to the empty plastic orange chair near her knees and smiled emotionlessly.
Eva frowned. ‘My mum?’
The nurse nodded affirmatively. ‘She arrived about half an hour after you did and has been here ever since, waiting for you to wake up.’ Eva was on the verge of protesting her confusion further, but the nurse ploughed on, asking, ‘How do you feel? Would you like a little cup of water?’
Ignoring the increasingly condescending tone, she replied, ‘A little bit groggy and yes please.’
Responsively, the nurse picked up a plastic cup from the shelf next to the bed and held it in front of Eva’s face, poking the luminous yellow straw invasively into her mouth. Eva lifted her eyes with scathing disdain to the nurse’s and plucked the cup from her hands, taking a large gulp of the not-so-fresh water whilst holding the straw off to one side. Before their tête-à-tête could progress any further, Eva noticed her mother walking through the swing doors to the left side of the wing. She walked towards the bed, obviously lost in thought, and Eva was struck by how old she suddenly appeared. Her shoulders seemed more hunched than usual, her gait more laboured, as though every joint involved in the process was completely protesting against the action. Her usually perfectly groomed hair hung lifelessly about her face; the grey hairs that had escaped from the honeyed blonde hair dye seemed to pick out each line that was only too visibly etched across her face. Her brow was strewn with them, each one speaking of a new worry and belonging to an individual fear.
As the nurse strapped a blood pressure gauge around Eva’s bicep, she called out, ‘You’ll be glad to know she’s wide awake, Mrs Wilson.’
Eva could see her mother’s breath physically catch in the back of her throat as she rushed mindlessly to her daughter’s side and seized her hand. Wordlessly, she used her free hand to cup Eva’s cheek, her thumb gently rubbing circles along the side of her face. Her eyes twinkled with the threat of an oncoming flood and her mouth formed into two tight lines stretched across her face, curving into a smile of unabated relief. Eva returned the smile in a manner that she hoped would convey her strength and smooth out some of the lines of worry so apparent on her mother’s face.
‘Oh darling, I’m so sorry.’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper, unable to raise any further in case it sent the tears cascading to freedom.
Eva squeezed the rougher older hand holding onto her own. She closed her eyes momentarily, absorbing the many reasons that her mother was so candidly apologising to her. She was too exhausted to be as emotional as her mother, but her brain throbbed from the sudden harsh realisation of her position. She couldn’t allow herself to think past the current moment, to consider what her life would mean once she left that hospital bed, but she could see it all in the distance, like an opposing army waiting on a hilltop to mount its attack. For now she would just have to keep it at bay, until she had the strength to forge a counterattack. When she reopened her eyes, Eva noticed that one single tear had escaped its prison and was slipping slowly along her mother’s cheek.
‘Mum, I’m so sorry for scaring you.’ The guilt began to rise and take the place of any physical pain nestling inside her as the tear plopped onto the threadbare white sheet.
Letting go of her cheek, her mum shook her head vehemently. ‘Don’t be ridiculous Eva. If you hadn’t have phoned me you could have bled to death on that bathroom floor. I just wish...’ She trailed off, trying to curb the million and one questions that had been mounting since she had received the terrified phone call from her daughter. Her instinct for organisation had taken charge and she had called an ambulance to collect Eva from her solitary flat, instructing them to break down the door. After that, her rationality had disappeared and her stomach had become an icy cold pit with the fear she had cultivated from the unknown and the suddenness of the situation. Looking at Eva now, pale but animated, she had to content herself with the fact that there would be plenty of time to thaw out the frost of fear. ‘I just wish I could have been here sooner.’
Looking down at their entwined hands, Eva was struck by how similar their fingers were; so long and slender that people always said things about what wonderful pianist’s hands they had, but as a girl Eva had just been thoroughly annoyed by the fact that her bony fingers were always too slim to wear the chunky silver rings that she had always wanted. Now they were the fingers of two women gripping on to each other for salvation and for forgiveness.
‘Have you spoken to Dad?’
Her mother perched on the edge of the uncomfortable bed, her expensively tailored trousers looking completely out of place, stroking Eva’s hair away from her face. ‘Of course. I left him a message telling him where we are and I’m sure that he’ll be here as soon as he can.’
Eva nodded. Her father may have been two years shy of retirement, but that hadn’t reduced his workload or slowed his work rate down. In fact, it was almost as though he was aware of the time ticking away and was consequently racing to get everything finished before he put his feet up for the rest of his life. As a result, he had increasingly been stuck in meetings over the last few years, focusing his efforts on leaving behind him a legacy more than anything else. She couldn’t help regretting the fact that as soon as he got out of whatever it was that he was doing this afternoon, he would receive the hysterical voicemail from his wife screaming all sorts of possibilities about her health down the phone and putting him into a blind panic, especially when everything was over now.
‘How long do I have to stay here for?’
Her mother shrugged minutely. ‘I haven’t spoken with the nurses recently, so I wouldn’t like to say for sure, but since you seem to be so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I’m sure that we can get you home in time for supper.’
Eva peered curiously at her mother. After a moment or two, she finally asked, ‘Am I coming home with you?’
‘Of course,’ snipped her mother with the air of officiousness that Eva was more accustomed to. ‘You don’t think I’d abandon you to look after yourself, do you?’
It was Eva’s turn to shrug. ‘I wouldn’t think you were abandoning me.’
‘Enough of that nonsense. We’ll wait for your father to arrive and then we’ll get you discharged from this odious place.’ Despite the rollercoaster of emotions that she had experienced throughout the day, she couldn’t help but add as an afterthought, ‘You know, I’m honestly not surprised that the national health service is in such a crisis. This place is certainly testament to the fact that the left hand doesn’t have the faintest idea what the right’s doing.’
Eva couldn’t help but break out into a genuine smile at her mother’s unconscious conservative loyalty, which even in the most fraught of situations, still seemed to prevail, as though a change of administration was always the answer to any problem she encountered. Her mother probably even thought that it was Tony Blair’s fault that Eva was in hospital in the first place. Her smile melted away and her gaze fell to the empty bed sitting opposite her in the ward.
At last, and with every grain of strength left in her body, Eva found herself asking the one question that had been circulating in her brain, but that felt like it stung her mouth to utter.
‘Can I see the baby Mum?’
‘No darling. The baby’s gone,’ she replied shaking her head dimly.