Beautiful, Fragile

BEAUTIFUL, FRAGILE

MICHELLE MONTEBELLO

Beautiful, Fragile

Copyright © 2019 by Michelle Montebello

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, real people, and real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events or organisations is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Michelle Montebello is an Australian author and British English is used in this novel.

Editing by Lynne Stringer.

Cover by Kris Dallas Designs.

To Liz

For the memories we’ve made and the ones still to come

This book is for you.

Courage doesn’t always roar.

Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, I’ll try again tomorrow.

~ Mary Anne Radmacher

BLURB

Faith James is found on a remote beach in Spain with a head injury and no recollection of how she got there. Recovering in hospital, she is desperate to return to Sydney to the only life she knows.

But Faith has lost ten years of memories and nothing is how she remembers it.

Her husband, Will, arrives to collect her, and she is told she has three young children waiting at home in London. So begins the emotional journey to reclaim the life she's forgotten, learn how to be a wife and mother, and mend a broken marriage.

Can she save something she never knew she had? And are all memories worth fighting for, even the ones that hurt?

CONTENTS

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

A Note From The Author

Acknowledgements

Also by Michelle Montebello

About the Author

ONE

Long before I opened my eyes, I could hear their voices.

Low and gentle, they were words I struggled to comprehend, a language I didn’t understand. My fingertips brushed stiff sheets and my senses awakened.

But my eyes were too heavy to open, weighed down with fatigue and the dull ache of pain. So great was the heaviness that I allowed it to take me from the room and the voices faded.

I was hovering now, somewhere between consciousness and dreaming, like wisps of a cloud, so fragile I could disintegrate. I was on a beach, a wide-open stretch of sand and the blue beyond. I could smell the sharp tang of the sea and taste gritty granules in my mouth. The sun was blinding and I had to shield my eyes, for it hurt more than I could stand.

It was a beach I didn’t recognise, nor did I know how I’d got there. All I knew was that I was alone and scared, with not another soul for miles. I walked until I grew dizzy and my legs shook, until my body could not stand upright any longer, and I slid to the sand.

Then the voices returned and I’m not sure if it was minutes or hours later that I was pulled back to the room. There was a gentle hand on mine with a soft voice to match, patting me like a mother would a child.

‘Wake, now.’ The voice belonged to a female, her accent so thick I could only assume that was what she said.

Her soothing tone dragged me further from unconsciousness and I became aware, more than ever, of my surroundings. The inside of my mouth was parched. I could have drunk a swimming pool.

‘Bueno. That’s it. Open your eyes.’

I forced them open.

The eyes that stared back at me were deep brown and full of concern. They crinkled at the corners; not youthful, but kind and motherly.

‘There we go. Very good. I’ll get the doctor.’ Whoever she was disappeared from my bedside and I was alone.

The room was small and dark. Slivers of pale light were caught at the corners of the drawn curtains and a neat little desk with a chair and lamp sat opposite me. I was in a bed, dressed in a green gown, the sheets crisp and the pillow lumpy. When I looked down at my hands, I saw dried blood caked in my cuticles. A cannula was strapped to my skin, a needle stinging my vein as a tube ran upwards towards a bag filled with saline.

The smell of disinfectant. The thrum of a monitor.

My hand fluttered to my head and I felt layers of bandages there.

What happened to me?

There was little doubt I was in a hospital. And I’d been admitted with some sort of head injury. But how had I come to be here? I searched my brain for the answers although I could barely grasp an entire thought, just the edges of them, soft and shapeless.

Breathe, I told myself, for the panic rose up my throat. Just breathe.

Where was that woman with the accent?

A white clock on the opposite wall told me it was ten on the hour and obviously morning, for there was sunlight around the curtains. But I wasn’t sure what day it was.

If I stretched my memory back to the last thing I could remember, nothing came to mind except fragments. The Australian Space Agency. The research project I’d been working on. My apartment in Bondi. My mother and sister. All the things that made up my world, but I couldn’t extract a last memory from them.

I didn’t know what time I’d woken up that morning or what I’d had for breakfast. I didn’t know why I wasn’t at work or what incident had brought me here. Had I tripped or fallen down some stairs? Perhaps I’d been hit by a car.

The concentration was giving me a headache.

Where is that woman?

I closed my eyes and must have dozed off for I came to when she was at my bedside again, that lovely warm hand around my own.

‘Hola,’ she said in a gentle, sing-song voice.‘This is Doctor Gonzalez.’

I craned my neck for a better look and saw a man in a white coat standing next to her. His hair was thick and greying at the temples, his face friendly. The nurse moved away to collect a chart from the end of my bed. I heard her pen scratch against paper as the doctor took a small, thin torch from his coat pocket.

He shone it in my eyes, flicking the light back and forth. He wrapped a strap around my arm and pumped it, checking my blood pressure, then peered inside my ears and around the bandage on my head.

He relayed his findings back to the nurse in what I assumed was Spanish, and she nodded and wrote things down on a chart.

‘Where am I?’ My words came out as a croak.

Doctor Gonzalez looked down at me. In an equally thick accent, he said, ‘You are in the Hospital Santa Florentina del Puerto.’

I stared at him. ‘The where?’

‘The local hospital in the Port of Santa Florentina.’

I hadn’t the faintest clue what he was talking about.

‘Do you know where that is?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a small fishing village on the south-east coast of Spain, five hours from Madrid. You were found wandering on a remote beach with a head injury. A local fisherman brought you here.’

I was still trying to process what he’d first said. ‘I’m in Spain?’

‘The Hospital Santa Florentina del Puerto. It’s on the south-east coast of Spain,’ he repeated dully, as though that would make it more comprehensible. ‘Do you remember what happened to you? How you got the injury?’

I shook my head.

‘Can you tell me your full name?’

‘Faith Amelia James.’

‘And how old are you?’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Sydney, Australia.’ The nurse was writing excitedly on the chart.

‘Do you have any allergies to medication? We can give you pain relief now that you’re awake.’

‘I’m not allergic to anything.’

He turned and spoke to the nurse who made another note on the chart.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said for I was still confused. ‘Did you say I’m in Spain?’

‘Yes.’

‘What am I doing here?’

‘I was hoping you could tell me that.’

‘How long have I been in the hospital for?’ I asked.

‘Since early this morning. You’ve been in and out of consciousness the last couple of hours. We haven’t run a CT scan yet, but I’d like to get that done as soon as possible.’

I swallowed thickly, that panicked feeling returning. ‘Wait, no. I think I’m in the wrong place.’

‘Just rest now.’

‘You don’t understand,’ I said, trying to sit up. ‘I can’t be in Spain. I don’t remember coming here.’

‘Please lie back down.’ He was on his feet, pushing my shoulders gently towards the bed. The nurse came to assist.

‘Something’s happening to me. Please!’

Doctor Gonzalez conferred with the nurse, and I caught the words ‘CT scan’ and ‘pronto’. I laid my head back on the pillow and closed my eyes, tears leaking from the corners and running down my cheeks.

If what he said was true, I was a million miles from home, in a hospital with a head injury and no recollection of how I got here. Of how I’d ended up hurt and wandering a beach alone.

Had I travelled here with friends? If so, who were they? Where were they?

Doctor Gonzalez spoke gently to me in his thick accent. ‘It’s normal to feel confused after a concussion. Try not to worry. We’ll know more after we do some tests.’

He left my bedside.

The nurse’s name was Sister Antoinette Lopez.

She had lovely eyes and a calm bedside manner, patting my hand and speaking to me in her soft Spanish way while I alternated between fractured sleep and troubled wakefulness.

Later, after a dose of pain relief for my thumping headache, I tried a little of the lunch she wheeled in—rice with capsicum and tomatoes, and a potato tortilla Española.

While I ate, she told me that I was in the small intensive care unit on level three and not to worry. To be there was precautionary only and the wound to my head was not deep, just five stitches. If the tests came back clear, I’d likely be moved to the main ward to recover. It explained the dark, quiet room I was in and the privacy for which I was grateful, while I tried to work out what had happened to me.

I asked her if my handbag or any other belongings had been brought in by the fisherman.

‘I do not think so,’ she said with sympathy. ‘No purse, phone or passport. No luggage. I folded the clothes you were wearing and put them there for you.’ She pointed to a chair in the corner where a blue cotton dress lay folded next to brown sandals. They were the clothes of a stranger. I’d never seen them before.

‘The hospital reported your condition to the local police. They will stop by to speak with you later.’

‘The police?’

‘It’s procedure.’

‘How about the people I was travelling with?’ I asked. ‘Has anyone enquired about me? Are they waiting for me somewhere in the hospital?’

‘No one came in with you. No one has asked for you. You were alone.’

Alone?

‘I’d like to call my mother and sister in Australia,’ I said. ‘They’d know why I travelled here and who I came with. Could I please borrow a phone?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘But let’s have the scan first, then we make the call. Okay?’

I sighed deeply as Doctor Gonzalez stepped into the room.

‘Right,’ he said, clapping his hands. ‘Imaging is ready to take your scan now. Stay in the bed. We’ll wheel you over.’

It was just as well for I was too dizzy to walk anywhere.

The CT scan results were ‘unremarkable’, as Doctor Gonzalez put it when he strode into my room with a sheet of paper.

‘The neurologist checked your results. No intracranial bleeding or oedema of the brain, but you did sustain a grade three concussion. Unconsciousness, confusion, fatigue.’ He put down my results and went through the drill again, checking eyes, blood pressure, ears, head wound. ‘Any ringing in the ears or nausea?’

‘No, just a headache still and some dizziness.’

‘Sensitivity to light?’

A vision came to me of walking along a stretch of beach, the sun so bright in my eyes it was scalding. I blinked it away and shook my head. ‘No sensitivity at the moment.’

‘Good.’ He pulled a chair close to my bed and sat. ‘I’d like to talk to you more about your gaps in memory.’

‘Okay.’

‘It seems to me like you have some retrograde amnesia that’s affecting your episodic memory. That’s quite normal after a brain injury. It does not appear to be semantic or procedural at the moment.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Well, you can still remember how to eat, drink and talk. That’s procedural. And your speech and general knowledge of things seem unaffected. That’s semantic. But your episodic memory has been affected—your recollection of events. Of course, I’m not a neurologist. But that’s my observation.’

That surge of panic coursed through me once more.

‘Can you tell me your full name again?’

‘Faith Amelia James.’

‘How old are you?’

I was aware of Sister Lopez watching from her desk. ‘Twenty-five.’

‘And where are you from?’

‘Sydney, Australia.’

‘Not Great Britain?’

‘Great Britain?’

‘I detect an English accent.’

The comment perplexed me. ‘I’ve never been to Great Britain.’

He watched me intently. ‘What’s the date today, Faith?’

His question left a strange space in my head. ‘Um…’

‘The date, please.’

‘Saturday the seventh of March.’ Although I said the words, I didn’t quite believe them.

‘And the year?’

‘2009?’

‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

‘It’s 2009,’ I said with more conviction.

He pursed his lips. ‘Who is the current president of the United States of America?’

‘Barack Obama was recently elected.’ I was certain this time, for I had followed the coverage.

‘Barack Obama?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not Donald Trump?’

I screwed up my face. ‘Donald Trump? That guy from The Apprentice?’

He leant back in his chair and studied me. ‘Faith, do you have any idea why you came to Spain? A holiday, business trip, honeymoon? Do you have family here? Take your time, try to think.’

I did. I forced my brain to push through the fog and the headache and the confusion. I tried until the concentration made me nauseated. ‘No, I’m sorry. I have no idea.’

‘It’s just that the Port of Santa Florentina is very remote. It’s off the beaten track, as they say. There must have been a reason for you to come all the way down here.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Okay.’ He leant forward. ‘Let’s talk about the beach. Do you know why you were there?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think you could have been attacked? Your purse and passport didn’t come in with you.’

‘I don’t know. I could have been. I have no memory of coming here, nor of the plane ride or the hotel or the people I travelled with. It’s a blank.’ My voice shook and I sank deeper into the pillow, closing my eyes, trying to quell the onset of vertigo.

Doctor Gonzalez patted my bedside. ‘Try not to worry. With a grade three concussion, it is common for patients to forget some things.’

‘But will it come back to me?’

His look was one of uncertainty. ‘In most cases, patients remember although it can take time. In rare cases, they won’t remember at all. The brain is incredibly complex, especially when it comes to memory processing and recalling. I’m afraid all we can do is wait and see.’

His words did little to comfort me as I closed my eyes again and took an unsettled breath. Yes, I could eat and speak and I knew who I was, but I was missing major gaps in my memory. Gaps he wasn’t sure would return to me. Gaps that frightened me.

‘There is one more thing we need to do,’ he said. ‘We need to examine you for signs of sexual assault. The police will need this for their investigation.’

‘Oh,’ was all I could think to say. ‘Great.’

Like the CT scan, the physical examination was unremarkable. There were no signs of sexual assault or recent intercourse. Aside from the cut on my head, I had a black eye and bruising around my neck and right shoulder that Doctor Gonzalez thought was consistent with a seatbelt. He asked me further questions about my time in Spain, questions I couldn’t answer, questions that filled me with growing anxiety the more he persisted.

By the time the sun slipped below the horizon, I was unutterably exhausted. I laid in my hospital bed miles from home, feeling the dense weight of loneliness. I wanted to call my mother and sister, for I knew they would come and get me. They would make sense of it all, but when Sister Lopez brought the phone to my bedside, my mind went blank as to what their numbers were.

The phone and I stared at each other for several minutes.

‘Take your time,’ she said gently.

‘I just… I can’t recall the numbers.’ This was silly! I dialled them every day, knew them by heart.

‘Maybe it will help if you write them down first.’ Sister Lopez brought me a pen and paper.

I pulled the bed table across my lap and placed the paper down, pen poised, but nothing came to mind. I was hollow. It was so frustrating hot tears stung my eyes.

She put her hand over mine in that reassuring way of hers. ‘Try not to worry. A good night’s sleep will make everything clearer in the morning.’

‘What if I wake tomorrow and I still can’t remember?’ I asked, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

She smiled soothingly. ‘Then you will try again the next day and the day after that. Be patient, it will come to you.’

She went back to her desk to prepare her handover to the night nurse. Her shift had ended and I felt an unexplainable panic at the thought of her absence.

After she left, I picked at some dinner then fell into a troubled sleep. Dreams swam before my eyes, merging into greyness with no shape or purpose.

My head was a jumbled mess. My memories were on hold.

TWO

When Sister Lopez arrived the next morning, I’d already had breakfast and was sitting up.‘How did you sleep, cariño?’ she asked, placing her bag down on the table as the dour night nurse muttered goodbye.

‘Aside from being woken every three hours by that woman so she could shine a light in my eyes, fine.’

Sister Lopez chuckled. ‘The first seventy-two hours of a head injury are critical. We need to make sure you do not slip into a coma.’

‘I think I’m comatose from lack of sleep.’

She came over to check beneath my bandages and dressing and seemed satisfied with what she saw. ‘Muy bien. Your head is healing nicely. The stitches can come out in a week.’

‘Oh, that’s good news.’ Because they were already starting to tighten and itch.

‘Doctor also gave me orders to remove your cannula and catheter today.’

‘Do you think I could take a shower?’ I asked. I still had dirt and blood in my fingernails and I felt grimy all over, like I hadn’t showered in days. And perhaps I hadn’t.

‘Yes, of course. Let’s take it slow. There’s a chair in the shower for you to sit down on. And we can’t get your dressings wet.’

She removed the catheter, then the IV line from my vein, taping gauze across it. Her hands were nimble and practised. When she’d finished, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and she looped one arm around my waist. Slowly, I lowered my feet to the ground and felt the room sway.

‘Easy, cariño. Nice and slow.’

I took tiny, shuffled steps towards the bathroom, feeling a hundred years old. We passed the small window with the drawn curtains on the way.

‘Can I have a look outside?’

‘If you like, but not for long. Your eyes will be sensitive.’

She pulled the heavy curtains aside and I stepped towards the window. The morning was bright, sunlight streaming in as I squinted against it.

My room overlooked a small port filled with fishing trawlers. The water was blue and calm, hardly a breeze to ruffle it, and dotted along the headland were narrow villas in different colours. There weren’t many people around, just fishermen hauling great nets above the trawlers and a few cars rolling past at a sedate speed that would have had people blaring their horns in Sydney.

It was a charming, sleepy seaside village. Remote. That’s what Doctor Gonzalez had called it. Off the beaten track. What had drawn me here, then? What had pulled me from my life in Australia to this dormant little place on the other side of the world?

Sister Lopez closed the curtains and helped me the remainder of the way to the bathroom. When we got there, she turned on the light and ran the shower. While the water warmed, she helped me out of my hospital gown.

The room had finally righted itself and the swaying stopped. I felt increasingly confident on my feet as I stepped into the water. I didn’t use the seat. I stood, clinging to the support bar, letting rivets of water run down my sore, sunburnt skin. My shoulders and chest were mottled with purple bruises, and I was aching and stiff all over.

I also noticed, strangely, that I was fuller around my stomach and hips, as though I had put on a little weight overnight. My breasts and backside seemed changed too. Hardly was I one to be vain but it felt like gravity had taken hold.

It was me and yet, it wasn’t. I was different.

I pushed the familiar feeling of anxiety back down into my stomach and closed my eyes against the water. Sister Lopez helped wash me with soap then she shut off the taps. I stepped into her waiting towel and wrapped it around myself.

‘Are you all right for a moment, cariño?’ she asked. ‘I just want to get you a fresh gown.’

‘Yes, I’m okay.’

She bustled out and I stood in the swirling steam, patting the towel over myself. I was dying to brush my teeth and wash my hair, to spray on deodorant and have some of my belongings back, wherever they might be.

Waving the mist aside, I moved closer to the small mirror on the wall, wiping it dry with my towel.

I stared at my reflection, but I wasn’t sure who was staring back at me.

Beneath my bandages, my blonde hair had been cut short. Shorter than I’d ever had it. Short like someone had come in with scissors and cut it while I’d been sleeping.

I touched my face. It was sunburnt and bruised. There were fine lines near my eyes and mouth that I’d never seen before and yes, my breasts were different. Less pert. Something was wrong.

‘Sister Lopez,’ I called out, ‘I need you.’

She was at the doorway in an instant. ‘Are you okay? Are you feeling faint?’

‘What happened to me?’

She took my arm so I could lean on her. ‘You have a head injury, remember? You were found on the beach.’

‘No, I mean, I look different in the mirror. My face is different. And someone’s cut my hair. It’s usually long, almost to my bottom. I thought it was just tucked up in the bandage.’

Sister Lopez glared at the mirror as though it had caused us great offence. Then she looked uncomfortable, fussing with my towel, trying to dry me.

‘What year is it?’ I asked.

She avoided my eyes.

‘Sister Lopez?’

‘We should wait for Doctor Gonzalez.’

‘What year is it?’

She sighed deeply. ‘It’s 2019, cariño.’

‘2019?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not 2009?’

She shook her head sadly.

My body broke into a cold sweat. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Let me page the doctor.’

‘Ten years?’

She gave me a grim look. ‘Yes. It seems you may have forgotten the last ten years.’

If she hadn’t been holding me up, I would have sunk to the floor.

Doctor Gonzalez was back at my bedside an hour after Sister Lopez had paged him. In the time before he arrived, I cried, hyperventilated and studied my face and body obsessively in the mirror, inspecting every new line and curve.

Ten years had passed. Ten years! Not just a day here or a trip to Spain there. A decade. I wasn’t twenty-five anymore. I was thirty-five and somewhere along the way I’d cut my hair short, gathered lines around my eyes, my skinny little body had grown curves, and I’d ended up in the Mediterranean.

It put a new perspective on my presence here. Did I live in the Port of Santa Florentina? Were my mother and sister here too? Did I have a house, a job, a circle of friends?

When Doctor Gonzalez entered my room, I was fraught with anguish. Sister Lopez had a quiet word with him in Spanish and he nodded sagely. Then he came to sit on a chair beside me.

‘Sorry, Faith. I got caught up in another ward.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth yesterday? When I told you it was 2009, why didn’t you correct me? You should have told me I had a ten-year gap in my memory.’ My voice rose and shook. I was on the verge of tears again.

He nodded as though my questions were fair. ‘I didn’t want to frighten you. In most cases, head trauma patients regain their memory the following day. I was hoping you’d have some recollection by now.’

‘So what’s the actual date today?’

‘It’s the twenty-third of June 2019.’

I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the confusion, but when I opened them again, the good doctor still looked at me with irritating pity. ‘How can this be? I’m not even that injured,’ I complained. ‘I had a shower on my own this morning. Standing up.’

He smiled kindly. ‘You sustained a severe concussion, Faith. That was enough to cause a fracture in your memory.’

‘A fracture? I’d call it more than a bloody fracture.’

‘As I’ve said, I’m not a neurologist but yes, there is significant memory loss.’

‘The last ten years have been kicked clean out of my head!’

‘Try not to panic.’

‘That’s easy for you to say.’

The tears started to fall again, noiseless but no less powerful, as I contemplated the full extent of all that could have happened in a decade. My life as I knew it might not be the life I led today. The idea of it was so formidable, so frightening, that I started to shiver.

‘Let me give you something to relax you,’ Doctor Gonzalez said. ‘Just while we try to connect the dots. It will make you feel better.’

‘I don’t want a sedative. I want to go home,’ I cried.

‘I’d like you to stay in the ICU until we know more.’

He continued to talk about my recovery, but I could barely muster the energy for the conversation any longer. That feeling had returned where concentration fatigued me and my brain couldn’t process the imponderables.

‘Cognition is a delicate function for a head trauma patient,’ he went on. ‘Pushing yourself too hard will only set you back. We are dealing less with a physical injury now and more with a cognitive one. You’ll probably need rehabilitation at some point.’

‘I need to sleep now,’ I blurted.

‘Of course. Rest is the best thing for you.’

I didn’t notice him leave. My eyes had closed with a force too powerful to resist, and I dropped to sleep as swiftly as if I’d stepped off a cliff.

When I awoke, there were other