The sensible thing would be to contact the police and report what happened. There are more CCTVs than people in this country, so some must have captured images of him following me into the car park, if not the assault itself. But I don’t. Because nothing about what I’m going through right now could ever be described as sensible. Something tells me to stay quiet, for my own sake.
Mum is watching me from where she stands by the towel rail. Well, not watching. She stares ahead, not at me, but there’s no doubt she’s tracking me. There’s a crackling sound which I realise is the embers and smoke coming from her body. Delicate wisps float from her skin up to the ceiling. While I’m fixated on her, she holds up her hands like a saint in a Renaissance painting, and I can see they’re blistered and bleeding. Then she disappears.
I glance out of the open bathroom door at the spot by the wardrobe in my bedroom where, only four days ago, I sat with a rope tied around my neck. I don’t know the truth behind Laura’s motives for coming to the flat, but I am strangely grateful to her. Perhaps if she hadn’t killed me, I might never have seen Mum again. Despite the state she is in.
There’s about twenty centimetres of freezing water lying inside the bath now, along with the contents of half a dozen bags of ice I picked up from the corner shop in my only trip out today. I dip my hand under the surface and grimace. Good God, it’s as cold as the sea I died in. My thinking is that the shock of the cold water filling my lungs might take me where I need to go more swiftly than warm water. The faster I die, the faster I can learn the truth about the boy and Mum’s connection to him. Then Melissa can, fingers crossed, bring me back.
She has already refused to use the rope Laura insisted on, because she can’t watch me die like that. She has witnessed theaftermath of deaths by hanging and strangulation. One continues to haunt her, a nine-year-old trans boy who ended his life in his parents’ garage after online bullying.
Melissa slips into view in the bathroom doorway and I’m aware of her watching me. She’s asked me countless times if I’ve changed my mind. And she called me last night when Adrienne was asleep, to tell me she’s terrified that it won’t work and she can’t save my life. But I know that she will. It’s a gut instinct that I doubt will offer her much reassurance.
I consider telling her about the man who attacked me, but I don’t think she’d believe me. She already thinks I’m bordering on nuts with these hallucinations. Even with my facial injuries I don’t think she’ll accept someone was about to hurl me over the side of a car park. Besides, I don’t want to give her another excuse to back out of tonight.
Melissa has been here for the best part of an hour. She came straight from work, so she’s dressed in her paramedic uniform of green trousers, a polo shirt and steel-capped black boots. Laid out on the floor within easy reach is a defibrillator she brought with her, as she apparently doesn’t trust mine. She ought to know. I know those sharp, intermittent bursts of electricity might save my life, but I hate them nonetheless.
‘Did you smuggle that out of your ambulance?’ I ask.
‘And risk someone else’s life so you can die?’ she asks bitterly. ‘No. I borrowed it from one of the rigs in the repair shop.’
No sense in clarifying I was kidding. She also has with her a small hand drill and two glass vials of clear liquid. I’m about to ask what they contain, but she reads my mind. ‘Once you’re dead, it’s my problem and not yours.’
Her spikiness is no less than I deserve. I know I’ve become demanding and completely irrational. Her job is to save lives and I’m asking her to do the opposite with me. That’s a hell of a thingto wrap your head around. First the trauma of finding me dead in the water, then doing it all over again when she caught Laura killing me. The third time figures to be no less agonising, I know.
‘Have you said anything to Adrienne?’ I ask.
‘Oh, of course. I explained I was popping out to kill my ex-husband, and that she should keep the casserole simmering on a low heat because murder gives me an appetite.’ Her eyes are slits. If she didn’t still care about me, she’d have no trouble wishing me dead. ‘What the hell do you think?’
‘I think I should stop asking stupid questions.’
She examines her equipment for a second and then a third time. The defibrillators are charged. When she claps them together, the noise triggers something inside me and I recoil.
‘For fuck’s sake, Damon,’ she snaps. ‘Get over it and grow up.’
‘Sorry.’
She takes my hands in hers. I have never seen someone who typically oozes such confidence appear so concerned.
‘Are you sure?’ she says. ‘Are you absolutely sure this is what you want?’
‘One hundred per cent.’
‘Because it’d be so easy for me to accidentally fracture your ribs and cause internal bleeding or damage your internal organs. Then there’s the danger of hypoxic brain damage if I can’t bring you back quickly enough ...’
She winds down. We’ve been over and over it.
Melissa takes a deep breath and pulls me in towards her. Her skin is warm and smells reassuringly familiar: the earthy tones of the argan oil she uses to moisturise her face, the grapefruit conditioner for her hair. Even now, if I walk into my bathroom and inhale, I think I can smell her, and for the briefest of moments, it’s like she never left.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I love you.’
She doesn’t say anything but is the first to leave our embrace.
I slip off my socks and roll them into a ball, then pull off my top. I turn my back to her, a little embarrassed by my ever-thinner frame. I kneel on the bathmat as if to pray, then rest my forehead on the edge of the bath as Melissa secures cable ties around my wrists and ankles to ensure I can’t escape or accidentally hurt her.
Finally, I take three deep breaths and as I exhale the final one, I say, ‘Now.’
Melissa takes my head, gently at first, then thrusts it powerfully down into the water. Its iciness takes my breath away and I immediately swallow a mouthful. It slides down my throat and deep into my chest. It’s not salty like the seawater, but it’s equally unpleasant. I cough and splutter. My body’s reaction is primal, and I commence thrashing my head from side to side. But Melissa has a firm grip on me, she’s pinning me down, her knees now on the back of mine, her chest pressing heavily against my back. Her restraint skills are why other paramedics want to work shifts with her, particularly on weekend nights, when the drunk and injured are more prone to aggression.
‘Please don’t fight,’ she begs between sobs.
