Angela

Julie was on her way to work when the red car came careering around the corner, lost control and slammed into her bike. She saw the wild-eyed stare of the driver as he fought the wheel, the tree trunk just before she slammed into it and then nothing. No hurt, no pain, no stars, only darkness deeper than the darkest night.

The car sped off leaving Julie’s broken and comatose body lying in a crumpled heap at the base of the tree. A passer-by dialled 999 and waited helpless, unable to do anything more for the injured woman. The ambulance and the police car arrived twenty minutes later and while the police questioned the witness, the ambulance, with Julie now inside, flew siren blaring to the local A & E.

Emergency operations were carried out to repair her injured body and stabilise her condition. But Julie, who lay in a deep coma, felt and knew nothing of the operations that saved her life. All she was aware of was a black velvety nothingness that surrounded and enfolded her in its dark embrace.

Six weeks later when she awoke from her coma she opened her eyes only to find that the darkness persisted; she was completely blind. The nurse called the doctors and there was a flurry of activity around her bed. They examined her, checked the original scans and sent her for new ones. The upshot of it all was that when she slammed head first into the tree the retinas of both eyes had become detached. The good news was that they could be surgically reattached; the bad news was that after a period of six weeks the odds for a successful outcome dropped from 98% to only 25%. Despite the odds Julie consented to the operation, hoping against hope that it would work, and if it didn’t – she shuddered inside – then she would just have to learn to live in a world full of darkness.

After the operation she was placed in a small room off the main ward and as she lay in the bed, her eyes swathed in bandage, she remained still and listened. Not that there was much to listen to; the only sounds were the squeak of the nurse’s shoes on the polished floor and what she imagined was the faint scratch of a pen on one of those charts that hung on the bottom of all hospital beds. This was followed by retreating footsteps, the sound of the door opening, the click as it closed and then in the silence she began to sob. Great gasping, gulping, miserable sobs of self-pity at her predicament. With the operation over and odds of 75% against, she now simply couldn’t believe that would ever see again.

Then a kindly voice said, ‘Things are never as bad as you think they are.’

So unexpected was the sound that Julie stopped in mid sob, ‘What? Who’s there?’

‘Angela, I’m in the bed opposite.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know there was anyone else in the room.’

‘Only me,’ said Angela.

She had a lovely cheerful voice, the kind of voice that Julie imagine belonged to someone who smiled a lot, and she sounded younger than herself; maybe in her early twenties, against her own late thirties.

‘It’s true you know,’ said Angela. ‘It is never as bad as you think.’

‘That’s all very well, but there’s a 75% chance I won’t regain my sight.’

‘No, think of it the other way around, there is a 25% chance that you will regain your sight.’

Julie still wasn’t convinced, but suddenly she felt tired, so she mumbled, ‘Sounds better that way,’ and drifted off to sleep.

The next morning she was barely awake when Angela called out, ‘Good morning sleepy head, it’s a beautiful day, the sky is blue and the sun is shining.’

‘What? How?’ she asked.

‘I can see out of the window from here.’

You might have thought that Angela describing the scene outside the window would have upset Julie, but it didn’t. She wanted to know more. ‘What else, what else?’ she asked.

‘The window overlooks a garden and a path lined on either side with beautiful flowers leads to a circle of crazy paving with a bird table in the centre…’

At this point Angela broke off as the door opened and a nurse came to check on them, after the nurse left the orderly came around with the breakfasts and an embarrassed Julie was hand fed her boiled egg. It wasn’t until after breakfast that they had the time to talk again and it was then that Julie realised she had been so wrapped up in her own troubles the night before that she had failed to ask Angela why she was in hospital.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Angela, when she asked. ‘I missed the top step, fell down the stairs and broke my leg in so many places that they have had to insert steel pins.’

‘That must have been painful.’

‘Yes it was, but stupid too. In the future I’ll take care where I put my feet.’

They chatted for the rest of the day and no further mention was made of garden. But from then on, each morning Angela would describe the garden and the different birds, bees and butterflies that appeared. The pictures that she painted were so vivid that Julie couldn’t wait for her bandages to come off so that she could see it for herself.

Then one afternoon Angela came over, sat on the edge of the bed and told Julie she was being discharged,

‘When?’ Julie asked.

‘The taxi is picking me up in an hour.’

They spent the next half hour chatting, then hugged, exchanged addresses and said goodbye.

The next day the doctors removed the bandages and Julie could see, not very well, just the dim shapes of the doctor and the nurse, but she could see. Tests were done, lights were shone in her eyes and the bandages were replaced. The following day the process was repeated and this time her vision was a little better. Then on the third day the bandages were removed for the last time and Julie looked around. There were only two beds in the room her own and the one that Angela had occupied. There was no window. ‘Nurse where is the window?’

‘Which window would that be, dear?’ asked the nurse.

‘The one with the garden, the one Angela used to describe each day.’

‘Ah, that window. The garden Angela describe to you was in her mind. Angela has been totally blind since the age of six.

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