10th March
Its hard to put all of this into words, but I need to try; I need to make sense of this ordeal. The days after the accident feel like a blurone endless white corridor, the antiseptic burn of the hospital ward, the constant drone of too-bright lights overhead. The man who caused the crash sped off and left me lying in the road. Now, I’m aching and feeble, stitches and swelling all along my side, and the doctors speak in clipped, worried tones. Michael, my husband, rarely lifts his eyes from the floor. And Margaret, my mother-in-law, has stepped into the void, running things so efficiently I barely have the strength to protest.
Today, the door creaked open and Margaret strode in, holding Leos hand tightly. She ushered him forwards, her lips stretched into a careful smile, and announced it would only be for a minutejust so the little one knows you’re alright. She stepped away, retreating to the window, but her presence filled the room.
Leo climbed carefully onto the bed beside me, trying his best not to disturb the tubes or the lump of my aching body beneath the blanket. He was far too solemn for a boy of five, as if he already knew he should whisper and not ask questions here. He handed me a bottle of orange juice, and I held it with trembling fingers, not thinking, only feeling the cold of the plastic against my palm.
Then he leaned in so close I could smell his hair, and with his little hand cupped over his mouth, he whispered, Grandma said you should drink this. But she told me not to say anything else.
Everything in me went still. The juice was too cold, the coloura glaring, artificial orangelooked nothing like the bottles from the hospital menu. Id thought I heard Michaels voice behind me, and when I looked, I saw him lingering in the doorway, eyes shadowed and silent. Margaret pretended to gaze at the grey sky outside, but I felt her attention burning right through me.
I forced a weak smile, pressed the bottle to my lips, and then, when Leo wasnt looking, let it rest on the bedspread. Moments later, as he clung to Margarets skirt, they left. I stared at the bottle for a long time. Something about itits glint, its taste, the feeling in my chestmade me suspicious. The doctors had warned me: absolutely nothing to eat or drink outside their care. With my wounds and the recent blood loss, anything unexpected could be dangerous.
The next morning, I asked the nurse gentlyno fuss, no scene at allto have the juice checked over. I just want to be certain, I said.
Evening came. The consultant returned, looking grave, and shut the door quietly. There were medications dissolved in the drink. The type used to thin bloodsafe enough for the average adult, but disastrous for someone in my battered state, with stitches still raw and wounds so recently tended to by the surgeons needles.
It made sense then. One sip could have set off unstoppable internal bleeding, right there in my hospital bed.
The doctor asked me, as gently as he could: Who gave this to you? I told him the truth.
He closed the folder slowly, then said: If youd drunk even half, I doubt youd have made it through the night.
I kept remembering Margarets voice, her firm questions to the doctors, her authoritative tone about my recovery. She knew about the risks, the warnings, the fresh scars. Yet she brought Leo in that day, gave him the bottle, and told him only to say so much.
That evening, when Michael came back with that familiar lost look on his face, I showed him the doctors report. He looked between the paper and me, as if he didnt know either of us. Mum said it was just juice to give you strength, he muttered, defeated.
I said nothing. I didnt need to. Because in that quiet, something inside me shiftedfor good. When I finally left St. Marys, I knew I wasnt just leaving as an injured woman. I was leaving as someone who would never allow herself to be so vulnerable again, not to Margaret, not to anyone.
