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Authors: Elizabeth Davies
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daughter. Then I realised it was not just exhaustion I was seeing etched in her every line: it was grief.
If I hadn’t felt like a dried-up flower left too long in the sun , I would have cried.
I must have made a small sound because she woke instantly, the transformation from deep slumber to alert awareness occurring in the blink of an eye. The old woman disappeared and she was the mother I knew once more, as her face creased into its familiar smile, relief and love radiating from her.
‘Thank God! You’re awake. Don’t move, I’ll get you some water.’
She rose stiffly out of her chair, stretching cramped legs and rotating one shoulder before pouring a glass of nectar sweetness: water had never tasted so good and I tried to gulp more , but she held the glass away from my lips.
‘Steady,’ she warned. ‘Take it slowly.’
I obeyed, sipping gratefully, life coming back into my parched body, my cotton mouth revelling in the cool water on my tongue.
‘How long?’ I croaked: my throat was raw and it hurt to speak.
‘You gave me such a fright, Gigi. Hilary had just gone and I was in the kitchen when I heard you scream, and when I ran in to see if you were alright you were on the floor and there was blood on your hands and face. And on your neck. But don’t worry, you’re okay now,’ she added, almost as an afterthought.
I remembered blood. I remembered lots of blood and gradually the memory of what I had done flowed back into my mind, sickening me. I had killed a man . I had stabbed him and watched the life drain out of him and I had done nothing to help.
The prick of tears hurt my eyes and I tried not to cry.
‘I don’t know what you caught yourself on when you fell; it must have been the chair. You cut your lip but there was an awful lot of blood for such a small cut.’
I recalled Wil’s backhand slap across my face and I nodded slowly. That would have to be the explanation: I couldn’t tell my mother the truth: she would never believe me. It was bad enough for her to witness my body inexorably failing in front of her eyes. I didn’t want her to think my mind was going, too. She had enough to deal with, and besides, the story was preposterous. How could she accept such a thing? I wasn’t sure Ianto was one hundred per cent convinced I wasn’t going insane and he had seen so much more than my mother.
I lifted my hand and she answered the unspoken question.
‘I called Hilary on her mobile and she came straight back. You were in so much pain,’ she shuddered at the memory. ‘The tablets weren’t working and I had given you two, then Hilary said she would put you on a morphine drip, so that’s what she did.’ My mother smiled, trying to lighten the mood. ‘For such a skinny thing you weigh a ton. It took the both of us to lift you onto the bed.’
I gazed at her mournfully, so immensely sorry she had to deal with the effects of my ‘time travelling,’ as well as the problems the tumour itself caused. I was under no illusion my journeys into the past caused the debilitating headaches and I wished with all my heart my mother didn’t have to witness it. But as the time travel was purely involuntary, I didn’t see there was anything I could do to prevent it. I didn’t even know if I wanted to prevent it. Going back in time, seeing Roman, the man I loved, was the only good thing left in my life (apart from my family). It was the one time in this miserable existence of mine that I felt like me – no slurred speech, no muscle weakness, no problems with my memory. No pain.
It if wasn’t for the all-encompassing agony in my head when I returned from one of my sojourns to the past, and the effect on my parents and Ianto when they saw that pain, I would gratefully time travel every day.
As it was, I didn’t think my body could take that kind of abuse on a daily basis. Each time I returned there was a part of me that didn’t function as well as it did before. Whether it was the headaches,
If I hadn’t felt like a dried-up flower left too long in the sun , I would have cried.
I must have made a small sound because she woke instantly, the transformation from deep slumber to alert awareness occurring in the blink of an eye. The old woman disappeared and she was the mother I knew once more, as her face creased into its familiar smile, relief and love radiating from her.
‘Thank God! You’re awake. Don’t move, I’ll get you some water.’
She rose stiffly out of her chair, stretching cramped legs and rotating one shoulder before pouring a glass of nectar sweetness: water had never tasted so good and I tried to gulp more , but she held the glass away from my lips.
‘Steady,’ she warned. ‘Take it slowly.’
I obeyed, sipping gratefully, life coming back into my parched body, my cotton mouth revelling in the cool water on my tongue.
‘How long?’ I croaked: my throat was raw and it hurt to speak.
‘You gave me such a fright, Gigi. Hilary had just gone and I was in the kitchen when I heard you scream, and when I ran in to see if you were alright you were on the floor and there was blood on your hands and face. And on your neck. But don’t worry, you’re okay now,’ she added, almost as an afterthought.
I remembered blood. I remembered lots of blood and gradually the memory of what I had done flowed back into my mind, sickening me. I had killed a man . I had stabbed him and watched the life drain out of him and I had done nothing to help.
The prick of tears hurt my eyes and I tried not to cry.
‘I don’t know what you caught yourself on when you fell; it must have been the chair. You cut your lip but there was an awful lot of blood for such a small cut.’
I recalled Wil’s backhand slap across my face and I nodded slowly. That would have to be the explanation: I couldn’t tell my mother the truth: she would never believe me. It was bad enough for her to witness my body inexorably failing in front of her eyes. I didn’t want her to think my mind was going, too. She had enough to deal with, and besides, the story was preposterous. How could she accept such a thing? I wasn’t sure Ianto was one hundred per cent convinced I wasn’t going insane and he had seen so much more than my mother.
I lifted my hand and she answered the unspoken question.
‘I called Hilary on her mobile and she came straight back. You were in so much pain,’ she shuddered at the memory. ‘The tablets weren’t working and I had given you two, then Hilary said she would put you on a morphine drip, so that’s what she did.’ My mother smiled, trying to lighten the mood. ‘For such a skinny thing you weigh a ton. It took the both of us to lift you onto the bed.’
I gazed at her mournfully, so immensely sorry she had to deal with the effects of my ‘time travelling,’ as well as the problems the tumour itself caused. I was under no illusion my journeys into the past caused the debilitating headaches and I wished with all my heart my mother didn’t have to witness it. But as the time travel was purely involuntary, I didn’t see there was anything I could do to prevent it. I didn’t even know if I wanted to prevent it. Going back in time, seeing Roman, the man I loved, was the only good thing left in my life (apart from my family). It was the one time in this miserable existence of mine that I felt like me – no slurred speech, no muscle weakness, no problems with my memory. No pain.
It if wasn’t for the all-encompassing agony in my head when I returned from one of my sojourns to the past, and the effect on my parents and Ianto when they saw that pain, I would gratefully time travel every day.
As it was, I didn’t think my body could take that kind of abuse on a daily basis. Each time I returned there was a part of me that didn’t function as well as it did before. Whether it was the headaches,
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