A voice sounds out of nowhere. My thoughts are sluggish, as if I’m running under water. I try and try but I’m not getting anywhere.
‘Not stable. Eighty over sixty. And falling.’
Oh God, I’m still alive.
I move my legs, they respond, barely, but they respond. Light prowls its way into my eyes. I hear dogs barking, high pitched. They pant, their tags clatter.
‘You’ve been in a car accident.’
My face is numb, my thoughts vague, like dusty boxes in obscure and dark attic spaces. I know immediately something is amiss.
‘Oh my God, look at her head.’
A siren sounds, it stutters for a second, then turns into a steady torment.
I want to tell them…I open my mouth, my lips begin to form the words, but the burning sensation in my head becomes unbearable. My chest is on fire, and ringing in my left ear numbs the entire side of my face.
Let me die, I want to tell them. But the only sound I hear is of crude hands tearing fragile fabric.
‘Step back. Clear.’
My body explodes, jerks upward.
This isn’t part of the plan.
When I come to, my vision is blurred and hazy. I make out a woman in baby-blue scrubs, a nurse, slipping a plastic tube over my head and immediately two prongs hiss cold air into my nostrils.
She pumps a lever and the bed yanks upward, then another lever triggers a motor raising the headboard until my upper body is resting almost vertically.
My world becomes clearer. The nurse’s hair is in a ponytail and the pockets of her cardigan sag. I watch her dispose of tubing and wrappers and the closing of the trashcan’s metal lid sounds final, evoking a feeling I can’t quite place, a vague sense of loss, like a pickpocket making off with my loose change, disappearing into the crowd that is my strange memory.
A male voice sounds out of nowhere.
‘I need to place a central line.’
The overly gentle voice belongs to a man in a white coat. He talks to me as if I’m a child in need of comfort.
‘Just relax, you won’t feel a thing.’
Relax and I won’t feel a thing? Easy for him to say. I feel lost somehow, as if I’m in the middle of a blizzard, unable to decide which direction to turn. I lift my arms and pain shoots from my shoulder into my neck. I tell myself not to do that again anytime soon.
The white coat wipes the back of my hand with an alcohol wipe. It leaves an icy trail and pulls me further from my lulled state. I watch the doctor insert a long needle into my vein. A forgotten cotton wipe rests in the folds of the cotton waffle weave blanket, in its center a bright red bloody mark, like a scarlet letter.
There’s a spark of memory, it ignites but then fizzles, like a wet match. I refuse to be pulled away, I follow the crimson, attach myself to the memory that started out like a creak on the stairs, but then the monsters appear.
First I remember the darkness.
Then I remember the blood.
My baby. Oh God, Mia.
The blood lingers. There’s flashes of crimson exploding like lightning in the sky, one moment they’re illuminating everything around me, the next they are gone, bathing my world in darkness. Then the bloody images fade and vanish, leaving a black jittering line on the screen.
Squeaking rubber soles on linoleum circle me and I feel a pat on my shoulder.
This isn’t real. A random vision, just a vision. It doesn’t mean anything.
A nurse gently squeezes my shoulder and I open my eyes.
‘Mrs Paradise,’ the nurse’s voice is soft, almost apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, but I have orders to wake you every couple of hours.’
‘Blood,’ I say, and squint my eyes, attempting to force the image to return to me. ‘I don’t understand where all this blood’s coming from.’ Was that my voice? It can’t be mine, it sounds nothing like me.
‘Blood? What blood?’ The nurse looks at my immaculately taped central line. ‘Are you bleeding?’
I turn towards the window. It’s dark outside. The entire room appears in the window’s reflection, like an imprint, a not-quite true copy of reality.
‘Oh God,’ I say and my high-pitched voice sounds like a screeching microphone. ‘Where’s my daughter?’
She just cocks her head and then busies herself straightening the blanket. ‘Let me get the doctor for you,’ she says and leaves the room.
Further reading
A baby goes missing. But does her mother want her back?
Get ready for the next must-have on your reading list. Gone Girl meets The Girl on the Train in this stunning psychological thriller.
Click here to buy now.
MEET PC DONAL LYNCH
Irish Runaway. Insomniac. Functioning alcoholic.
Chilling, brutal, addictive – if you like Tim Weaver and James Oswald, you will LOVE James Nally.
Click here to buy now.
YOUR FAMILY OR YOUR LIFE?
Chris returns from his morning run to find his wife and children missing and a stranger in his kitchen. He’s told to run.
If he’s caught and killed, his family go free. If he escapes, they die.
Click here to buy now.
Angela Clarke
Angela Clarke is an author, columnist and playwright. She read English and European Literature at Essex University and Advances in Scriptwriting at RADA. Her journalist contributions include: The Guardian, Independent Magazine, the Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan and Writing magazine. Her memoir Confessions of a Fashionista (Ebury) is an Amazon Fashion Chart bestseller. The short film Drift, based on her screenplay, is due for release in 2015. Her debut play The Legacy received rave reviews after its first run at The Hope Theatre, Islington, in June 2015. Now magazine described her as a ‘glitzy outsider’. She volunteers for The WoMentoring Project which provides mentors for marginalised female writers. In 2015 she won the Young Stationers Prize for achievement and promise in writing. Angela is addicted to social media and chocolate biscuits.
You can follow Angela @TheAngelaClarke
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Praise for FOLLOW ME by Angela Clarke
Dedication
Chapter 1 FML – Fuck My Life
Chapter 2 YOLO – You Only Live Once
Chapter 3 #FF – Follow Friday
Chapter 4 BFF – Best Friends Forever
Chapter 5 OMG – Oh My God
Chapter 6 DTF – Down to Fuck?
Chapter 7 IDK – I Don’t Know
Chapter 8 FFS – For Fuck’s Sake
Chapter 9 STBY – Sucks To Be You
Chapter 10 FWIW – For What It’s Worth
Chapter 11 FWP – First World Problems
Chapter 12 BTW – By The Way
Chapter 13 SMH – Shake My Head
Chapter 14 NSFW – Not Safe For Work
Chapter 15 ICYMI – In Case You Missed It
Chapter 16 RTFM – Read T
he Fucking Manual
Chapter 17 IKR – I Know, Right?
Chapter 18 EOT – End Of Thread
Chapter 19 SITD – Still In The Dark
Chapter 20 FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out
Chapter 22 IRL – In Real Life
Chapter 23 GR8 – Great
Chapter 24 RT – Retweet
Chapter 25 ISO – In Search Of
Chapter 26 VBD – Very Bad Date
Chapter 27 BTDT – Been There Done That
Chapter 28 MT – Modified Tweet
Chapter 29 C&B – Crash and Burn
Chapter 30 TBC – To Be Continued
Chapter 31 JK – Just Kidding
Chapter 32 TMI – Too Much Information
Chapter 33 B/C – Because Eight years earlier
Chapter 34 WUBU2 – What You Been Up To?
Chapter 35 CU – See You
Chapter 36 TBA – To Be Announced
Chapter 37 AKA – Also Known As
Chapter 38 WTF – What The Fuck?
Chapter 39 DIY – Do It Yourself
Chapter 40 PDA – Public Display of Affection
Chapter 41 WTAF – What The Actual Fuck?
Chapter 42 BRB – Be Right Back
Acknowledgements
Author Q&A
Are You Awake
Little Girl Gone
Further reading
Angela Clarke
About the Publisher