I am writing this as a record of events for my daughter, Cassie. I know that the chances are you may one day learn of my existence and I want you to know what my intentions were when I left you and your mother. While my reasons were, perhaps, selfish, I do not want you to think that I chose to stay away from you, my darling little girl, without weighing up the consequences of whatever action I took. I had to think a long time about what I would do, what would be best for you and Jenny and me, I'll admit, though not as much as you might think. So this is my account of events.
I am alive. And though it may be difficult to explain, I honestly did not intend to deceive you or your mum. When the plane went down, I was on board. Please continue reading, even if what I am writing seems to make no sense. I swear to you, this is the truth. All I remember was the screaming, the panic all around me. Flashes here and there of the green patches of the fields coming up at a horrifying speed. My ears bursting as the pressure changed. I don't remember the impact itself.
I woke up, suffocating and constricted, wrapped in some sort of black plastic. As I struggled, I fell, onto a hard floor. I desperately scratched around the edges of the bag until I found the zip, then worked my way to the top of the bag and found a tiny gap where I could push my finger through. I managed to tug the zip open a little and then forced it down as I tore the flap open. My worst fears were realised when I saw that I was lying on the tiled floor of somewhere clinical, a morgue I guessed, and that the bag was indeed a body bag. I felt my stomach cramp and I tried to throw up, but I had nothing in my stomach. After a while, it dawned on me that as horrible as this was, I was alive. I thought there must have been some terrible mistake. They must have thought I had died in the crash and put me in the body bag and brought me to this place. My head still spun and my eyes took in everything with a watery, half focus. I was naked and it was cold. Trying to move I felt something catch in my chest, pulling painfully at the skin. I patted myself down for injuries, and that's when I felt the staples. Large flat staples like the ones they use to seal big cardboard boxes for shipping; steel biting into my flesh. There were a few, running down my chest and belly. I ran my hand down, looking bleary eyed at my beer gut, not really able to focus on something that close just yet. The staples went from below my navel up to my breast bone, then split into a 'Y' that ended at my collar bones. I tried to stand, but my legs just flopped around, useless as if the blood had been cut off to them and they had gone to sleep. I started to moan, and then cry out, trying to draw the attention of some doctor or attendant. I pulled at one of the staples but it was bent around the thick, fatty skin of my chest. I remember one year, when dad, your granddad, took me fishing and he sat on a fish hook. He had to get me to work the hook out from his rump. This was like that. But these were bigger than a fish hook and both ends of each metal pincer had been driven into me. I gave up trying to take them out.
I started punching my legs to try and get the blood flowing, the pins and needles prickling at the muscles. I tried yelling again, but ended up choking and coughing, short of breath. My eyes were clearing, but what I could see now, were dozens of black bags around me. Some on gurneys as I had been. Others stacked on top of one another against the walls and in corners. I dry retched again, feeling like a nest of snakes were coiling and writhing inside me. After a while I managed to haul myself up onto my weak and wobbling legs. I tried calling out but just didn't have the lung power to make a noise of any real volume. I looked around, for something to cover up my nakedness. A set of white paper overalls hung on a hook near the door. I waddled towards them, avoiding the black bags underfoot and clutching the workbench built along the wall. On my journey to the overalls, there was a sink in the bench, I stopped and drank from the tap, the water stinging my cracked throat. Each step felt stronger, and by the time I had made it to the door I could stand without the aid of the bench. I had to lower myself back onto the floor to pull the legs of the overalls on. As an item of clothing, it was ridiculously insufficient. The thin, disposable fabric did very little to cover me and almost nothing to provide protection from the chill air. Luckily it wasn't that cold. I was breathing fog now, but I wasn't feeling it enough to shiver.
Getting to the door, I thought I'd find it locked, but I was lucky. There was a large round dome that I pushed that unlatched the door. No doubt this was a measure to prevent anyone being locked in here. That level of precaution made me wonder how many times they had made a similar mistake in the past to the mistake they'd made with me.
The air outside the door was warm, almost hot. The light was bright to my gloom adjusted eyes. I hoped to find someone here, someone alive, that I could complain to and who could help me. I imagined their shock and I'd take it with an aloof, matter-of-fact detachment, like this sort of thing happened to me all the time. And they'd be amazed by my composure and impressed by my dry wit. But there was nobody living in the room, which looked to be some sort of operating theatre. But on the operating table there was a lifeless body. Small and delicate. So still. Just so still. When I had boarded the plane, there had been a little girl. She must have been about eight. She smiled at me, a cheeky little grin. I looked at her just long enough to poke my tongue out, such a dad thing to do. Her grin grew wide and I saw that her two front teeth were short, coming through after losing her baby teeth. I had only given her a second of my time on the way to my seat. I could hardly recognise her without that smile. My heart had left me. All I could see on that cold metal tray, was you, my Cassie. I felt weak again, like my legs could go at any second. I was 42, old, fat, and not much of a man. I'd lived a life. I'd missed so many opportunities, but I'd been there, had my chances. But, her. My eyes blurred again as the tears ran. I'm a pathetic, waste of human life. She was so very small. A deep cut in her chest, a letter 'Y', held closed by shiny steel staples. And that's when my slow, dull brain worked it out. The staples in my chest, in the same pattern as hers, were all that was left. They were the only evidence that remained of my autopsy. I didn't even have a scar. But as I felt the weight shifting inside me once more, I knew. I yanked out the staple below my left collar bone, and watched. Slowly, but not so slow as you couldn't see it happen, the torn holes in my chest closed and the dents where they had been filled in.
Looking down at the girl on the table, I squeezed my gurgling rage back down my throat, my body shaking, the tears now a flood. I clasped her tiny head in my hands and I willed whatever it was in me that had made me like this, out of me and into her. I pleaded with it, with God, with whatever. I pushed and tore at it within me. I imagined it flowing down my arms like a golden light into her. I commanded it, ordered it to go into her, to make her whole. I bargained with it. Let me fall down dead here and now, let me feel everything I did not from the crash. Give me the pain of every other passenger on the plane. Just, let her live.
But I still stood. She still laid. Nothing moved between us.
I heard laughter coming from the corridor. Footsteps approaching. And I don't know why. I really have no idea why. But I hid in the corner of the room. I watched them come in, men in white coats, still laughing. I wondered how they could be laughing. They walked over to the table and one of them said, “God it's a shame.”
The other nodded. “Had her whole life ahead of her.”
As they covered her face and transferred the girl to a gurney, I crept out the door. I found a white coat, one of many hanging on a rack and a pair of green gumboots. I walked, dazed, from the hospital. Nobody stopped me, nobody even cast me a glance. I thought I might in fact be a ghost. Then, in the parking lot I was nearly hit by a car, the driver angrily beeping his horn and yelling curses at me.
I ran scared, Cassie. I didn't know what to do and I had to figure things out before I did anything. So I hid. I'm sorry. I'm posting this blog from any internet cafes I find. I will try to write more soon. Take care of yourself and your mother for me.
Love,
Dad.
