Lifesaving for Beginners

he’s a little short-sighted.
    Minnie says, ‘The next time you’re going to have a near-death experience, could you do it on a Friday? Get me out of the weekly meeting with the Pillock.’ Pillock is what Minnie calls her boss, and the funny thing is that they get on quite well. She picks up her handbag and coat and is gone in a cloud of Chanel Coco Mademoiselle.
    Now it’s just Thomas and me and, all of a sudden, I feel sort of shy, like I’ve been doing the tango in my bedroom with an imaginary partner before noticing that the blinds are up and the neighbours are gawking. I grab the sharp edge of the sheet and pull it to my neck.
    I say, ‘Shouldn’t you be spreading dung on some poor unfortunate turnips?’ If you ask Thomas what he does, he’ll say he’s a farmer, even though he’s a freelance journalist who happens to have inherited a smallholding in Monaghan where he grows impractical things like grapes that are never anything but sour, and sunflowers that, as soon as their heads poke above the earth, get eaten by his one goat, two pigs, three hens, a garrulous goose and a lamb-bearing ewe.
    He doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he sits on the edge of the bed. Carefully, like he’s afraid he might break something. I want to punch his arm and tell him he’s a big eejit but I can’t because of the wires attached to my wrist. I don’t think I can laugh out loud either. My head feels funny: heavy and dense. When I touch it, there’s a bandage, wrapped round and round.
    I say, ‘This is a bit Grey’s Anatomy , isn’t it?’ My voice sounds nearer now but there’s a shake in it. I clear my throat.
    He smiles but only briefly. Then he puts his hand on mine. His hands are huge. Like shovels, they are. I pull my hand away. ‘What?’
    He says, ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You look kind of . . . appalled. Is it my hair?’
    He smiles a bit longer this time.
    He says, ‘I’m just . . . I’m glad you’re OK. When they said the car was a write-off, I thought . . .’
    ‘The car’s a write-off ?’
    ‘Yeah. Sorry.’
    ‘I love that Mazda.’
    ‘I know, but it’s replaceable.’ He looks at me when he says that. A really intense look like he’s cramming me for an exam. For a terrible moment, I think he’s going to say something horrendous. About me. Not being replaceable. Something heinous like that.
    But he doesn’t say that. Instead, he says this:
    ‘I thought you were dead.’
    ‘Jesus, this is actually cheesier than Grey’s Anatomy .’
    ‘Can’t you be serious for a moment?’
    ‘I’m as serious as a car crash.’
    ‘That’s not funny.’
    ‘It’s a little bit funny.’
    Thomas nods, thank Christ. He’s not usually like this. He’s usually got quite a good SOH, as Minnie calls it. Even though she’s got Maurice and they’ve been smugly coupled up for years, she still reads the ads. For me, she says. I don’t know if she does it anymore. The Thomas situation has been going on a fair while now. Maybe a year and a half.
    Although I think Thomas said, ‘Twenty-two months, actually,’ when I mentioned it the other day.
    Thomas says, ‘Do you remember the accident?’
    I nod. ‘Sort of.’
    ‘What do you remember?’ He can be such a journalist sometimes.
    ‘There was a deer on the road.’ What the hell was a deer doing on the road? ‘There was a truck. It swerved. Really suddenly. And there was a car. In front of me, I think. A yellow one. Really bright yellow. Something about a banana written on it. Then the airbag exploded in my face and then . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t think I remember anything else.’
    ‘You could have died.’
    ‘Are you going to keep on saying that?’
    ‘That woman . . . the one in the yellow car. She . . . she died.’
    ‘You’re not going to cry, are you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Thank Christ.’
    Thomas stands up. Walks to the door. Pauses. Looks back at me.
    I say, ‘Can you get the doctor?’
    ‘Are you feeling OK?’ He looks worried, like maybe I’ve got a brain tumour or something.
    ‘I want to know when I can get out of here.’
    ‘I’m sure they’ll want to monitor you for another while. You’ve been out cold.’
    ‘I just want everything to get back to normal.’
    He looks at me then. Says, ‘No.’ Like we’re in the middle of an argument.
    ‘What do you mean, no?’
    ‘I mean no. Things are different now. You could have died.’
    ‘Can you stop saying that?’
    ‘We’ve wasted enough time.’
    I manage to