My voice played musical chairs before leaving. It bounced apologies around the jogger who found me, the policeman, the nurse at the hospital – trying to find itself seated and steady when the music stopped. What it said was ‘sorry’. Sorry for not remembering the rule about offers of rides home, for failing to escape, for forgetting to say thanks when rescued, for shrinking at the sight of a speculum.
The speculum came closer, my mouth dropped open and my voice tumbled out, grew legs before my eyes and did not look sad to leave me. I wasn’t mad, I wouldn’t have wanted to stay with me either.
When you arrive at an end you never saw coming, everything is retrospect.
I last remember my voice echoing from the nurse. Sorry she said, this might hurt.
It didn’t hurt, but I couldn’t tell her. The music stopped and my voice made its escape: climbed blinds printed with birds, scaled the skater in the next cubicle getting stitched up, ducked a candy-striper coming with a change of clothes, skirted the social worker, made like a mare and bolted.
So when the boyfriend came in I could not apologise because it ran, or for allowing this to happen. I could not ask him please to run back down the long hospital corridor he had just raged through and look for a voice, the one he’d heard on me yesterday.
I couldn’t disagree if he said that, perhaps, it would no longer fit me anyway.