Please note: this piece contains descriptions some readers may find distressing.
As I regained consciousness, I first saw Mairead entering the hotel lobby on the arm of Carlos. I was on one of the leather sofas, alone. Huddled around the reception desk was a crowd of four or five young girls around my age, also staring at me. I guess some might have called them scantily clad, but they handed out water to my two friends and seemed kind. Later, I found out they were the ones who had discovered me.
Somewhere, a glass smashed.
Mairead had fainted.
Carlos held her up in his muscled arms. She was a bundle of blonde. The group of girls stopped looking at me and gathered around them. Carlos propped Mairead up against the reception desk. Her arms were droopy at her sides. Someone offered her a fresh glass of water and she was able to take it. I wondered why they didn’t put her on the sofa next to me.
‘We’ve called the police,’ Carlos said. He was on the sofa all of a sudden.
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘Will you call your family?’ He asked.
‘Not now, it’s really late. I’ll do it in the morning,’ I said. But I knew I wouldn’t.
‘What happened exactly? I thought you were with Mairead the whole night.’
‘I’m not sure, Carlos,’ I said. My head was spinning.
‘Well, you’ll have to tell the police something. I don’t know how it works here.’
The police arrived – a man and a woman. Someone had called Mairead a taxi to go back to our apartment. It wasn’t clear why – I was closer to Mairead than Carlos, and really, this was a girl problem. Still, it wasn’t the time for asking questions. Carlos and I got into the police car and they took us to the station. It was still warm out, somehow.
We were led into a dim side room with a desk and a few scratchy chairs. The officers sat on one side and Carlos and I on the other. The female officer offered me a cigarette. It was a thin, pink lady cigarette. She leaned over to light it for me and we began. Thankfully, their English was good, as we knew no Greek.
Mairead had got chatting to some guy in a bar. We’d been out all night and I was finally tired of the loud, thumping music and the endless cheap drinks. I wanted to go back to the apartment. Mairead looked cosy with the guy so I told her to stay if she wanted to. ‘Do you remember the way?’ She asked. ‘Yes, I think so,’ I said. So, we left each other in the darkness. ‘Message me when you get back,’ she called as I walked away.
I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and I was wandering along an unfamiliar road next to some fields. I was completely lost and it seemed to be getting more and more rural. A car parked at the side of the road turned on its headlights. Finally, some civilisation. Under the streetlight, a man got out and offered a lift.
‘Was it a taxi?’ Asked the female officer.
‘Yes, it was,’ I said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘What was the make? All taxis here are Mercedes.’
‘Yes, Mercedes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I think so.’
‘What did he look like’
‘Dark hair. Dark eyes. Beard. White shirt?’
I did remember that the passenger door was locked. I tried the window. We’re not going the right way, I shouted. I smashed my fist against the glass over and over again, but I wasn’t strong enough. We pulled over next to the field. He punched me in the head – bam, bam, bam. He opened the door and pushed me out into the dark field.
‘Where did this happen?’
‘A field by the side of a road.’
‘Which road?’
‘Somewhere near the hotel where you collected us from.’
‘Would you be able to show us if we took you out in the car?’
‘Maybe. It was dark.’
‘When did the girls find you and take you to the hotel?’
‘I don’t know, I was mostly unconscious.’
There were no more answers to give so there were no more questions. Now, they would take us to the hospital. ‘I don’t want to go,’ I said. I just wanted to sleep. ‘You have to,’ said the female officer. I wasn’t sure why. Carlos and I drifted off in the car on the way there.
In the hospital the doctors told me to shower and change into a gown. ‘Why do I have to shower?’ I asked. They showed me to the bathroom. It was very white and clinical. When I looked in the mirror and it wasn’t my face looking back at me. It was a new, shattered face. Dried blood was mashed into my cheeks, forehead and lips. There was sticky pollen matted into my hair and clothes. Pink blotches covered my inner thighs. It wasn’t real.
My eyes were closed during the examination. The two doctors agreed on something in a different language. They took blood. I uncurled, vertebrae by vertebrae, in a cold MRI scanner. The mute nurse put me on a drip of colourless liquid. I laid down, but didn’t sleep. Carlos nodded off in a blue plastic chair, like the ones we’d had at school.
After they had removed the drip, we were in the back of the police car again. I had to climb into the same, tainted outfit as yesterday. There was still sticky pollen knotted in my hair and shirt. I was silent and guilty. It hadn’t been a Mercedes.
'I’m sorry,' said Carlos quietly. We were looking out of opposite windows onto endless fields of dead, yellow grass. 'I didn’t think these things happened in real life.'
Outside, the horizon was pierced pink. Another dawn was shattering the night.
A new day, forever.