The Attic

Eight

“…I don’t know, she wouldn’t say. I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday…”

            Paul’s first thought was “Help!”

            Both the album that he was suddenly and inexplicably recalling, but also a cry for help his frozen lips couldn’t form.

            He couldn’t open his eyes yet so he focused on that white rectangle with the four figures, gesturing wildly with their wide coats that made them look they were wearing funny blue squares, and above them, in the top left corner, letters that popped out the background in thin red type, Help!

           

*   *   *

            “His lips are movin’,” John said, and everyone parted to let him sit beside Paul. “Paul, love, what is it?”

            He couldn’t bloody think with the music playing. That damned music, Paul’s song, his masterpiece. He’d worked on it for so long, whenever he could, actually, sitting down to work on his song, like he was fucking Beethoven or something. John felt a tear make its way into the corner of his eye.

            “All my troubles seemed so far away… Now it looks as though they’re here to stay…”

            John didn’t know whose idea it was to play the song over the hospital’s loudspeaker, but it was making him lose his calm faster and faster by the minute.

*   *   *

            Then there was pain.

            Where was the pain coming from? Paul struggled to find the epicenter of his discomfort. He ached. Yes, he ached. He ached everywhere.

            No, not everywhere, he decided. He ached in his top half; he ached in his chest; his chest and lungs were hurting every time he took a breath, and there was a nagging, stabbing pain in his rib.

            Paul concentrated on his breaths. Air in, suck, pain; air out, whoosh, pain. When the air left his lungs it went out of his mouth. Paul felt the feeble motion of his lips as he breathed, and focused on his lips, and the muscles that pulled and pushed them into smiles and frowns and words.

            He tried flexing them, summoning his entire willpower, feeling the corners of his mouth tremble slightly.

*   *   *

            “Oh, I believe in yesterday… mmm mm mm mm mm m-m…”

            “Oh—my god,” one of the nurses said, breaking the silence that John had effortlessly commanded. “He’s—he’s humming along.”

            And he was.

*   *   *

            It was like the bubble around John had popped and there was no longer that vacuum that muffled sounds and made him feel like his mind was trapped in his body, it was like someone had suddenly broken the glass dome around him and now sound could travel in, and he felt like the air he was breathing was fresh again.

            Everyone went right back to business after that, and they were already wheeling Paul, freshly woken up from post-op, into a little business meetings room where a few policemen were already waiting for them, jittery and elated; John suspected their good mood was because they’d be talking to both John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It didn’t often happen that they were in the same room together anymore.

            “Have you caught him?” John demanded, a scouse lilt worming its way back into his voice.

            There was an awkward, embarrassed silence that said it all.

            “Right. You haven’t,” said John, who’d decided to take charge.

            Paul was in a corner, sitting in his wheelchair and looking sickly. He closed his eyes slightly, as if existing were too much for him, and John looked at him worriedly. Paul opened them quickly, as if sensing John’s worry. The issue was, John was scared he’d close his eyes and not be able to wake up again.

            “Um, there was an…incident this morning,” one of the cops said, clearing her voice.

            “Incident?”

            “Well, from what we gather from the scientific explanation,” said another, nodding at one of the medical staff. “There was a mix-up with Mr. McCartney’s blood bag that was thankfully caught… It was a different blood type that had been put in with the next day’s changes… and we believe it was a deliberate attempt on his life.”

            “The same person?” John asked, feeling chills down his back.           

            “We have no way of knowing, but it is presumed so.”

            John nodded, looking again, almost instinctively towards Paul, who had his hazel eyes turned towards the officer currently talking; almost like a good schoolboy at a lesson, John thought.

            “We think it would be best if the two of you went into hiding while the police force sorts this out.”