I should have known really. There's me saying I'm a dab hand at finding myself black and blue, and at the same time thinking I'd shattered my whole body working out. Not to mention, if I had hurt myself at the gym, Roddy or one of the other guys would no doubt be hovering about, all anxious and annoying.

Even as I'd thought it, I knew I hadn't hurt myself at kick boxing.

It's just that it's not every day you get savagely attacked in the middle of nowhere, I think we can all forgive me for taking a moment to get my head around it. Just after the police left, a wee lady in a lab coat and huge glasses that made her look like an insect came to poke and prod and scrape me in the hopes of finding some DNA with which they could identify my attacker.

My attacker. The very word makes me go all cold and clammy. Somebody attacked me. Were they trying to kill me? In all the haze of trying to answer what questions I could from the police (not many, I spent most of the interview staring at them in horror and repeating the last thing they'd said like some kind of halfwit), I hadn't thought to ask that. They appeared to know more than I did about what happened, which didn't particularly endear me to them - or vice versa, for that matter.

The pain of the lab tech's ministrations made me sweat and I was grateful for the distraction of the wee man in the orange tracksuit who'd started up a sing song with the wedding party. They were all giving a rousing, if tuneless, chorus of Jeanie McCall while nurses yelled at them to shut it. When the technician was finished, she spoke for the first time to tell me that I had lots of skin scrapings under my nails so I must have given him what-for, good girl. 

That made me puke, so at least I was keeping my dignity.

A little later the wedding party was discharged into the custody of the police, though not before the bride in a showed up dress about three times the size of her and a hair-do that appeared inspired by a pineapple, to dramatically announce she never wanted to see any of them again. A few nurses cheered then a wee orderly guy asked her out and she went off with him (and the gurney he'd been pushing) while her new husband sobbed into the arms of a disinterested police officer.

After the police bundled them all out, it all went quiet. Not silent or anything; the orange tracksuit man had dropped off and was snoring loudly, from somewhere out of sight a baby wailed, and nurses blethered, machines beeped. But relatively speaking.

I closed my eyes and wracked my brains for the last thing I could remember. When the police were all 'where were you and what time and what then?' I was a bit like a rabbit in headlights and could only stammer that I didn't know, couldn't remember, hadn't a clue. I kept apologising and even got a bit teary, at which point the whispy-bearded nurse brought me a cup of tea and pointedly asked if I needed to rest. I caught the two police officers exchanging a frustrated look and I cringed, annoyed with myself.

I always imagined I would be a model victim, if anything ever happened to me. Cool and clear headed, I would have first-aided myself before the emergency services even arrived and everyone would marvel at how complete my description, congratulating me on my perfect recall and eye for detail.

Instead here I was all battered and stuttering and stammering, eyes filling with tears like some pathetic wee wean, needing a nurse who grew a bum-fluff beard on purpose to come to my rescue.

Where the hell was Craig, by the way? He should be here by my side, squeezing my hand and making funny faces behind the police officer's backs to make me smile? He must be on his...

Oh, right.

He wasn't on his way. He dumped me. Walked out of our flat after five years leaving nothing but a stupid wee note with an address to forward post onto. Oh aye, I'll get right onto that Craig.

I'd been on Loch Lomond. Of course. That much came back to me and I felt relief coursing through me: maybe I wasn't going completely bonkers after all.

After getting told off by Granny on the phone yesterday, I dragged myself down to the gym where I work and the brutal kick boxing class I took did the trick in terms of dragging me back to the human race. A wee bit, at least. So then I decided that I'd head up to Balloch and take my paddleboard out, because while any exercise sorts me out, exercise in the fresh air is like nectar from the gods.

I closed my eyes, blocked out the snoring and the beeping and the wailing, and tried to focus. 

It had been a calm day. Cool but clear, the loch as smooth as glass. My board zipped across the water as I dug the paddle in and pulled, working up my second sweat of the day.

A bit of sun broke through the clouds to warm my face, and I remember feeling a teensy glimmer of hope flutter to life inside me. It's not as though it was all better. I still wanted to howl when I pictured his face as he hovered in the doorway before muttering a final goodbye.

I'd been tidying up after breakfast, I remembered, deciding whether to stick the frying pan in the dishwasher or wash it properly, when out of nowhere he blurted that it was over and he was off. After he shut our front door I waited, a half smile on my face even as a cold torrent of horror swished back and forth in my tummy, certain that he'd pop back in any second and laugh that it was all some daft wind up. Then I heard the thud of the outside door of our tenement block and I knew he was really gone.

But cutting cleanly across the crystal clear water of the loch, catching a glimpse of Ben Lomond brooding on the horizon as I headed for Balmaha, I started to feel a tiny bit better. I could at least envision a time when it wouldn't hurt so much. I wasn't there, not by a long shot, but it was no longer beyond the bounds of my imagination. 

And then -

And then what? And then I woke up in this A&E ward with a lightening bolts of pain ricocheting through me, a brawling wedding party and a bum-fluff beardy nurse bringing me tea.

I got his skin under my nails.

The thought made me queasy again and I took deep breaths, praying I wouldn't puke, not least because it just about tore my ribs apart last time. I clenched and open my right hand, gritting my teeth as it sent shockwaves of pain my arm, miming scratching someone in the hopes it would click open a memory. But nothing came. My mind was a black fog.

'Right you, c'mon. Time to go.'

At first I thought it was the beardy nurse again, but the voice is different. Lower, more raspy, as though the person speaking was just getting over a sore throat or smoked forty a day. Wincing against the pain, I looked up to see another nurse, but this one was taller, skinnier, with a mop of jet black hair and a pointy wee goatee. 

What is it with nurses in this place and stupid beards, I thought grumpily. He tossed my rucksack on my lap and I heard the click of my gurney's brake being kicked off, then I was being wheeled at speed down the corridor.

And then I felt a cold blast of air on my face and I realised that we were outside.

'Where -- what --?' I twisted, trying to get a better look at the nurse but my bloody ribs conspired against me. The gurney trundled and bumped across the carpark as a grey dawn seeped through the darkness. 

It crashed against a kerb and stopped with a jarring thud that shot right through me. I struggled to sit up, ready to give the guy and his pretentious goatee a piece of my mind. 

But when I finally got myself to a sitting position, I was alone.

I think I actually blinked like a cartoon character as I tried to make sense of what had happened. I mean, they talk about NHS cutbacks, but surely we're not reduced to shoving patients out the door and running away as they rumble down a sloped carpark. Then I heard a siren approach and some instinct took over.

Gritting my teeth against the pain I hauled myself to the ground, limped across the grass verge and hailed a taxi on Govan Road.