Death & the City Book Two (39 page)

Connor doesn't say anything as we walk the few yards to my car, unlocking it. It feels really strange, walking around to the passenger side and getting in.

"How long was I asleep in the ambulance?" I ask, opening the glove-box and getting my phone out, as Connor does up his seatbelt. Three missed calls, all from him.

"Not too long," he says. "I was outside The Zone and had just tried ringing you when I found your car wasn't outside, then head office rang me and said you'd left Crypto to cut across the park and not made it back to your car. I rang you again a couple of times, to see if I could find you quicker by the ring-tone, but luckily when I got to the skate ramps you were in plain sight. Head office sent Adam over from The Plaza where he was monitoring kick-out time. Stop leaving your phone in the car, it's not just for head office to inconvenience you with."

"I don't do it that often." I put it back in my pocket anyway. He starts the engine using the key ignition. I'm glad to assume that means it's only my own fingerprint recognition scanned into the car. I still like to feel I have some independent control over my own life.

"I'm guessing you don't black out often either, otherwise you'd keep it with you." Connor shakes his head to himself, waiting for the ambulance to depart before pulling out of the parking space behind. "I knew today was a bad idea, changing your work pattern. Too much information going through your little brain in one go. Something was bound to blow a fuse."

I don't say anything else as we drive to hospital. I get the impression he's not in a good mood.

The A&E receptionist confirms my details, phones through to Referral Admissions to tell them I've arrived, and a Dr. Ji-Yong arrives shortly, with forms for the Haematology and X-ray departments.

"I'd rather walk," I say, as she says she'll call a porter with a wheelchair. "I know my way around fine."

"It's all right, I'm staying with her," Connor adds.

"When you're done, come back to Casualty, then the consultant on duty will see you and go over your results," she says.

I have to do the usual bodily fluids samples as well as a blood pressure check, and they also take a forehead swab with a sterile paper strip, which I happen to recall is a test for cocaine use. When they ask, I manage to remember everything I ate and drank, from the cup of tea at Connor's and aspirin, to some of the Haribo I confiscated and withheld from Cooper, right up to the lemonade & lime at Crypto – I guess I'm not that much of a diet freak now - but also that virtually everything I ate today came from other sources which I didn't oversee, except for watching Connor make tea this morning. I hope nothing turns up in any of these tests, as it'd be virtually untraceable.

When I go to the X-ray department it turns out they want to do a C.S.I. scan, not because my brain is a Crime Scene but because they want a full Cross-Sectional Image. The newest model higher speed scanner is out of service due to technical problems with the drive computer, so I'm stuck on the standard one, which I'm told could take up to an hour. Or longer, if the computer fucks up halfway through. I'm told during this time that I have to keep as still as possible, not even move my eyes, but it doesn't matter because as soon as they start, I fall asleep anyway.

The consultant waiting for me back in A&E is Mr. Katana, a Neurologist, whose pink shirt and purple tie make me think of Pole-Ka-Doodle-Doo hen-night special door staff uniforms, but whose openly benign and learned expression behind his red-rimmed spectacles is the complete opposite.

"I'll wait outside if you want," says Connor, but I shake my head.

"I'd rather you came in," I say, but I'm not sure why. Maybe something to do with wanting someone I know to have more detailed insight on me. Not just the comfortable prejudices and assumptions my friendships exist on. And it might as well be him, seeing as he's here and being supportive, and sat for an hour just now with nothing but Health & Safety notices to look at while I was in the scanner.

"Hello, Lara. Have a seat," Mr. Katana greets me. "I met Connor as well, not a little while ago - I popped down while you were having your scan for a quick look. It was a good sleep for you, then?"

"Just catching up," I admit.

"Right, well - the short-term tests show nothing chemical in your system, so at least that's nothing to be worried about. There's no visible damage to speak of in your scan that would cause that kind of anomaly - just evidence of previous surgical interventions in the facial bones and skull. Some evidence of hairline fracture self-repair in the posterior and lateral skull, but nothing recent. From what you've given in your medical history and the paramedic's report, my gut instinct is to suggest that what you experienced is neuropathic. Possibly due to your body fighting to stay awake. The nerves send a message to the brain that your physical body is ready to shut down to sleep, often in an inappropriate setting, without the event occurring. The brain reacts to the neural messages as if it's something else it can logically interpret from its alert state, like an assault or muscular restraint over which you have no control. Similar to phantom pain or phantom pregnancy - the body isn't doing anything, but the symptoms are recorded in the brain by a confused nervous system sending messages without actual stimuli attached."

"Okay," I nod. "Makes sense. I think I was just tired and hung over, and ate more than usual today. Including more junk food."

"Is it likely to recur?" Connor wants to know, worrying his thumbnail like earlier.

"There is a possibility of it being caused by stress and pattern-matching," Mr. Katana says. "There are other tests, but more in the field of psychology - monitoring the brain's activity under interview or when looking at certain images. But it could be a long and convoluted process. Unless you can connect something definitive between the two incidences, or recall other incidents similar which may have occurred during sleep disturbance while alone - feelings of struggling, being restrained, or sat on, or strangulation, suffocation - these are all part of a neuropathic sleep disturbance where the body and mind are in conflict over waking up or staying asleep - usually that the alert mind wants to wake, but the body is shut down in deep sleep, and the nervous system informs the brain that the body is incapable of movement. The brain translates this as 'invisible restraint' and leads to nightmares or night terrors. Sound familiar at all?"

I just nod. I have definitely experienced that in the past - probably on more occasions than I'd want to admit to. But I'd always put it down to an old unremembered childhood nightmare about ghosts or something, and never understood why it still happened as an adult. If I'd thought it was a problem, I'd already have wasted hours of my life trying to analyse it.

"Yeah, she's done that when I'm there as well," Connor interjects, unexpectedly. "Jumped awake for no reason."

"Once a neural pathway is established, the more exercise it gets, the higher likelihood of it recurring," he says. "My advice is, get regular sleep, get a good amount of sleep, and match your sleep to natural hours. Daylight and darkness all affect sleep hormones, and rest and repair times, so if you go against nature's clock, your brain is more easily confused, stressed and depleted. Higher likelihood of hallucination, more easily suggestible, less able to concentrate. Try to limit caffeine as a means to stretch your waking hours, and take naps instead."

He smiles at me encouragingly and sympathetically, but as I glance from him to Connor, Connor's face is still serious.

"Are there any other tests that a scan might not show?" he asks. "Any other disease or disorder which might cause it?"

"We're checking for low thyroxin levels, and a pregnancy test was negative," Mr. Katana replies. "Diabetes test was also negative, so it wasn't a diabetic seizure. If any other symptoms appear, or it happens again, come straight back here to Casualty, we'll do all the possible epilepsy checks, and we'll go through the Medical Encyclopaedia together. Basically, in the meantime - go home, get lots of sleep, find ways to cut down on stress - and start looking for a day job."

Connor takes my hand as we head back out into the car-park. Strange, because at this precise moment, I don't even know if it's the first time he's held my hand.

"Where do you want to go?" he asks me. "Do you want to stay over at mine, or would you feel better catching up on sleep at home?"

"I'd feel better at home," I reply. "No offence, I like your company, it's just - familiar is better."

"I'm staying anyway," he tells me. "You don't get that much say in it."

I look at him and he smiles at me. A little bit of reassurance manages to break through my preconceptions about him.

Chapter 35:
Fish Out Of Water

I have the weirdest dream ever. About how my work colleagues and the bar staff figure out why I'm always single, and so elusive and mysterious. Apparently their conclusion is that it's because I'm a mermaid.

In the dream I go to a huge after-club party at someone's house I don't know, and this rumour reaches me, so I sit in their ornamental garden with my feet paddling in their fountain, trying to prove them wrong and that I'm human. But instead, I grow a Shubunkin's tail.

It's quite a fantasy. And as I drift awake, I wonder how my subconscious personalities came up with that as their excuse, out of the blue. Not the kind of thing other people would construct in the current social climate in reality. Such as vampire, succubus, even the truth as hit-man, or just closet lesbian - hopefully with a leather fetish. Maybe it just proves that underneath all of the adult
découpage
of limited experience and personality disorders stuck to me with dubious permanency, I am still the shallow childhood reflection of a mutable-identity Barbie doll, who believes in fairies and stuff.

But it is the most undisturbed and thorough sleep I've had for a long time, and I wake up feeling ready for the day, instead of ready to stay in bed another nine hours.

"You got a call from D.J. Crank, and a voice message," Connor tells me, putting a cup of tea down in the clutter on my tiny bedside drawer surface. "Says can you meet him outside Lighthouse Mall at two. I texted back to say OK. How are you feeling?"

I look at my bedside clock, which reads 11:47 a.m.

"Good," I reply, stretching, and frown as my memory of last night returns in random pieces. "Oh, God - I have to drive to Phantasia tonight. It's going to be dancers on stilts throwing glitter, and girls dangling from the ceiling on bits of ribbon like
Cirque du Weirdo
."

"Sounds like fun," Connor smirks, and sits on the end of the bed with his own cup of coffee, leaning on the sliding wardrobe door that my divan is wedged up against. "I'm not going to fall into this cupboard if I put any weight on it, am I?"

"You could try," I suggest. "Your fall would be broken by shoeboxes on the other side."

"Probably end up puncturing a lung on some kinky stiletto," he jokes, and shifts his position tentatively. "I'll have a chat with head office about your living arrangements. I have a feeling a couple of interesting options just cleared on their requisition books."

"I don't mind looking," I say at last, relenting. "But definitely no gay bachelor pads in the East end of town, and no houseboats on the Marina. Nothing says Hollywood hit-man more than a poncey penthouse flat in the red-light district, or a flashy eccentric refurbishment."

"Easy," Connor grins. "Don't worry, I'm way ahead of you. Do you think my gatehouse is gay or eccentric, then?"

"Hard to say, considering it's not yours," I point out. "Actually no, I think it suits you."

"In what way?"

"It's unexpected," I reply, and he nods, apparently quite comfortable with that as his summary.

"I like my personal space," he says. "With a privacy radius of at least twenty miles related to my day job, a bit like you. But you could use more space indoors for you and your daughter. You couldn't swing a cat in here."

"That's why he lives outdoors," I agree. "Still good as Pest Control though. The only pests I get are green parakeets on my elderberry tree every autumn."

"You'd be surprised, there's a lot more to wildlife than you see," he remarks. "If it wasn't for the food chain there'd be rats and bunnies and foxes everywhere."

"What's above foxes?" I ask. "Apart from bored rich people breaking the law, driving four-wheel-drive like maniacs along country lanes, with their half-starved beagles on steroids?"

"Never mind," Connor grins. I wonder again if he's hiding a werewolf psychosis. One day it'll all come out, I think. Toothy bloodthirsty imaginary beasts and their underground-music-fan generation, with their fetish club parties and money-spinning moonlight hunts. Even Martha, whose ancestors wielded hereditary sickles and told people when to sow and when to harvest, scoffs at the fashion victims of fiction.