Rubbernecker (14 page)

Elixir of the gods. I know everything is relative, but it tastes so good to me that I actually start to cry.

‘Ahhh, look how happy!’ says Jean.

‘Ahhh,’ parrots Tracy Evans, but I can see she’s not interested. She barely looks at me and keeps clattering the teaspoon against my teeth. She’s looking for the man she’s trying to … well,
seduce
is too elegant a word. She thinks we don’t see. I suppose she thinks we’re all vegetables, but
I
see; I know what she’s up to. I knew girls like her at Hot Stuff in Merthyr. All the lads knew them – sometimes twice a night.

She puts the juice in too fast and I feel the strange and horrible sensation of it going down the wrong way.

‘Ah!’

Jean notices – bless her. She jumps up and rushes to get a machine I’ve seen them use on other patients. It’s like a vacuum
cleaner
and she feeds it down my throat and sucks stuff out of my airway with a nasty rattling sound, while Tracy stands there with her arms crossed, as if I’m making a fuss about nothing and had better not blame
her
. But in Jean’s eyes I can see how serious this could be.

She puts the horrible tube into me twice more, and collects watery orange mucus in a kidney bowl while my eyes stream with something similar, and I fight to keep breathing.

Finally she stops and takes Tracy away. For a bollocking, I hope.

I lie there panting, feel as if I’ve been punched on the inside, all my fresh hope scrunched into a stupid ball and tossed away.

Even if they’re not
trying
to kill me, they might yet succeed.

And all I can do is lie here and wait for it.

‘Patrick Fort!’ said Professor Madoc, as if he were a long-lost friend. ‘Have a seat.’

Patrick sat down and looked around. Professor Madoc fiddled with a Rubik’s cube behind the vast wooden desk that held two silver-framed photographs – one of a smiling young woman, and the other of a boat. There was another photo of the same boat on the wall behind him, with the professor himself looking tanned and rich, waving from the puffy red depths of a life-jacket. Patrick could read the name painted on the prow:
Sharp End
.

‘Damn thing,’ said Professor Madoc at the cube. ‘You ever done one of these?’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick.

The professor put it down and cleared his throat. ‘I hear you’ve had a few run-ins, Patrick. A few problems.’

‘No,’ said Patrick. ‘No problems.’

‘That’s not what people have told me.’

‘OK.’

Professor Madoc looked at a piece of paper in front of him.

‘Inappropriate attitude to staff, a near-physical altercation with a fellow student over a cadaver, ignoring procedure during dissection, and unauthorized access to confidential donation details.’

‘I wanted to know the cause of death; that’s not confidential.’

‘That’s not the point,’ said Professor Madoc. His hand strayed towards the cube but he caught it in time and drummed his fingers on the desktop instead. ‘You broke into a locked filing cabinet.’

‘I used the key.’

‘It was locked for a good reason.’

‘What reason?’

‘For reasons of confidentiality.’

‘But the cause of death isn’t confidential.’ How many times did he have to say it?

‘But the identity of the donor
is
.’

‘But I don’t
care
about the identity of the donor. I only wanted to know the cause of death.’

‘Listen,’ said Professor Madoc more sharply. ‘This is a medical school, not a kindergarten. We won’t tolerate this kind of disruption from our students, even ones with
issues
.’

‘What issues?’ said Patrick.

Professor Madoc took a moment to adjust to frankness. ‘We understand about your Asperger’s, Patrick, and we certainly have made allowances for it, but I have formally to advise you that we cannot make
endless
allowances. If I have further reports of incidents of this nature, I will be forced to suspend your studies here at Cardiff. Do you understand?’

Patrick pursed his lips.

‘Do you
understand
?’

‘Yes, I
understand
,’ said Patrick. ‘I’m trying to decide whether I
care
.’

Professor Madoc raised his eyebrows the way Mick had. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I might not care. I might have finished here. I don’t know if there’s any point in going on.’

‘No point in going on? What does that mean?’ The professor’s hand twitched again towards the cube.

Patrick thought that Professor Madoc might have a touch of Asperger’s himself, because he didn’t seem to comprehend anything he was saying.

‘I think the cause of death on the sheet is wrong. What’s the point of going on if I’m basing judgements on bad information?’

‘Cause of death is certified by a doctor.’

‘Doctors get it wrong all the time. You see it on TV.’

Professor Madoc’s hand flinched, and this time he followed through with a pick-up and started to twist the cube’s little coloured blocks – frowning at them disapprovingly as he went on.

‘The DR technician told me you asked him about a … doorway in the brain? Does that have anything to do with all of this?’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick, and stared at the cube turning in the man’s long, elegant fingers. ‘I want to know what happens.’

The professor sighed deeply and put down the cube. ‘You know, Patrick, all we see in the dissecting room is the physical aftermath of a life. A medical student starts his journey with the dead and works backwards.’

Patrick pursed his lips. ‘But I want to start with the dead and work
forwards
.’

Professor Madoc gave a small laugh. ‘The dead can’t speak to us, Patrick, although our lives would be immeasurably simpler if they could. While doctors might discover the mechanics of
how
someone died, they are privy to neither
why
they died nor to what happens to them
after
they die. To solve
those
puzzles I think you’d need to consult a detective … and a priest.’

He smiled, but Patrick didn’t.

‘And how do
they
solve those puzzles?’ said Patrick, leaning forward.

Professor Madoc looked a little taken aback by the sudden interest in a throwaway remark. He spread his hands in new uncertainty. ‘Well, I imagine a priest doesn’t actually
know
. That’s a matter of faith.’

‘Superstition,’ Patrick corrected him. ‘How does the
detective
know?’

The professor gave it serious thought. ‘Well,’ he finally said, ‘I suppose that to find out why somebody died, a detective would have to consult the living.’

‘What kind of living?’

‘Friends and family. Witnesses. Attending medical professionals. People like that, I suppose.’

Patrick sat back in his chair and Professor Madoc blew out his cheeks in relief. He wasn’t sure how this conversation had turned from him issuing a formal warning to a student firing awkward philosophical questions at him. He needed to get back on track.

‘You know, Patrick, Dr Spicer tells me that despite these difficulties, you’re a real talent in the dissection room. He says you’re a leading candidate for the Goldman Prize. It would be a shame to give up now, wouldn’t it?’

Patrick remained still for an uncomfortably long time. Finally he nodded silently and rose to his feet, then paused and reached across the desk. The professor withdrew slightly, but Patrick picked up the Rubik’s cube.

Professor Madoc watched as the matching colours spread quickly up the six sides until the puzzle was complete and Patrick laid it back on the desk.

‘It’s not difficult,’ he said. ‘I can show you, if you like.’

‘Thank you,’ said Professor Madoc, and Patrick left.

25

THE ORANGE JUICE
has gone to my chest.

Pneumonia. They don’t say it, but I know that’s the fear. People die of pneumonia – even healthy people. But I’m
incredibly vulnerable
. Phlegm rattles in my throat and my back is agony every time I breathe, so I try not to do that.

It doesn’t work.

Jean and Angie use the vacuum on me almost constantly. It’s disgusting and painful. Two doctors come. I wonder if one of them is the killer. Who knows?
I
would, if only I’d kept my eyes open that night. Would it be better or worse to know whether a killer was standing over me, taking my pulse, checking my drip? Right now I don’t care if one of them killed the man in the next bed, as long as they help
me
.

‘Blink twice if it hurts,’ says one, tapping my chest in that creepy way that doctors do – as if they’re trying to find a secret passage in a smuggler’s wall.

I blink lots and they exchange worried looks.

Without warning, tears roll out of my eyes and into my ears. I’m going to die, and I will never have seen Alice or Lexi again. I’ll never have told them how much I love them or why I never came home that day, or where I’ve been since.

‘Aaaaa!’ I say.

‘Don’t try to talk,’ says the younger doctor. ‘It will only hurt.’

He’s right, but I don’t care. I don’t want to slip into
unconsciousness
and die without doing my best to leave something behind, even if it’s a single word.

‘Aaaaa,’ I say. ‘Duh.’

‘Ssssh,’ says Jean, holding my hand and looking nervous. I reckon she and Tracy will get it in the neck if I die. Leslie will be furious – in a monosyllabic sort of way. All that work wasted. Even now my tongue curls away from where I want it to be, and I have to think of everything he taught me. I make an enormous effort, full of grunts and phlegm.

‘Aaaan. Dee.’

‘What’s that?’ says the older doctor, then turns to Jean. ‘Do you know what he’s saying?’

‘I’ll get the Possum,’ she says, but I don’t want it. I want to hear my own voice.

‘
Aaan
duh!’ I say as my lungs protest, my back spikes, and sweat and tears pour down my nose and cheeks.

I can’t do the S. ‘
Aandee!
’

There! I did it!

‘Angie?’ says Jean.

Not Angie, for Christ’s sake!
Lexi!
But it’s all I can do and it really doesn’t matter whether they understand or not. If it’s just the first word of thousands, or the last one ever to pass my lips, at least I’ve named the most important thing in my life.

‘Well done!’ says Jean, looking as relieved as she does encouraging. ‘I’ll get Angie to come and say hello. You’ll be ordering us all about by lunchtime.’

Another big lie.

Who cares? I don’t even know what’s true any more. If you can’t trust a mirror, what
can
you believe?

Jean bustles away with the older doctor. The younger doctor takes my notes off the end of my bed. I can’t see it happen – I just see the top of his head – but I know the feeling and the sound like my own breathing. The gritty little metal noise and the tiny
vibration
it makes in the steel frame and through the mattress. The princess had her pea; I have my notes.

He moves slightly so that I can see him as he reads them intently – I wonder what’s written there: just the injuries from the flying Ford Focus? Or everything from childhood measles onwards? He reads them like they’re instructions for a bomb disposal. Then he comes over, jabs a needle into my hip and I close my eyes, exhausted by the effort and the pain of living.

If I wake up dead, so be it.

26

THERE WERE ONLY
two Galens in the Cardiff phone book, and only one with the initial S.

The house was up Penylan Road – a large red-brick home set towards the back of a broad, unimaginative garden, where the only flowers were snowdrops and primroses in a narrow stripe either side of the wide gravel driveway. Everything else was shrubbery made of laurels and conifers. Patrick was allergic to conifers and regarded them all with suspicion. If he lived here, he’d dig them all out and have a bonfire.

He wheeled his bike past a late-registration BMW. This was how Number 19 had lived: well. It was a start, but to find out how he had died, Patrick guessed he needed more than he could gather from noting what kind of car the man had driven. He wasn’t sure
what
he needed, or how he was going to get it, but Patrick also knew that there were too many variables for him to have formulated a watertight plan of action. The front door might be opened by anyone – a wife, a mother, a son, a cleaner – and each of them would require a different strategy.

But he only had one strategy.

Therefore the only concrete opening he had prepared was
My name is Patrick Fort and I want some information about Mr Samuel Galen
. He assumed everything would fall into place from there.

Patrick put down the kickstand on his bike and knocked on the
door
. He could see his silhouette in the glossy black paint, and his face in the chrome letterbox.

‘
Go away!
I’ve called the police!’

Patrick blinked in surprise. It was a woman’s voice, high and screechy. And illogical. Why would she have called the police before he’d even knocked? She didn’t know why he was there.