The Glimpse (35 page)

‘But she was immersed over three minutes before the power went out,’ he said. ‘She couldn’t have stil been under water.’

Charlotte’s cold eyes glittered. ‘Perhaps you should wait outside. Visitors aren’t supposed to be on any of the stages.’

She held out her arms, palms upwards, as though to usher him away without making physical contact.

Ashby sidestepped her and strode to the girl. The paramedic rubbed the charged defibrilator pads together, getting them ready. Slim calves with chipped pink-varnished toenails, poked out of a towel. The nurse bent over the girl, breathed air into her lungs. When she puled back, Ashby was waiting. But the shock hit him hard.

Lifeless eyes stared from a bruised, swolen face. Gone was his daughter’s beautiful hair, her soft, pale skin.

Raw, dry patches mottled her forehead. Her lips were cracked, her hair limp, short, mousy. It hardly looked like her at al.

He filed with a sense of self-loathing. How had he let this happen?

‘Clear,’ the paramedic said. Ariana’s body jerked, flexing up, head tipping back. Then it flopped level again.

‘Nothing,’ the ambulance driver said. Ashby hadn’t 322

noticed the driver arrive, but the man was now crouched over Ariana. Jack and the driver must have brought the gurney up to the stage already. He glanced around for Jack and saw the young nurse, relieved of her duties, sitting in a crumpled heap. ‘Clear,’ the paramedic repeated. Ariana’s body convulsed. The driver laid two fingers on her throat, shook his head.

‘How long was she under?’ the paramedic asked.

Charlotte Cusher folded her arms across her chest.

The ambulance driver pressed his mouth against Ariana’s blue lips, breathed into her.

‘Around a minute,’ Charlotte said.

The young nurse sat up. ‘One hundred and thirty-two seconds,’ she corrected, wiping away the snot and tears from her face with the back of her hand. ‘Fifty-two before the power cut out and then about a minute twenty, while I was undoing the straps.’ Charlotte shot her a nasty look.

The nurse’s bottom lip trembled, but she wouldn’t be silenced. ‘I couldn’t quite reach, you see,’ she sniffed.

‘My arms aren’t very long, and I had to hold my breath each time and go under to reach down.’

‘Fifty-two seconds!’ Ashby shouted, as he watched the paramedic now pressing forcefuly and rhythmicaly against the centre of Ariana’s chest. ‘It’s supposed to be thirty.’

‘We’ve got to get her to hospital,’ the paramedic said.

‘The first time, thirty had no effect on her whatsoever,’

‘The first time, thirty had no effect on her whatsoever,’

Charlotte argued.

‘What’s happening with the power?’ the ambulance driver caled out.

Ashby turned and saw the security guard had appeared 323

in the entrance and was standing beside Jack. The guard raised his arms and shook his head.

‘Could take us a couple of minutes to get back through with her on the stretcher. It’s too long.’

‘Too long?’ Ashby echoed.

‘We’ve got nothing,’ the paramedic said, resetting the defibrilator. ‘Two minutes without oxygen on top of what she’s had already . . .’

‘You need to bring the ambulance up here.’ Ashby latched on to the problem like it was a life raft.

‘Charged.’ The paramedic pressed the paddles against Ariana’s snow-white chest. ‘Clear!’ Electricity buzzed through the machine. Her body jerked up and then thumped down. ‘Clear . . .’ the paramedic said, getting set to go again.

‘Give me a minute,’ Ashby said. ‘I’l get the ambulance to you.’

The paramedic nodded.

‘The engine’s running,’ the ambulance driver said.

Heart thumping in his chest, Ashby loped towards the rol-up gate. ‘Jack, let’s go. You,’ he pointed at the security guard, ‘you’re with us.’

‘Ashby?’ Charlotte triled behind him.

He leapt out into the bright morning and bolted towards the security outhouse, Jack beside him. The guard ga-lumphed behind them. ‘Move it!’ Ashby shouted. But with the biometric ID panel deactivated, he realised he didn’t need to wait for the guard to go through security.

Jack shoved back the heavy door and Ashby pushed into the control room.

324

‘Where’s the switch for the gate?’ he caled. The guard appeared, panting in the doorway. He pointed down the corridor to a compartment with a touch screen.

‘It’s al computerised,’ he wheezed. ‘There’s a manual latch, but you wouldn’t be able to do anything. It’s on a pul-ley and weighs a ton.’

Ashby darted into the compartment. He whipped off his interface and used its sharp corner to prise away the control panel. Wires cascaded. He twined them together, then wrenched. The magnetic force holding the gate shut, released.

‘He . . . he’s disconnected the circuits!’ the security guard said.

Charlotte swaggered through the outhouse. ‘What’s going on?’

Jack blocked her way, while Ashby bolted in the opposite direction. He thrust aside the security door and ran to the gate. It had inched back enough to wedge in his hand, but he needed leverage. Sprinting back to the guard, he grabbed the man’s truncheon, then used it to jimmy the door. Once the gap was large enough, he squeezed in and began to push. Al he needed to do was slide the metal ton across its rails. Impossibly heavy work. But he was damned if that would stop him.

Jack came to help. They laid their shoulders into the gate, giving it everything they had until it inched along.

Charlotte emerged from the security building, her prudish face a pool of wrath.

‘Who is she? If you’ve admitted someone that wasn’t 325

supposed to be here, I’l have you charged. I’l have your licence taken away.’

‘I didn’t send her. One of your lot committed her,’

Ashby said. ‘And if she dies, I’l have you kiled.’

The colour drained from Charlotte’s face. She could see he meant it. Perhaps she wasn’t so naïve. Perhaps she knew he could carry out such a threat. He thrust harder.

The roling door gained momentum.

‘We won’t be held responsible for someone that was never supposed to be here,’ Charlotte said. Her voice trembled.

Too little, too late,
Ashby thought. When he’d finished with Charlotte Cusher she would be petrified. She would beg for his forgiveness. She would never show such non-chalance towards the life of one of her patients again. If Ariana lived. If she didn’t live . . . Wel, needless to say, drowning would be a blessing in comparison to Charlotte’s last few minutes in the world.

‘Get me the ID she came with and the paperwork to release her,’ Ashby said.

‘You want to take her into your charge?’ Charlotte asked incredulously. Ashby felt himself swel from his body and mentaly crush the woman before him into dust.

He chucked the letter he’d received an hour ago from the Secretary of State for Health towards Charlotte. Her neck muscles strained taut. The letter fel into the mud by her feet.

‘You have no right,’ she floundered. ‘Who is she? She’s

– she’s . . .’ Understanding flashed across Charlotte’s eyes.

‘No, no, that’s impossible – she can’t be – the news . . .’

The door finaly shifted along far enough for the 326

ambulance to pass through. Ashby rounded the vehicle, swung into the driver’s seat, and yanked the gear lever into drive. Dombrant jumped in beside him. Flooring the foot pedal, Ashby accelerated through the gates. The right wing mirror clipped the outhouse buttress. But he was through.

Within seconds he screeched to a halt outside the tank stage. He jumped down. The ambulance driver and paramedic came rushing from the darkness, wheeling Ariana on a gurney.

Ariana on a gurney.

Ashby flung open the ambulance doors and stood aside, alowing the men to work. The driver secured the gurney.

The paramedic pumped Ariana’s heart, stopped to check her vitals, pumped again.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘There’s a flutter.’

Ashby bit his knuckles, tears of relief burning his vision.

The paramedic rubbed solvent across Ariana’s pale arm and stuck a needle through her raised vein. Then he prepped the tubing of the ambulance IV set.

‘Anyone know if she’s got any drug alergies?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ Ashby said. ‘And she’s in my care now. Take her to the nearest private place there is. Cost is not a consideration.’ The medic stopped for a second, looked at Ashby appreciatively.

‘Let’s move it,’ the driver said. He jumped down from the back. Dombrant got out of the front and returned to the saloon. Doors slammed. The paramedic hung the IV

bag on a hook and looped the tubing. Seconds later, they were hurtling away from Three Mils.

327

27

Emerging

She glided through streaks of sunlight, through salty spray, and waves whipped into froth. A foamy bubble stretched around her, shimmering, rising, lifting her above stretched around her, shimmering, rising, lifting her above the sea. A bird swooped. In the spread of its wings glittering atoms vibrated. Voices whispered to her on the wind.
‘Things are not
what they seem.’

And then she was submersed in water, not moving to save her breath, surrounded by a dim light. A shadow floated into the periphery of her vision. She turned her head. On the other side of a transparent wal, Jasper lay in a second tank. As though sensing her eyes on him, his face tilted.

Her heart raced. It wasn’t Jasper at al. It was Cole. She reached out, thrusting her hand through the thick, viscous barrier, but he was already drifting away, carried on a current towards the darkness.

And then she was flat on her back in a hospital room. A presence lurked close by. She tried to wake herself, puling her eyes as wide as she could. Her dream self fumbled for a bedside lamp, hoping her real arm was reaching out, hitting a light switch and the light would wake her up.

For hours afterwards, she trudged through white haze across a barren landscape. She was searching for 328

something, but al she found was a necklace of sharp metal vines that leapt to her throat when she held it high to see it better, and clung there.

The first time she knew she was truly awake, she was lying in a bed. Her father sat beside her, head bowed, holding her hand. His thoughts buzzed with remorse. She could feel them. Their shape, their weight. Like the vine necklace digging into her throat. But she couldn’t feel his hand, or the duvet on her body, or her eyes when she hand, or the duvet on her body, or her eyes when she ordered them to blink.

Look at me,
she thought. But he didn’t raise his head, and the notion of her own paralysis choked her with fear until white mist flooded her sight and she was walking inside it again, searching for the way out.

The next time she stirred there was the pain and nausea to contend with. A smel of disinfectant and rubber wormed its way inside her. She attempted to raise her arm, press the cal button near her head, but her hands were slabs of concrete, her arms ship’s anchors. Simply breathing deeply made her ribs flare with pain. She gave up trying to move.

After that, she lay bound to the darkness with time in a bottleneck, the seconds feeling like hours.

Eventualy, she woke to sunlight. A room with three bay windows. Gossamer curtains lapping against white wals.

The luminous oblongs glowed like doors to other planes of existence, lingering remnants of the shadow world she’d been stuck in for the last few days.

Directly in front of her face, a pot of coffee percolated on a bedside table. A tang of roasted beans pricked her nostrils.

329

She tested her eyes and was pleased to feel the soft flutter of her lashes coming together as she blinked.

‘You’re awake,’ her father said. He was standing near the door. He smiled, disconcertingly unsure of himself.

the door. He smiled, disconcertingly unsure of himself.

‘You look much better.’ A nurse brushed into the room behind him.

‘Ah, there she is,’ the nurse said. ‘Let’s sit you up, shal we?’ She crossed to Ana, her voice bright and business-like. ‘Now this might hurt a little. You have a fractured rib that’s going to need lots of rest.’ She efficiently lifted Ana under the arms. Ana cried out in agony. ‘Would you do the honours?’ the nurse asked her father. Ashby came and plumped the pilows. When he moved away, the nurse rested Ana against them. ‘That wasn’t too bad, was it?’ she said, tucking a falen strand of Ana’s short hair back from her eyes. ‘Looks like your father was right. He said the smel of roasted coffee might bring you back. Just don’t try drinking any yet.’ She winked at Ana, before breezing across the room. ‘Buzz the red button if you need anything,’ she said, and the door closed behind her.

In the nurse’s absence, Ana’s father loitered awkwardly between the door and the bed.

‘The doctor said you’ve been showing signs of coming around for a couple of days. You’ve been in a coma for almost a week.’

A week!
Ana struggled to grasp the concept. How could she have been out of it for a whole week?

Her father fiddled with a vase of sunflowers on a chest of drawers. Then he ambled over to a coarsely textured armchair and sat down by her bed. ‘I’m so glad you’re OK,’

330

he said, reaching for her hand. Her mind commanded her fingers to move. They twitched struggling to remember how. With a burst of determination, her hand jerked and slipped down her thigh.

Her father coughed. He stood up, moved away. ‘They say it could be a couple of days until your motor cortex activity is back to normal.’ At the nearest window he paused, lifted back the flimsy curtain and looked out.

‘Do you remember what happened?’

Ana grunted. He turned to her. She dipped her chin to her chest in a nod.

‘Three Mils—’ His voice sounded muffled. He cleared his throat, let the curtain drop. ‘Once I knew you were there, I did everything,
everything
I could to get you out.

You have to understand, Ana, I couldn’t just walk in and take you. There are procedures.’

Like the tanks.
She shaped her mouth to form the words, but a strange noise came out. She tried again, determined.