Mr. Nobody

by Catherine Steadman

  I stare at him, incredulous. “You want me to treat you?”

  “Yes,” he says simply. “I want you to fix me.”

  I look into his eyes, see the years of pain, the terrible things he’s done but not done, because every awakening seems to be a new birth to him. He must live with the actions of a hundred other selves. Splintered memories from half-remembered situations.

  “Can you?” he asks.

  I rub my hands over my eyes and desperately try to shake off the fug of stress clouding my brain. “Let me think.”

  I feel his eyes on me, expectant. I need to get my head straight if I want to come out of this alive. I voice my thoughts as they come. “Okay, so, we know from the fMRI that your memory losses are real. We’re already ahead of anyone else in diagnosis terms with that. But the cause? We need the cause.” I pause; where to even start with potential causes? I try to relax, to put myself mentally back in Cuckoo Lodge on that warm rug in front of the fire that first night as I brainstormed.

  And then I remember—that night the power went off in the lodge—I overloaded the circuit by turning on too many lights. Lesson learned. “Um, okay,” I splutter. “When I first saw your CT, Matthew, before I accepted this case, I knew I’d seen scans like yours before. I thought I’d seen other patients with growths on their pituitary glands. But now I’m realizing that those other scans were probably all you. I think that what might be happening when your ‘resets’ occur is that the pituitary cyst is bursting. Every time you get a knock to the head, or whenever the cyst becomes too large, it’s popping. Secreting fluid into surrounding structures, releasing a surge of hormones that are flooding your brain. Overloading your circuits. Those surges could be responsible for the cycles you’ve described.” I watch him take this in, following the logic of my theory to its natural conclusion.

  “And we’d need to remove it? This cyst?” he asks finally.

  I measure my response. These are hardly clinical conditions. What I have is only a theory, but a cyst might be fixable. “Matthew, I think—I’m not certain—but I think you possibly can be cured. There’s an operation we can do. But we’d need a neurosurgeon, you’d have to go back to the hospital with me, we’d have to do tests.”

  “An operation?”

  “Yes. But in the hospital. We’d take it out and, if I’m right, the episodes would stop. The resets. I’m confident they would stop.” As confident as a hostage can be about anything.

  I watch the light in his eyes burn bright for a moment, then implode as he realizes what the price of this operation will be. He’ll need to go back to the hospital. Other people would become involved. This is not the answer he wanted. This is not part of the plan. He would be anesthetized pre-op and then God knows if anyone would even operate on him or if he’d go straight into custody. I’d be long gone when he woke and he’d be left with nothing. All this for nothing. I see him think it through, the careful plan he made for himself falling away beneath him. Curing him means he gets caught. He would lose his freedom. I watch him realize he can’t ever escape this situation.

  And as if on cue, deep in my coat pocket my hospital pager bursts to life. I jump as the piercing bleeps cut through the silence of the small house. I’d forgotten all about it. Adrenaline suddenly courses through both of us; Matthew’s eyes narrow hawklike as I fish the violently vibrating object from my coat and quickly flick it off. I hold his gaze, my breath high in my chest. We both know what that sound means—someone has noticed I’m not where I should be, someone is looking for me. I place the silenced pager gently on the wooden floor between us, a peace offering, a trust exercise. We both look down at its retro bulk sitting there, an undeniable reality between us.

  When Matthew finally looks back up at me, I see there’s a new brand of sadness in his eyes. That’s when I realize we aren’t going back to the hospital. He isn’t going to have an operation, that isn’t going to happen for either of us. He’s made his decision. And that is when I run.

  I bolt wildly for the door, and for a bright and shining second, I feel certain I’ll make it. I feel certain he’s letting me escape—after all we’ve said, after everything that’s happened, somehow I’ve won my freedom. Then his body collides with mine and I slam down hard onto the floor. The breath is torn from me. My body pinned beneath him, he lets me kick and flail for a moment.

  “Sorry, Emma,” he whispers as he grasps my hair and raises my head. Everything goes black.

  45

  CHRIS POOLE

  DAY 13—DIRECTIONS

  Chris pulls into the lay-by Rhoda left less than thirty minutes ago. The shingle roars as he brakes and bursts from the car. Phone in hand, he bounds out toward the shoreline, eyes desperately searching for two figures.

  As he nears the opening out onto the sand he tries Emma’s mobile again. Still no signal; he pockets the phone and scans the dunes ahead. He scrambles up a bank, grabbing clumps of snow-crusted grass as leverage to pull himself up the steep slope. He rises panting to the top, hair buffeted in the wind, and searches the glistening sand in all directions.

  There’s no one on the beach.

  “Shit.” He fishes out his phone. One bar of signal. He dials Emma’s number again. It rings. He waits to hear the soft hum of her voice picking up. Perhaps everything is fine now, perhaps she’s okay and she’s gone back to the hospital, he thinks. Rhoda told him Matthew had disappeared and they’d come here to find him. Perhaps Emma found him already, perhaps they went back.

  Emma’s phone diverts to voicemail.

  Chris curses. Emma asked for him specifically, Rhoda said. She didn’t want the police. Chris frowns, his features to the wind, the roar of it around him. What the hell is going on? She might still be here, they could have walked around the cove. Chris recalls his strange first meeting with Matthew on this beach two weeks ago. Yes, they might have walked farther.

  He bounds down the dune, and heads out in the direction of the bend in the shoreline, covering large stretches of sand with each stride.

  Then he sees something ahead.

  He pulls up short. There are fresh footprints in the sand. Small footprints first. Female. But a long stride. A female, running. He follows the footprints out, running alongside them now, out toward the shoreline. The woman’s footprints meet with another set. Larger, male. A man. The prints move in a wide semicircle, a dance, a conversation. This is where she found him.

  Chris follows the movements of that meeting. The two seemed to come together and then the male prints lead the female away. The stride is slow; she wasn’t chasing, she was following. The male ahead of the female. Her following him. Strange for a doctor to follow a patient. Chris jogs alongside the tracks, looks ahead; the steps seem to lead toward the main car park.

  Chris bursts into a run.

  He skids to a stop on the edge of the car park. Unlike the windblown beach, the whole car park is still covered in deep snow, and the two sets of footprints are crisp and clearly defined in its unspoiled canvas. Farther out he sees the tire tracks, the speckled brown of gravel visible beneath the compacted snow.

  They left in a car—but, Chris slowly realizes, Emma didn’t have her car with her. And that’s when he knows for sure that something is very wrong with the picture he’s seeing. He races to the tire tracks and slows to study the pattern of footprints around the ghost of the car. What he sees makes his blood run cold. The footprints on the driver’s side are male, not female. Chris might have no medical training, but he’s pretty certain that patients on psych wards should not be driving their doctors. Something very strange happened on that beach, he’s not sure what exactly but he doubts it was a good thing. He pulls out his phone again and dials Emma. The phone goes straight to voicemail.

  Chris looks down at the tracks once more, scowling. Where were they going? Should he call Rhoda back at the hospital? he wonders. Or he could call for backup, but he
thinks better of that. Emma specifically asked him not to do that. He’s got to trust her; after all, she’s trusted him. No, he just needs to find her.

  He breathes in deep and races to the car park’s exit. On the snowy country lane, tracks. The car turned right onto the lane. The hospital is left; they drove right, away from the hospital. And suddenly Chris realizes what he has to do next.

  Without pausing, he turns and bolts back the way he came, back to the lay-by where he left his car. Wherever her patient took her, it wasn’t back to the hospital.

  46

  DR. EMMA LEWIS

  DAY 13—HOME FREE

  My eyelids part and daylight breaks through as the blackness lifts. The soft blur of the world sharpens around me. I recognize the window first. Blinking open my lashes, I see its dark wood lattice, the bare tangle of wisteria clinging outside it. We’re not at Stephen Merriman’s childhood home anymore. We’re at mine.

  Panic rises inside me and I feel a dark throb pulse through my skull as I dip under again.

  When I surface he’s standing in front of me, Matthew; he’s talking. He’s telling me things. Horrible things that have happened. I float in and out of consciousness, from the soft embrace of blackness to reality and back again. He towers over me, his face different somehow. I try to work out what has changed exactly and realize it’s that he doesn’t care about my opinion anymore. He has stopped trying to be the person he thought he might be, the good person. His voice is freer, skipping along with him as he confesses more, gruesome things I can’t un-hear, things he’s done and has to remember. I am no longer a purveyor of cures, I am a receptacle for nightmares. He knows there is no way back for him and he wants to tell me all about it. A problem shared. I want the sweet release of unconsciousness to take me again but I have no control over it. Some primal survival instinct is keeping me awake, ready, even though there’s nothing I can do.

  I know I’m not leaving here. Not if he’s telling me this. He’s come too far down this road. He talks of names, places, and tells me of the lives of people who never made it home and never got found because of him. He tells me it all with sadness in his eyes but anger in his voice. And I know I won’t be allowed to leave here.

  I look down at my hands, zip-tied to the arms of a chair. Red welts rise puffy and sore around my wrists. My bandages are long gone. I must have struggled against the ties at some point, though I don’t remember doing so. I can see now that the hand I bricked straight through my car window is broken; it lies red and swollen against the armrest.

  When I look up, Matthew is leaving the room, saying something I don’t catch. I watch his legs disappear into the hallway. He’s going to get something. I think about running. I shift my weight forward on the seat but the rush of blood to my head makes me lose balance and I tip forward, crashing down, chair and all, onto the parquet flooring. The side of my head makes a sharp thump of contact and there’s darkness again.

  It’s a strange noise that brings me around. The sound of something being slowly rolled toward me, rising in proximity and volume. Something small rolls across the parquet floor toward my face, then a soft tap on my cheek. Another rolling noise begins, tumbling closer and closer, this time ending with a tap to the end of my nose.

  I open my eyes. Matthew is sitting slumped against the wall opposite me, rolling stubby-looking red tubes toward me. Another brushes my lips and I struggle to focus on it. It rolls to a stop inches from my face, red plastic with a coppery metallic end, like a joke shop lipstick but not.

  I bolt upright, realizing what they are.

  Shotgun cartridges.

  With a whimper I shuffle back as far as I can while still bound to the toppled chair, my eyes frantically searching the room for the gun.

  And then I see it, propped against the door next to a large canvas carryall. The shotgun. Oh God, oh God. This is real. He’s going to kill me.

  I barely have time to turn away before the vomit comes. A retch of pure terror onto the reclaimed flooring, the smell sharp and vile mixed with the fresh-paint scent of the house.

  I understand instantly why he’s brought me back here. My whole body starts to tremble as the tears come unbidden and silent down my cheeks.

  He’s going to shoot me in the same room my father shot himself fourteen years ago. I’m going to die here, like this.

  I sense Matthew rising opposite me but I refuse to look up at him, so he approaches, squatting down in front of me solicitously. There is something in his hand. A piece of crisp white paper.

  “Have a read of this, Emma. Let me know if you’re happy with it? I can change the wording if you like but I think I got the handwriting pretty good.”

  I can’t focus on the words dancing in front of me. It’s a letter. Some sort of letter. Bizarrely, the handwriting looks just like mine, but I didn’t write this. I read the words.

  Please. No.

  It’s a suicide note. My suicide note. I didn’t write this. I look up at his face hanging over me. He’s not just going to shoot me. He’s going to make it look like I committed suicide, in the exact same way my father did. That’s why he’s brought me back here. That’s why he didn’t just kill me at Lillian Merriman’s house. Because when the police find my body here it will tell a very different story. And it’s a story I know some people will be more than eager to believe.

  Horrified, I think of how the press will twist it, of how everyone will believe I did this to myself. I think of Joe, of my mother, of Chris and everyone at the hospital thinking I chose to die just like my father. I think of the life I haven’t even really lived yet. I can’t die here, I can’t. I pull wildly at my ties and scream, straining every sinew in my body, spittle leaping from my mouth, until, exhausted, I run out of breath. No one can hear us out here.

  “Well, I didn’t realize my handwriting was as bad as all that.” He laughs and pats me on the head jovially. I shrink from his touch and his face falls. He stands back, carefully setting the suicide note down on the floor just out of my reach.

  “Listen,” he says, his tone serious. “I want you to know, Emma, that this is not how I wanted this to end. This wasn’t part of my plan. I don’t even know if I thought it would get this far—I can’t recall. I don’t know how I thought you could fix me. Medication, I don’t know, something manageable? But you know I can’t go back to that hospital. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, I really do, but I’m not going to give myself up for you, I’m not going to prison because of you. Not over here and not back in the States. I hope you can understand that this is the only way to be sure I can disappear again.” I start to speak but he stops me with a shake of the head. “I know, I know—you won’t tell a soul. You’ll take it to your grave. Well, that’s kind of what I’m banking on with all this. Listen, you’re a really good doctor, Emma. You actually care, which is rarer than you’d imagine, but people lie and people change their minds. You’d promise me anything right now, but tomorrow? And I’m not going to hang my chances of freedom on your word when you’re tied to a chair. I’m sure you understand my logic. But I will say, I’m truly, truly sorry it’s come to this.”

  He looks at me a moment before turning and moving away. My angle on the floor prevents my gaze from following him. Out of sight I hear him crack the shotgun open, then snap it shut.

  Oh God. Oh God. “Please. Matthew,” I gush, “you don’t have to do this. I won’t say a word, I really promise. You can just go. I’ll tell them I couldn’t find you. Please.” And a thought suddenly comes as if from nowhere, a solution so clear and reasoned it might just save my life. “Matthew! You asked me to fix you. To stop the cycles. But this, this is the moment it all boils down to. If these memories aren’t you, if there seems like no way out, if you truly aren’t this person, then stop. Just stop, now, and we’re halfway there. You can still change this. Don’t be this person. You can stop making this happen. But only you can.
”

  He looks down at me, sorrow in his eyes for a moment, and then his expression falters ever so slightly. He takes me in, as if only really seeing me now, on the floor twisted and bound to my tipped-over chair. He looks down at his weapon thoughtfully before gently lowering it and placing it against the wall.

  Oh God. It worked.

  “I see what you’re saying. I understand. Let’s get you more comfortable,” he says tenderly. “It doesn’t look very dignified, down there. You deserve better.” He grabs the arms of my chair and hoists it and me up together, in one smooth movement, as if we weighed nothing. But he does not loosen my ties. His eyes avoid mine. And I understand that my words have only made him kinder, they have not saved me. His plan has not changed.

  He scans the crime scene again. Me righted, his note before me. My exhausted face, hair plastered to my cheeks with sweat and salty tears. My broken hand, bloating and discolored. My bruised wrists bound to the arms of the collapsible metal chair. My breath is coming high and fast. I wonder how he plans to explain away the contusions on my wrists; perhaps he’ll slit them too, or zip-tie them to the gun as if I’d feared missing due to the recoil. Even if it doesn’t look like suicide, there are plenty of nutters out there who could have done this to Charles Beaufort’s daughter. I met one of them only yesterday.