Through Glass Darkly: Episode Three

by Knyte,Peter

  ‘But the suits take a lot of practice to use,’ she continued. ‘So while they’re great for toting around huge weights, they’re also great for ripping cabin doors off their hinges, or accidentally punching through a brick wall that you were going to lean against.’

  ‘It’s because they use your own movements as controls, they tend to operate on an all or nothing basis until you get used to them,’ I added. ‘So if you get it wrong, they can easily rip your own muscles and tendons, we’ve even had people accidentally break their own bones when using them.’

  ‘You sound like you’ve actually tried one out?’ Fraser observed.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ I replied with a wry smile at the memory. ‘And I got along fine with it for a while, but the first time I tried to adjust my lenses while I was wearing it, I hit myself on the side of the head so hard I was unconscious for nearly half an hour, and very nearly fractured my own skull.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said, as the penny finally dropped. ‘But if the Captain had even one person aboard with one of these suits on, then you’d have all the defence you might need against another attack by this creature.

  ‘Not that you didn’t seem to have it covered last time that is,’ he added with a quick grin.

  After we’d talked for a bit longer, I agreed to have a word with the doctors in the morning, to see if they’d consider discharging me, and then we could have a chat about the use of the marine suits with the Captain once I was back aboard the ship. I was hoping just having another member of the crew around, no matter how stiff and aching I might still be, would be enough to give the Captain a bit more room to negotiate with the city officials.

  CHAPTER 34 - RECOVERY

  Before Ariel and Fraser left for the evening, I decided I should have a stab at getting out of my wheelchair and actually doing some walking, which they were both more than happy to give me a hand with.

  It was excruciating at first, and I very nearly gave up after my first few steps, but remembering what the doctor said about my muscles working better once I started using them again, I grimaced my way through it for a few minutes, by the end of which I could just about walk unassisted again, though I was completely done-in and was very relieved to finally sit down again.

  The exertion was enough to send me straight off to sleep once Ariel and Fraser had departed, and I slept a deep and dreamless sleep for the whole night, before waking up just after dawn the following morning feeling much better.

  It was still raining outside, but far less heavily than it had been the preceding day, and I was content to lounge beneath the bed-clothes for a few minutes before I tentatively sitting up against the headboard.

  I still ached everywhere, but unlike the previous day, I was now just extremely sore and as long as I took things slowly I could just about move without crying out.

  Anticipating I’d be bedbound for a while Ariel and Fraser had brought a few of my things over to help pass the time, including my lenses and tools, my journal and my gun.

  Unlike the last visit to the hospital when Blake had kindly retrieved and serviced my gun for me, this time both my lenses and gun were filthy after their dip in the lake and were in desperate need of some care and attention.

  There was still some water by the side of my bed along with some oranges, so as it was still early I made a light breakfast of these before busying myself with the task at hand of first cleaning and servicing my equipment.

  The familiarity of the task was comforting and without thinking about it I’d finished with the lenses in no time and was hard at work on my Webley by the time the nurse came to check on me, and then bring me a more substantial breakfast.

  My gun was in a terrible state when I started, but after taking a well-earned break to devour some eggs and bacon I had it completely stripped, cleaned, oiled and re-assembled by the time the doctor appeared on his rounds.

  It was the same light-hearted fellow I’d had before, but I felt a little more prepared to deal with him this time.

  ‘Ah Mister Hall, still shirking in bed I see, when you should be up and around,’ he spouted as his opening volley.

  ‘Yes, that’s right doctor,’ I replied with a mock joviality. ‘This bed is just so much more comfortable than my own, I just couldn’t tear myself away.’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to take your word for it,’ he conceded, while looking through the chart at the foot of my bed slightly distractedly. ‘I’ve never tried one myself.

  ‘So, it looks like you managed to make it through the entire day yesterday without needing any pain killers or other analgesics. Is that right?’

  ‘Well, I presumed the tablets I was given with each meal . . .’ I replied, a little more hesitantly this time.

  ‘No, no, they were just some vitamin tablets,’ he breezed on, dropping my medical chart back onto its clip at the foot of my bed. ‘If you were experiencing any real pain you should’ve said something, there are several anti-inflammatories that are very effective at treating muscular pain.’

  There was something about the way this man spoke to me that just rubbed me up the wrong way, and even though I’d been prepared for him this time, I could already feel myself getting irritated.

  ‘Look here doctor . . .’ I began, before he rudely cut me off mid-sentence.

  ‘Well I can’t stand around here all day playing nice,’ he interjected. ‘Why don’t we get you on your feet and see how you fair on a bit of a trot around the hospital?’

  But instead of waiting for a response, he simply took my agreement for granted and turned to the nurse beside him. ‘Nurse would you see if you can rustle up a couple of canes for Mr Hall here, he’s probably not going to try all that hard, so we’ll not bother with a wheelchair for now.’

  The man was simply infuriating, and as soon as I’d shown him just how hard I was prepared to try, I resolved to give him a piece of my mind about his bedside manner.

  I was so irritated by his lack of courtesy and good manners, I walked all the way around the hospital to the veranda where I’d spent the majority of the previous afternoon and evening, before I realised it.

  ‘Well you seem to be shuffling along with those canes alright Mr Hall,’ the rude fellow airily conceded. ‘Why don’t we take a turn around the grounds, the rain seems to have stopped for the moment.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure I’m not taking up too much of your time,’ I sniped back at him rather ineffectually.

  ‘As long as you don’t dally Mr Hall, I think we’ll be fine.’ He replied, oblivious to my ill temper.

  I’d had enough, and was just about to give the clumsy fool a good talking to, but without some much as a by-your-leave he turned his back on me again and was off across the veranda and down the steps into the grounds.

  Well, that was it, this man had pushed me too far. Slinging my canes against one of the wicker chairs I stormed off after him to give him a piece of my mind.

  The rain might have temporarily stopped, but the ground was absolutely sodden after well over two days’ worth of heavy rain, and as I trudged after the fellow I immediately felt the wet soaking through my hospital slippers and socks, putting me in an even worse mood.

  Eventually the bumbling idiot of a doctor realised I was following him, and turned around to see me striding up to him.

  ‘Well that’s more like it Hall, you clearly didn’t need those canes after all.’

  ‘Now look here you pompous oaf,’ I began, coming to an abrupt halt directly in front of him.

  For the first time I saw something in his expression that made me think he might have twigged that I was displeased about something, and then an instant later he was looking at the saturated grass behind me, that I’d just strode across, and remarked

  ‘I say that grass looks rather wet, I shouldn’t sit on that if I were you!’

  Without thinking I looked behind me at the grass that he was talking about, thinking that the man must be losing his wits. I’d got no intention of sitting down at all, let al
one on the wet grass, but just as I turned back to him to tell him as much, he put his hand square in the middle of my chest and pushed me over.

  It was so unexpected I could do nothing to save myself, and I landed with an audible squelch straight on my backside.

  I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been more shocked in all my life than I was in that moment, sat on the wet grass having just been deliberately pushed over by a medical professional, who was allegedly responsible for my care.

  I was speechless.

  ‘You don’t seem very angry to me Mr Hall,’ the man who had just pushed me over observed, in a disappointed tone. ‘Which I find very curious in a man who only a day or so ago became so enraged he practically beat a far more powerful, armed and armoured opponent to death with his bare hands before launching himself out into the open air with no safety line in order to beat that opponent some more, heedless of the fact that you were several thousand feet up over solid ground at the time.’

  ‘What . . . what . . . that was different,’ was all I could bring myself to say while still grappling with the fact that this same man had just pushed me over.

  ‘I think perhaps we should get you back inside, and into some dry clothes,’ he continued. ‘Looks like it’s going to start raining out here again at any minute.’

  CHAPTER 35 – TILTING AT WINDMILLS

  It took a good long while for the penny to drop. This strangely perplexing doctor had helped me up and escorted me, squelching, back to my room and I was halfway through getting changed before I realized this must be the specialist that Fraser had mentioned to me, the Canadian who specialized in helping soldiers that were struggling psychologically with the effects of war.

  Once I was dry and had changed into a fresh set of pyjamas and dressing gown, I walked back over to the veranda where I’d agreed to meet the doctor to talk. My legs and lower back still ached painfully when I walked, and I was very much relieved to sit down again when I finally got there.

  The doctor had arranged for a pot of tea, and after I’d had a much needed cup, he got down to business.

  He started off by apologizing for the subterfuge he’d used to assess my condition, and then introduced himself as Dr Benedict Crow, but asked that I just address him as Ben or Benedict when it was just the two of us.

  ‘I don’t know if you recall, but we’d already met at least once before Agent Fraser asked me to do a psychological assessment of you?’ He asked.

  I confirmed I remembered him from one of my previous visits to the hospital, but admitted to being slightly perplexed at why he’d have been treating me.

  ‘Oh, I trained and practiced as a medical doctor and a surgeon long before I became interested in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological ailments,’ he explained, matter-of-factly. ‘And I still help out now and again as a locum just to keep my hand in. Needless to say, the arrival of your ship over the city and the several hundred members of your crew in need of medical attention, has put quite a strain on the local hospitals, so I was drafted in to help out. Treating you before I received Fraser’s referral was pure coincidence, but it allowed me to confirm my initial hypothesis.’

  ‘Can you tell me what that hypothesis is?’ I asked quite bluntly.

  ‘Not just yet I’m afraid, all I can say for the moment is that I’m a bit concerned that something unusual is affecting you Ashton. From what James. . . Agent Fraser, has told me you’ve experienced these bouts of extreme anger on at least two occasions in the last week, and this kind of reaction just seems out of tune with how you are as a person the rest of the time,’ he explained. ‘Would you say that was a fair summary?’

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted, still a little reluctantly. ‘If anything in the past I’ve always strayed toward over-thinking things, and like a lot of my fellow countrymen, priding myself on my self-control, and especially not losing my temper.’

  ‘Yes, that’s as I’d suspected,’ he continued. ‘Which presents us with the altogether more interesting and more thorny problem of understanding what has changed recently that is causing you to so spectacularly lose your self-control.’

  ‘I’m afraid the things which have changed recently would probably make quite a long list,’ I commented, wryly. ‘Being betrayed by my former crewmates, nearly dying from poisoning, several close friends and colleagues being murdered in their sleep, finding myself on a world completely different to my own.’

  ‘Yes, I take your point,’ he conceded, thoughtfully.

  ‘Perhaps if we approached this from a different angle,’ he suggested. ‘Can you tell me how you’ve felt on either of these two occasions when you’re temper has got the better of you?’

  That was one of the things I really didn’t want to dwell upon, but odd though this doctor was, there was something about him that made me think I could talk to him, and if there was a way to fix me then I really wanted to find it.

  ‘Alright,’ I said reluctantly. ‘The first time it just caught me by surprise. I’d felt myself getting angry and sorrowful when I’d had to try and put a name to my fallen crewmates after I’d woken up in the hospital to discover so many of them had died, but when I first saw the creature that I’d thought responsible, I went straight from calm and in control to raging after the thing in the blink of an eye.’

  ‘But the second time you felt differently?’ Crow asked.

  ‘It was actually a long time before the second incident that I became aware of something different. After I lost control of myself the first time I became much more aware of the anger within me, constantly burning, sometimes more quietly, sometimes more violently, but always there, and threatening to burst into full flame.’

  ‘Are you are aware of this even now, while the two of us are just sat here drinking tea?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ I admitted, quite casually. ‘It’s quiet now, barely even smoking, but I feel its heat still.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Crow muttered as he made a few notes in his pad. ‘And yet, when I was deliberately going out of my way to provoke you earlier on, this always present anger didn’t result in you losing your temper again?’

  ‘Oh I was cross with you and more than a little irritated,’ I conceded. ‘But no I wouldn’t say I was even remotely angry with you.’

  ‘And how about if we were to start talking about the creature, and the attack on the ship, perhaps even the death of those two engineers who sounded the alarm?’ He pushed, and I instantly felt the smouldering anger within me begin to glow with a greater heat.

  ‘That’s altogether different,’ I replied, a hint of menace involuntarily creeping into my voice.

  ‘I apologise for mentioning it,’ Crow continued. ‘But that is a very specific trigger for your anger. Tell me, when you lost your temper the second time was anything else different, your perception of sound or colour, the way things felt of moved?’

  ‘Both times I’ve felt a little . . . detached, if you know what I mean. Almost as though I were watching someone else doing the things I was doing. The last time it was a bit different, I knew what I should be doing and could think incredibly clearly about what was going on, but at the same time I wanted the creature dead at all costs and didn’t much care who was caught in the crossfire.’

  ‘Fascinating, fascinating,’ Crow kept mumbling to himself as he scribbled line after line of notes.

  ‘Well, I barely know where to begin Ashton. From my perspective something very unusual is going on here. From what you’ve said it seems clear you’re not having some kind of psychological breakdown, nor is it the case that strong emotions are simply putting your limbic system in control. . .’

  ‘I’m sorry Doctor, I don’t think I’m quite following you.’ I had to admit.

  ‘My apologies, let’s see.’ He said, clearly thinking about the best way to explain things to me.

  ‘Okay, a nice easy way to think about how the brain works is to think of your Cerebral Cortex, which makes up the majority of the outside of the brain, as the main logical bit
that we all use when solving problems or for thinking rationally. In contrast the limbic area of the brain, which makes up its centre is what we use when processing emotions, not just negative emotions like anger and hate, the limbic system is what we use when reading soppy novels, asking an attractive young lady out for dinner or in my case when I’m deciding whether or not to have another helping of apple pie.

  ‘So far, so simple?’ He asked, before proceeding when I nodded my agreement.

  ‘Well, you swap between using these two areas of the brain pretty quickly, but the bit of the brain that decides which part to use in which situation, that is called the Amygdala. Now the Amygdala is kind of like a filing cabinet of emotional memories, and the more plentiful or stronger those emotional memories are the more frequently you’re Amygdala will decide to use your limbic system.’

  ‘Yes, I think I’m still with you Doctor.’

  ‘Splendid. We’re on the home stretch now, so just bear with me a little longer.

  ‘Now, what this means in real terms is that when you have a rotten day, you’re much more likely to get irritated by your friends and family because your brain is pre-disposed to process things emotionally rather than rationally because you’ve only recently added several more emotional memories of your day to your Amygdala filing cabinet. As a consequence you’ll pick up on the slightest nuance of how somebody says something rather than what it is they’re saying.

  ‘The curious thing about you Ashton, is that for someone who’s just spent an entire evening in a homicidal rage, pretty much anything should be enough to tip your brain back into reacting emotionally, and in this case getting angry with me while I was being deliberately annoying.

  ‘Now this is good for several reasons, firstly you didn’t punch me on the nose while I was being irritating, secondly, it’s means you’re not likely to be a danger to your crewmates or colleagues, no matter how bad a day you’re having, and thirdly from my perspective you’ve given me a really interesting problem to solve, which when you’re as good at what you do as I am, can often be a surprising difficult thing to find.’