Lost Lives (Emily Swanson Mystery Thriller Series Book 1)

by Malcolm Richards

Opening her eyes, she saw sunlight the colour of treacle oozing through the window. Silhouettes of tree branches toyed with the light, leaves dancing and spinning on the carpet. The light moved over the bed, prodding her awake.

  Her mother sang her name. And then, there were other voices. Voices she didn’t recognise. That odd, chemical odour grew stronger, invading her senses. Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe.

  Emily woke in darkness. There was something in her nose and running down the back of her throat, gagging her. Her fingers scrabbled towards her face and wrapped around a long, thin tube. She pulled on it, but it wouldn’t move. Beside the bed, a machine began to emit a series of loud beeps and blinking colours. Terrified, Emily tightened her grip on the tube and pulled harder. The tape securing it to her skin tore away. She felt the tube moving inside her as she pulled, hand over hand. Hot bile dripped on her tongue. Then, as the tube left her nose, she drew in a deep ragged breath and felt the air rush against her raw throat.

  At the edge of her vision, a figure appeared in a swathe of light.

  Emily tried to sit up. Seeing another tube taped to the back of her hand, she gave it a sharp tug. A needle ripped out of her skin, followed by a thin arc of blood.

  Now there were voices. Then silhouettes moving into the room. They surrounded her, holding her down on the bed. She felt a sharp jab somewhere in her flesh. Soon, voices became distant echoes. Before long, the only sound she heard was the monotonous drum of her heart, each beat fading into silence like the end of a sad song.

  It was daylight when she woke again. The brightness hurt her sensitive eyes. Through blurry vision, she saw a window. Through the glass there were smudges of greens, browns and blues.

  The intravenous drip had been replaced, the needle reattached to the vein in her hand. Syrupy liquid in the feed bag glistened in the light. Emily moved her hand to her nose and was relieved to find the tube gone.

  Her mind found it difficult to function. Thoughts clashed together. Bits of images faded in and out.

  A nurse dressed in blue uniform stepped into the room, her gaze fixed on her morning notes. She looked up, startled to find her patient awake.

  “Where am I?” Emily asked, her voice cracking like splintered wood.

  The nurse, who was young and anxious-looking, said, “Just a moment, please.”

  She ducked out of the room, returning a minute later with an elderly man dressed in a tweed three-piece suit and a white doctor’s coat. He was bald, with a gaunt face, the skin pulled tight against his cheekbones.

  “I see we are awake,” he said, his voice melodious and erudite. “How do you feel?”

  Emily pulled herself up on her elbows and managed to keep herself there.

  “Thirsty,” she said.

  The man muttered to the nurse, who slipped out of the room.

  “My name is Doctor Adams,” he said when they were alone. “I am the consultant psychiatrist and medical director at St. Dymphna’s, which is where you are.”

  Emily frowned. Her head had changed from concrete to cloud, and now she floated inches above the bed. Doctor Adam’s words soared over her like birds.

  “Tell me, Emily. What do you remember?”

  Her head swam with images. The room separated into two identical pictures, then snapped back again. The nurse returned carrying a jug of water. She filled a plastic glass, cupped the back of Emily’s head and brought the glass to her lips. Chilled water cascaded over her tongue and down her throat. It was ecstasy. When the glass was empty, the nurse adjusted the bed so Emily could sit without struggling, and then repositioned herself next to Doctor Adams.

  “What’s ... St. Dymph ...?” Something was wrong. The words were forming in her mind but leaving her mouth all skewed.

  “St. Dymphna’s,” Doctor Adams said, “is a very nice private hospital in the countryside.”

  “Hospital?” If only this drowsiness would leave her, then she could assemble her thoughts into some sort of chronological order. “Why ... why am I here?”

  Doctor Adams laughed. It was such an unexpected reaction that even the nurse failed to hide her surprise.

  “You don’t remember? You’re in hospital because you harmed yourself. Quite seriously I might add.”

  Emily looked down at her body. Nothing felt broken. She wasn’t in pain. She could move all of her limbs, albeit with tremendous effort. She turned her hands over and inspected her wrists.

  “You took a lethal overdose of pills. A veritable cocktail of everything you’d been prescribed,” Doctor Adams said. His voice sounded as though it was coming through the wall. “You’re extremely lucky you were found so early. Had the police not been alerted, we most certainly would not be having this conversation.”

  Shock had squeezed the breath from Emily’s lungs. She sat up, her arms twitching by her sides. The familiar pounding of her heart returned like an old friend.

  “I didn’t do that.” She had no recollection. Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes. She tried to remember but there was only a blank space.

  “Well I’m quite positive the amount of pills you took rules out it being an accident,” Doctor Adams said.

  “No. I wouldn’t have done that.” A wave of raw emotion swelled inside her. She tried to think back. Everything before waking up here had been fractured, as if all her memories had been shredded like unwanted photographs. There were faces, locations, bits of names—nothing that made any sense on its own. What had happened to her?

  “Ms Swanson?”

  Emily looked down at her body, then across the room at Doctor Adams and the nurse.

  “I don’t—I didn’t take any pills.”

  She waded through the broken images in her mind and they swarmed around her, smothering her in confusion.

  “I can assure you that you did,” Doctor Adams said. He produced a pair of reading glasses from his breast pocket and examined his clipboard of notes. “I have a copy of the police report right here. I’ll sum it up as best I can. In the early hours of Thursday the tenth of December, officers were called to The Holmeswood building after a tenant, who wished to remain anonymous, reported hearing screams coming from inside your apartment. Forcing entry, they found you unconscious in the bathtub. Empty bottles of prescription medication were found in the sink. Interestingly, your elderly neighbour, Harriet Golding, eighty-two, was also found unconscious, with a number of broken bones, just outside of your apartment in the stairwell.

  Emily’s eyes grew wide. “What?”

  The doctor looked over his clipboard. Emily’s skin had turned the colour of ash. He returned to the report. “An emergency psychological assessment was performed on site and under Section Four of the Mental Health Act, you were deemed a danger to yourself and others. You were subsequently detained and, due to a shortage of National Health beds, transferred here. Under Section Three of the Act, a treatment order was then put in place, and here you are, Ms Swanson, at the beginning of a long and arduous recovery at St. Dymphna’s Private Hospital.”

  Sat in the bed, Emily felt her left eye twitch. Doctor Adam’s lips continued to move up and down, but she could no longer hear his words. She fell back into a pitch black hole, limbs flailing, heart in her throat. The darkness lashed around her in thorny vines, consuming her body until there was nothing left but the echo of a scream.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When she was next aware of her surroundings, Doctor Adams was gone. A different nurse was in the room. She was older, her movements fluid and confident.

  “Help me,” Emily said, her voice a whisper. Her head bobbed up and down like a bird.

  “I’m Nurse Stevens,” the nurse said. “I’ve run a bath for you. We’ll get you cleaned up and then I’ll help you to dress. Nurse Berlinger will be assisting.”

  A sudden movement brought Emily’s attention to the woman across the room. She heard running water and turned her head towards the open bathroom door.

  “It’s very private,” Nurse Stevens said. Pulling b
ack the sheets, she manoeuvred Emily so that she was sat on the edge of the bed. Together, the nurses stripped their patient of her clothes and sat her in a bath of warm, soapy water.

  Once bathed and dressed, Nurse Stevens brushed Emily’s hair, tied it back in a knot, and helped her into a wheelchair.

  “We thought you might like to get out of your room,” she said.

  From the peripheries of her vision, Emily saw the walls slide back like stage scenery. Nurse Stevens wheeled her along a wide hospital corridor. Some of the doors were closed. Others were open and revealed empty beds, stripped of sheets.

  The corridor turned ninety degrees. Nurse Berlinger swiped a card through a reader and the electronic doors in front of them swung open. They entered a large room filled with tables and chairs. Fixed high up on the wall, a television played an old soap opera.

  There were a handful of other patients here, all of them women. A few sat on sofas watching the TV show, while two sat at separate tables, one reading and the other—a thin girl in her late teens—playing solitaire. In the window, a woman with cropped hair had her face pressed against the glass.

  “This is the dayroom,” Nurse Stevens told Emily. “There’s no need to be afraid. We’re all friends here.”

  The young woman playing solitaire looked up. Nurse Stevens pushed Emily towards her.

  “How are you today, Grace?” Nurse Stevens asked.

  The girl regarded Emily through narrowed eyes.

  “Oh I’m wonderful, thank you. Just fantastic.”

  “I’m very pleased to hear it. I have someone I want to introduce to you.”

  Grace reached out and grasped Emily’s arm. Lifting it into the air, she let go and watched the limb fall back into her lap. “It’s drugged to the eyeballs.”

  “Yes, well Emily is new here and she could do with a friend. I thought that friend could be you.”

  “She’s not new,” Grace replied.

  Nurse Stevens frowned. “You’re always complaining that there’s no one to talk to, so here’s someone to talk to.”

  “Except, she can’t talk back. Might as well talk to the wall.”

  “I can talk,” Emily said. Getting the words out of her mouth was exhausting.

  “See,” Nurse Stevens said, her smile returning. “Problem solved.”

  “There are much bigger problems to solve, as you well know,” Grace said. “Such as what happened to Helen for example.”

  Nurse Stevens’ eyebrows knitted together. Behind her, Nurse Berlinger muttered to herself.

  “Oh it speaks!” Grace exclaimed.

  Nurse Stevens released her grip on the wheelchair. “You know very well that Helen has gone home. I don’t know how many times you have to be told. She came to the end of her treatment and she went home. I’m sorry she didn’t say goodbye to you, and I understand how hurtful that must feel, but I really can’t do a thing about it, Grace. Now, if you don’t mind, I have other patients that need my help.”

  “Do what you like,” the young girl huffed. “But I know the truth.”

  Both nurses shared an exasperated look. Nurse Stevens patted Emily on the shoulder.

  “Doctor Adams will be along to see you shortly. We’ll need to take some blood in a while, just to see how you’re faring. In the meantime, I’m sure Grace will be riveting company.”

  She shot a warning glance at the girl, before marching away with Nurse Berlinger. When they were gone, Grace gave Emily a sideways glance, then returned to her card game.

  “She’s wrong of course. No one comes here looking for friends, so don’t expect to make any. They come here because they’re in Hell and they think coming here will help them escape.”

  Emily looked around the room, her eyes coming back to the girl at the window, who was now crouched and tapping on the glass. Grace spread the cards out on the table in a perfect fan. She cut the fan in half and made two neat piles.

  “But it’s a waste of money,” she said. “They might leave this place thinking they’ve won, but they’ll be back. You can’t leave Hell when it’s inside you. Game?”

  She held out half of the cards to Emily, who, with tremendous effort, shook her head.

  “It’s the right attitude. Don’t mix. Half the people here are crazy. Or so they’re led to believe. Here’s my question—is this place really helping them to get better, or are they all being slowly stripped away, until all that’s left are obedient little citizens?”

  The girl shuffled the cards, her movements hastening until the cards were a blur.

  “You look too young to be here,” Emily said.

  Grace slammed the cards down, startling some of the other women.

  “Age is irrelevant,” she huffed. “You ask because I’m smart. Because I speak my mind. Of course, you can’t be young and filled with wisdom. It’s not part of the system. The system is all about combinations, you see, and I’m very good at working them out. You can be young and naïve, or happy and subservient. You can be fat and funny, or you can be beautiful and irrevocably stupid. It’s the way of the world and don’t you dare try to mix and match. Because if we did, suddenly whole empires would collapse. Stock markets would crash. People would take back their self-control. And by people I mean women. And by women I mean every single one of us in this room. Do you think any of us would be here if we lived our lives by combination, regardless of whether we’ve self-admitted or been brought here against our will? I’m not discounting mental illness—some people are just born that way. What I’m saying is would ninety percent of the crazies in this world lose their shit if this world was a little less controlling? And by the world I mean men. Because they have combinations too, and they don’t dare break them because the fear of losing control terrifies them beyond belief. Because losing control equals weakness.”

  “I’m not supposed to be here,” Emily said. “There’s been a mistake.”

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” Grace sighed. She picked up her cards again and stacked them into a pile. “That was my whole point.”

  The sound of footsteps caught Grace’s attention.

  “Who’s Helen?” Emily asked.

  Scooping up her cards, Grace whispered, “Not now.”

  She scurried away to join the other women, squeezing into the centre of the couch.

  “I see you’ve made acquaintances with our resident radical.” Doctor Adams took a moment to ease himself into a chair, then readjusted his jacket, smoothing out the creases. “How are you feeling, Ms Swanson?”

  Emily looked up. The doctor wavered, then split into two halves.

  “I shouldn’t be here.”

  “Now if I had a penny for every time I’ve heard those words,” Doctor Adams said. “You’ve woken from a long sleep. Your body will require time to regain its strength and agility, which mean you need to rest.”

  He removed his glasses, took a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and began polishing the lenses.

  “I’ve been going over your file, Ms Swanson. You have a long history of anxiety and depression ... multiple courses of therapy, medication ... and I’m afraid there’s no simple remedy you can take to rewrite it all. Once the bloodwork is back and everything is fine, we’ll continue with the next phase of treatment—a combination of prescribed drugs, a good dose of cognitive behaviour therapy, and a healthy bout of time to heal.”

  “I want to go home,” Emily said. She wanted to scream it at the top of her lungs. But her head was so heavy. Her insides felt as if they were solidifying, turning from molten lava into black rock. She tried to move her legs, to stand, but the effort to move even her toes was excruciating.

  “Of course you want to go home. And you will in due time. But first, we must root out the cause of your unhappiness. It’s a tragedy for a young woman of your age to care so little for life.”

  Standing, he signalled to Nurse Stevens.

  “Please,” Emily said.

  “I’ll see you soon for our first formal session,” the do
ctor replied. “In the meantime, get some rest. Try to eat a little something.”

  She watched him walk away. A great tiredness pressed upon her. She sensed someone behind. Then she was moving out of the room and through a long, black tunnel. There were voices, echoes. Then there were dreams.

  In each dream came a terrifying figure dressed in a surgical gown with a white sackcloth draped over his head. In each dream, she stood beside a pale young boy with a shock of dark hair, and together they watched in mesmerised horror as the figure murdered her mother, over and over, hacking and stabbing and strangling, until his white garments were soaked with her blood.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Time had become liquid. She didn’t know how much had passed. Perhaps a day. Perhaps a week. There had been brief moments of lucidity, but mostly it was as if dreams had descended upon the real world in a thick fog. Her life before now was broken into fragments. But some pieces had begun to fit together.

  “What is the last thing you remember?”

  She sat in Doctor Adams’ office, which was small and square with tidy bookshelves and a large desk. The doctor sat behind it, staring at her. Behind him, the blinds shut out the day. A lamp in the corner lit up the gloom.

  Emily thought about what she remembered. She had been living in a cottage, the one she’d bought herself after saving years for the deposit. She lived there alone. No, that wasn’t right. She was engaged to be married. A name came to her, followed by a bitter taste in her mouth.

  “Lewis.”

  Doctor Adams raised an eyebrow, then flipped through a file of papers on his desk.

  “Ah yes, Lewis Hemmingway,” he said. “Your former fiancé. We contacted Mr. Hemmingway when attempting to appoint what we call a Nearest Relative. He was, shall we say, reluctant to engage. It’s unfortunate, but often the burden of mental health can become too much for our loved ones to bear. Everyone has their limitations, and I’m afraid it seems Mr. Hemmingway reached his some time ago. Did you speak to him prior to hospitalization?”

  Across the desk, Emily instinctively began to count—to four on an in breath, to seven as she held it in, then to eight as she exhaled. Of course. Lewis had left her alone in that apartment. No, not in the apartment. In the cottage. He had walked out one morning, leaving a note on the table. Eight years together ending in two lines of his untidy scrawl. Wait. What apartment?