“Erm… yes, you are.”
“Some, however, may exhibit involuntary movements or mimic other people’s actions or speech, or make strange unnecessary movements, but they are not aware of doing it. My money is on Colin exhibiting plenty of the former, but none of the latter, so neither true catalepsy or catatonia.”
“And do you have a theory as to why that might be so?”
“Yes.”
“Care to share?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you can tell me. Quid pro quo, Mr Gibbs.”
“Okay. As this conversation isn’t happening…” Gibbs leans forward, feet planted firmly on the floor, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together, ready to deliver his information, and Grace mirrors his stance, ready to receive it.
“Apart from the initial trauma, Captain McLeod has undergone quite a catalogue of surgical events,” he says. “Not life threatening, but certainly life changing. Amputations, debridements, skin grafts, you name it. His last was six months ago, which resulted in the removal of the distal portion of his right femur. He came through it okay and everything seemed to be healing as well as could be expected, good clean wound, no infection. He seemed fine in himself, chipper almost, and we thought there was a good chance he would adapt to his condition, to being disabled, pretty well. He started physiotherapy and was progressing nicely, even got so far as the list to be measured up to have a pair of artificial limbs fitted in due course. Then, without warning, he went into a decline. He stopped co-operating with the staff, stopped eating, stopped talking, becoming more and more withdrawn. And then came the first period of complete catatonia, total shutdown. It only lasted for a day before he came out of it, seemingly none the worse for the experience.”
“And then it happened again?”
“Yeah. More than once, and each period would be longer than the last. We had him on Midazolam at one time, but it didn’t do any good, in fact it seemed to be making him worse, slipping him deeper out of our reach.”
“You shouldn’t be surprised. Benzos are muscle relaxant sedatives. Knock you right out.”
“True. Then the periods began to stretch out to a week or ten days at a time. This time, however–” He puffs out his cheeks. “Too long.”
Before Grace can ask how long, the door to the lounge pushes open and a man bustles in. He is dressed the same as Gibbs, in navy top and track suit pants, white trainers, his ID badge swinging around his neck.
“Don’t mind me,” he says. “I’m not stopping, just need coffee. My blood caffeine level’s in danger of falling below critical mass.”
They sit in silence as he helps himself to a brew, takes a couple of biscuits from a tin, and leaves.
“You didn’t say there were biscuits,” says Grace.
A cherry flush colours Gibbs’ cheeks.
“It’s alright, I don’t want one,” she says. “But I wouldn’t mind a refill.”
She holds up her cup. Gibbs takes it, tops it up with more coffee, and hands it back.
“Before someone else comes in and interrupts us, Miss Dove… Grace I mean, can you possibly shed any light on why this could have happened. Why Colin should be doing so well one day and then go into a complete reverse the next, because we haven’t got a sodding clue. God only knows, and he’s not telling us. “
“Ah, that’s what GOK stands for,” Grace says. “God. Only. Knows. Good one.”
She turns her mug around in her hands, takes a drink, and sits with the rim pressed against her lips.
“If, as you say, you have already grasped at every other straw to hand and got nowhere,” she says, “any explanation I put forward, no matter how loony toons it sounds, can’t make things any worse, can it?”
“I don’t care if it involves Mr Magoo and Huckleberry Hound in a threesome with Olive Oyl. Just give me something.”
Grace tries very hard not to visualise such gruesome cartoon antics, keeping her face steady as she sits back in her chair.
“Okay, here’s what I think. Colin is very depressed certainly, no argument there, I mean who wouldn’t be in his situation? But as far as the hard and fast definition of catatonia goes, no.”
“What then?”
“The best description would be an extreme form of dissociation.”
“Extreme how?”
“Total separation.”
Gibbs’ eyebrows rise, inviting elucidation.
“With everything that’s happened to him, the pain and the suffering his body has gone through, the stress and trauma he’s had to endure, it’s more than his flesh and blood can stand,” she says. “He’s finally hit absolute overload and taken himself off to somewhere quiet and still where he feels safe and in control, and not in any pain. To put it at its simplest, his body is here, but he’s not in it. The reason why the drugs don’t work is because there is nothing for them to fix. True catatonic depression is a neurological disorder over which there is no control. Colin has shut down by choice. He chooses to be absent.”
Gibbs clears his throat, fixes on that simpering smile again. “So… if he’s not here, if he has as you say left his body, gone somewhere… else, where is it you think he’s gone?”
How that flat measured tone grates on her, the one that’s supposed to be inoffensive, yet offends her totally, it and the smile so patronising of the total idiot he thinks he’s talking to, so much so that she finds the urge to punch him in the face almost irresistible. She stays firm, however, eye to eye with Gibbs, not even blinking.
“No thinking required, Mr Gibbs. I know exactly where he is.”
Gibbs gives way under the unwavering gaze. “And where would that be?” he says.
“Like I already said, in a safe place.”
“I’m going to need a little more than that.”
“It’s a special place he created in his mind where it’s quiet and peaceful. An escape. A sanctuary. It’s where he goes to get away from people like you.”
Gibbs’ eyebrows rise again. “People like me? All I’ve ever did is try and help him.”
“You and I both know that, and deep down he knows it too, but you’re part of the system that’s made him the way he is, the military and medical machinery working together, and he’s sick of being messed about with. He just wants to be left alone by everybody.”
“Except you? Why are you so special?”
She takes a rapid sip from her cup. The coffee has gone tepid and bitter, not a patch on Dr Mal’s splendid brew.
“Me too, at first, so I’m not special at all. The first time I went there I certainly wasn’t welcome. In fact he tried to throw me out. Gave me a fine set of bruises. When I went back, we talked and he realised I wasn’t there to cause him any hurt because I needed to be there just as much as he did. He relented, and I’ve been going regularly ever since.”
Gibbs tries to keep his face impassive and fails spectacularly. His mouth falls open a full inch, then snaps back closed with an audible clack, his sharp grey eyes bugging so wide they are in danger of falling out of their sockets.
“You… went there?”
“Yes.”
“To this fantasy place… inside his head?”
“Yes.”
“But… how could you–?”
“It defies explanation, Mr Gibbs, and to be honest, I don’t even think about it any more. One thing that might have something to do with it is –” A pause. “A few weeks ago, I did something silly and had a near death experience and I think some kind of connection was made–” She wafts her hand. “–out there. Somehow our lost and wandering consciousnesses got pushed together. Don’t ask me to explain it any further, because I simply can’t.”
And The Look is back.
Is that confused enthusiasm or fear she can see in his eyes? They flicker, measuring out the distance between them and the long strip of red rubber running around the wall of the room at approximately waist height, and she has her answer.
�
�Press it if you must,” she says. “I’ll go quietly.”
Gibbs feigns surprise. “Sorry?”
“The panic button,” she says. “Press it and call in the straitjacket and white van mob. Have me carted off to the funny farm for my own safety. That’s what you’re thinking isn’t it? Go ahead, do it.” She leans forward in her chair. “But before you do, I swear to you Simon Gibbs, that I Grace Dove am telling you the absolute truth as I know it.”
A long and difficult silence ensues. Twice Gibbs opens his mouth as if to speak and closes it again.
“I peered through the door when you were visiting with Colin,” he says on his third attempt. “To make sure you were behaving yourself. The whole time I was watching, he never moved a muscle, didn’t even open his eyes. As for conversation, he never spoke. Not one word. I heard only you talking to him, only your voice, your laughter. It was all totally one sided. It was all you. And yet…” He trails off. “And yet if anyone were to ask me if I thought he was talking back to you, if you were chatting like two normal people, I would have to say … yes.”
“What else did you expect us to do? Sit there in stony silence like a pair of bookends for the whole time? That would have been a waste of a visit, wouldn’t it–?”
Gibbs bounces a forefinger against his lips, closes his eyes and makes a rapid shushing sound. He’s thinking and needs her to be quiet. His jaw moves from side to side, as if he’s chewing on a live wasp, then he sucks in a deep breath, holds it, and lets it out in a slow, steady stream, as if using it to balance himself.
He opens his eyes and looks at her.
“It occurs to me, Grace Dove,” he says, slowly, “That you are about as nutty as a Dundee fruit cake with about a pound of extra almonds. A bona fide headcase. A delusional fantasist who is quite possibly deranged–”
“Please, try telling me something I don’t already know,” Grace says. Gibbs pays her no heed.
“And don’t ask me how, or why, but–” He mutters something under his breath that sounds a lot like ‘God help me’. “I think I believe you.”
Now it’s her turn to stare. “You do?”
His eyebrows come together, rising over his nose to create curved furrows in his brow, giving him the look of a perplexed pug dog. “Does that make me as potty as you?”
Grace smiles broadly. “Very probably.” She tilts her cup in a mock toast. “Welcome to the club.”
They clink pottery.
“Sláinte mhath.”
The next pause draws on and on until, like a piece of overstretched elastic, it snaps.
“You going to tell me why you believe me, if you think I’m so monkey nuts?” Grace says.
Gibbs sits up and rolls his neck as if trying to ward off a cramp, head moving from side to side. “Can’t,” he says, and he sounds defeated, exhausted.
Grace gazes at him, a soft smile on her lips, and an expression of innocent expectation on her face.
“This discussion hasn’t cleared up anything at all, has it?” she says. “If anything, I’ve just added to your pot of confusion.”
“You’ve gone and stirred it all to buggery is what you’ve done. Sorry, shouldn’t swear. It’s unprofessional. Fuck, what am I saying?”
Gibbs covers his face with his hands, sliding them down over his nose and his mouth, dragging them over his cheeks and chin, pulling down the corners of his mouth into a mask of theatrical tragedy.
“Okay, time for the bottom line,” he says. “Firstly, I’m not going to pretend for one minute that I understand anything we’ve just talked about, because if I think about it too much I’m going to be in need of some therapy myself. Second, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but as our most experienced psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists and Uncle Tom Cobleigh have come up with precisely zero, zilch, nothing to rationally explicate Colin’s condition, your account, your outlandish, fantastical Cloud Cuckoo Land babblings, as hare-brained as they sound, deserve at least a passing consideration. As Shakespeare said, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy, so who the hell are we mere mortals to argue?”
“Who indeed.”
He sighs. “I know I’m going to regret it sooner rather than later, but I’m going put my job, my reputation, my very sanity on the line and give you the benefit of the doubt. I won’t deny something peculiar happened in that room, that something very, very strange is going on between you two, but as you don’t seem to have done Colin any harm–”
A shrill urgent peeping breaks into his speech and he swears as he takes a small electronic device, a pager, from his breast pocket. He reads it and frowns.
“Ach! Bloody staff meeting in the dining room. Should have been there ten minutes ago. I’ve got to go.”
“And so do I,” says Grace. “I’ve got a bus to catch.”
They walk together back down to the foyer.
“I told Colin I’d come and visit him again soon,” she says. “Perhaps in a day or two? Thursday is good for me? Will that be alright?”
“Should be. Only limitations are on Fridays. That’s when the consultants make their rounds before they swan off to the golf for the weekend. Make your intentions known at the desk before you go. Get it down in writing and you should have no trouble getting in. If you do, I’m on duty ten ‘til six. Ask for me and I’ll make sure you get in. After that I’m off until the following Wednesday, if the professional standards panel don’t call me in before then.”
She waves a dismissive hand. “Ah, sod them. What do they know? What time do you have lunch here?”
“Er .. .half twelve-ish.”
“Great. I’ll bring a picnic. Colin would like that. He’s looking a bit on the thin side. He needs feeding up. I’ll ask if it’s okay for me to come then. Don’t go away.”
Before Gibbs can say a word, Grace strides over to the desk to speak to the receptionist, hands over her card, exchanges a few words, and a few keystrokes and a nod of thanks later, she has her card back and a wide smile on her face.
“Thursday it is,” she says.
Gibbs walks with her through the foyer and out through the sliding glass doors. Once outside, she bobs up on her tiptoes and pecks a light kiss to his cheek.
“Thank you Simon, you’ve been an absolute if somewhat befuddled angel.”
With lightness in both her heart and step, she walks away down the driveway toward the main road to catch the bus back into town, and Gibbs watches her on her way, shaking his head.
“As crazy as a bag of squirrels.”
He looks down at his trainers, then up at the sky. “You had a hand in this, didn’t you Big Man? Give you a giggle did it? Well done, mate. Well done.”
He turns back into the building to attend his tedious staff meeting, deciding on the way that it might be best for all concerned if he says nothing to anyone about what he witnessed during Grace’s visit with Colin McLeod, or what he and Grace talked about afterwards, lest he be given a matching backward fastening jacket and take a ride in the same white van to La La land with her.
“Make that two steps beyond crazy.”
Chapter 30
“It was wonderful to see you yesterday,” says Colin, as he and Grace stroll through the herb garden. “Ye’re much prettier in the flesh. I like the colour of yer hair. Canna say I’ve known many redheads afair.”
“This is Scotland you divot. Every other person here is a redhead.”
“Ach, ginger’s more orange than red. It doesn’t count. Yours is nice. It suits you.”
“Thank you, but don’t get used to it. Next week it might be blue … or green.” A pause. “You could have warned me.”
“Fit ‘boot?”
“Being so thin and pale, all those tubes and … so frail looking. I hardly recognised you.”
“I’m sorry if I didn’t live up to your expectations.”
“Expectation is the root of all heartache, so wrote William Shakespeare,” she says. “And I have
adopted those wise words as one of my primary life rules. I have none of the former, thus sparing myself the latter.”
“And how is that working out for you?”
She sweeps her hand across the upright purple heads of the lavender, releasing their perfume.
“If it’s a nice day on Thursday when I come and see you again, I’m going to ask Simon if I can take you outside. You need to get some sun on your skin.”
“Simon?”
“Charge Nurse Gibbs. He’s that nice young man who’s been looking after you, the one who let me in to see you even though he could have lost his job.”
“Och, aye. He’s okay. Disna treat me like a cabbage.”
“Nobody is treating you like a cabbage, Colin. They are all doing their best for you.”
“And it would make their job a lot easier if I’d co-operate? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Your words, not mine.”
He pauses to pull off a stalk of rosemary and holds it to his nose, taking in its fragrance. “I dinna ken why they bother,” he says. “There’s far mair trying cases than me that deserve their support. I’m jest–” He shrugs. “I’m jest a lazy selfish bastard who taks up their time and resources.” He sticks the sprig of rosemary in his breast pocket. “Be better for all concerned if I made a quick and dignified exit and saved them all their trouble.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t discharge yourself. Who would look after you, because you certainly can’t take care of your– Oh, you mean–?”
“Aye. I do.”
“No. Absolutely not! Don’t even think about it.”
“Why no? You did. What’s sauce for the goose.”
“Totally different.”
“Why? The second that bomb went off and ripped me apart, the rest of my life was taken out of my hands. One false step, one split second and any control over ma ain future went up in smoke and blood and shattered bones. What’s left is the best it’s ever gain ta be from now on, with no end in sight except a pine box.”
In The Garden Of Stones Page 20