“I can’t,” he says, and huffs with frustration.
“You did,” she says. “Just a little bit, but you did. Well done. You may have your reward.”
She takes hold of his hand, extends one of his fingers and dips it into the soft buttery frosting. Gently she inserts it into his mouth. When the butter and sugar mixture has melted on his tongue, he swallows it down and Grace wipes his wetted finger with the tissue and lays his hand back in his lap.
When everything is packed away, Grace wheels Colin over to a bench and sits beside him, holding onto his hand while they wait for an attendant to come to wheel him back into his room.
Gazing around the garden, she spots a young man sitting at the water feature, staring off into the middle distance, his face haggard, drawn and expressionless, swollen lines surrounding exhausted eyes which are at the same time intense, unnerving and dark, darting in and out of distant shadows, searching for ghosts waiting to haunt the last shreds of sanity remaining inside a terrorised mind, that vacant emptiness in the troubled eyes of a traumatised combat soldier.
“They call it the thousand yard stare,” says Colin. “Ye can see it everywhere, and no jest here. Look around ye next time ye’re in town and ye’ll see ‘em. Deid souls sucking on a vodka bottle in Union Terrace Gardens, or ambling aimlessly through the streets, eyes darting everywhere like scared rabbits, heids down avoiding eye contact, preferring to bed down in the park or in a doorway because they are too terrified ta be indoors–” He lets out a deep, juddering breath. “Not all wounds are visible.”
She squeezes his hand, kisses his fingers, and they sit for the next few minutes in silence.
“Ye were thinking aboot the dead man at the Larches weren’t ye?” Colin says after a while. “Wondering if he might have been one of those poor lost sods?”
“Yes.”
“No news yet?”
“No. I–”
She breaks off when she spots a man striding toward them. Colin follows her gaze.
“That us?” he asks.
“Looks like it. You ready.”
“I suppose.”
“Everything okay?” the attendant says, letting the brake off Colin’s chair.
Grace smiles up at him. “Fine. He’s a little tired, but nothing a wee nap won’t put right, eh sweetheart?” She kisses the top of Colin’s head. “Looks like it’s time for me to go, and for you to get some rest. I’ll come and see you again in a couple of days, okay?”
“Bring something nice.”
“What would you like?”
“Ice cream.”
“Really?”
“Aye. Vanilla, with some o’ that toffee sauce.”
“Not asking for much are you? I’ll see what I can do.” She kisses him again. “Bye bye, sweetie.”
“Cheerio.”
Grace knocks on the partly open door of the office labelled Duty Room.
Gibbs looks up from the paperwork on his desk and beckons her inside, rising to greet her.
“You said you wanted to see me before I went home,” she says.
“Yes, I do.” He offers her the use of the visitor’s chair. “Please, sit.”
She sits, and he perches a buttock on the edge of the desk, arms folded, looking down on her, a stiff artificial smile plastered on for her benefit.
The silence stretches on and on until Gibbs barks out a short sharp laugh, shakes his head and throws up his hands.
“He was there wasn’t he? Colin? Out there on the lawn?”
Grace blinks up at him. “Yes.”
“All that bickering back and forth for your eyes and ears only?”
“It’s not my fault you’re on a different wavelength to us, that you can’t join in.”
“Different wavelength? Different planet more like. How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Get him to swallow that drink and that… stuff?”
Shrug. “He wanted it.”
“And he told you that?”
“He needed a little persuasion, like he did to go outside in the first place, even though he’s bored to death stuck in that room all day with nothing to do. It’s a shame he couldn’t get out of the chair to enjoy the picnic, but the ginger beer and the cake went down well, don’t you think? You didn’t eat much, by the way. Weren’t you hungry? There are some sandwiches left, and a cake. Do you want them now or do you want to take them and save them for later? I know ginger beer and cake is probably not the healthiest thing I could have offered him, but it was all I had, it was what he wanted and it was tastier than that chemical concoction you were forcing into him. He said you go too fast, by the way, and it gives him reflux, which is unpleasant and tastes disgusting, so you might want to take it easy in future. Do you think I should bring him something healthier next time? Fruit smoothie perhaps, although he did request vanilla ice cream? How I’m going to get it here without it melting I don’t know. Do they serve it in the restaurant? I’ll stop by and ask on the way out. You don’t have any objections to smoothies and ice cream, do you? A little treat now and then shouldn’t do him any harm and might even buck him right up don’t you think?”
A dam burst of words, delivered in such a rapid breathless staccato that it knocks Gibbs sideways.
“Yes… no … erm, what?”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I tend to babble a bit when I’m nervous, and you staring at me like that is making me very nervous.”
“Sorry. What was the question?”
“I asked if giving Colin something a little bit naughty like ice cream and cake now and again goes against his treatment.”
Gibbs shakes his head. “Erm… no, it should be fine, in small doses.”
“So why do you just look like I offered to give him a dose of hemlock? You saw me put that cup to his lips and cake frosting on his tongue, you saw him take it in and swallow it, yet you’re still not totally convinced are you? You still think it might have been wishful thinking on your part.”
Gibbs presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I just don’t know what to think, Grace. I thought I was imagining things because it was what I wanted to see, then I thought maybe it was some kind of automatic response with no consciousness behind it, because it was the first time he’s reacted to anything at all for nearly two months.”
“But even now, after you’ve seen it with your own eyes–?”
“Excuse me, Mr Gibbs?”
Gibbs looks to the interruption; a young female nurse standing in the doorway.
“Yes, Mary, what is it?”
“Sorry to bother you, Mr Gibbs,” she says, “but Dr Hamid is requesting the pleasure of your company. Sergeant Williams–” She stops short when she sees Grace. “I’m sorry I didn’t know you had company.”
“It’s alright Mary,” he says. “Tell him I’ll be along in a few minutes when I’ve shown Miss Dove out.”
“Yes, Mr Gibbs.” Nurse Mary turns on her heel and squeaks away down the corridor in her rubber soled trainers.
Gibbs turns to Grace. “I’m sorry Grace, duty calls.” He helps her on with her coat. “Don’t worry about anything. You didn’t do anything wrong. Quite the opposite. You’re doing nothing but good. In fact, I think today you performed some sort of minor miracle. We’ll talk about it some more next time you come. Any idea when that will be?”
“Day after tomorrow, roadworks and bus timetables permitting.”
“You should have seen poor Simon’s face,” Grace says, dabbling her toes in the stream. “All slack and gloopy, like a bowl of porridge. He just couldn’t get over you sucking on that cake frosting and taking a drink and I think it gave him a brainfuck – pardon my French. He thinks I’ve worked some kind of miracle on you. Daft beggar.”
“Maybe you have,” says Colin, tossing a pebble into the running water.
“Bah, wasn’t me at all, it was all you. All you had to do was make the decision to try. You did and voila! One stunned nurse. I told him about the reflux by
the way, and he said he would make sure your…concoctions are administered with more care in future.”
“Thanks.”
“And he says fruit smoothies and ice cream would be most acceptable for a treat now and again, so I’ll see what I can do.”
“Sounds great. I look forward to them. Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
He leans into her, kisses her cheek, then puts his arm around her and hugs her to him, his face in her hair.
“Thank you for caring about me,” he whispers.
“You’re an easy man to care about, Colin.”
The hug gets tighter, and Grace thinks she hears him sniff quietly.
Grace’s next visit with Colin is a more subdued affair. He is clean and tidy, as expected, but his face is pale and drawn, emphasising the dark circles around his eyes. An air of weariness hangs over him like a dark veil.
“You okay?” she asks. “You look exhausted. Physical therapy this morning worn you out?”
“Among other things.”
“Such as?”
“Had a nasty surprise first thing. I had a feeling something was going on, so I popped back, jest ta see, and find a couple of docs poking and prodding me all over and ma heid all wired up to a machine.”
“What were they doing?”
“No idea. I’ve never seen these two afair. One called the other Chaplin, didn’t catch his oppo’s name. Blasted interfering busybodies the pair of them.
“Did they say anything? Tell you anything?”
“No’ me. I’m jest the patient. Mumbled all kinds of bollocks among themselves I had no ken aboot.”
She strokes his hair. “They certainly seem to have worn you out. Would you prefer I left you to rest?”
“No, jest…” A deep sigh. “Stay,” he says. “I’m no in the mood for conversation, but stay and… read to me.”
She pays a visit to the rehab centre’s small but well stocked library, returning with a dog eared copy of Stuart MacBride’s gritty crime thriller, Dark Blood.
“This is the best I could find,” she says. “Unless you prefer a Mills and Boon bodice ripper, or Fifty Shades of Filth.”
After a full hour’s reading, doing the voices and everything, she senses he is no longer listening, either having fallen asleep or absented himself to the garden for some peace and quiet, and so she places the book on the bedside cabinet, kisses him and takes her leave.
Two days later, and Colin seems better; perkier, laughing and joking with her as they share a light tea on the patio outside the day room, although to the casual observer Grace is talking to herself while feeding spoonfuls of ice cream to an unresponsive man in a wheelchair.
Her visit over, she returns the borrowed tea tray to the restaurant and meets with Simon Gibbs. Time to continue their interrupted conversation.
They make small talk on the way to the Duty Room, but the moment they are safely within the office, her questioning starts.
“What was going on with Colin the other day?” she asks. “He said he had a visit from some doctors and they did some tests on him. Fair wore him out. He was exhausted. What was it all about?”
“They went through a whole rigmarole of standardised grading tests - heat, cold, light, pain stimuli – and an EEG.”
“EEG? That would explain the ‘wiring up’ part he mentioned. I suppose it’s too early to ask–?”
“It showed a few irregularities in his brain wave patterns,” Gibbs says.
“Caused by?”
“No idea… yet.”
“How about pain?” Grace asks. “Colin says his legs hurt sometimes, quite a lot … phantom limb pain don’t you call it? He says that sometimes his analgesia is a bit hit and miss.”
Gibbs nods pensively. “That could explain it. We don’t really know why it happens, but the theory is that his brain thinks it is still receiving messages from the nerves that originally carried impulses from the intact limb and getting them all mixed up, perceiving them as pain.” He considers. “Yes. It sounds like a logical explanation. I’ll make a note of it and get a doctor to check his prescription.”
“Thank you. Back up a minute… pain stimuli? You’ve been hurting him? No wonder his readings are all over the place.”
“A few quick jabs of something sharp in certain key areas,” says Gibbs. “Nothing more than a… a bee sting.”
Like Doctor Burke did to her in HDU, the pain in her foot that made her curl her toes and yelp.
“And what was the purpose of all this jabbing and prodding?”
“Ever heard of the Bush-Francis rating scale?” says Gibbs.
Grace shakes her head. “I’ve heard of the Glasgow Coma Scale. Is it anything like that?”
“Yes and no.” Gibbs perches one bum cheek on the edge of his desk. “The GCS is generally used after trauma and is pretty limited in its scope, having only three tests. The BF scale is purely to assess catatonia. It uses 23 different categories, the first 14 use simple absence or presence of diagnostic symptoms, and then all 23 are rated from 0 to 3 scale according to severity. You with me so far?”
She nods.
“Colin didn’t do very well,” he says. “In fact the only thing he seems to do normally is blink and react when something touches the surface of his eye–”
Grace shudders at the thought of anyone or anything touching her cornea.
“In every test we’ve done on him he registers as … unresponsive at best,” says Gibbs. “We can’t even fit him into a definitive LOC–”
“Sorry?”
“Level of consciousness. There are five – alert, drowsy, lethargic, obtund and coma. He’s neither one thing nor another.”
A long pause ensues, which makes Grace nervous and uncomfortable. Finally, Gibbs speaks up, his voice low and grave, and it disturbs something deep within her.
“Grace, do you think you can go to where Colin is, to this sanctuary of his, and bring him back?” he says. “And I’m not talking weeks or months from now, or in his own sweet time, I mean… well, sooner would be better.”
She regards him closely. “Something’s wrong isn’t there? I’ve heard that tone before. It’s the one they use on you to tell you you’ve only got six months to live and they should have told you five months ago. Those tests showed there’s something terribly the matter with Colin, and you just haven’t been able to come out and say it.”
“Not yet there isn’t, but there very soon could be.”
Footsteps sound in the corridor outside and Gibbs gets to his feet, slams the door closed and locks it, determined not to be interrupted like last time.
“I shouldn’t even be talking to you about any of this,” he says, opening a drawer in the filing cabinet. “If I’m caught it’s a court martial and the glasshouse for me for sure, so this is strictly between ourselves, okay?”
“Okay.”
He takes out a bulky manila folder and holds it out to Grace. On the front of the file are stamped three capital letters in bright red ink – DNR, a medical acronym for an order whose implementation had only the worst possible outcome.
Grace’s mouth falls open in horror. “Who put those there?” she asks in a hoarse whisper.
“After the tests, they had a case conference, and based on their findings, on past events, on future prognosis… a decision was made.”
Grace’s stomach clenches. “No.”
“I’m sorry, Grace.”
“No–”
“Grace–”
She springs to her feet. “NO! They can’t.”
“They can and they have.”
“After a few minutes fiddling about they decide his life isn’t worth living, won’t be worth the effort of keeping him alive? A few piddly tests and they condemn him to death?”
“It wasn’t that simple or that quick, Grace. They’ve been considering every aspect of Colin’s case for a while. The tests were merely confirmation of what they already knew.”
“I can’t believe what I’m
hearing,” she says. “After all we’ve been through, all we’ve talked about, all you’ve seen. A sodding miracle you said. Did you tell them about that?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And what did they say?”
“A fluke, nothing more.”
Grace paces the floor, scrubbing at her brow. “What about Lucas? He’s next of kin. They can’t do anything without his say. Get Lucas in here. Get him to tell them–”
“He’s already given his consent,” says Gibb.
“What? When?”
“When he took responsibility as Colin’s next of kin, he signed documentation abdicating all Colin’s care to the medics, trusting they would always do their best for him. He literally gave them carte blanche to do whatever needed to be done to his brother without further consultation. He left it entirely in their hands hoping only for improvement and eventual discharge. It probably never even crossed his mind that if Colin should suffer an intractable fit, or a heart attack, or he picks up an infection and goes into organ failure, or fails to respond to treatment, as he is doing now, he will not receive any life restoring measures. He will be made as comfortable as is humanly possible, and then–”
“You turn away from him and leave him to die? You can’t work out how to make him better, so you give up on him.”
“Speaking for myself, I never give up on anybody, Grace, no matter how hopeless the case–”
“Colin is not a hopeless case–! If Lucas had had the slightest inkling of what he was being asked to sign up to he wouldn’t have agreed.”
“Beside the point,” says Gibbs. “What’s done is done.”
“You can’t allow this to stand.”
“I’m afraid we can, and there’s not a damned thing either you or I can do about it. It’s out of our hands.”
“We’ll see about that. I want to see the doctor in charge. The one who made this decision. Get him in here right now.”
“Nothing you say will make any difference, Grace. The decision has been made by the people who are able to make it and, to be brutal – it’s none of your business.”
“Oh, really? And who’s going to stop me making it my business?”
No reply.
“As I thought. So are you going to call him or not?”
In The Garden Of Stones Page 26