She locks eyes with his and can see the earnest pleading in them. He’s as frightened as she is. Two fat tears slide slowly down her face and she nods. “I’ll give it my best shot.”
The pressure eases. “Good girl.”
She sits in the blue plastic visitor’s chair, Colin’s clammy hand held firmly in hers, closes her eyes and tries to relax herself into the meditative state that takes her to where Colin is.
It’s like something out of a Grimm’s fairytale. Dark and menacing and dreadful.
Daylight is all but gone, clouds the colour of bruises glower down on her adding to the gloom, thunder rumbles in the distance and the air prickles with static electricity.
Grace cannot make out the wall at all, the stone blocks are totally hidden with a reinforcing jacket of thick black foliage out of which poke savage barbed thorns as long as her pinkie finger. Colin has done this, she knows. He’s created an impenetrable barrier behind which to hide, keeping everything and everyone away. Even her? Or especially her?
She’s been here often enough to know she’s in the right place for the gate, but she can’t even make out where it should be, at least not from where she’s standing. She examines the blockade of vegetation closer. It appears to be nothing more than an overgrowth of some type of mutant acacia, and she knows these types of bushes grow on a short trunk. If she’s right, there should be a space of about eight inches between the earth and the first branch. Perhaps if she were lying down?
She gets down onto her belly, face close to the dirt.
There it is. A gap … and the gate beyond.
Grateful now for losing that bit of weight from her already fine frame, she flattens herself to the ground and squirms and wriggles, scrabbles and scrapes her way through the narrow space, heaves herself high enough to reach the barley twist ring handle, turns and pushes it. The gate swings open with an ear splitting squeal that sounds more like demonic screaming than a rusty hinge in need of a squirt of WD40.
Scratched, bleeding and filthy, she collapses onto the gravel path, twisting and straining her neck to look for the thorn lodged in the back of her shoulder. Fingers probe for the protruding end. They find it, pinch it, and give it a test tug. Extraction will not be so simple. It has gone through the fabric of her sweater and deep into her skin. She grits her teeth, counts to three and pulls hard. A burning stinging pain explodes in her shoulder.
God that hurt!
A bead of bright blood oozes from the throbbing puncture wound, forms itself into a red droplet and runs down her back.
What if the thorn is poisonous? Are deadly plant toxins already coursing through her, ready to stop her heart at any second? No time to bother with that now. There’s plenty of time to die after she’s found Colin.
Where to start looking?
A moment taking stock of her surroundings and it is clear it is not going to be an easy task.
Gone is the faded sepia tone and opacity created when the ECT disrupted Colin’s thought patterns. In their place are now more of these pseudo-acacia thorn bushes, lots of them, and they are very solid indeed.
A closer look reveals more. They are not growing randomly, like a wild hedge, but straight up, like walls, with sharp corners and blind ends, just like a … a maze?
She shudders as a memory floods back, the overwhelming fear of being lost, trapped, the terrible panic attack that overcame her, her yelling and crying until someone came to lead her to safety. She swore then, at nine years old, that she would never set foot in one again.
Why then would Colin have made such a thing and placed his little hut in the centre? Because he knew, that’s why. In the same way as she had learned things from his mind, about the explosion that nearly killed him, experienced the horror of his PTSD, he had taken this particular phobia from hers and was now using it against her, safe in the knowledge that she would not be able to navigate the puzzle, find him and haul him out.
He was right on all counts. The fear factor was just too great. She couldn’t do it.
She cups her hands over her mouth and calls at the top of her voice. “Colin! Colin McLeod!”
No answer.
“I know you’re in there, Colin, and I know you can hear me, so you answer me right now!”
No reply.
“Please Colin! You know I can’t come in after you. I want to, but I can’t.”
Pause.
“You’re not safe in there, Colin. If you stay here, you’ll die. Please. You have to come out.”
Overhead the mass of purple clouds roil and churn, emitting a low rumble that vibrates in the pit of her stomach, a menacing threatening sound, like the growl of a dog, a big dog, with lots of teeth.
“I know that was you,” she shouts. “And you’ll have to do better than that if you want to scare me away.” She pauses for a reply, gets none. “I can’t help you if you stay in there. You have to come out. Come to me. Please! I’ll wait for you, but you haven’t got long.”
Almost quarter of an hour passes in silence with Grace holding onto Colin’s stone cold hand, eyes closed, furrows of concentration standing out from her brow like rusty guttering.
All this time Gibbs leans against the door, barring unwanted intrusion, buying Grace the time she needs, not taking his eyes off her, waiting for some small signal.
Suddenly she takes a deep inhalation and lets her head fall back until she is staring at the ceiling, and when she finally speaks, her voice is small and fragile and shaky.
“I can’t reach him, Simon. He’s made himself a barricade he knows I can’t cross. There’s nothing I can do. He has to find his own way back.”
“Keep trying, Grace, and halfway won’t cut it this time. He has to come all the way.”
“I can’t get to him. If I could, I might be able to persuade him, if he’ll listen to me, although chances are he’s shut up shop completely and won’t listen to anybody. He can be a stubborn sod at the best of times, but right now, he’s also scared out of his wits.”
“Do what you can.”
She rubs at a sore spot on her shoulder, winces with pain, feels cold dampness, and when she looks to her fingers, they are clarted with blood.
What happens in one place affects the other. Bruises, thunder, nettle rash …
She does have a tool at her disposal, she realises. One that is all her own and guaranteed to work, and she has one chance to use it.
Chapter 41
“I’m going to try something,” Grace says. “So I’ll need peace and quiet … and a steady supply of coffee.”
“I’ll make sure you get it,” says Gibbs. “What are you going to do?”
Grace smiles knowingly. “Slowly and surely send him round the buggering twist, and if he wants me to stop, he’s going to have to tell me himself … in person. How long have we got?”
“No telling, but not long, so not too slowly, eh? I warn you now, when Mr McLoughlin gets here–”
“God himself won’t be able to keep him out. Understood.” Grace points to the mask covering Colin’s face. “Does he really need this?”
Gibbs checks Colin’s chart, glances at the monitor. “No. His blood oxygen level is fine.”
“And that beeping? Can it be muted? It’s starting to get on my nerves.”
“Sure.” Gibbs removes the oxygen mask and turns off the beeping. “I’ll go and find you that coffee.” He takes two steps to the door, then turns back. “I have every faith in you Grace Dove,” he says. “Whatever dark art it is you practise, do what you can for him. He deserves the chance. He’s a good man, a brave man. The world needs more like him.”
Not just the world, thinks Grace. I need him.
When the door falls closed, Grace gazes down at Colin’s pale inert form, at the dull circles of discolouration at his temple where the ECT electrodes were in contact with his skin.
She kisses his brow. “Right then, let’s get started, but first–” She takes a cellular blanket from the linen pile, opens it out, and climbs
onto the bed, taking Colin’s cold thin arm and draping it around her neck. “Let’s get comfy, eh?”
She arranges the blanket around them both and rests her head on his bony chest, through which she can clearly hear his heart beating in time to the graph dancing on the monitor screen. Strong and regular.
“That’s better isn’t it? Nice and cosy. Just right for a little chat.”
Silence. Time to get started.
“I know what they did to you was horrible,” she says. “I had it done a few years ago. Five times in all. It really hurt and it left me confused and unsteady for days afterwards. You’ll feel a bit wobbly as well, but it will pass. Your memory might be shot to buggery too. It will come back eventually, at least for the most part and not necessarily in the right order. You might lose some fragments completely. I know I did. I didn’t recognise myself in a mirror for nearly a week and I couldn’t remember some things from my childhood, or that I didn’t like Camembert. I found that out when I tasted it. Gah! To be honest, I don’t think it did me any good in the long run. They say it doesn’t work for everyone. I can’t imagine what they thought it might do for you. Shock you wide awake and ready to party I suppose. You showed them though, didn’t you? Lying here like a corpse after an autopsy instead of dancing a highland fling.”
She pulls the blanket closer. “I know you are probably feeling pretty rough right now, scared out of your mind, and I don’t blame you, but it’s over with. Done and dusted. They can’t… won’t risk doing it again. You’re safe, from that at least, and if you know what’s good for you, you should hotfoot it right back to me now.”
She pauses, giving him the chance to say something. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t, although, and it may be just her imagination, she thinks she detects a subtle change in his pulse. A little faster maybe? Dare she risk pushing a bit harder?
“There’s something you need to know,” she says. “I tried to tell you last week, but you knocked me for six by telling me about this instead. I don’t want to frighten you, but I have to tell you that there is an order in place, it’s called a DNR – do not resuscitate. Basically, it means that if anything happens to you, they won’t do anything to save you. That’s not the worst of it though. If you stay like this, sleeping on the job, there’s every chance they are going to cart you off to Newcastle or Sussex, and when you get there they are not going to give you any treatment there either. They are going to put you into a room by yourself, make you comfortable and let Nature take her course. Do you understand what that means? It means they are going to let you die, Colin. We will never see each other again. I don’t know about you, but after everything we’ve gone through, what we’ve talked about, what we’ve planned for the future, it’s going to be such a waste if that happens… and in Newcastle of all places? Ever been? I have. Trust me, it’s is a horrible place. Couldn’t understand a single word they said, and if you think Aberdeen is gloomy on a wet November afternoon, you ain’t seen nothing.”
Gibbs eases the door open with his hip and enters the room, a steaming cardboard cup of coffee in each hand.
He sets one down on the bedside cabinet, saying nothing about Grace taking up space on Colin’s bed, about the two of them huddled together like lovers under the blanket, because nothing Grace Dove does surprises him any more. He’s seen her do some amazing things already and knows there must be reason in her madness.
Grace hasn’t noticed the incursion, or the coffee. She is totally focused on Colin, keeping up a continuous stream of banal chatter. At first Gibbs is confused, and then he gets it.
She is using the God given gift of her own voice to talk Colin back to her, using it as a beacon for him to follow.
Gibbs checks his watch. The Consultant Neurologist, Mr George McLoughlin, should be on the premises by now. Whatever Grace is doing, she needs to get on with it, but as there is nothing he can do to hurry things along, he withdraws from the room to drink his coffee in the corridor, leaving her to it.
“There are days when time folds in on itself,” Grace is saying.
“When my days are darker than your nights, when nothing makes any sort of sense, where every thought, picture, word, smell, sound takes me to a dark place, when the ground becomes unsteady and I don’t know where to put my feet, when every step causes a crack, hairline at first, gradually becoming wider until it is big enough for me to fall into. On days like those, all I want to do is sit in a corner with a blanket over my head, and quite often I do, in the dark and the quiet while I wait for the world to stop spinning. I know you’ve had those kinds of days too. Lots of them. You will again, and that’s okay, because I’ll be there for you just like you were there for me. We have these things in common. It’s why we understand each other so well. Birds of a feather flock together, two suits cut from the same cloth, Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”
She pulls his arm tighter around her and kisses his cold fingers. “When I have one of my dark spells again, and I will, I don’t want anyone but you there with me to help me, to build me a nest like you did before, to get in bed with me and stay with me, to walk with me in the garden of stones until I’m ready to face the world again. I’ll be lost without you Colin, you and the world of our own making. You saved me from myself, brought new meaning into my life, gave me something to live for. Without you, I am in that place beyond despair, where there is only a void. I want to live Colin, not just exist, not just muddle through, and for the first time in my life, I want to be in love.”
Was that a sigh? Keep going.
“I’ve heard it said that when you love someone, you love them completely, every cell of their being, every breath they take, every touch, every smile, every tear. There are no half measures. You can’t half love someone. You do or you don’t. It really is one of those all or nothing situations. I want to see for myself. I want to love someone so wholly and completely that I would die without them, and the person I want to love is you, Colin McLeod. I hardly know you but my soul does, and my soul is telling me to love this man–”
“So help ma Boab, will you shut up! Yer non stop bloody blethering is givin’ me a migraine.”
The voice is croaky and dry, like a creaky wheel … but most definitely not inside her head. It is a real, live voice, and the sound of it sings in her ears.
She sits up and stares down at him. “Colin?”
“Who else were ye expecting?”
“Gerard Butler at the very least.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
She bends to kiss him. “Oh sweetheart, I thought I’d lost you. Welcome back.”
He looks around confusedly. “Back where? Where is this? Fit’s gain oan? This is no my room.” He makes a clicking noise with his tongue. “Gah! Feels like something hairy died in my mouth.”
“You’re in a different part of the centre, sweetie. You’ve had some treatment, but don’t worry about not being able to remember it. It will all come back to you. You’re going to be fine now.”
Their sweet reunion is rudely interrupted by the door whooshing open and Simon Gibbs rushing in.
“Grace–!”
He gets no further before a ruddy faced, middle aged man of gargantuan proportions bustles in, closely followed by a man in dark blue scrubs, and the nurse who had been attending Colin when Grace first arrived.
When the man in the rumpled grey suit sees Grace kissing his patient, he erupts. “What in the blue blazes–!”
Charge Nurse Simon Gibbs pushes his way forward to stand protectively between the angry consultant and Grace.
“It’s okay Mr McLoughlin. This is Grace Dove. She’s a friend of Captain McLeod’s and I gave her permission to be here. I thought, under the circumstances–”
“It is most definitely not okay, Mr Gibbs. This man is critically ill–”
“Not any more,” says Grace, and shifts on the bed so that Mr McLoughlin can see Colin, wide awake and smiling weakly up from his pillow. “You can cancel the transfer to the Neuro place in Newcastle. H
e won’t need it now.”
McLoughlin’s mouth falls open like a gate with a busted hinge, adding a new chin to his already considerable collection. He turns his eyes to the ceiling and bellows. “Doctor Critchley!”
A man in dark blue scrubs steps forward. “Sir?”
“Doctor Critchley, you led me to believe this man was in a post-anaesthesia coma–” says McLoughlin in a cold measured tone.
Critchley looks across at Colin, his mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. “He is … was … I don’t understand–”
“Looks pretty un-coma like to me, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I … er … no, sir. I mean yes, sir.”
“Yes sir is right.”
McLoughlin opens Colin’s file, the one with the bright red letters DNR still plastered across the front, and flips over the pages.
“Catatonic depression … pre-ECT anaesthesia … post-anaesthesia failure to respond … query possible persistent vegetative state … blah, blah, blah. Did you write this, Dr Critchley?”
“Yes, sir,” Critchley says, his ears turning bright red.
“Rather jumped the gun a bit don’t you think? First time administering ECT anaesthesia I suppose and you panicked?”
“No sir, he’s my eighth…no ninth case, and in every one of those priors, the patient woke up within a few minutes; full recovery within fifteen minutes.”
“So what went wrong this time?”
Dr Critchley’s ears redden even more. “Er… well…I… we didn’t think anything had gone wrong … at first. Anaesthesia and ECT were administered as prescribed, although we knew Captain McLeod’s catatonic state would mean we had to rely on our observations of his pulse, blood pressure and breathing rate to assess his level of consciousness. There was some agitation recorded in the first couple of minutes after administering the first shock, and again for a longer period after the second, which did give us some cause for concern, but it settled, and so we felt hopeful that consciousness would return shortly, except it didn’t. I decided to wait a little longer, but he continued to show no sign of recovery, so I thought it best to seek a second opinion, and I called you …” Gulp. “Sir?”
In The Garden Of Stones Page 29