One Station Away

by Olaf Olafsson

  DEDICATION

  Many thanks to Lorenza Garcia for her invaluable assistance when writing this book

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  About the Author

  Also by Olaf Olafsson

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  I could hear the sea. That was perhaps an hour after I became paralyzed, although I couldn’t be sure as I soon lost track of time. The shoreline up here is rocky and draws in the waves; it is only when you get down to the village that the beach becomes sandy. Before lying down, I had opened both windows and placed an alarm clock beside the bed so that I could see the time, but then changed my mind and put it in the drawer, removing the batteries because it has a loud tick. Of course, I needn’t have put it in the drawer at all, but I didn’t realize that until later.

  Once I got used to the ventilator and my heartbeat slowed, I could hear the birds in the maples. Later I heard voices in the garden, clear at first but gradually becoming fainter. They were women’s voices, and I pictured a pair of doctors or nurses, their shift finished, walking together to the staff parking lot, which for some reason has never been paved. Perhaps they were discussing the coming weekend, for their voices had a tone of anticipation, especially the one I imagined belonging to the younger of the two. They walked slowly, stopping twice and laughing heartily the second time. Then two cars started up, neither powerful, I imagined, and slowly began to move on the gravel in the calm sunshine. One of the women turned on the radio and rolled down the windows as she drove away.

  Simone would have helped me but I couldn’t ask her. First she would have tried to dissuade me, I am sure, before shrugging the way she often did, and saying that if I were bent on trying this then I should just get it over with—or words to that effect. We have been colleagues for almost eight years, and she knows that when I am set on doing something, it’s not easy to get me to change my mind. Best get it over with, she would have said, insisting on administering the medication and the ventilator herself. But I couldn’t ask her, not after her episode with the speech therapist. There is always the risk that something may go wrong, and Hofsinger, the department chair, isn’t known for his tolerance, especially where Simone is concerned. That’s why it was best she knew as little as possible.

  Anthony was flattered when I asked for his help. He is young and so full of ambition that I find it sometimes painful to watch him. However, he is conscientious and hardworking and will almost certainly go far, though I doubt he will make any memorable contribution to medicine. I expect he will end up in a managerial post, like Hofsinger. The two men aren’t so different, except that Anthony is a novice and has to learn to keep himself in check. I have noticed how he behaves with people he considers beneath him, and I can see which way he is heading. Simone finds him unbearable, but I can’t help smiling.

  Anthony didn’t ask any questions; he just looked at me and then at the signed statement I handed him. He is tall and fair-haired and while he was glancing at the document it occurred to me that he could do with a visit to the barber; his hair was too long at the back. He adjusted his glasses, but I was too impatient to wait.

  “I need to ask you to give me succinylcholine and keep me breathing while I lie there. This is just to confirm that I asked you to assist me and that I take full responsibility.”

  He wrinkled his brow as though my words puzzled him.

  “In case anything goes wrong,” I added.

  “Nothing will go wrong,” he said. “You know I worked as an anesthetist for more than a year.”

  “That’s why I came to you,” I said. “I have complete faith in you.”

  He straightened up.

  “When? Today?”

  “No, on Friday. When things are quieter.”

  He looked again at the statement.

  “Vecuronium bromide.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll give you vecuronium bromide. Succinylcholine may cause muscle spasm, and besides, its half-life is too short. It can only be used with anesthetic.”

  “Let’s keep this between the two of us,” I said.

  He nodded and said nothing more. He didn’t seem curious to know what I was up to, which didn’t surprise me. When she is feeling uncharitable, Simone calls him “the robot,” but I simply see him as one of these scientists who primarily think about how best to do something, not why it needs doing. And that’s exactly what I needed this time.

  This was on a Tuesday, a week after Mrs. Bentsen, an elderly lady who had been in a coma for several months following a stroke, died. Simone had thought we should give her an MRI scan, but I agreed with Hofsinger that this was unwise. Simone took it badly, but he was right. We didn’t have our own scanner at that time, and although, according to her daughter, Mrs. Bentsen was young for her age (she lived on her own and did the crossword every morning with her coffee), we couldn’t ignore that she was in her eighties. I said this to Simone, as I saw no point in arguing with her over whether Mrs. Bentsen was conscious or not. I said: “She hasn’t got long to live in any case.” I knew it sounded harsh.

  “What if she were your mother?” she asked.

  “My mother’s only seventy,” I said, smiling.

  It was then that I remembered her birthday. My father had mentioned it in a letter at Easter, but it had slipped my mind. I should do something for her, he had said, give her a surprise—make her happy. She certainly deserves it. I know you’re busy, but perhaps you could find the time to celebrate with us . . .

  I’d had to put the letter down and take a deep breath. At first glance, his words appeared completely innocent, and yet I felt he was accusing me of being neglectful, in his usual insidious way. Needless to say, I hadn’t heard from him since, no doubt because he thought he had said enough and now it was up to me. I had put off replying, and then forgotten all about it until a month later when I was in Paris for a conference. He doesn’t use e-mail, and I find speaking to him on the telephone uncomfortable, so I bought a postcard at a kiosk and sent it that afternoon.

  I’m in Paris for a few days at a conference. It’s cold here. I heard Chopin in a café and I thought of you both. Speak soon. Best wishes, Magnus Colin.

  I remembered those lines as I stood in Mrs. Bentsen’s room, watching the thin curtains stir in the breeze. Her daughter had taken her things away the
day after she died, and yet I could still feel the emptiness the old lady had left behind. It usually disappears within a week or so, sooner if a new patient moves into the room. Some like to think it’s the spirit or soul lingering on, but the fact is, it’s only natural that those who know the patient need time to get used to the change. It isn’t only believers who have trouble accepting this explanation, which is why I keep it to myself. I refrain from pointing out that anyone entering Mrs. Bentsen’s room for the first time the day after she passed away would have been unaware of this emptiness. In any case, it was while I was standing in her room on that Tuesday in June, watching the curtains flutter and reflecting on Chopin, the postcard I had sent with a picture of Pont Neuf, and my mother’s birthday, that I decided, more or less out of the blue, to ask Anthony to give me a dose of succinylcholine when things quieted down at the end of the week.

  “I am completely in your power now,” I said to him as I locked the door to Mrs. Bentsen’s room, shortly after four o’clock that Friday afternoon.

  His face remained impassive as he continued to set up the ventilator the two of us had just wheeled in. I dealt with the alarm clock before stretching out on the bed, and he arranged the medication on a tray, took my pulse and blood pressure, and asked me for how long I wanted him to keep me paralyzed.

  “Two hours,” I said. “Unless the building catches fire. Then you can give me the antidote.”

  He didn’t reply, but put on gloves and unwrapped a slim tube which I knew he would insert into my windpipe to keep the airway open. He worked slowly, adjusted his glasses, inserted a cannula in my arm, hooked me up to the heart monitor, and asked me again how much I weighed before double-checking that he had calculated the correct dosage.

  “And you want the windows left open?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And I’d be grateful if you could make as little noise as possible.”

  “In that case, you should keep your eyes closed so I won’t need to moisten them.”

  Before inserting the tube, he numbed my throat with an anesthetic spray, which smelled like candy. He then hooked me up to the ventilator and attached the nerve stimulator to my thumb and forearm.

  “Ready?”

  The drug paralyzed me almost instantly. Of course I was expecting that, and yet I was terrified. My heart started hammering uncontrollably and my clothes became drenched in sweat. I felt as if I was hanging in midair from a rope which I couldn’t grab hold of. I had a sensation of falling and tried to kick out my legs and cry for help, but my limbs were frozen and my voice had vanished. Only my racing pulse revealed my anguish. Anthony checked the monitor and said something about everything being normal, and yet I felt as if I were under an enormous weight and that Anthony was far away, his voice almost inaudible. He dried the tears which suddenly streamed down my cheeks and said that they were to be expected.

  The only bodily function the drug affects is the power of movement. It doesn’t dull or excite the mind, or send you to sleep. I kept reminding myself of this, trying to convince myself that I still controlled my thoughts, that it was up to me to rally them and slow my heartbeat. Only two hours, I told myself. Only two hours. I thought about the white, embroidered curtains, which I imagined fluttering every now and then in the soft breeze, the trees outside the window, the leaves, the birds hopping from branch to branch. Anthony walked gingerly across the floor, pulled a chair out from under the table in the corner, and brought it over to the bed. There he sat down and opened a book.

  Gradually my heart rate slowed. The hum from the ventilator was soothing, and blended seamlessly with the afternoon lull. Anthony sat reading, and after a while I began to kill time by counting how long it took him to turn each page. I hadn’t noticed the book when we entered the room, but I guessed it must be something technical or scientific, because I couldn’t imagine that he was interested in fiction or even biography. Every so often, he rose to check the monitors before sitting down with his book again. I had asked him not to let me know how much time had passed, and I regretted that now. Once I heard footsteps in the corridor followed by a knock on the door. Anthony didn’t get up, but called out: “Occupied!” in his authoritative voice. I had been right in guessing that it was a woman; she said “sorry” before hurrying away.

  Over an hour must have passed when I heard the sea. Shortly before, the windows had started rattling and the room had grown suddenly cooler. I envisioned the skies darkening, scudding clouds shadowing the lawns surrounding the hospital. I was listening for the wind when I heard the sea. At first I thought I was imagining it, but when I concentrated I heard the waves unmistakably lapping at the rocks, rather lazily, I might add.

  I could not have imagined hearing the sea from the hospital, not even on winter days when it crashed against the rocks, surging onto the land, over the dirt track that takes you to the boat-houses and from there into the village. Forgetting for a moment that I couldn’t move, I instinctively tried to lean forward, the way people do when they are straining to hear something, but was reminded of my helplessness. This time I didn’t despair, but continued to listen for sounds outside the hospital walls—for something I might not have noticed before and which I suddenly thought could mean something to me. It was odd, this strange conviction that I had missed something important, and equally bizarre the notion that now was the moment to reclaim it. I hadn’t walked by the sea since that day in the fall when Malena had taken the train from Grand Central to the hospital. Of course, I should have known from her voice that something was wrong, but she couldn’t have called at a worse moment. In fact, I had barely had time to pick up the phone and make a mental note of when her train was to arrive. It was another Friday, and I had the idea we might try the new restaurant in the village people were talking about, before we caught the nine o’clock train home.

  The sea was breaking over the rocks, and the rays from the afternoon sun were bobbing on the waves along with a few restless gulls. I could hear our footsteps on the dirt track, the autumn breeze in the grass and the squawking gulls. And her words, which devastated me. We had reached the village by then, stopping outside the old café next to the drugstore that’s still closed on Sundays. I was telling her how much I liked this little village where time seems to stand still, the main street with its corner bookstore, its barbershop, the grocery store that sells firewood, bicycles, and toys, along with reading glasses and kitchen utensils. I was saying something about the “H” that had been missing from the blue sign above the pharmacy since I first came here almost a decade ago. And the window display that hadn’t changed, either: a few perfume bottles here and there, some dried flowers, and a sun-bleached advertisement for Old Spice that could have dated from the sixties. I was about to tell her that it was the pharmacist’s daughter, back from a long stay abroad, who had opened the new restaurant where I had reserved a table for us. I never got that far, because she came to a halt outside the café and tentatively took hold of my arm. And uttered those words which now echoed in my head as I lay motionless in Mrs. Bentsen’s room.

  I didn’t stand up immediately when I started to move. First my eyelids stirred, then my fingers, and gradually, one by one, my limbs. It was strange how long it took me to get my bearings, as if I had just come back from a long voyage and had to remind myself of every detail of my surroundings because it all looked so unfamiliar, even Anthony as he switched off the equipment and adjusted his glasses.

  When I finally got up off the bed, I went over to one of the windows and looked out toward the sea. You can’t see it in the summer for the leaves on the trees, and yet I stood gazing out until Anthony said to me: “So, did you get what you wanted out of this?”

  The next day, the first heat wave of the summer came over the city. I woke up early and jogged in Central Park, despite a little weakness, and then had brunch at the diner on the corner of Columbus and Seventy-Fourth. When I got home I tried to work, but soon gave up and, after much agonizing, finally called my parents in Allington.


  Chapter 2

  I never understood why we left Kingham. My father said it was because of my mother, but I didn’t believe him. I suspected he had money troubles, as was so often the case, although he would have denied it.

  I had just turned ten. He said she found the town depressing, and that it kept her from concentrating. She didn’t want to disrupt our lives, he said, but she had put up with Kingham for too long. In addition, the climate had a bad effect on the piano, whose pitch was never as clear as it should be. Not even on a bright summer’s day, because the instrument had no time to recover from those cloudy, damp periods so typical of Oxfordshire. That was why she had been unable to play for over a year, as I had doubtless noticed, and why she had to stop teaching: how could a pianist who is unable to pursue her own vocation possibly instruct others? He forbade me to discuss the matter with her, and said we mustn’t let her suspect that we were anything but delighted about moving. I said good-bye to my friends Stephen, a Liverpool supporter, and Andrew, who taught me how to carve a bird out of a piece of wood, and who tolerated that I had a crush on his sister, Mary, although he had a hard time believing I could find her anything but irritating. She was a year younger than us, and had brown hair, big eyes, and a dark complexion, nothing like her two brothers and her parents who were all lily white.

  Stephen and Andrew came to wave me off the day we left Kingham, and I watched through the rear window as they grew smaller in the distance. I never saw them again, but I have sometimes wondered whether they had secretly agreed not to ask me why we never played at my house. They always acted as if it were natural that we should meet at either of their houses, and treated me as an equal, sometimes even with surprising respect, possibly because I was better at school than they were, and if necessary would help them with their homework. I wrote Mary a letter before I left, which Andrew swore he would give to her, but she never wrote back and I gradually forgot about her. I sometimes wonder whether he kept his promise.

  Allington in Hertfordshire is a nondescript little town with a population of around fifteen thousand. The high street has the same shops and services you find in other small English towns—hairdressers, grocers, butchers, bakers, and banks. The train from Kings Cross to Cambridge stops in Kneesworth Street; an hour from London and approximately half an hour to Cambridge. The town was almost deserted on the Sunday we moved into the house on Abbey Court, and none of our new neighbors made an appearance, except for Mrs. Tribble who lived opposite. I watched her make her way across the street to greet my parents. My mother hurried inside, while my father exchanged a few words with our neighbor, and then it started to rain. It rained all day and into the evening, and was still raining when I woke up in my new room the next morning. The house stood at the end of a cul-de-sac, and from my window I could see a large field where the local boys played football. Either my father hadn’t noticed the goalposts when he bought the place, or he hadn’t stopped to think about the consequences. The pitch was frequently shrouded in fog, which, like everything else in the town of Allington, held little excitement: I had difficulty imagining anything lurking in it, either superheroes or monsters. Although there were times when the sun came out, dispersing the fog, and the pitch would light up for a moment so you no longer saw the puddles and muddy patches where grass never grew.