by KL Slater
I actually feel as if there might still be something I can do.
I decide to start by giving nurse Nancy Johnson a call.
63
Present Day
The Nurse
‘So, what’s the story, Joanne Deacon?’ Nancy’s face looms in close to the patient.
There is no obvious clue whether Jo, as she is apparently known, sees her or not, but Nancy knows that she does. She saw her blink yesterday when everyone crowded into the room. She opened her mouth to tell them, but something stopped her saying anything. What good would it have done? It would have given false hope to Toni Cotter for one thing, a woman who is a mere shadow of her former self and has suffered enough.
And then, last night, Nancy received a call from Toni, begging for her help.
‘You have to find a way,’ Toni had sobbed. ‘Only you can help Evie now.’
Nancy had responded kindly to Toni and asked her to give her a little time to think about the situation, but she had her own ideas of how she might be able to help this broken, desperate woman. These were unconventional ideas – the kind of thing that would certainly be frowned upon by her supervisors. Nancy made her mind up right there and then to keep quiet and try a little experiment with Joanne Deacon.
‘I’ll pop over and see you in the next couple of days,’ Nancy had reassured Toni. ‘In the meantime, don’t mention anything about this to DI Manvers.’ She knew he’d be speaking regularly to the doctors and hospital management team and she didn’t want anything slipping out in conversation.
Nancy stares down now at Jo’s unresponsive face and imagines that her own blurred features are sharpening in front of the patient’s eyes as she begins to come into focus.
Nancy is in uniform, tiny beads of perspiration dotting her top lip. She knows from the bathroom mirror this morning that her mascara is clogged in the corner of her left eye. The concealer under both eyes is badly blended and there’s a spot forming on her chin that threatens to be a quite a whopper.
Jo Deacon will see all this in close-up. She will see that Nancy is just an ordinary person. And if she plays the right game, she will start to believe Nancy wants to help her.
‘The police are speaking to your mother, your colleagues, Jo,’ she says. DI Manvers had told them that Jo Deacon had been living under a new identity for the last six years after serving time for fraud. They’d managed to trace her mother after discovering the truth. ‘There’s nobody here in the room but you and I.’ Nancy stares down at her. ‘I don’t believe you’re an evil person. I’d have felt it before now.’
She means it. Nancy has always had the measure of people.
A couple of years ago, a man called Cameron Tandy had been admitted to the ward Nancy worked on. He’d been recovering from a road traffic accident in which both his legs had been badly crushed. He’d told all the nurses he was an eminent barrister, defending the innocent and the good. He was a good-looking chap, with his chiselled jawbone and broad shoulders. The younger nurses swooned and Nancy could understand why.
But she had seen something else. Felt it, in fact. A strange sensation, whenever she was physically near Tandy, that literally caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up on end.
The next day, two detectives turned up at the hospital unannounced, demanding they be allowed to question him over the disappearance of an eight-year-old boy. Turned out Tandy had been struck off as a barrister four years earlier and now appeared as an entry on the child sex offender register.
Nancy had known Tandy was evil when everyone else had been fooled, just like she now knows that Joanne Deacon is not. Whatever the evidence is pointing to at the moment, Nancy is convinced that there’s more to it all.
Three years ago, Nancy tried to help little Evie Cotter when she’d been covered in wasp stings. Now she’s going to try and help her again.
Nobody knows if Evie is alive or dead, but Nancy feels strongly that, whichever one it is, the most important thing is to get her back to her mother.
And Joanne Deacon is the key. She is the only key they have.
64
Present Day
The Teacher
Harriet sits by the window, using her fingertips to lift the net away from the glass, just a touch. She doesn’t want anyone to know she’s here. Watching. She doesn’t want to draw any attention from any of the surrounding properties.
She has good reason.
The street is quiet today, and what a blessing that is. Late last night, Harriet had peered out of the window into the small front garden to find two drunken young men urinating on her hydrangea shrub. Once they’d had a little shake and put themselves away, they staggered off down the street, no doubt heading for one of the overcrowded bedsits at the bottom end.
It’s a relief to note there’s nothing much to see out there today.
Harriet glances down at her hand and watches as her fingers tremble, the movement transferring itself to the fine net curtain, setting it quivering.
It’s definitely getting worse, the shaking. And not only in her hands – sometimes her arms and legs begin to tremor, too. It’s most unsettling and can be altogether embarrassing, for example if she’s at the supermarket checkout or the post office counter.
She can’t bring herself to make an appointment with her GP though. Not with them all knowing what happened.
A figure appears at the gate and Harriet instinctively lets go of the net, allowing it to fall into its loose folds, no longer needing to be razor sharp and perfectly equidistant now that her mother is gone.
Part of her stiffens at the prospect of a visitor, but the other part of her sinks when she sees it is not. She shrinks back behind the curtain, though still upright and flexed in the armchair. A rattle at the door and then the thud of the newspaper hitting the mat allows her to relax again.
Harriet hasn’t ventured up to the top floor of the house for many weeks now. She can’t face it. She tried to be prepared and to do her best according to her mother’s instructions and it has all gone horribly wrong.
She blames herself. She should never have listened to her mother and allowed her to erode her innate feeling of what was right and decent. But of course she did, and now she is left with the consequences.
None of her mistakes can be reversed.
It’s easier to see things clearly now her mother has gone, although it’s far too late to redeem herself. She can’t put things right, can never turn back the clock. Her only option is to lock the room and stay out of it. Pretend the mistake never happened. Which is far easier said than done.
Harriet always thought she’d move out of the house when her mother passed, move to a smaller, newer property – perhaps one of those eco houses on the other side of the river.
All hopes of that crumbled when her mother’s plans failed. She can’t move forward, can’t go back. Harriet is trapped. Trapped by the grisly contents of the locked room on the third floor.
65
Present Day
The Nurse
A number of years back, Nancy read a couple of fascinating medical academic articles detailing a procedure whereby a paralysed patient, unable to move apart from a single blinking action, could begin to communicate with medical staff via the use of a letter board.
Nancy can’t ask whether the hospital owns such a letter board, for fear of drawing attention to herself. She can’t discuss her idea with any of the doctors either, because they’re all convinced that Joanne Deacon is brain dead and it suits Nancy for their opinion to remain as such, just for a couple more days.
Firstly, Nancy needs time to coax Jo into relearning the action of blinking so that she can perform it at will. Nancy had witnessed that single blink and this is proof enough that Jo has the capability to repeat the action.
When she gets home after her shift, Nancy feeds Samson, makes herself two slices of buttered toast and a coffee and sits down with her laptop. Samson purrs and rubs against the bottom of her legs. She reaches down
and scratches his ears, his warmth and loyal affection slowly easing the tension of the day from her bones.
‘Sorry, buddy, you’ll have to wait for your fuss tonight,’ she says regretfully, booting up the laptop.
She googles ‘letter boards’ and finds a simple and suitable idea that will serve her purpose – at least to begin with.
She has brought home a small sheet of white card she found on the ward desk and now she proceeds to draw a clear, neat grid with the use of a black marker pen and a ruler.
Row 1: A E I O U Y
Row 2: B C D F G H J
Row 3: K L M N P Q R
Row 4: S T V W X Z
She holds the grid at arm’s length and studies it.
This is it for now.
This is all she can do.
* * *
The next day, when she gets up to the ward, DI Manvers and two uniformed officers are already in Jo Deacon’s room. She hovers outside the door.
‘Dr Chance is in there with them,’ another nurse tells her, with only mild interest. ‘They want to question a patient in a vegetative state, how crazy is that?’
‘I suppose they have to at least try,’ Nancy says. ‘There’s a lot at stake.’
‘Well, in my opinion, the sooner they turn her off the better,’ her colleague whispers. ‘As far as I’m concerned, that so-called woman in there is a waste of a good respirator.’
Presently, the door opens and the officers come out. Nancy nods to them and stands aside.
‘Regretfully, there’s very little prospect of anything changing,’ Dr Chance explains. ‘It’s more a case of how long we leave things the way we are.’
‘Do keep us informed.’ DI Manvers shakes his hand. ‘We’ll try and track her sister down, as you suggested.’
‘She only came to visit once, as far as I’m aware,’ Dr Chance replies. ‘There must have been some kind of mix-up when her details were taken. We’ve been unable to contact her since.’
They walk away down the corridor and Nancy slips into Jo’s room.
‘It’s just me,’ she says, closing the door softly behind her. ‘It’s Nancy.’
She walks over to the bed and leans over Jo Deacon’s face.
‘I’m going to be honest with you, Jo, I think you’re more than just a reactive blink. I think you’re still in there, that you understand everything that’s being said to you.’ She studies the patient’s glassy eyes, the pale, slightly clammy skin. ‘I want to try something. It’s just between you and me. I promise I won’t mention it to anyone else for now.’
Nancy wonders what, if anything, is happening inside Jo Deacon’s head. Are her thought processes the same as before she had the stroke? Does she speak out loud inside her head and answer Nancy’s questions? All she can do is assume that this is the case, assume Jo can hear everything she tells her.
‘OK, I’m going to be straight with you, Jo. They’ve all written you off. You probably know that, right? If you can hear everything that’s being said around you, you’ll already know that things are pretty serious.’
Nancy pauses. It’s important she says exactly the right thing.
‘But I’m not judging you. Not yet. It’s important you understand that.’ Nancy glances over at the door and moves her face a little closer to Jo’s. ‘But I need to know the facts. I’ll let you into a little secret, Jo. I’ve worked out a way we can communicate, you and I.’
She watches the patient’s face for the slightest flicker of a reaction.
Nothing.
‘I don’t know if you know what happened to Evie Cotter. You had a photograph in your bag showing Evie at least a couple of years older than when she was taken from her family, so you must know something.’
Nancy pauses, watching Jo’s face for a short time before she begins speaking again.
‘I need you to tell me where she is, Jo,’ Nancy says softly. ‘Whether she is alive or dead, you have to give Toni Cotter some peace. Can you do that?’
There is no reaction.
‘I’ve found a way for you to do it. In order for it to be able to work, you have to be able to blink. Just blink, that’s all.’ Nancy gives an exaggerated blink over Jo’s face. ‘It doesn’t even have to be that big. Just a flicker will do. If you can blink, we can have a conversation. Try now, try to blink.’
Jo’s face remains completely still.
No twitch, no blink, nothing.
‘I want you to take all your energy to your eyes,’ Nancy whispers. ‘Imagine it just like lightning, channelling up from your toes, from your fingers, collecting behind your eyes. Think about your eyelids coming down like shutters. The energy is forcing them closed.’
Nancy glances at the door again.
It’s just before ten and soon the cleaner will be doing the morning ward rounds, mopping the floor with disinfectant to fight the dreaded norovirus that has swept through so many hospitals in the UK in recent months.
‘Just keep practising, Jo,’ Nancy urges. ‘Keep imagining that energy sweeping up behind your eyes. I know you’ve blinked before – you can do it again. You can.’
Nancy waits, talking Jo through the process again and again.
Then suddenly, it happens.
Jo blinks. Just the once.
‘Brilliant, you did it!’ Nancy swallows down her euphoria and tries to keep her voice level. ‘You blinked, Jo! You really did it. Now try again. Try again and again until it happens.’
She watches and waits.
By the time Nancy leaves the room, Jo Deacon has blinked three times.
66
Present Day
The Nurse
The following day when Nancy arrives at the ward, there are pressing staffing issues due to a stomach bug outbreak. Everyone has to accommodate additional duties, so it’s nearly midday before she manages to get to Jo Deacon’s room.
‘OK, let’s try something,’ Nancy says. ‘Can you blink, Jo? Just once.’
She can almost feel the intense effort emanating from the patient.
Jo blinks.
‘Fantastic! Now, can you blink twice, please, Jo? Just two little blinks, if you can.’
Again there is a pause while Jo seems to gather energy, and then she blinks. Just once.
Nancy waits, staring down into the glassy, grey eyes.
A minute later, Jo blinks. Twice.
Nancy reins in her excitement. ‘I’m going to ask you a really simple question,’ she says evenly. ‘If you can, you’re going to blink twice to answer “yes” and blink once to answer “no”. Here goes. Do you understand, Jo?’
Jo blinks twice. Not clear, neat blinks, more of a frail fluttering, but it’s an amazing development and Nancy’s heart soars with hope for Toni Cotter.
This patient is nowhere near a vegetative state following a stroke, as several doctors have diagnosed. Jo Deacon is suffering from locked-in syndrome.
Nancy has no personal experience of the condition, but, over the years, she has heard about such cases. Locked-in syndrome can completely paralyse the patient. Sometimes, the only action they’re able to perform of their own accord is to blink. It’s extremely rare, but Nancy is convinced that Joanne Deacon is locked in, and aware of everything happening around her.
She knows she has an ethical responsibility to inform the doctors immediately and she has every intention of doing that. Very soon.
But, ethical or not, Nancy’s priority is not Joanne Deacon.
It is Evie Cotter and her family.
* * *
Nancy spends the following days dashing around the ward, fulfilling her general duties to the patients on Ward B. She keeps a close eye on Joanne Deacon’s room, monitoring when the doctors visit so she can return to the patient and be assured of a little time undisturbed with her.
Jo tires very easily. After a relatively short period, she stops blinking altogether and returns to her previous unresponsive state. But over a period of two full days, Nancy had been able to establish answers to several i
nitial questions.
‘Did you abduct Evie?’
Yes.
As soon as Jo had blinked in the affirmative, Nancy was desperate to ask how and why, but of course none of these answers could be satisfied by a mere yes or no blink.
To alleviate Jo’s tiredness a little, Nancy graduated to asking Jo to blink just once if Nancy said the right answer. It worked well for some questions, and this afternoon she had one particular question in mind. Nancy waits until the doctors have seen Jo and then, near the end of her shift, she takes her chance to sneak into her room once again.
‘Is Evie still alive?’
Jo ignores the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and blinks once when Nancy gives the option ‘I don’t know’.
Nancy tries not to let her frustration show. How can she not know? If Jo is the person who abducted Evie, then surely she must know.
She picks up her homemade letter board.
‘You can spell out words,’ she explains. ‘I will read the lines of letters very slowly and you can blink once when I say the correct one. Let’s have a go.’
The process is long and laborious. Jo manages to blink a few times but the letters spell nothing. Nancy quickly realises the letter board is too much, too soon.
She feels her heart clench as Evie’s innocent face floats before her mind’s eye. Heat floods through her and the urge to physically shake Jo Deacon forces her to turn around and take some deep breaths until she feels calm again.
‘Let’s go back to yes and no answers,’ she says evenly. ‘Do you know where Evie is?’