She gagged and wiped some drool as the tube finally left her throat.
“What the bloody feck am I in here for? Why was I not taken to Altnagelvin? I'm special, ye know. What're youse pumping me full of? What's that manky feckin shite in that bag there? Naw, not the one with me piss, the other one?”
“I'm uncomfortable with your language.”
“And I'm uncomfortable with yer bl—” Bridie controlled herself, just. “Face!”
The doctor ignored her. “It's an intravenous drip of water, sugar and vitamins. It's there to help you, to top up your levels.”
“What was that operation ye were on about? Slicing into me without me consent? Compensation, I'll be demanding!”
“I can assure you there was no slicing. You've had a gastric lavage.”
“What the feck—?”
“We've pumped yer stomach.”
Bridie looked down hopefully. Was it gone? Sadly, no.
“You almost died of alcohol poisoning. You're lucky you've survived. Oh, and we drained your stye as well.”
“Lemme outta here!” Bridie tried to get up, but her arms were weak, and there were tubes sticking out of her everywhere. She didn't want to race out into the parking lot trailing bags of nutrients and urine behind her. “Five pints I had, just! Everyone does it, sure! What's all this palaver about?”
“Five pints of whiskey, perhaps you're talking about? Your alcohol blood level was 0.33. 0.35 is coma, and 0.40 possible death.”
Bridie noticed the woman was suddenly holding a cup and moving it towards her mouth.
“To be absolutely sure you're out of danger, I'd like you to drink this down.”
Bridie peered into the cup. It was a black liquid. She eyed it with intrigue. She hoped it was Sambuca. There was a black kind, she knew. She took a whiff of it. She reeled.
“What the bleedin hell—? What's this shite?”
“Activated charcoal.”
“Ye're forcing me to drink coal? Are ye a madwoman?”
The doctor looked down at Bridie as if to say she knew who the madwoman in the vicinity was.
“Charcoal will absorb any toxins still left.”
Trying her best to avoid the sight of the cup that was inching closer and closer to her twisting, pouting lips, Bridie stared beyond the sea of druggies in the waiting room and through the rusty bars of the cloudy windows. She could tell from the angle of the shadows from the smoke stacks of the chemical plant on the wall of the entrance to the race track it was past 7 PM, tea time. She was stricken with fear. Tea , evening meal, not just the drink.
“Jesus, Mary Mother of God! What time does it be? I've to get me Damien's tea on the table!”
And she almost did wrench her body off the trolley. The doctor held it in place.
“We've to keep you here until all the alcohol has left your system.”
“What system?”
“Your body, I'm talking about.”
Bridie snorted. “The alcohol will never leave me body,” she said proudly. For months now she had felt fearless. And it had led to being reckless. “Do ye not know I've been visited by the Virgin Mary? I'm safe from harm.”
But, Bridie thought from the woman's disappearing lips, perhaps a Pakistani couldn't care less about the Virgin Mary. Perhaps she didn't know who the Virgin Mary was.
“Drink.” The doctor demanded it.
Bridie did as she was told. Maybe it was only the hope of a malpractice suit that made her drink. Haltingly, gag after gag, the activated charcoal slipped through her suddenly blacked lips, and she felt it ooze down her throat. She felt dizzy. Nauseous. She felt like she had eaten a lump of coal. Was this really a modern medical procedure? It seemed like something from the Middle Ages. Or something a shaman might suggest. She'd have to look it up on the Internet before she filed for malpractice.
“Now I've something else to discuss with you.” The doctor reached up and somehow pulled a curtain around them. It was covered with giraffes, monkeys and clowns. A few of the hooks were missing so it hung down at odd angles here and there. “While we were pumping your stomach, I took that occasion to give your body a thorough examination. And I found some rather alarming things. For example, some ecchymosis, these contusions, along your arms, ranging in age from relatively recently to a month or so ago.”
“Speak English, would ye?”
“Your bruises.”
Bridie scowled and wanted to fold her bruised arms around her chest, but she couldn't tug the one with the tube far enough.
“Och, sure, I got those from banging into things when I was legless, hi.”
“I understand they might have come from being in a state of advanced intoxication. However, your outburst, and the panic I saw in your eyes when you talked about making this 'Damien's' tea puts these bruises in a different light. Am I correct in assuming he is your partner?”
“What are ye on about?”
The woman was apparently speaking the same language as Bridie, and quite a lot of it, but Bridie couldn't understand a thing from the streams of English that were spilling from her flapping lips. And Bridie had attended three semesters of Derry Community College, so she knew difficult words. What was this woman saying? Or did she just not want to hear?
From the same place the cup had come, the doctor now pulled out a selection of glossy pamphlets.
Bridie eyed them with suspicion.
“What bloody fecking good is piles of pamphlets meant to do me? Am I meant to rub them on me bruises, like?”
“It's not the actual paper that's meant to help you. It's the information printed on them. Information is power, you understand.”
Bridie snatched them from the woman's hand, and, again, it was curiosity more than anything that had brought them into her hand and made her eyes scan them.
CLATTERED NO MORE, promised one, YOU ARE IN CONTROL! a second, and TAKE THE UPPER HAND INSTEAD OF AN UPPERCUT the third. There were others, Bridie saw, with phone numbers and addresses for safe houses and dates and times of meetings. She scowled and wanted to throw them to the floor. But she didn't. She shook her head vehemently instead.
“I'm affronted, so I'm are! Mortified ye would think such a thing! Ye don't understand me Damien. Ye don't know him, so ye don't.”
“I know I don't know him, per se. I just know...certain signs of...an abusive relationship when I see them.” The doctor spoke softly and kindly. She almost placed a hand on Bridie's shoulder.
“Och, go on away a that!” Bridie snarled. “Abusive relationship me arse!”
The doctor smiled down at her. It was as if Bridie hadn't spoken.
“I know this place, this horrid St. Blanchard's, is a tip,” she said, “but we care. Really, we do.”
Bridie continued to shake her head. The pamphlets were crumpled bits of paper in her hand by this stage.
“Like I told ye, ye don't know me Damien. A saint, so he is. And soon to be a millionaire saint. Aye, ye don't know him yet. Ye'll be seeing him soon, but.”
The doctor looked around in alarm at the curtain, as if she feared it would be ripped open and Damien would be standing there like his namesake from The Omen.
“Naw, he's not on his way over,” Bridie said. “I haven't phoned him, sure. I kyanny find me phone. But ye're to be seeing him on the telly, I'm talking about. On that Safari Millionaire. The new season begins this Saturday! ITV 2. I've been counting down the days!”
The doctor's eyes raised with interest. She was apparently an avid TV viewer.
“Safari Millionaire? You mean—?”
“Aye, that reality show from the telly. Where they ship them off for forty days to fend for themselves in the wild. And one be's voted out by his tribe mates every week. And the winner nabs a million quid. Damien was walking in the city center one day, and there they were, producers or some such from the show. Talent scouts, whatever. They gave him a screen test, a quiz, and then they picked him. I've been crossing the days off me calendar to the broadcast since he go
t back from the Amazon. This season's called Safari Millionaire: Macapá. That be's some area on the edge of the Amazon. In the Northeast. Three months ago, he came back, and they've been three very long months. Waiting.”
“And has he won the million pounds?”
Bridie scoffed.
“Silly women! He kyanny tell me! Sure, he signed one of them confidentiality agreements. Like the Official Secrets Act. If he tells anyone what went on before it airs, they won't give him the money. But I'm sure he has.”
The doctor shook her head sadly. She pressed the now crumpled bits of pamphlet more firmly into Bridie's hand.
“I don't know if a million pounds is worth a lifetime of abuse.”
“Alleged abuse!” Bridie roared. “He's not battered me, I'm telling ye!”
The doctor inspected her with her eyes. Bridie felt a bit naked. Then the doctor sighed, pulled aside the curtain and said, “I've other patients to see now. You're to stay there for the night at least. Damien can get his own tea. I'll keep the curtain closed.”
And she was gone. Before Bridie could even think of phoning Damien, let alone calling out to ask where her handbag and phone were, and her watch and her earrings, she collapsed, suddenly overcome with exhaustion. As she drifted off to a dark, fitful sleep, the pamphlet bits slipped from her hand and scattered on the floor. One slipped under the curtain, and was soon slick with blood. A heroin addict stepped on it and, staggering, dragged it on his heel all the way to the bathroom where he went to shoot up or throw up, the girl at reception wasn't sure.
* * *
CHAPTER NINE
When Zoë Riddell finally roused herself to consciousness, she felt warm and fuzzy. Her eyes fluttered open. Her left hand reached out, fingers feeling around the closest vertical surface like the legs of a spider, and she scooped up her Burberry frames. It was the first thing she did every morning. She put them on and peered through the lenses. She blinked. Though her mind was hazy, confused, she still had the wits to marvel at what she saw, the bliss of her surroundings. Minimalist-chic. This, was her first thought, is truly ace interior design.
Next to the white leather chaise lounge, the bareness of the stark gray and white walls was accentuated by a chrome end table adorned with a glass urn bursting with color, filled with those marvelous, shocking flowers from the deepest rainforests of Africa. They assaulted the eye like the best art should. Zoë saw orchids, rhizomes, gingers and a heliconia or two. Next to the urn was a smaller bowl of cut crystal filled with a clear liquid, and from it poked thin sticks. Aromatherapy. She could smell lavender, and she nodded her head with approval. Then she noticed her head was swaddled in a comfy pillow, the covering of which was surely 1500-thread-count Egyptian cotton. The nape of her neck could tell. And, now that she was returning more firmly to the land of the living, though her head was still pounding, she realized her body was luxuriating under a plush duvet. She suspected it was SFERRA, which even she considered an unnecessary expense for her own bed at home. SFERRA was the best of Italy. She could only admire the designer. What marvelous boutique hotel had she landed in? Why had she never booked this place before? Could she possibly still be in Derry?
There were wall-to-ceiling windows covered with olive-colored Roman shades. Zoë knew the type. She found the control on the night stand next to the bed, where her glasses had been, and pressed. The shades whirred up, letting in the early evening sun. She winced, then blinked again. With an air of urgency, she roused herself from the duvet. She clutched the top of the sofa—genuine leather, she confirmed—and the desk chair—chrome—as she made her way to the window. Her legs were a bit wobbly. She looked down at her body. She was clad in a nightie. Then she peered out the window. She caught a glimpse of the edge of a golf course and the corner of a tennis court. And as her breath steamed the glass and she saw the reflection of her mussed hair, it suddenly flooded back to her: the grubby hold up in Final Spinz. The pitchfork. The trowel slicing through the air. The clacking of the coal tongs. She felt the lightness of her earlobes, the nakedness of her left wrist, the empty expanse of her neckline. She was gripped with a sudden fear. A scream formed in her throat.
Had the hooligans carted her away here? Had she been kidnapped? Was she a prisoner for ransom? Why would they choose this luxurious hotel? How had they gotten her unconscious body past reception? Were they mad? How much were they asking for her? Who were they asking? Her accountant? Her lawyer?
Rory?! Would they threaten him? No! Not her dear son! Was he in danger? And, an afterthought, the grandchildren...?
In her panic, she caught a glimpse of something green on her nightie, and looked down. Embroidered over her left breast were the letters WV. And it was as if the druggy fug in which her brain had been submerged suddenly lifted. Her cerebral cells clicked alive.
“You silly woman!” she chastised herself. “You're in Wellness Valley!”
The private hospital on the edge of Derry. Her registered hospital. Her first visit. The rooms were even more impressive in person than the brochures had promised. Wondering what sort of drugs they had pumped into her, and why, she marched as purposefully as she could with her weak knees over to the tastefully concealed emergency button above the night stand. She pressed long and hard.
Moments later, the door clapped open and a middle-aged woman in a crisp knee-length olive dress with white epaulets, cuffs and hem made her way towards her. She had blonde hair done up in a bun. Not a hair was out of place. She radiated brisk professionalism.
“Mrs. Riddell!” she said, flashing American teeth. “You're up. I'm so happy. I am Mrs. Sooth. I'll be your Care Coordinator during your time here with us. Your short time here.”
She guided Zoë with a firm yet gentle hand back towards the bed and the waiting duvet.
“There's no need for alarm, though you really ought to rest. We gave you a few milligrams of Xanax to help you relax. Perhaps you still feel the effects? Have you been having a few odd thoughts?”
“Odd thoughts, indeed!” Zoë said, her head snuggling back into the pillow. She looked up at the woman smiling down at her. Kindly. Admiringly. “What am I doing here? I gather I passed out during the...during the...”
“Yes, the hold up. I don't wish to alarm you, but the police need to speak to you. Later, of course. They're not here now. And I'm sure, as you're the owner of the dry cleaners, you have many things you think you should be doing. But first we must ensure that you are in perfect health.”
From one of her pockets, Mrs. Sooth brought out a blood pressure monitor and wrapped it around Zoë's arm. “I'm sure you're wondering why you were brought in,” Mrs. Sooth said as she pumped up the monitor.
“Indeed.”
“You had a spell of syncope.”
“Pardon my ignorance. What is that, exactly?”
“You fainted.” Mrs. Sooth eyed the monitor. “One twenty over eighty. Perfect! I expected nothing less. Now!” She rolled up the monitor, then took out a sheaf of paper. “There were questions we wanted to ask you when you came in, but couldn't because you were out cold. Perhaps I can ask them now?”
“Go ahead.”
“Before your syncope, can you recall if you had any chest pain? Shortness of breath? Confusion?”
Zoë smiled wryly. “Yes. I believe I had all three, though I'm sure they weren't medically related.”
Mrs. Sooth nodded her head. “I understand. Typical bodily responses of the victim of a criminal act. Do you suffer from blurred vision?”
“Only without these.” Zoë motioned to her glasses.
Mrs. Sooth tinkled with laughter.
“We've had to run some tests while you were under. I'm sure you understand. For Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, and the like. And perhaps now's the time to ask you, have you yourself a history of heart disease?”
“No.”
“And your family?”
“Not that I know of.”
“And no previous history of fainting?”
“None.”
Mrs. Sooth was checking off little boxes on the paper. With a Mark Cross pen, Zoë noticed.
“And we can see you've experienced no loss of bladder or bowel control.”
“I'm thankful for that.”
“And did you notice an irregular heartbeat or a pounding heartbeat before you lost consciousness?
“Well, yes, a pounding heartbeat, but only, again, because I was in the middle of a robbery when I fainted. Not only was it the shock of the robbery, but there was also some horrid stench in the dry cleaners. I'm not sure where it came from. My head was reeling from the smell even before the...the criminals burst in.” Zoë clucked her tongue and fought to raise her head from the pillow. “I appreciate you are only doing your job, Mrs. Sooth, but this is faintly ludicrous, me being pampered here. I've a business to run.”
Mrs. Sooth, again gently, firmly, pushed her back down.
“More like an empire, if I might be allowed to say. You are an inspirational woman, Mrs. Riddell.” She seemed on the verge of asking Zoë for an autograph.
“Thank you. But still—”
There was a knock at the door, and a young woman dressed in the same Wellness Valley outfit came into the room. She was clutching a file.
“Ah!” Mrs. Sooth exclaimed. “I expect that's the test results.” She motioned to the girl. “This is Angela. She's second in command of your welfare.”
“Hello, Angela.”
“Hello, Mrs. Riddell. It's an honor to meet you.”
Angela almost curtsied. She handed over the file and scurried from the room.
“Really,” Zoë said, raising herself to her elbows with a wince and a moan, “as pleasant as it is here, and it truly is, I must insist I leave. Now that the effects of the medication are leaving me, I'm getting more and more concerned about finding out exactly what is going on with the inves—”
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