I swallow hard, then I stare at the closed door, wondering what the fuck is going on outside. The team are literally discussing whether or not my life is worth saving. I guess it’s bizarre that that isn’t even at the forefront of my mind right now. I look at the phone in my hand, will it to ring. Come on, Lenny. What the fuck have you found?
The door bursts open, Elaine leading the other five people in to my ward.
‘Okay, Gordon, we’re going to take you down now. Mr Douglas has the theatre set up; he’s awaiting your arrival.’
Two of the team approach the rail behind my head, one of them kicking out at something under the bed. Then I feel myself floating, being wheeled towards the door.
‘Gordon, Gordon,’ Michelle calls out. She grabs my hand. ‘You’re going to make it through, I know you will.’ She leans in to me, kisses my forehead. My mind begins to spin, swirl, do backflips. I’m going for make-or-break surgery. My ex wife is fucking kissing me. Guus Meyer took Betsy. What the fuck has gone on this morning? It feels as if I’ve woken up in the middle of the most surreal nightmare fathomable.
‘You won’t be needing this,’ Elaine says, grabbing the phone from my hand.
I shout out but she doesn’t care. She hands it back to Michelle who is now sobbing in the doorway of my ward as I am wheeled away from her. I turn over on to my belly, stare backwards and watch Michelle. It almost feels as if I’m being wheeled away in slow motion.
Then Michelle begins to wave at me. She’s running. Getting closer.
‘It’s ringing,’ she says. ‘It’s ringing.’
Elaine tries to stop her from giving me the phone, but I swipe at it.
‘Thank fuck, Lenny,’ I say as I hold Elaine at arm’s length. ‘They’re bringing me down to theatre now, what have you got for me?’
The silence between me asking that question and Lenny answering is almost torturous. I can actually hear my failing heart beat loudly in my ears.
‘Gordon, Guus didn’t take Betsy,’ he says. The sound of my heart thumping suddenly stops. As if it no longer wants to beat. As if it no longer feels a necessity to keep me alive.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Gordon, she’s not there. Guus had nothing to do with her disappearance.’
Elaine grabs at my wrist.
‘Gordon, you need to hang up that call now.’
The surgical team push me into a large elevator. I don’t even hang up on Lenny, I just hand the phone over to Elaine and lay my head back on the pillow, my mind splintering in a thousand different directions.
Bollocks. Lenny didn’t get me any answers. Why the fuck did I get my hopes up? I think about the envelope I left back in my ward. Fuck it. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m going to survive these surgeries. I have to survive these surgeries. I need to know what happened to my Betsy.
I grab at the sleeve of Elaine’s scrubs.
‘I need to get through this,’ I say. She sighs quietly, then purses her lips at me. ‘Please tell me Douglas is going to carry out the surgeries. Please!’ I’m almost crying through my begging when the lift door opens and I’m wheeled out. Elaine doesn’t answer me, she just stares straight ahead.
I’m wheeled down a long corridor and then around a corner towards another long corridor. The colour has disappeared from the hospital. No greens or blues or yellows. Everything is just white here; either white or clear glass. As the team and I are buzzed through a double doorway, I see him. Douglas.
‘What took you all so long?’ he asks.
The surgical team look at each other. Except Elaine. She’s too busy staring at me.
‘Sorry, Mr Douglas, but we had an issue with the bed, it wouldn’t wheel. We had to find another one.’
Douglas tuts loudly, then motions, with curled fingers, for the team to wheel me into his theatre.
‘We’re all ready here,’ he says. ‘We need to do this asap.’
When I’m wheeled through, a member of the team places his hand around my back, moves me up into a sitting position. Then the T-shirt I’m wearing is taken from me, my arms reaching up so it slips up over my head. I stare around the room, almost blinded by the brightness of it all.
‘Ready, move,’ somebody says beside me. Suddenly I find my whole body being lifted and then placed down on another bed. Possibly my deathbed. Douglas is dictating orders to his team, but I can’t really make out what he’s saying. My mind is racing too much. My whole life seems to be flashing before my eyes. My parents, my school friends, my horrible fucking teachers, my first job, meeting Michelle. Betsy. Betsy. Betsy.
‘Gordon, Gordon?’ Douglas says, removing me from my thoughts.
‘Huh?’
‘Do you understand everything I’ve just said to you?’
I arch my head back a little, strain my eyeballs to look up at him. I’ve no idea what he’s just said to me, but I just nod anyway.
‘Okay, so take one deep inhale.’
I do. And as my lungs are filling, he places a mask over my mouth and nose.
‘I’m going to ask you to count backwards from ten. By the time you do, you’ll be asleep, okay?’ I nod again. Then Douglas nods at me, prompting me to start. I look around, find Elaine, then hold a hand out towards her. She grabs on to it, squeezes my fingers.
I take in another deep breath as I close my eyes. Then I begin to count.
‘Ten… nine… eight… seven… si—’
Yesterday
Betsy
Another bloody software update. This seems to happen about every three months now. A box flashes up offering me the chance to:
Chat with one of our representatives now.
I just click the tiny ‘x’ on the corner of that box and then continue to download the new software update. I don’t need to ‘chat’ with anyone. Downloading the latest Kindle update is easy. Dod showed me how to do it.
I couldn’t live without my Kindle. It’s one of the best inventions ever. I have nearly two hundred and twenty books inside this skinny little machine. There’s no way I’d be able to fit all of those books in this basement. Not unless I slept on top of them. Dod still buys me my non-fiction books in paperback form. I’m currently reading about a president of America called Barack Obama. He was the first ever president of America with black skin. I don’t know why I always seem to relate to people with black skin. I think it might have to do with the fact that they were held as slaves for so long until they fought their way to a better life. Maybe I can relate to that in some way. Obama seems to be a real modern-day hero. I’d like to say that it would be great to meet him but I really don’t have much interest in meeting people anymore. It used to be my dream to meet somebody… anybody, but I’ve learned to love my life. It might be restricted; I don’t ever leave this house, except to breathe in some air out the back garden, but I have everything I could ever want. I have all my books. I have Bozy. And I have Dod. What more do I need?
I love Dod so much. He is so many different things to me; a best friend, a parent, a partner, a cook, a hairdresser, a TV critic, a book critic. Sometimes we read the same books and then discuss them afterwards. We both read Dreams From My Father at the same time, although he finished it way before me. Then afterwards, over dinner, we discussed what we both love the most about Barack Obama. We also both read The Hunger Games books at the same time and then discussed them. I think Dod liked them more than I did. We’ve also watched the movies. They’re crap in comparison to the books.
The software update finishes and I click back into the book I was reading: The Fault in Our Stars. It’s very sad. Very, very sad. But it is so gripping. I only downloaded it yesterday morning. Am nearly finished it already.
‘You should read this one, Dod,’ I say.
He looks at me, then squidges his nose.
‘Doesn’t seem like my cup of tea.’
A small laugh comes out of my nose.
‘You’re just afraid you’ll cry.’
He makes a face at me, then continues to
paint the wall of my basement. He’s so good at looking after me and my little room. I asked him to paint it light blue, so that it looks like the sky. He bought some paint yesterday and began the job today. The smell is a bit strong, but I don’t mind. It will look great when it is all done.
Dod’s going to buy me two plants as well that I can put in the corner of the basement, just so I can bring a bit of the outside into my inside. We still go out the back, with the lights turned off, every Saturday evening before our Pizza arrives. The smell of fresh air is still a joy for me. We whisper when we’re out there; about anything and everything. It’s normally the best twenty minutes of my week. But anytime spent talking with Dod is always great. He is so clever.
I stare at him as he runs a paint brush up and down the far wall. I think he has lost some weight in the past months. I asked him if he was doing more exercise.
‘No. Apart from running around seeing to your demands!’ he said to me laughing. He says I have him under my thumb, that I totally control him. He might be right. I don’t know. I just know that we love each other. And that neither of us would change a thing. We don’t even hold any secrets from each other.
Well, apart from Betsy’s Basement. I still haven’t told him about it. I’m not sure how he would react to reading it. I think it’s a great book. I really do. It’s a hundred per cent non-fiction now. I got rid of all of the fictional stuff about neighbours who I made up. The whole book now is about my time spent here. It’s like a memoir; a bit like the Obama book in a way, a bit like the brilliant book I read last year: Angela’s Ashes. That kinda thing. Somebody in the future will find it. Somebody will read it and know the full truth about my life in this house. And I will continue to add to it. My life is far from over. I’m only twenty-one. Have lots of years left. My spelling and my writing improves all the time, but it’s still not perfect. I’m sure there are still lots of mistakes in it, but I really like Betsy’s Basement and think whoever does find it in the future will really enjoy reading it. I might even become famous. Only I won’t know. Because I will be dead.
I sniffle up a tear that almost falls out of my eye as I continue reading The Fault in Our Stars. I always know if a book is good or a bad depending on how it makes me feel. Once it makes me feel anything – happy, sad, angry, afraid – then I know it’s good. It’s the writer’s responsibility to make the reader feel… feel something. This book is definitely making me feel something: sad. But that’s a good thing. The writer has done her job. I hope whoever reads Betsy’s Basement feels something. But I don’t want them to just feel sad even though there are sad bits in it. I want them to feel happy too. And angry. And afraid. Because they are all the feelings I have had while I’ve been writing it.
‘Ohhh,’ I need a glass of water,’ Dod says as he scrambles back to a standing position.
‘I can get one for you,’ I say.
He shakes his head.
‘Don’t worry about it. I wanna take a little break. I don’t feel too good. I’m a little light-headed from the fumes, I think. I’ll be back in ten minutes. You just keep on reading.’
I smile back at him and watch as he makes his way up the steps. He doesn’t seem to be walking like he normally does. He’s holding on to the wall for balance as he makes his way towards the light in the hallway.
Then he just drops; his whole body slapping against the floorboards in the hallway.
Five hours later
20:00
Lenny
Lenny crunches another plastic cup in his grip, tosses it into the bin and then interlocks the fingers from each of his hands around the back of his head. He lets out another sigh and then begins to pace the corridors. Again. Slowly. Really slowly. He’s not going anywhere, but he’s sick to death of sitting in the waiting room. He can’t fathom why the plastic seats in these waiting rooms are always so uncomfortable, as if they’re designed to itch people’s arse cheeks. He has studied each face he’s come across during his repeated walks, but none has matched the pretty girl’s in scrubs he’d seen in Gordon’s ward this morning.
He grinds his teeth again, the day’s events constantly nagging away at him, then squirms. He’s furious with himself that he spent much of his day running around strangers’ homes shouting out Betsy Blake’s name – as if she was just gonna magically poke her head out from behind a curtain after seventeen years.
‘I’m a fuckin idiot,’ he whispers to himself as he continues to walk, his hands still interlocked behind his bald head. It’s not the first time he’s mumbled that sentence in the past couple of hours.
He’s frustrated with himself over a number of things, but none more so than the fact that he put Sally on the backburner. He’d never done that before. He got so wrapped up in his job that he let Sally down. He’s promised himself – and her –countless times over the past hours that he will never do that again.
Still, despite the cringe-worthiness of his day, it may all work out wonderfully for him in the end. As far as he’s aware, Gordon said he was leaving his home to him in his will; it was practically the last thing he said as he was being taken down for surgery. Wasn’t it? The day’s been such a blur, Lenny isn’t entirely sure what was said. Though, if he learned anything since he arrived home and researched the Betsy Blake case, it’s that it wouldn’t be particularly wise to trust anything Gordon Blake says. Yet, despite that, here he is – back at the hospital, desperate to find out if that will Gordon wrote in front of him was left on his bedside cabinet before he was wheeled down for his surgeries.
The first thing Lenny did when he arrived back at the hospital was to go up to St Bernard’s Ward; into the room Gordon had been lying in all morning. But there was nothing in it; nobody in the bed, nothing in or on the bedside cabinet. Lenny has begun to wonder if he’s being equally as deluded as he was earlier in the day, thinking Gordon would leave him his house. But he couldn’t just sit at home not knowing for sure. He felt he had to be here, he had to find out. Intrigue was controlling him.
He told Sally everything. It took quite a while for it all to sink in and for her to understand what had gone on during his morning, but once the penny dropped that Lenny was doing everything for his family – for her and the boys – she held her arms out, invited him in for a hug. They held each other for about half an hour, until the boys finally asked why dinner was taking so long.
When Sally released him from their long embrace, Lenny made his way to their pokey dining-room and wiggled the mouse of the home computer, making the screen blink on. He researched the Betsy Blake case as thoroughly as he possibly could. Every minute of reading made him squirm even further into his seat. He never thought he could be so gullible.
Everybody he spoke to during his investigation; from Alan Keating and Barry Ward to Michelle Dewey – Betsy’s own mother – to Ray De Brun, the lead detective on the case, Frank Keville who reported on the case for a decade and even Gordon’s former best mate Guus Meyer – they all told him Betsy was dead. And yet he still raced around thinking he could find her. The internet informed him there’s no doubt about it: Betsy Blake’s DNA was found inside that car back in 2009. And that DNA did indeed confirm she was deceased. Unless the cops are unfathomably dirty and had somebody in the lab ensure their findings matched up to the theory, then there’s absolutely no doubt about it: Betsy Blake is dead.
The penny dropped within Lenny that Gordon Blake must have just gone crazy after he lost his daughter, and couldn’t bring himself to admit that she was gone forever. But that’s exactly why Lenny is here – because Gordon Blake is crazy. Maybe, just maybe he was crazy enough to leave a small-time investigator he barely knew a million euro house in his will.
Lenny lets out another deep sigh as he turns another corner, into another corridor that looks identical to the other thirty he’s strolled down over the past hour and a half. He spots another water cooler, decides to fill another plastic cup just to break the monotony of his corridor walking. He holds down the small white tap
, and when the cup is only half-filled, he stops and tilts his head sideways. He can hear a familiar voice; a voice he was talking to earlier today. He takes one large step back, just so he can peer around the corner. Michelle. She’s nodding her head, in conversation with a nurse. Michelle’s eyes look heavy, as if she’s been crying. Maybe Gordon didn’t make it. Though maybe she’s been crying because Gordon did make it. Their relationship is so toxic, Lenny’s not quite sure what way Michelle would react to any result of Gordon’s surgeries.
Lenny’s eyes stretch wide and he instinctively takes a step forward, out of her sight, when Michelle glances her eyes towards him.
‘Bollocks,’ he mutters to himself. The conversation around the corner stops dead. Then the sound of heels stamping their way towards him echoes against the walls.
She doesn’t say anything when she’s directly behind him, but he can feel her eyes burn into the back of his head. After blinking rapidly, he finally spins around, widening his eyes in mock surprise.
‘Michelle, how did Gordon get on?’
She holds his stare, snarls up the butt of her nose at him.
‘You should be fucking ashamed of yourself,’ she says. Then she trots away, her heels clapping against the tiled floor again. Lenny tucks his chin into his chest and waits for the cringing to stop running down his spine.
‘Eh… Mr Moon, am I right?’
He lifts his chin, sees the nurse Michelle had just been speaking to approach him slowly. She holds a hand out to his bicep and pats it gently.
‘I’m really sorry to tell you that Gordon Blake passed away during his procedures this afternoon. His… his heart rate was too high, making the surgeries all the more complex. Plus he produced about six massive blood clots after the procedure had begun; a couple of which entered one of his lungs. I know it’s no consolation right now but he slipped away under heavy anaesthetic, so wouldn’t have felt any pain.’
The Tick-Tock Trilogy Box Set Page 48