Meg frowned. ‘Can you do that again, Mrs Deal?’
She did it again.
‘Can you give one tap for yes, two for no?’
Meg held her breath. Mrs Deal’s finger started to tap, but kept going – five, six, seven, eight times, and Meg picked up the book again. She wondered whether she was just wasting her time. For the first time, she realized that her actions were not entirely altruistic. Deep down, she had hoped that reading to a coma victim would spark a recovery for which she would be responsible. It was humiliating to confess such a motive – even to herself. She was a kind person, sure, but was she also a glory-seeker? A show-off? Meg didn’t like the new light by which she found herself examined. It was not modest or selfless and it made her ashamed.
Chastened, she found her place again and resumed reading. From the corner of her eye, she saw Mrs Deal’s finger tapping and stopping, tapping and stopping.
Angie came over to check one of the machines beside Mrs Deal’s bed, and smiled at Meg.
‘Why does she do that?’ asked Meg, nodding at Mrs Deal’s juddering finger.
‘It’s just something that happens – a patient twitches or speaks, or opens their eyes, even when completely unconscious.’
Meg nodded slowly.
‘Does it bother you?’ asked Angie.
‘A bit.’
The nurse smiled sympathetically. ‘I know it’s upsetting at first, but after a few weeks you won’t even notice it.’
She smiled a goodbye and moved on to the next bed.
A few weeks!
With a sour ball of dread in the pit of her stomach, Meg stared slowly around the ward, at the bedridden lumps that had once been real people.
The idea of this clammy vigil becoming part of her future for weeks or months to come sent a shiver down her spine.
34
TEA WAS A curious time.
Kim made toast for herself and for Lexi, who wore the kimono. Patrick hoped that that meant she was Kim’s guest now, not his. Everything had gone so horribly wrong all at the same time, and he had neither the time nor the inclination to make cheese sandwiches or to sleep on the floor.
The three of them sat in the front room and watched some bright, noisy show with glove puppets and a robot, while in the kitchen Jackson slammed the cupboard doors. Patrick flinched at every bang.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Kim rolled her eyes and yelled, ‘Could you make any more noise in there?’
‘Sure!’ he yelled back and threw what sounded like cutlery into the sink.
‘Child,’ muttered Kim, and ate her toast.
‘Where did you go last night?’ Lexi asked Patrick. She had her feet tucked up beside her on the couch and Patrick noticed that the kimono – although a better fit on her than it had been on Pete – still showed an awful lot of thigh.
‘Out,’ he said.
‘Out where?’
‘He won’t tell you,’ said Kim. ‘Patrick likes secrets, don’t you, Patrick?’
Kim was an idiot. Patrick didn’t like secrets at all – especially today. The thought of never knowing the secret of Number 19 made him want to kick the TV.
‘Ooh, I love secrets!’ said Lexi. ‘I want to know. Tell me!’
He didn’t tell her. Let her find her own secrets at the bottom of a bottle. Someone – probably Scott – would stumble on ‘heart failure’ and claim they’d established cause of death, and then probably win the Goldman Prize for best student, when it should have been his. He hadn’t found his answers. His quest had failed, and without it he was lost.
More than lost.
Emptied of hope.
From the corner of his eye he could see Lexi crane her neck to try to make him look at her. ‘Tell me,’ she sang. ‘Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me…’
Kim tutted. ‘He won’t; he’s such a killjoy.’
‘Nah,’ said Lexi. ‘He’s just playing hard to get.’
‘He’s playing it very well,’ said Kim and they both shrieked with laughter, showing soggy toast in their mouths, like washing in a machine.
Patrick glared at the robot on the TV. It was trying to take a cake out of a cardboard oven, but it kept crushing the sponge with its metal fingers. The glove puppets were giggling and pointing, but the robot didn’t understand what it was doing wrong, or why the cake kept crumbling through its hands.
Like meat crumbs falling out of the flesh-cake that was Number 19.
‘I went to see your dead father,’ Patrick said.
Kim giggled, but Lexi stopped laughing and said, ‘What?’
‘Last night, I went to see your dead father. That’s my secret. We’ve been cutting him up for months. He’s all in little bags now.’
‘That’s sick!’ said Kim, and giggled uncertainly.
‘What?’ said Lexi again. Her face had become ashen, and the toast she held in her hand had flopped sideways on to her bare knee and stuck there, Marmite side down. Patrick had the sudden, uncomfortable notion that being knocked unconscious off a swing with a broken nose was nothing compared to the shock drawn so nakedly on Lexi’s face that even he could read it.
‘What do you mean?’ she said through trembling lips.
‘You wanted to know.’ He shrugged, somehow wanting to make it her fault. He picked up a magazine from the arm of the chair. Art Forum.
Lexi turned to Kim. ‘What does he mean?’
‘Nothing,’ she said uneasily. ‘I mean, he’s a med student, but… Nothing, I think.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Lexi again. ‘What the fuck do you mean?’
Patrick didn’t look at her and wished that she would stop looking at him. He wished now that he hadn’t said it, but the glove puppets were so cruel! Why not just help the robot? Why did they have to laugh?
He threw Art Forum at the TV and walked out.
He was at the foot of the stairs when he heard Lexi coming, making a noise like a cat in a bag being thrown from a train. He turned and she slapped his face so hard that he fell backwards on to the stairs. She didn’t stop. She was a crazy animal flailing on top of him, slapping, scratching, gouging – and all the time howling with rage and profanity, while Kim screamed ‘Jackson! Jackson!’ over and over again.
Patrick covered his head and drew up his knees. He planted a foot in Lexi’s stomach and shoved her away from him. She crashed backwards into the front door, then curled into a ball and started to cry in huge, open-mouthed gasps.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Kim. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘What the fuck is going on?’ said Jackson, running from the kitchen.
‘I don’t know,’ said Kim, and started to sob too. Jackson put an arm around her and she turned into him, pressing her toast into his shoulder.
Patrick sat up slowly and touched his nose; there was blood on his fingers and his heart was beating so hard he could see the pulse twitching under the skin of his thumb.
This felt bad. He felt bad, although it brought him no satisfaction to recognize it. He frowned at Lexi, hugging herself on the dirty hall carpet, and – out of nowhere – thought of his mother the night the policemen had taken him home and made him beans on toast. Wailing on the floor.
The two things felt connected but he didn’t understand why.
Why? That was the question. That was always the question, and always would be unless he took control and solved the puzzle.