There was one downside for the HM; his staffing budget was hit by the need for extra security to stop people from invading the place. All of my mail – which rapidly built up to sackfulls a day, increasingly from abroad – was dealt with by hospital staff. Zara sometimes told me about the choicest letters, which included some astonishingly spicy suggestions. ‘And you should see the photographs they send!’ Curiously, such letters continued to arrive even after we broadcast the fact that I had no time to deal with them.
The hospital organised two adjacent consulting rooms for me, so one patient could be made ready while I was dealing with another. I spent the days walking from one to the other, assessing conditions, easing pain, sometimes effecting an instant cure. Some were more difficult.
‘This is a sad case, and I’m not sure if you can help.’ Zara was reading the case notes as she walked into the empty consulting room at the start of the day. ‘An eight-year-old American girl, Sally, mad about horses, fell off and broke her neck. She’s tetraplegic.’ The rest of her life spent completely paralysed and helpless, dependent on others for every detail.
‘Let’s go and see.’ The girl was face-down on the consulting table, her spine uncovered, her parents sitting beside her, radiating anxiety, sorrow and hope. I greeted them, then crouched down beside the girl, turned my face the same way as hers, and grinned. ‘Hi Sally! This is your friendly local monster here!’ Her lips twitched. ‘Let’s take a look at you.’ I ran my fingers over her neck and spine. Neck vertebrae crushed together, as I expected; nowhere for the spinal cord to find a way through. The nerves on each side of the break were intact, though, so I had an idea. I closed my eyes and focused on those nerves, knew them, became them. And grew.
I concentrated intensely on growing, on directing growth around and behind the break, both sides working towards each other. There was a flicker of response; very slowly, a micron at a time, the nerves were beginning to grow. I opened my eyes and had to steady myself against the table, my head suddenly swimming. Zara looked on anxiously. I drew a deep breath. ‘That’ll do for now. Come back in a couple of day’s time and we’ll see how you’re getting on.’
I sat down and waited until the girl was wheeled out, parents whispering reassuring words.
‘Are you all right?’ Concern glowed from Zara.
‘I think so, it’s just that such an intense mental effort is tiring. In fact, I’ve been noticing it even with simpler tasks, if I do too many of them.’
‘You need a break every now and again. They’re working you into the ground.’
‘Maybe. But the ones they send, I can really help.’
‘Then make sure you can keep helping them, by pacing yourself.’
‘All right, all right. I’ll build in some days off, if that makes you happier.’
She frowned. ‘I’m not sure that will be enough, but it’s a start. I think that you really need to get away from this place for a while. I’ll see if I can organise something. Is there anything you’d like to do?’
I thought about it. ‘Oddly enough, I’ve been dreaming a lot about swimming lately. I don’t know why, I was never much of a swimmer.’
Two days later, I was transported in the dead of night to the local swimming baths in the back of a van, with Zara and the muscular and mainly silent Max, who had been appointed chauffeur/minder, in the front. I entered the building to find a fifty metre competition pool, still water reflecting the ceiling lights. As soon as I saw it, I felt an overpowering urge and dived straight in, feeling an inexpressible thrill of sensual pleasure as the cool water flowed caressingly along my body. I glided to the bottom and opened my eyes. To my astonishment, I found that with a slight effort I could focus sharply. Evidently, my eyes had altered in even more ways than I had realised. I pushed off the bottom and swam strongly underwater, loving the buoyancy and the feel of the water, enjoying the strange perspectives caused by the water’s different refractive index. I put on a spurt, kicking hard, seemingly flying from one end of the pool to the other.
Eventually, I surfaced and drew breath, to find Zara and Max peering anxiously down at me. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Never better. I think I was designed for this. What’s the problem?’
‘You’ve been underwater for nearly ten minutes, without coming up for air.’
I absorbed that for a moment. ‘Then I was definitely designed for this.’
‘What’s more,’ Zara added, ‘I timed your last few lengths. I used to do some competitive swimming at one time, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I think a few world records just tumbled.’
I laughed. ‘They don’t give any for swimming underwater.’
I stayed in the pool for a long time, feeling completely at home and at ease for the first time since the accident. I found that I could swim underwater for twenty minutes before needing to come up for air. I couldn’t imagine what enabled that; I must be storing oxygen somewhere, which implied some novel internal changes. Eventually, Zara’s entreaties about the coming dawn persuaded me to leave. I felt no ill-effects from my long immersion; my eyes were clear, my scales unwrinkled, and I returned to the hospital both relaxed and invigorated.
That was only the first of many nocturnal visits to that beautiful pool. The physical activity of swimming somehow eased my mental tiredness and kept me functioning to meet the relentless demands of the sick. For the time being, talk of a holiday was abandoned.
After few weeks of this routine, I had a call from reception during my lunch break (a tasty mix of macadamias and pecans, with an orange starter): ‘there’s a man here, he says he’s your brother’.
I paused in surprise, then mentally shrugged. ‘What does he look like?’
‘Early forties, medium height, lean build, light-brown wavy hair, rimless glasses.’
I laughed. ‘Were you in the police?’
‘No, but we have to be observant these days.’
‘Anyway, that sounds like him so you’d better escort him up.’
A knock on my door, and Luke walked in, looking much the same as ever, only leaner and rather more suntanned. He was casually dressed, in well-worn clothes chosen for practicality rather than style. He stopped and stared. ‘Is that really you, Matt?’
‘More or less.’
‘I really am finding that hard to believe.’
I thought for a moment. ‘We last met at Mum’s funeral. We didn’t say much then, as usual. You talked about your last mission – in Afghanistan, I think.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, we did some disaster relief work there.’
‘Then you said something about your next task – in Burundi, wasn’t it?’
‘Right again, we’re carrying out a major educational assistance programme. That’s why it took me some time to get to you; I’ve only just arrived home on leave.’ He paused for a moment, then asked, ‘do you recall the last time we were together with Dad, and what we said?’
I could hardly have forgotten, it was a turning point in both of our lives. ‘We were arguing, about religion and science as usual. You were taking Dad’s side and announced that you were determined to follow him in working for the Church – not as a priest, but for their charity organisation. I ended up telling both of you that I was an atheist and I thought your beliefs were – let me get it right – “the result of a mental virus which has plagued mankind throughout civilised history”.’