But whatever she looked like, Salazar could find nothing wrong with her cognitive apparatus, therefore nothing to justify intervening in her slow-motion suicide. He and DiMarta had Moulson moved out of the main ward into the quarantine room (as per the governor’s instructions) by eleven o’clock. He asked Moulson if she’d consent to a visit from Fellside’s non-denominational pastor, Sarah Afanasy. Moulson declined, politely but firmly.
The quarantine ward was a little secure space all by itself, like a solitary cell in the heart of the infirmary. The pastor would have had to make a house call, because Moulson wasn’t going anywhere, even if she changed her mind about dying.
But she didn’t. She was still totally lucid when she was actually awake, and she refused – politely – all sustenance except water. DiMarta left her with a plastic pitcher and two plastic cups.
To Sally, the two cups seemed a bizarre touch. “She’s not going to be entertaining anyone,” he pointed out, joking.
The robust DiMarta was just a little outfaced for a moment. “You know,” she said, “I didn’t even think about it. It’s just automatic. Fill the jug, set out two cups. Isn’t it funny how much of what you do is… you know, not thinking about it?”
“The power of routine,” Sally agreed. He was very much aware of the phenomenon – of options silting up, doors rusting shut. Sometimes it seemed to him that every time he came to the point of a decision, it was pre-empted by a decision he’d already made years before. “We’re like robots, really. Not sophisticated ones, just kids’ toys. Moving in grooves that are already cut out.”
DiMarta was shocked. “I didn’t mean anything that depressing! I just meant that it’s easy to go into autopilot without realising it.”
Salazar protested that that was what he’d meant too, but he’d soured the conversation. He had no gift for banter.
He looked down at Moulson, who had fallen asleep again. Unable to think of anything to say that would lift the mood again, he fell back on physical comedy. He set out the two cups, filled both of them and pantomimed introducing Moulson to an imaginary guest.
DiMarta laughed out loud, but then clapped her hand to her mouth. “That’s not good,” she said between her fingers.
“What? What’s not good?”
She pointed to the two plastic cups. “That’s how you call the Coco. By pouring a glass of water or wine in front of an empty seat.”
“And what’s the Coco, exactly?”
“A monster that eats children and then takes their shape.”
“Lovely. This is a Portuguese thing, is it? I didn’t know you were superstitious, Patience.”
DiMarta shrugged her broad shoulders. “Autopilot,” she said. “I grew up with it. Every night my mother told me to go to bed without any fuss, or the Coco would come and get me.”
“And here you still are.”
“Yes. But I didn’t make a fuss. Or set a place at the table for ghosts.”
Salazar looked in on Moulson throughout the day. She came and she went, but generally she wasn’t strong enough to talk even when she was awake. He tried anyway, making meaningless conversation just to show her that he was there and to remind her that she was too. The worst thing about death was that it tended to be lonely, even when there were people around you. And this death was likely to be lonelier than most.
Starvation, in Sally’s purely theoretical understanding, was a complicated proposition. There was no smooth progression to it. It came on you bumpy and discontinuous like a cart bouncing over rocks. He talked it over with Patience, who would probably have to carry as much of the burden as he did.
“Starving isn’t abstinence from one thing; it’s abstinence from a whole lot of things. Mostly people only think about the big, obvious ones.”
“Calories.”
“Right. No calories, so you’ve got no energy to move. And no proteins for cell repair. But there are so many other things your body needs. We’re very complicated engines, Patience. We’ve got to have chloride for our stomach. Iodine for our thyroid gland. Electrolytes for our nervous system.”
“I don’t like thinking of a human being as a machine,” DiMarta tutted. “I wish you’d use a different metaphor.”
Sally registered the objection, but it was the only metaphor he had. “So all those different parts of you are going to have their own different emergencies, which will just come whenever they come. And then eventually you’ll reach catabolysis. You’ll start to feed on your own fat and then on your own muscle and tissue: your body will try to break itself down for parts.”
“I imagine it stops hurting at that point,” DiMarta said doubtfully.
Sally was going to do his best to make sure it didn’t hurt at all. Moulson had refused treatment, but he was allowed to give her pain relief, and since she was dying anyway, the sky was the limit. All the same, he wasn’t looking forward to seeing any of this, or managing it.
But it was part of his job, and he would do it to the best of his ability. At least, he hoped he would. He knew his own failings very well, and one of them was cowardice. There might well come a point when he was tempted to look away.
17
“A letter for you,” Nurse Stock said.
She set the cream-coloured envelope on Jess’s bedside table. Then stood and stared at it as though its presence there disturbed her in some way.
Most of the nurses treated Jess with wary detachment but Stock seemed to have an intense interest in her. She came into the quarantine ward quite often, even when there was nothing specific that she needed to do there, but almost never spoke a word.
“Thank you,” Jess murmured. She waited until the nurse finally went away before she opened the letter.
It was from Brenda, of course. And it wrung her heart, which was otherwise beyond wringing by this time. Jess had written to her aunt to explain about the hunger strike. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but she couldn’t bear the thought of letting Brenda find out from the TV news. Brenda who had been her second mother, both before and after her real mother died. Who had called her my little jelly mould, and then my lovely Jess. Who had always loved her, no matter how unlovable she became.
This was Brenda’s response. Don’t put out that precious light, Jess. Whatever they say you’ve done, don’t throw yourself away. Not for someone else’s idea of crime or sinfulness. You know what you’ve done and what you haven’t done and you’ve only got to answer to yourself, not to them.
But that was precisely the problem.
Jess used the controls on the bed to lift herself halfway upright. She had a pad and a pen, which Nurse DiMarta had ordered from the commissary on her behalf. She used it now to scrawl an unsteady, spidery reply.
Don’t come to me. Don’t be hurt by me any more. I love you so much, but this is the best way for me. Don’t cry.
She sealed the letter, addressed it and put it on the table. The postage would be taken from her commissary credit, which was rapidly dwindling towards zero. But then again, so was she.
She fell asleep again, despite the harshness of the ward lights, and dreamed of nothing. Her next stop and final destination.
Sylvie Stock collected the letter and took it downstairs to drop it off in the box next to the admin station.
All mail from patients in the infirmary was handled in this way. It wasn’t special treatment exactly. Still, it rankled with her to be running errands for a child murderer.
She tore the letter up instead and flushed it down one of the staff toilets. It was a tiny thing, but it gave her a little transgressive thrill that she carried with her for the rest of the day.
“Could you please leave the lights off?” Jess asked Dr Salazar the next day or maybe the day after that. “They hurt my eyes.”
“I need them on when I examine you,” Salazar told her.
“I know, but… the rest of the time. When I’m alone.”
He did as she asked. And after that, there were no days or nights. There was just the darkness where she lived, and the signal flares that blinded her every time the doctor or the nurses came and vanished with them when they went.