“Then why is her heart rate so steady?” Salazar murmured.
They moved back and forth around her, taking measurements, exclaiming, occluding Alex and then revealing him again and again. He didn’t move. He stood in the shadows at the far end of the room but he was as clearly visible as though he was in bright sunlight. Or perhaps it was the light of a fire she couldn’t see. In his bowed head and pursed lips there was a boundless patience.
She slept and woke. Alex still waited.
“All right,” Jess whispered, giving in at last. “What?”
I changed my mind.
“About…?”
You said you hurt me, and I told you I didn’t care.
He leaned over her. Jess flinched back, her upper body sliding further up the headboard, but there was nowhere to go. You couldn’t escape from madness, and clearly she was mad.
Oh God, she was mad. And talking to the ghost of the boy she’d killed.
I don’t think you did kill me. That’s what I wanted to tell you. That’s why I came back.
He was right beside her, his face leaning down to look into hers. She turned her head away. “Burned…” she tried to say, although what came out wasn’t words. “In a… fire…” In her dream or hallucination, or whatever it was, he’d been able to read what was in her mind. She let the images form there. The wastepaper basket. The bedroom. The smoke. The horror.
I didn’t die in a fire!
“But…”
I didn’t. Listen to me. There might have been a fire. I suppose there was if you remember it. But I must have been dead before I burned.
Alex held up his left hand, fingers spread, then pointed to his right eye and cheek. There was a woman. She hurt me, here and here. Hurt me with sharp things. And then she killed me.
The dead boy frowned – the same solemn expression he’d worn in her dream. I was wrong, he told her. It does matter. I was alone for a long time and I forgot. There was nobody to talk to, so I forgot. I didn’t know who I was or what had happened to me. But then you talked to me and it made me start to remember. Now I want to know the rest. There was a woman who hurt me. Not you. I’d know if it was you. And there were other things before that. I want to know. It’s horrible not knowing. It’s almost like not being here at all. If you feel sorry for what you did, you’ve got to help me.
But you’re not real, Jess thought. You can’t be real.
I’m as real as you are! And I brought you back. I was kind to you.
He stepped away from the bed, glowering at her now with something like indignation. There’s nobody else I can ask. Nobody else sees me when they’re awake. So if you don’t help me, I’ll never know. I’ll be stuck not knowing for ever.
I can’t, Jess protested. There was no point in telling him again that he was a hallucination, a fitfully firing neuron. He wouldn’t believe her. Alex, she said instead, if there was some way to help you, I’d do it. But you’re dead, and I’m dead too. I can’t do anything.
Yes you can! The boy’s fists were clenched, his face twisted with anger and frustration. You can see me and you can talk to me. And you can talk to other people. Somebody must know!
His expression changed – becoming calmer, but also filling with a frightening resolution. I know about you wanting to die, Jess. I saw you thinking about it a lot of times. But I’m not going to let you die until you’ve done this first.
He turned his back on her and walked away. She could see him for a long time getting smaller and smaller, as though the cramped room was a corridor that stretched halfway to the end of the world.
Jess. It was the first time, alive or dead, that he’d ever called her by her name. It burned behind her red, itching eyes the way a brand might burn on her skin.
27
Grace lost a packet when Moulson rallied.
It wasn’t a little bit here and a little bit there: it was a single massive payout to a dozen or so long-shot punters when Moulson hit the six-week mark with a heartbeat, a pulse and a full matching set of vital signs. Grace paid out in the ballroom that evening. She handed over the money without a murmur, as a bookie was bound to do, but the muscles in her jaw got tighter and tighter until Big Carol Loomis became seriously scared and tried to deflect the lightning with a change of venue.
“Look at this,” she said, pointing to a poster on the wall. “Film club is showing Angels with Dirty Faces. ‘Top of the world, Ma!’ You want to go watch it, Grace?”
Grace turned to stare at her with flinty eyes. “White Heat,” she said.
“What?”
“‘Top of the world, Ma!’ is the last line in White Heat. Angels with Dirty Faces has Cagney dying like a coward to stop impressionable young kids from following in his footsteps. No, Carol, I don’t want to watch it. But I want you to. And when you’re done, you can write me a fucking review.”
Loomis weighed up many possible replies, but settled on a nod. She kept her face carefully expressionless as Grace walked away with her empty cash box dangling from her hand.
Dr Salazar witnessed Moulson’s return from the dead with mixed emotions. He was amazed and overjoyed when he saw that she was rallying – an instinctive response arising out of a fuzzy but firm conviction that life was better than no life and that his job was to push as hard as he could in the right direction. But as a professional, he was mystified and almost affronted. How could this thing have happened? How could it be continuing to happen in front of his eyes?
Nurse Stock, who was actually the first to see the change in Moulson’s condition, had a more straightforward and primal reaction. When she told Sally about the spike in the readings, she was whey-faced and terrified, close to breaking down. The whole time Salazar was examining Moulson, she was babbling away to him about how she’d made a mistake with Moulson’s meds. She should have reported it, but it was late and it was dark and she didn’t realise… and on and on.
Sally saw exactly what mistake she’d made: the violent purple bruise on Moulson’s thigh made it clear as day that Stock had injected the last dose of tramadol into the artery instead of the vein. Moulson ought to have died, or at the very least gone into a cardiovascular crisis.
It wasn’t an easy mistake to make with the femoral artery. It was a big target, whether you were trying to find it or (which was much more likely) avoid it. Stock had almost killed a patient through the kind of blunder you might expect from a first-year med student. A sloppy first-year med student with a happy-go-lucky attitude. The initial mistake was compounded by her not reacting properly to the sudden rush of blood that must have occurred as soon as the needle was withdrawn. Instead of seeing this for what it was – proof positive that she’d pierced an artery – Stock had just staunched the flow and walked away.
And now she was watching him, tense and rigid, as he inspected the damage. She was waiting for the axe to fall. But Salazar had a problem with axes. Evil had to be identified and extirpated, obviously. But he’d flinched from that test before, when the evil was a lot bigger. Stock most likely had just made a mistake, and who was he to judge another human being’s failings when he was such a desperate mess himself?
She was waiting for him to say something.
“Better get another bandage,” he muttered. “This one is soaked.”
Stock made a small, unidentifiable sound and retreated. When she came back with the bandage, Salazar stood aside and let her change Moulson’s dressing herself. He thought he ought to say something, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I’ll give her the tramadol from now on,” was what he finally came up with. “We’ll change the schedule so I can do it last thing before I leave.”
Stock mumbled something he didn’t hear. It was probably just, “Yes.”