‘Nothing’s happened to you.’
The voice jolted her, sounding like it came through a speaker system. She blinked in confusion. Was the person beside her speaking to her, or was someone speaking to her from behind an observation screen? Was she in the CT scanner room and not in a theatre? The voice belonged to a man, but not one she recognised. It was none of the surgeons she knew. She squinted up at the masked face. ‘Are you the doctor or are they in another room? Are we in the scanner room?’
‘I’m the doctor.’
Christ, her hearing was all wrong. He sounded like he was speaking beside her, yet the voice sounded distant, like a telephone voice. Why didn’t he turn off the bloody lights and take off his mask and talk to her properly? Hold her hand, even? She sighed agitatedly. ‘So you haven’t found anything wrong with me?’
‘There isn’t anything wrong with you.’
Impatiently, her voice rang louder. ‘Look, can we rewind here? Why exactly am I lying here and why was I brought in? What does my casualty card say?’
‘You know, you really shouldn’t get yourself so worked up. Your heart is racing. Your breathing is erratic and your oxygen levels are only ninety-four per cent. Do you smoke?’
Her eyes darted to the cardiac monitor on a trolley beside her. She could see the trailing wires and knew they were attached to electrodes on her chest.
‘Look, I don’t mean to be rude. You’ve probably had a long day, but I’m a bit pissed off that I’ve woken up to find myself alone. Now just so we’re clear, I’m not going to make a complaint, but I do want to know who you are. I want your name and I want to know what’s going on, right now.’
‘Well, Alex,’ he said, raising purple-gloved hands in the air which held a surgical stapler. ‘Just so we’re both clear. Right now, if you don’t keep a civil tongue I’ll be inclined to staple your lips together. You have a pretty mouth. It will be a shame to ruin it.’
A wave of terror instantly hollowed out her stomach. Muscles rigid, eyes open, her thoughts, her anger and her voice were paralysed.
‘Temper isn’t going to help you here,’ he stated calmly.
Champagne and roses, she thought. Think of that. Patrick. Think of him.
‘That’s better.’ She could hear a smile in his voice. ‘I can’t work with noise.’
Scenarios played like a film on fast forward in her head. She was in the hospital somewhere. Someone would find her. Someone would hear her scream. This was a madman. A patient on the loose. A doctor? Or someone impersonating one? He had obviously taken control of one of the theatres and she .?.?. she had somehow stumbled across him. Her mouth, the pressure she had felt. The gagging after she dropped to her knees in the car park .?.?. He had brought her in here. He had hit her and then gagged her, with a cloth. He must have anaesthetised her. Chloroform or ether .?.?.
‘Please don’t scream,’ he said, reading her mind. ‘We’re quite alone and I really don’t want to resort to silencing you. I have a headache as it is. Cold wind always gives me one. Surprised you haven’t got one, wearing so little on a cold night like tonight.’
She was instantly aware of her nakedness beneath the green drapes. Her exposed breasts and vagina, her bottom slightly raised in the air and her calf muscles beginning to spasm from the unnatural position they were in.
Patrick. Think of him or anything else apart from being here – Mum, work, the patient who died today. The people who would be looking for her. Think, Alex. Rationalise with him. Engage his mind. Say what she was. Who she was. Humanise herself. Isn’t that what the textbooks taught? She had practised many times what she’d learned from them. First rule: acknowledge your patient’s anger. Second rule: defuse it.
‘My name is Alex and I’m a doctor.’
He calmly replied, ‘Are you aware you have a retroverted uterus? While removing your coil I had to use a curved speculum.’
Stunned, she could only gape at him. He had already done things to her. While she lay unconscious his hands had been inside her.
Think, she instructed herself. Think this through before it’s too late and this is all over. Be nice to him. Make him like you. Try, for fuck’s sake, she lectured herself sternly as her tongue lay like a thick slug inside her mouth.
‘Th-thank you for doing that. Not everyone would be so considerate.’
‘You’re welcome.’
His response gave her a tiny glimpse of hope. It was working. They were talking. She hadn’t actually seen his face and he probably knew that. She could tell him she didn’t know what he looked like and she would forget about whatever he had already done to her. No harm done. He could walk away.
‘I wonder,’ she said carefully, ‘if you would let me up to use the toilet?’
‘No need.’ His purple-gloved hands disappeared beneath the green drapes and touched her naked skin. She flinched. ‘Steady,’ he advised as he palpated her lower abdomen. ‘Your bladder’s empty. I already catheterised you. Output’s good.’
‘Why have you done that?’
‘Major procedure, Alex,’ he said, using her name with the familiarity of two colleagues working side by side. ‘It will be painful for you to urinate normally for a while.’
Despite herself, a deep sob shuddered from her chest and the sound of her desperate cry filled the room.
‘What have you done to me?’
‘I already told you. Nothing has happened to you. Yet. The decision is yours. You simply have to answer this question: What does “no” mean?’
Her thoughts scattered as she tried to make sense of the question. Know what? Know him? What the hell was he asking her?
‘These, for instance.’ He held up her pale pink sandals with their long stemmed heels and delicate straps, which she knew would turn Patrick on, even though they were impossible to walk in. ‘Do these mean no? And what of these?’ Her stockings were dangled over her face. ‘They surely don’t mean no. When I undressed you, you weren’t wearing a bra and your panties were hardly big enough to make a small handkerchief.’
Her ankles pulled hard against the leather straps, binding them tighter as she tried to draw her knees together. She understood exactly what he was asking. ‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Don’t.’
‘It’s a simple question, Alex. I think we both know what you mean when you say “no”, don’t we?’
Hatred overrode her fear, and for a moment she felt free and brave. She spluttered as she angrily spat the words. ‘I don’t understand the question, you fucker. And my oxygen levels are low because of what you gave me. You need to go back to your books. Are you a failed quack? Is that it, fuckhead?’