Poppet (8 page)

For the first time it dawns on AJ that Melanie’s feelings about the unit run really deep. Yes, it’s her professional reputation on the line, but she actually seems to care. Really care. In his experience genuine commitment beyond a pay cheque is thin on the ground in Beechway.

He clears his throat. ‘You’ve carried the can for the rest of us. We wander around whingeing about overtime and night pay, but at least at the end of the day we can walk away from it.’ He finishes tying the bandage and gently pushes the hand back at her. ‘There you go. You’ll live.’

Melanie fumbles up one of the blood-stained tissues from her lap and blows her nose noisily. She lets the hand sit in her lap and stares at it blankly. She
has
been crying, there are mascara trails on her face. ‘Everyone’s going to say I’m suicidal. They’re going to say I cut myself. What’s the expression? Eventually the system will turn in on itself?’

‘I don’t know.’

She sniffs again and looks at him. ‘AJ?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry about the professional-bitch demeanour this morning.’

‘That’s OK. You’ve got a job to do.’

She gives a small, tearful laugh. ‘Sometimes it’s the only way I know how to be.’

‘Like I said, it’s OK. It’s fine.’

There’s a short pause. He wonders where this is going. Then she says, ‘We’ve known each other a long time. Tell me honestly. This delusion they have – the you-know-what.’

‘The Mau—’

‘Please don’t say it.’ She looks at him with a watery smile. ‘Sorry – it’s just, I … AJ – you’ve never seen anything, have you? Something you couldn’t explain.’

He gives a scoffing laugh. ‘Oh, all the time. People walking through walls.’

‘Seriously. What
is
it about this delusion?’

‘That depends,’ he says, ‘on whether I’m Scully and you’re Mulder.’

‘I’m definitely Scully.’

‘No – you can’t be. ’Cos I’m Scully.’

‘Then it’ll have to be two cynics. Two cynics in a Beetle. They should make a film about us.’

They both give a half-hearted laugh. AJ sits back and stares out of the windscreen to where a drunk woman is picking a fight with an equally drunk man in camouflage trousers. There’s a long silence, then he says: ‘You’ve got to admit, she was a bloody nuisance.’

‘Who?’

‘Zelda.’

‘No, no – AJ, you can’t say that. Every person on the unit has a right to our care. We shouldn’t let anyone down.’

‘But she was a nuisance. I know it’s taboo to say it, but out of all the people it could have happened to, aren’t you glad it happened to Zelda? I certainly am.’

There’s a pause. Melanie keeps her eyes on the two drunks. Her mouth is moving slightly – as if she’s suppressing a slight smile. ‘We never had this conversation,’ she says, not meeting his eyes. ‘I never heard you say that and you never saw me nod. OK?’

‘What conversation?’

‘And last but not least, you never saw …’

‘What?’

She tilts her chin over her shoulder at the vodka bag on the back seat. ‘You never saw what was in that carrier bag either.’

The End

SUKI’S BREATHING SLOWS
. The rapid in and out – the frantic panting of the last few hours – deflates into something slow and thoughtful. A measured surrender. To Penny this is the first sign that the end really is coming. It’s going to be soon.

She looks at her watch. Five o’clock. Evening. So it will be evening when Suki goes. It can’t be much longer. She hitches up the duvet which makes a tent over her and Suki – here on the floor in the office where Suki lies curled on the tatty old bed that she has had for fifteen years – ever since she was a tiny puppy. Penny has been here all last night and today. She’s not tired, not sleepy. Not at all.

‘Don’t be scared, Suki.’ She strokes her face. ‘Don’t be scared. I promise there’s nothing to be scared of.’

Suki takes another breath. Almost pensive. She lets it out. Penny rests her hand on Suki’s ribcage – very lightly, because the skeleton is so tiny, so feeble. It seems a ridiculous insult to expect it to rise one more time. This little old dog – small and shrunken as a walnut. Even as a youngster Suki was tiny. Not a proper breeder’s dog – she was a rescue puppy, a cute hairy-faced mutt. All her life no one has ever noticed or paid attention to Suki – not the way they’d whoop and ooh over the glamorous red setters and Weimaraners. Of course, Suki has never minded. She’s always been content to trot along next to Penny, quite happy with the world and the way it was. No one is really going to notice when she’s gone. Only Penny.

Another breath comes. A slow release. Penny watches the ribcage – expecting another.

She waits, and she waits.

‘Suki?’

No response.

‘Suki? Is that it?’

Her chest doesn’t move. Penny presses her hands into it, her fingertips gently searching between the ribs for the last flutter of heartbeat. Nothing. The little dog’s chin is down and the whiskers around her mouth are curled and brown where they touch her front leg.

‘Suki?’

Penny looks at her watch again. Five minutes go by. Then another five. She makes herself count the seconds out in her head. All the way to a hundred and eighty. Three more minutes. Nothing, no one, can exist without breathing for this long. It is definitely the end.

‘OK.’ She rocks back on her heels. ‘OK.’

She cries. Just a little, and has to hold up her sleeve to soak up the tears. There’d be more, but the heavy ones passed through yesterday morning, when the vet told her the end was coming.

‘I’m picking you up now.’ After a long time she bends at the waist and lifts Suki up on to her lap. The dog doesn’t move or resist. Her legs flop down. She weighs nothing – no more than a small wicker basket. Penny hunches down, puts her face against the old muzzle. Rocks her. ‘It’s all right, my girl. It’s OK. You’ve been so good. Such a good girl. Thank you,’ she tells her. ‘Thank you so so much. For everything.’

The Nobel Peace Prize

AJ IS IN
that place again. The cave, its walls as smooth and warm and glowing as polished walnut. The hole is there too, slightly to his right. There’s a slender strand of something – gossamer, or spider silk maybe – reaching into the hole, almost as if it’s pointing the way. He is certain that if he tugs on the strand every miracle on earth will be revealed to him, all in one cosmic white blast. But this time, just as he’s about to grip the strand, the babble of infant laughter comes to him. He jerks round to the cave opening. Something is out there. A familiar pitter-patter of feet. A shadow crosses the ground.

He wakes, gulping in air. Breathing hard, his heart galloping, hands groping for something to hold on to.

‘Shit shit
shit
.’

‘AJ? You all right there, mate?’

He blinks. The Big Lurch and one of the nurses are staring at him from the other sofa. He opens his mouth, struggles up on his elbows and stares blankly at them. He’s in the nurses’ TV room. The digital clock on the wall says nine forty-five. The TV is on. A woman wearing nothing but thigh-high boots is gyrating her pelvis, throwing her long blonde hair around like a whip.

AJ groans and turns away into the damp-smelling sofa, his face in his hands. He shakes his head. He is so tired now it is beyond a joke. He wants to sleep but he can’t. He is going slowly, very slowly, mad. The lunatics are taking over the asylum, the system is feeding on its own young. He wishes he could wear a
You don’t
have to be mad to work here but it helps
T-shirt. Why is he stuck on this highway to hell of a career? There was a time he’d deluded himself he was going to change the world by caring for the patients, he even thought he was doing it to make Mum proud – make her believe her son was caring and thoughtful. Now he looks back at those rose-tinted days and thinks, without any humour, he should have gone to Specsavers.

He’s seen the worst of human nature in this profession. He’s seen guys who’ve stabbed random little kids to death in the high street, he’s nursed a woman (long dead now) who killed her disabled husband by pouring a kettle of boiling water over his head and leaving him in his wheelchair for three days until he died of the burns and the infection – AJ’s heart used to gallop every time he saw her holding a cup of coffee; she was only allowed that after ten years on the unit. Then there was the guy who’d hacked up, cooked and eaten his neighbour’s pony because it was ‘looking at him strange’. And the AIDS sufferer who put his used needles pointing upwards in the sandpit at the local children’s playground. And so it goes, on and on.

At some point he decided he didn’t want to know what someone was in the can for. He reckoned he’d nurse them better if he was none the wiser about the things they’d done. Technically, he’s supposed to know it all – the staff need to be aware of the offending history – but he’s found ways of learning only the bare minimum. He prefers it this way – his patients are to him like strangers in a pub or on a train – no illusions or preconceptions. There are simply some he likes and some he doesn’t, but he always tries to give them the same care.

‘You should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,’ says Patience. ‘For that and for your work with trees.’

He doesn’t feel like a Nobel Prize winner. Anything but.

‘Right.’ Now he rolls his feet off the sofa. Tilts himself forward and sits for a moment, rubbing his face. There’s a strange, almost fishy smell in the room – maybe something they’ve been eating. ‘Right,’ he repeats. ‘I’m going to do a walk-through.’

No one acknowledges him. The woman on screen is, evidently, in the middle of a drawn-out orgasm. She is yelping and squealing and acting her heart out. Massaging her breasts. The Big Lurch and the other nurse are agog. AJ hopes he’s never fallen for a fake orgasm in his life. The odds are, he supposes, pretty high.

‘I said, I’m going to do a walk-through.’

Neither of the other two men break away from the screen. ‘
Hey!
’ Suddenly he’s irritated. ‘Hey. Look at me.’

Both of them turn, startled. The Big Lurch fumbles with the remote and clicks the TV off. Holds his hands up. ‘Sorry, AJ, my man. I’m sorry.’

‘OK – well, now I’ve got your attention, can I enquire what that fucking disgusting smell is? Have the bins been emptied? Has the washing-up been done? You aren’t being paid to sit around here all night.’

‘It’s the kettle – it fused.’

‘The kettle is fused? Then what do you do about it? Do you a) ignore it and watch more porn? b) ignore it, hope it will go away, and then watch more porn? or c) try and fix it?’

The Big Lurch gives a long sigh and gets up. ‘Don’t worry – I know the rest. If we can’t fix it, then we put in an order to Accounts. I even know the right forms.’

‘Great – that’s a result. Gold star, mate.’ He shakes his head resignedly. Puts his hands on his knees and pushes himself painfully to his feet. ‘Now I am going to walk the wards – actually work for a living.’

‘Jesus,’ murmurs the Big Lurch as AJ walks past him. ‘Who puffed sand up your backside?’

He ignores that comment, trudges out of the room, to the staircase, his mood getting progressively worse. He doesn’t want to be here; he’s tingly and amped, but at the same time he’s tired and he’s fed up with it all. He passes Zelda’s room – casts a quick glance in there. Everything is exactly as it was last night, paint roller still up against the wall.
Plus ça change
. That’s just the way things happen around here – at a snail’s pace.

He goes first to Monster Mother’s room and opens the observation hole – peers through. The room is quiet, she is asleep in bed. The curtains are closed and on her chair hangs a dark kimono-style dressing gown, the light reflecting off its fat folds. While it’s impossible to know if Monster Mother is skinless tonight, at least she is sleeping. He closes the hatch and goes quietly back down the corridor.

On Buttercup Ward something isn’t right. It’s just a small noise, a creak of a bed, a breathing pattern that’s fallen out of sync. He crosses the corridor to room 17 – Moses Jackson’s room – and turns the little spigot in the pane. He sees immediately this is where the noise is coming from.

Moses is sitting on his bunk, rocking himself to and fro, holding his head. He’s a completely different person from the arrogant one The Maude attacked. Ever since his ‘auto ennucleation’ he’s been nervous and self-effacing. He is so changed. Tonight he’s dressed in his vest and underpants and he hasn’t noticed AJ because he’s too caught up in his own internal battle. Batting his face, and screaming silently. Rocking and rocking.

AJ opens the door. ‘Moses. Moses, it’s me.’

Moses instantly stops moving. He freezes, lowers his arms.

‘Moses? It’s AJ. You OK, mate?’

He blinks with his one good eye. ‘AJ?’

‘I’m going to come in.’

‘Yes,’ he mumbles. ‘AJ, help me.’

AJ closes the door and comes into the room. On Buttercup Ward the colour theme is, unsurprisingly, yellow. Even in the dim light you can’t get away from the yellow – the curtains are yellow with grey diamonds and the floor is a sickly yellow linoleum flecked black. It is one of the rehabilitation wards reserved for patients who are considered to be less of a danger, and the rooms have some movable furniture. AJ goes and sits on the very edge of the bed. You’re not supposed to sit on the beds – it opens you up to all sorts of possibilities of abuse accusations. But Moses is shaking like a leaf.

‘Moses? Hey, hey, mate, come on. What’s up?’

‘AJ, AJ AJ.’ He grips his curled hair tightly. ‘AJ, help me.’

‘That’s why I’m here. Now let’s take deep breaths. You’ve had your meds, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Usual time?’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’

‘Good. So what’s the problem?’

Moses shakes his head. He moans and tightens his hands against his scalp. When he speaks his voice is almost inaudible. ‘I’m scared, Mr AJ. Moses is scared.’

‘Hey, hey.’ AJ gently untangles his fingers from his hair and holds them. ‘Moses, old man,’ he says, keeping his voice well modulated, ‘calmly now. Some more of those deep breaths. That’s the way …’