The Rapture

But he shakes his head, splits his falafel, and contemplates its mild protein steam. ‘We are all hoping Joy will return, so you will understand if I don’t say more.’

I nod to acknowledge this. ‘But what about you? Where do you stand with Bethany?’

‘I’m purely on the, er, electrical side in this case. Heh. So I don’t have to listen to her,’ he says, squashing the falafel with his fork so that its grains mash up through the tines. ‘I just give her the volts.’

The Quiet Room is clinic-white. I’m in the adjoining observation annexe where, through the thick glass screen, I am about to witness Bethany having ECT. Dr Ehmet has been explaining that the procedure, once disturbing, has become fairly banal to watch, thanks to the general anaesthetic and muscle relaxant. ‘Oh yes, the days of high drama are long gone, heh. No more violent fitting. No more patients swallowing their tongues or spitting out their teeth.’ He sounds a little nostalgic about it. ‘It’s still controversial because there’s memory loss. And the fact is, still no one knows why it works. One theory says that the shock stimulates the neuroendocrine system, and balances the stress hormones. Then there’s another one that says it’s not about hormones being rearranged, but the chemicals in the brain. Others reckon it’s just wiping out brain cells. But I think if they are being wiped out, they’re being renewed. More constructively.’

I don’t recognise Bethany at first, when a nurse wheels her in on a trolley bed. She’s clad in a white hospital gown and her hair is scraped back from her face. Without make-up she looks even younger. Spotting me at the far end of the room, she points at her forehead, sketches a swift lightning-bolt in the air, and smiles the triumphant smile of a terrorist whose demands are being fully met.

The ECT machine itself is unspectacular, consisting of a rectangular box with coloured wires emerging, and a dial.

‘It is time for the IV now, Bethany,’ says Dr Ehmet. It’s matter-of-fact: they have clearly done this many times before. She proffers her skinny little arm. The criss-cross of razor slashes goes all the way up. ‘I’m putting in an IV of Brevital,’ Ehmet explains, catching my eye and mouthing clearly. ‘An anaesthetic.’

As it goes in, Bethany’s eyelids close like those of certain dolls I had as a child, comatose the moment they horizontalise. Her face, normally volatile, instantly relaxes, as though unconsciousness has forced her features to sign a temporary peace accord with one another. The nurse inserts a new IV. ‘A muscle relaxant,’ indicates Dr Ehmet. ‘To prevent broken bones and cracked vertebrae. It’s a seizure we’re giving her after all.’ Dr Ehmet is one of those men who enjoys conveying information. Since I’ve already read about the procedure on the web, he hasn’t yet told me anything I don’t know, but I’m happy to see the theory put into practice, and for him to talk me through it. The nurse wipes Bethany’s forehead with a damp cloth, then gently parts her lips and inserts a rubber mouth-guard over her teeth — ‘to prevent tongue damage,’ Dr Ehmet explains, as he applies gel to two padded electrodes, and fits a breathing mask over her nose and mouth. On the anaesthetist’s nod, he applies the pads to her temples and holds them in place. Nothing visible happens.

‘I’m, heh, shooting an electric current into her brain now. A level-two dose, stimulating a grand-mal seizure that will last for precisely ten seconds. It’s all in the timing.’

Although there’s still no sign that anything has happened — no convulsions, no twitching, no noise — an unexpected wave of revulsion brings me close to gagging. It’s like watching one of those anti-vivisection campaigns showing grainy footage of a tiny tragic macaque monkey pinned to a slab. Dr Ehmet has a professional eye on the digital clock. ‘And then release.’

He removes the electrodes: under the sheet, Bethany’s toes curl and flex, reminding me of speeded-up footage of bracken unfurling. Dr Ehmet gestures to me to come closer. Positioning myself next to Bethany’s head, I am oddly tempted to touch her brow, where the pads went, but I resist the urge.

‘There we are. Logged off,’ says Ehmet. ‘It’s only a light anaesthetic so she’ll wake in a couple of minutes. She won’t look a million dollars, as they say. Or should it be euros? Heh. But she’ll feel like new.’

Five minutes later Bethany’s eyes flick open and she groans, then yawns. Just as Dr Ehmet predicted, she does not look a million, in any denomination. In fact, she’s monstrous: ragged and bleary and punch-drunk, a preview of herself at forty. Her pupils are wildly dilated and when she sits up, groggily, she holds her head as if her sense of balance is impaired.

‘Bethany, do you know my name?’ I ask.

Memory loss is the most significant side-effect of the procedure. Sure enough, Bethany doesn’t recall who I am. It doesn’t appear to bother her.

‘I saw this giant whirlpool made of wind,’ she croaks. ‘It was fucking incredible.’ The procedure seems to have carried her voice down an octave so that it sounds like it’s emerging from a toilet or a cave.

‘Where?’

She seems muddled. ‘The clouds. They start spiralling. And then on a map. The destruction’s, like, mega. Write this down. Write down, the fall of Jesus Christ.’

‘What does that mean to you?’

She shakes her head on the pillow. ‘And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. But you wait till you see it, man.’ She blinks. ‘Behold, the Lord maketh the Earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.’

‘Where do you remember that from, Bethany?’

‘Hey, I know who you are. You’re Mrs Bibble Babble. Mrs How-does-it-make-you-feel. Listen. This is what you don’t get. This isn’t about what I’m feeling. It’s about what’s going to happen. Hey. Bring me that.’

She points to the wall, where a flimsy paper calendar hangs. I hesitate, then reach for a corner and pull it down.

‘Flip through to July,’ she commands. I do what she asks, then hand it to her. ‘There,’ she says, pointing to a square. ‘The twenty-ninth. It’s going to be a big day.’ She squints into the square as though it’s a tiny window through which she is seeing the far distance. ‘South America. Brazil. Hurricane. Whoosh. Up it goes and then it all comes down. A whole lot of people are going to get wiped out. Kapoom. Along with their… scooters and their chicken coops and their crap fencing and their screaming munch-kins and their pet dog Fuckface.’

‘How do you know this is going to happen?’

‘Because I saw it, duh. Just now.’

‘It sounds like it might be frightening.’

She shrugs. ‘Whatever.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘For the people who die it is. Not for me. I mean, I don’t give a shit about them. Hey. I want them to die The planet’s overpopulated, right?’ This sounds suspiciously like the dogma I have just spent a large part of my weekend mulling over. The fewer the merrier. More oxygen for the rest of us. Organic diseases.

‘Have you heard of the Planetarians?’ I ask.

‘The who?’

‘It’s an eco-movement.’

She looks either baffled or bored, it’s hard to tell: she clearly doesn’t know who they are, or can’t remember, or doesn’t care. Instead, on she talks, at high speed, about magma and trapped gas beneath the Earth’s crust, and a volcano gearing up for an eruption. I nod, and say little. I’m remembering there’s a word in Russian, izgoy, that describes someone with a flaw which makes them singularly unfit to perform their professional role. A blocked writer, a lascivious priest, a drunken chauffeur. As a screwed-up therapist, someone like me should not be working at all. Not yet. Not in my line of business. It is far too soon. Anyone can tell you that. Bethany, with her Competence Scale, already has. But here I am. An izgoy.

Trying to help a girl who has risen from the dead, bursting with ideas.

‘October the twelfth, that’s when the shit hits the fan,’ she is saying, flicking through the calendar. ‘Write that down, too. Mark it on the calendar. You got a pen?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Well, remember it then. That’s what I do. And write down about the hurricane. Rio, on July the twenty- ninth. It’s got to go in the notebook,’ she grins. The braces on her teeth flash.

I can see her moving on to the next stage, an adult facility like St Denis or Carver Place or worse, Kiddup