The Cold Calling

glowing ball. Just rolling, in total silence. But also vibrating … shimmering.

‘And if that animal happens to shit on my land,’ Falconer called after him, ‘clean it up, would you? Old chap.’

V

The sky was boiling over.

A finger of lightning prodding almost languidly out of the deep, dark, sweating clouds as if it was attached to the arm of a vengeful god. There was a flock of sheep, several already struck down, a heavy tumble of bodies, milk-eyed heads flat to the plain.

A few yards away, the shepherd lay dead. His dog, back arched, howling a pitiful protest at the heavens.

Terror, death.

And only the great stones in their element. Whitened, as if they were lit from within by electric filaments, the stones exulted in the lightning.

Energy. The horrific energy of death.

The sky boiled over and yet it was cold. So cold.

All through the night, he cowered in terror on the plain as the frigid lightning struck and struck again, like a white snake.

Sister Andy had hardly slept, feeling close to feverish. And in the morning, when she ought to have been totally clapped-out, she felt stronger and years younger. There was a polish on the world. The colours were brighter.

Very much like the time when she herself was cured. What was this saying to her?

Don’t dwell on it. At the best of times, Sister Andy was ever a fatalist. It cannae last, hen.

Coming on nightshift, she dumped her bags in the office and went straight to find Jonathan.

‘So. How is he tonight?’

‘Your miracle?’ Jonathan beamed at her. ‘He wakes up. He looks bemused. He drinks half a cup of tea and he goes back to sleep. He’s fine. He’s restored all our faith.’

Andy shook her head, looked down at her hands. All worn and scoured, the texture of grade four sandpaper.

Something moved in mysterious ways.

‘He saying much?’

‘Not a great deal.’

‘It’s a bloody miracle he can even activate his lips. Four minutes gone? Jesus God.’

‘Maybe it just seemed like four minutes,’ Jonathan said. ‘We were all a little …’

‘Hysterical? I don’t think so, Jonathan.’

They’d all be backtracking now, of course. The paramedics saying maybe we were wrong, maybe he was alive when we brought him in. Debbie Barnes saying maybe he wasn’t flatlining three minutes plus. Well it couldn’t have been that long could it, or he’d have come round as a cabbage; you could turn him into coleslaw and he wouldn’t notice.

‘You think it was mass hysteria, Jonathan?’

‘I think it would be a black day for all of us if you were to leave, Sister Andy.’

‘Aw.’ Andy turned away, embarrassed. ‘It really wasnae me, y’know?’

He was blinking at her with the undamaged right eye. The left eye would take a while to clear. It looked like the RAF symbol, circles of red, white and blue, but not necessarily in that sequence. She’d been there the first time the good eye opened. And there to hear the first word he’d spoken when, against all the medical precedents she could recall, his brain broke surface.

He’d said, Cold.

Which was how Andy had been feeling, entirely convinced they’d lost him, the way the sun turned black fast as a shutter coming down over a camera lens.

‘How you feeling, Bobby?’

‘Strange.’ He blinked some more.

They had him in a side ward, on his own. There was always a small risk; something they might’ve missed, so Jonathan wanted to hold on to him until tomorrow, when they’d wheel him up to the men’s ward for a few days’ bedrest, observations, tests.

Andy touched her fingertips together in slightly cautious wonder. She couldn’t let him go to the men’s ward yet. Something very strange had happened here. It would never make it onto any report; the suits would see to that, but …

‘Hang on,’ Bobby said. ‘It’s Sister Andy, isn’t it?’

She went to sit on the bed. His eyes were open again.

‘Nothing wrong with the memory then, son.’

‘I can still smell cocoa.’ He smiled, all lopsided, a boxer’s smile the day after the fight.

Some fight.

He fell asleep again and the smile died on his lips.

It had looked textbook, the way he’d come out of it: a long sleep, a few words, another long sleep. The usual questions. Who’s the Prime Minister, Bobby? Neville Chamberlain, he’d said grumpily, and gone directly back to sleep. He’d seemed annoyed at being wakened. Not quite textbook.

Cold, he’d said, that first time, everybody amazed at his coming out of it enough to make a sound, let alone speak a recognizable word.

Then he’d coughed and rolled his head this way and that on the pillow, and there’d been a bit of a panic in case he was somehow choking on dust or something. He’d made small, dry spitting motions with his mouth before subsiding into an uneasy sleep.

Andy had hung around and watched and listened. Staying on for nearly two hours after her shift had finished, sitting beside his bed, talking to him softly, making notes of the things he said.

Concluding that something well outside the textbook parameters had happened to him during the minutes of his death.

Every word he’d spoken she’d written down more or less verbatim, in shorthand. Feeling it was important, somehow.

Rushing down cold tunnel.

Flushed into the street.

Everybody stuck in a smog. Don’t care. Don’t want to get out of it. Faces all squashed and smeary. Stocking masks.

Walking coma. Streets all grey and icy. People passing you either side, they don’t see you. No feeling of being here, no feeling of being…

Bus tyres sucking at the slush. Slops over the kerb onto your shoes.

February. It’s all February.

All February.

And once he’d woken up and said, quite lucidly, ‘Don’t let Riggs in.’

Shortly before midnight, Andy was finishing a cup of cocoa when Bobby Maiden appeared at the door of her office.

‘Jesus God,’ Andy said. ‘Gave me the fright of ma life.’

He stood there, shaky, in just pyjama bottoms, sweat-shine on his face and chest, eyes all over the place.

‘Let’s go back to bed, shall we, Bobby?’

‘Wha’m I doing here?’ Slurring his words, as she led him back to bed. Brain-stem damage.