The gravel on The Tower’s drive was frozen solid, each stone to its neighbour. The great clock was still lit in its mock-Florentine tower, but had frozen at 11.45, a disc of ice smudging the normally crisp outlines of the Roman numerals of the face. The automatic doors of the foyer swished open and he lingered in the caress of the hot air within, letting his shoulders slump, easing the exquisite pain in his joints. The nurse behind the desk was a regular and looked up only to check the electric clock: 1.02am.
‘For Laura Dryden,’ he said. The nurse nodded. Dryden’s late-night visits were not uncommon. Laura’s sleep pattern was erratic enough for it to make little difference to her when he called, as long as he did.
Her room was tropical. As he closed the door the COMPASS clattered into life and he analysed his reaction: was he pleased that his wife was conscious? He walked to the bed and felt the familiar thrill of seeing her face, her brown eyes wide and, briefly, locked on his. He leant in low, and lifted her in an embrace.
He took the tickertape from the COMPASS.
A LETTER.
He searched the screen of the PC and found a new file marked HOLIDAY.
He opened the document, and lay beside her on the pillows to read. Laura’s consultant had suggested that she could leave the hospital for a brief break. They’d had to put the request in writing, and this was his formal reply. For more than six months now she had been free of the complications which had once confined her to her room: bouts of pneumonia and a series of blood infections had demanded constant observation. But now her health was stable, the lingering physical symptoms of her illness the only bar to a wider freedom – and even here there had been improvements.
But for Dryden the progress she had made merely doubled her schizophrenia: her world had always been divided between conscious and unconscious – but now the conscious world was divided between those hours when her recovery provided hope of a return to the life they had once had, and those in which it mocked their dreams, promising only the prospect of a slow and imperfect rehabilitation, a struggle back to the rudimentary movements of early childhood.
Tonight her hopes were alive and Dryden shared them, genuinely thrilled that there might be a life for both of them outside this hospital room.
The memo listed the conditions for her release from The Tower for a period of seventy-two hours.
• You will need to either transport a hoist or take the break at a destination which has one on site. We recommend a bridge hoist with a lifting weight of no less than 100lb.
• You will need a supply of waste bags and PEG-feed apparatus. We can provide these.
• We recommend that your destination should be no more than 45 minutes drive from a general hospital. Ideally it should not be more than 90 minutes from The Tower.
• You will need to either transport a wheelchair or have immediate access to one at your destination. We recommend you take one of those used at The Tower which can be adjusted to relieve pain and increase seating tolerance.
• Clearly it is possible to transport the COMPASS, although cumbersome. A small handheld version is now on the market and costs around ?2,000. Unfortunately, we do not have this item, but we can order it for you.
• We need both a landline telephone number and a mobile number deposited with us at reception. We will give you the emergency lines for the hospital. We can guarantee an immediate response and retrieval of the patient to The Tower within four hours as long as all other stipulations have been followed.
• You need to contact the Mid-Anglian Mutual to amend insurance cover while not on the premises. We understand that their response is likely to make cover contingent on following these stipulations.
• For the time our patient is outside the hospital our fees will remain unaltered.
‘Unbelievable,’ said Dryden, tapping a finger on the last prescription. ‘Don’t forget the fees, eh? We wouldn’t want to get away with two days at a cut price.’
He lifted his wife up against the pillows and began the tiny rituals which had made his nightly visit to The Tower an almost religious ceremony. Uncorking a bottle of Italian red wine from the side cupboard, he poured two glasses, setting one down on Laura’s tray. If she asked, he would pour a little of the liquid into the drinking tube she was beginning to master. Then he sat, tapping a single white Greek cigarette from the packet out into his hand. He no longer smoked as a habit but Laura enjoyed the acrid smell of the harsh tobacco, and the memories it brought her of a honeymoon spent in the Cyclades.
Taking the perspex tube attached to the COMPASS, Dryden looped it tenderly over his wife’s lips. He watched as her cheeks moved with the effort of sucking and blowing the commands which would move the on-screen cursor.
LATE?
They had developed a shorthand language to restrict the agonizing stutter of the computer printout.
‘Yeah. Sorry. I should have texted. Sorry.’
He drank a glass of the wine and took a refill.
‘Odd. Another death from the cold. Out on the Fen. This guy was just frozen on his doorstep. Under ice. It was like something from a wildlife film, some animal rigid in the Arctic snow. Disturbing, really; much worse than a bloody corpse.’
SUICIDE?
Dryden shook his head: ‘I guess – or an accident. But there’s a few things wrong. It’s like this other one in the flats, the guy who just threw the windows open and died in his armchair. It turns out he’d had a visitor just before he died – a doctor, but there’s no record of an official visit from any of the emergency services, Age Concern, nothing. Then, when I go back to the flat there’s someone there. Someone who shouldn’t be there. I tried to catch him but he did a runner. So what’s that about?
‘And the one out on the Fen… he was locked out of his own house. I know that can happen – I did it once at the flat, remember? But this guy gets an evening paper every day, right? Plus weeklies. And yet there are no newspapers in his recycling bin, even though the bin’s full.’
