In The Garden Of Stones (38 page)

The
silence stretches on and on until Gibbs barks out a short sharp
laugh, shakes his head and throws up his hands.

“
He was there wasn’t he? Colin? Out there on the
lawn?”

Grace
blinks up at him. “Yes.”

“
All that bickering back and forth for your eyes and ears
only?”

“
It’s not my fault you’re on a different wavelength to us,
that you can’t join in.”

“
Different wavelength? Different planet more like. How did
you do it?”

“
Do what?”

“
Get him to swallow that drink and that… stuff?”

Shrug.
“He wanted it.”

“
And he told you that?”

“
He needed a little persuasion, like he did to go outside in
the first place, even though he’s bored to death stuck in that room
all day with nothing to do. It’s a shame he couldn’t get out of the
chair to enjoy the picnic, but the ginger beer and the cake went
down well, don’t you think? You didn’t eat much, by the way.
Weren’t you hungry? There are some sandwiches left, and a cake. Do
you want them now or do you want to take them and save them for
later? I know ginger beer and cake is probably not the healthiest
thing I could have offered him, but it was all I had, it was what
he wanted and it was tastier than that chemical concoction you were
forcing into him. He said you go too fast, by the way, and it gives
him reflux, which is unpleasant and tastes disgusting, so you might
want to take it easy in future. Do you think I should bring him
something healthier next time? Fruit smoothie perhaps, although he
did request vanilla ice cream? How I’m going to get it here without
it melting I don’t know. Do they serve it in the restaurant? I’ll
stop by and ask on the way out. You don’t have any objections to
smoothies and ice cream, do you? A little treat now and then
shouldn’t do him any harm and might even buck him right up don’t
you think?”

A dam
burst of words, delivered in such a rapid breathless staccato that
it knocks Gibbs sideways.

“
Yes… no … erm, what?”

“
I’m sorry,” she says. “I tend to babble a bit when I’m
nervous, and you staring at me like that is making me very
nervous.”

“
Sorry. What was the question?”

“
I asked if giving Colin something a little bit naughty like
ice cream and cake now and again goes against his
treatment.”

Gibbs
shakes his head. “Erm… no, it should be fine, in small
doses.”

“
So why do you just look like I offered to give him a dose
of hemlock? You saw me put that cup to his lips and cake frosting
on his tongue, you saw him take it in and swallow it, yet you’re
still not totally convinced are you? You still think it might have
been wishful thinking on your part.”

Gibbs presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I just
don’t know what to think, Grace. I thought I was imagining things
because it was what I wanted to see, then I thought maybe it was
some kind of automatic response with no consciousness behind it,
because it was the first time he’s reacted to anything
at all
for nearly two
months.”

“
But even now, after you’ve seen it with your own
eyes–?”

“
Excuse me, Mr Gibbs?”

Gibbs
looks to the interruption; a young female nurse standing in the
doorway.

“
Yes, Mary, what is it?”

“
Sorry to bother you, Mr Gibbs,” she says, “but Dr Hamid is
requesting the pleasure of your company. Sergeant Williams–” She
stops short when she sees Grace. “I’m sorry I didn’t know you had
company.”

“
It’s alright Mary,” he says. “Tell him I’ll be along in a
few minutes when I’ve shown Miss Dove out.”

“
Yes, Mr Gibbs.” Nurse Mary turns on her heel and squeaks
away down the corridor in her rubber soled trainers.

Gibbs
turns to Grace. “I’m sorry Grace, duty calls.” He helps her on with
her coat. “Don’t worry about anything. You didn’t do anything
wrong. Quite the opposite. You’re doing nothing but good. In fact,
I think today you performed some sort of minor miracle. We’ll talk
about it some more next time you come. Any idea when that will
be?”

“
Day after tomorrow, roadworks and bus timetables
permitting.”

“
You should have seen poor Simon’s face,” Grace says,
dabbling her toes in the stream. “All slack and gloopy, like a bowl
of porridge. He just couldn’t get over you sucking on that cake
frosting and taking a drink and I think it gave him a brainfuck –
pardon my French. He thinks I’ve worked some kind of miracle on
you. Daft beggar.”

“
Maybe you have,” says Colin, tossing a pebble into the
running water.

“
Bah, wasn’t me at all, it was all you. All you had to do
was make the decision to try. You did and voila! One stunned nurse.
I told him about the reflux by the way, and he said he would make
sure your…concoctions are administered with more care in
future.”

“
Thanks.”

“
And he says fruit smoothies and ice cream would be most
acceptable for a treat now and again, so I’ll see what I can
do.”

“
Sounds great. I look forward to them. Thank
you.”

“
My pleasure.”

He leans
into her, kisses her cheek, then puts his arm around her and hugs
her to him, his face in her hair.

“
Thank you for caring about me,” he whispers.

“
You’re an easy man to care about, Colin.”

The hug
gets tighter, and Grace thinks she hears him sniff
quietly.

Grace’s
next visit with Colin is a more subdued affair. He is clean and
tidy, as expected, but his face is pale and drawn, emphasising the
dark circles around his eyes. An air of weariness hangs over him
like a dark veil.

“
You okay?” she asks. “You look exhausted. Physical therapy
this morning worn you out?”

“
Among other things.”

“
Such as?”

“
Had a nasty surprise first thing. I had a feeling something
was going on, so I popped back, jest ta see, and find a couple of
docs poking and prodding me all over and ma heid all wired up to a
machine.”

“
What were they doing?”

“
No idea. I’ve never seen these two afair. One called the
other Chaplin, didn’t catch his oppo’s name. Blasted interfering
busybodies the pair of them.

“
Did they say anything? Tell you anything?”

“
No' me. I’m jest the patient. Mumbled all kinds of bollocks
among themselves I had no ken aboot.”

She
strokes his hair. “They certainly seem to have worn you out. Would
you prefer I left you to rest?”

“
No, jest…” A deep sigh. “Stay,” he says. “I’m no in the
mood for conversation, but stay and… read to me.”

She pays
a visit to the rehab centre’s small but well stocked library,
returning with a dog eared copy of Stuart MacBride’s gritty crime
thriller, Dark Blood.

“
This is the best I could find,” she says. “Unless you
prefer a Mills and Boon bodice ripper, or Fifty Shades of
Filth.”

After a
full hour’s reading, doing the voices and everything, she senses he
is no longer listening, either having fallen asleep or absented
himself to the garden for some peace and quiet, and so she places
the book on the bedside cabinet, kisses him and takes her
leave.

Two days
later, and Colin seems better; perkier, laughing and joking with
her as they share a light tea on the patio outside the day room,
although to the casual observer Grace is talking to herself while
feeding spoonfuls of ice cream to an unresponsive man in a
wheelchair.

Her
visit over, she returns the borrowed tea tray to the restaurant and
meets with Simon Gibbs. Time to continue their interrupted
conversation.

They
make small talk on the way to the Duty Room, but the moment they
are safely within the office, her questioning starts.

“
What was going on with Colin the other day?” she asks. “He
said he had a visit from some doctors and they did some tests on
him. Fair wore him out. He was exhausted. What was it all
about?”

“
They went through a whole rigmarole of standardised grading
tests - heat, cold, light, pain stimuli – and an EEG.”

“
EEG? That would explain the 'wiring up' part he mentioned.
I suppose it’s too early to ask–?”

“
It showed a few irregularities in his brain wave patterns,”
Gibbs says.

“
Caused by?”

“
No idea… yet.”

“
How about pain?” Grace asks. “Colin says his legs hurt
sometimes, quite a lot … phantom limb pain don’t you call it? He
says that sometimes his analgesia is a bit hit and
miss.”

Gibbs
nods pensively. “That could explain it. We don’t really know why it
happens, but the theory is that his brain thinks it is still
receiving messages from the nerves that originally carried impulses
from the intact limb and getting them all mixed up, perceiving them
as pain.” He considers. “Yes. It sounds like a logical explanation.
I’ll make a note of it and get a doctor to check his
prescription.”

“
Thank you. Back up a minute… pain stimuli? You’ve been
hurting him? No wonder his readings are all over the
place.”

“
A few quick jabs of something sharp in certain key areas,”
says Gibbs. “Nothing more than a… a bee sting.”

Like
Doctor Burke did to her in HDU, the pain in her foot that made her
curl her toes and yelp.

“
And what was the purpose of all this jabbing and
prodding?”

“
Ever heard of the Bush-Francis rating scale?” says
Gibbs.

Grace
shakes her head. “I’ve heard of the Glasgow Coma Scale. Is it
anything like that?”

“
Yes and no.” Gibbs perches one bum cheek on the edge of his
desk. “The GCS is generally used after trauma and is pretty limited
in its scope, having only three tests. The BF scale is purely to
assess catatonia. It uses 23 different categories, the first 14 use
simple absence or presence of diagnostic symptoms, and then all 23
are rated from 0 to 3 scale according to severity. You with me so
far?”

She
nods.

“
Colin didn’t do very well,” he says. “In fact the only
thing he seems to do normally is blink and react when something
touches the surface of his eye–”

Grace shudders at the thought of anyone or anything
touching
her
cornea.

“
In every test we’ve done on him he registers as …
unresponsive at best,” says Gibbs. “We can’t even fit him into a
definitive LOC–”

“
Sorry?”

“
Level of consciousness. There are five – alert, drowsy,
lethargic, obtund and coma. He’s neither one thing nor
another.”

A long
pause ensues, which makes Grace nervous and uncomfortable. Finally,
Gibbs speaks up, his voice low and grave, and it disturbs something
deep within her.

“
Grace, do you think you can go to where Colin is, to this
sanctuary of his, and bring him back?” he says. “And I’m not
talking weeks or months from now, or in his own sweet time, I mean…
well, sooner would be better.”

She
regards him closely. “Something’s wrong isn’t there? I’ve heard
that tone before. It’s the one they use on you to tell you you’ve
only got six months to live and they should have told you five
months ago. Those tests showed there’s something terribly the
matter with Colin, and you just haven’t been able to come out and
say it.”

“
Not yet there isn’t, but there very soon could
be.”

Footsteps sound in the corridor outside and Gibbs gets to his
feet, slams the door closed and locks it, determined not to be
interrupted like last time.

“
I shouldn’t even be talking to you about any of this,” he
says, opening a drawer in the filing cabinet. “If I’m caught it’s a
court martial and the glasshouse for me for sure, so this is
strictly between ourselves, okay?”

“
Okay.”

He takes
out a bulky manila folder and holds it out to Grace. On the front
of the file are stamped three capital letters in bright red ink –
DNR, a medical acronym for an order whose implementation had only
the worst possible outcome.

Grace’s
mouth falls open in horror. “Who put those there?” she asks in a
hoarse whisper.

“
After the tests, they had a case conference, and based on
their findings, on past events, on future prognosis… a decision was
made.”

Grace’s
stomach clenches. “No.”

“
I’m sorry, Grace.”

“
No–”

“
Grace–”

She
springs to her feet. “NO! They can’t.”

“
They can and they have.”

“
After a few minutes fiddling about they decide his life
isn’t worth living, won’t be worth the effort of keeping him alive?
A few piddly tests and they condemn him to death?”