Slow Burning Lies (12 page)

She wrote her address down and left.

22

Patrick considered what to do that evening. Usually on a Friday he’d go out to a bar then onto a club of one sort or another. But did he really need that real-world therapy – drinking and gassing?

He paced his apartment for a few minutes and decided that no, he simply couldn’t face it, and spent the rest of the evening alone in his living room. He listened to music, he read a book for a while, he tried to get into a movie on TV. He gave up pretty quickly on each one.

Playing a little guitar might help. Yes, that would calm his nerves a little.

His old friend – his good old Les Paul – was still in the cupboard where he’d placed it in frustration a few days before. He took it out and sat on the sofa, resting it on the top of his thigh.

Now, to try again.

He tried to hold a few chords, but, just like before, it felt awkward to his fingers, unnatural. He tried strumming it a few times, just to play anything, however tuneless. It sounded awful.

He looked at the signature just below the whammy bar, and rolled his fingers along the polished body.

This was silly. He was sure he used to play. He learned in his teenage years. Perhaps he was just rusty.

He tried again and again.

Sure, he knew the thing was a fake – a cheap Chinese import that still sounded pretty good. He knew he’d played in a few bands before. But the more he held it, the more he knew the truth.

The truth was, he just didn’t have a clue how to play the damn thing.

He gave up trying and went to bed.

By the time he got there he felt like he had given himself the last rites, going over and over the various possibilities of what was happening to him, trying to drag his mind away from the inevitable conclusion – that he was suffering from some sort of psychological disorder.

The sleep was slow in coming, but come it did.

*

The next time Patrick woke up he found himself sitting alone in a small office. There was a faint odour of disinfectant, and the surroundings were familiar – it took a few seconds of checking out the wall charts and the medical equipment for Patrick to fully realize that yes, this was Doctor Patrick Leary’s practice room.

There was no outward sign, but Patrick felt a bump of adrenaline hit his brain. Somehow this crazy plan had worked, he was back with Rozita – or at least he would be after his day’s work was done. And as soon as he thought of Rozita another feeling overshadowed the shock of being in the same dreamworld yet again. That feeling was of pleasure, the sort that made him forget whatever other worries he had in life, a feeling of love and simple togetherness with a woman the like of which he’d never known before.

He’d missed Rozita the way only a man locked away in another world could. He would have gladly stayed as Patrick the Physician with the perfect wife and perfect life, and never returned to OrSum and Beth and his apartment in Chicago. Whatever this world was, he wanted to stay in it for eternity, but knew he had no choice in the matter.

The buzz of the intercom jerked him away from his musings, and the receptionist announced that his next patient was ready.

Patrick the physician dealt with eight-year-old Jack’s foot rashes by reassuring his mother it was definitely not meningitis, and by giving the boy a wide smile and a friendly wink. He also told Jack’s mother she should try buying her son cotton instead of synthetic socks, and in the meantime he prescribed some cream.

But as Jack and his mother left the room, Patrick’s heart gave just a little blip – somehow he knew something was not all rosy in the world, as though he had no right to be so cheerful.

‘Have you got my next patient ready, Shania?’ he said into the intercom.

‘Next patient?’ the box crackled back to him.

‘It’s only eleven. I don’t need a break just yet.’

‘But Doctor Leary, we’ve cancelled your appointments for the rest of the day just like you asked.’

Patrick took a moment to work it out. He failed.

‘Did I?’ he said.

‘The hospital said you can be with your wife now.’

‘You mean Rozita?’

There was a pause before the answer came. ‘Well… Yes… Rozita.’ It was spoken slowly and precisely, as if explaining something to a schoolkid.

Patrick’s pulse started hopping around.
What the hell had happened to her?
He coughed and said, ‘I’m sorry, Shania. Yes, of course.’

‘That’s quite understandable, Doctor Leary. Please let me know how she is.’

Quite understandable. The
under the circumstances
was left unspoken, but Patrick heard it loud and clear.

Patrick left his office and walked towards the main hospital foyer. He kept on walking straight across and towards the opposite wing of the hospital, apparently knowing where to go without being consciously aware of it.

The signs pointing to the psychiatric ward jogged his memory. Yes, now he remembered the events of the past twelve hours:

Rozita and he had gone to bed as normal, and she had woken up in the early hours of the morning shrieking and crying, and nothing Patrick could do seemed to calm her down. She had staggered around the bedroom screaming about ‘the children, the poor children’, but would not entertain any notion of explaining her words or her emotional reaction.

When their own children had been woken up by the noise and became disturbed by their mother’s erratic and frightening behaviour Patrick had no option but to call for an ambulance.

By the time the ambulance arrived Rozita was no better and no worse, just shouting about the poor children, and how horrible it all was, and asking Patrick and everyone else how anyone could do such a thing. The medics sedated her and took her to the hospital for further investigative work, and told Patrick they would contact him later that morning. Patrick was distraught, but kept himself together for the sake of the children, calming them down, getting them fed and packing them off to school.

After that he phoned the hospital. The specialist told him Rozita was still sedated so there was no point coming to see her just yet, but that he could visit any time after eleven. He was also told that even then, if she was awake, it wouldn’t be wise to mention the incident to her.

And so, rather than stay at home worrying all morning, he’d gone into work for a few hours.

Now those few hours were over and he felt weak as he approached the reception desk of the psychiatric ward.

Ten minutes later he was in a small, but bright and airy, consultation room with Doctor Bailey, a woman Patrick initially thought too young to know about life and its tribulations.

‘Okay then, Mister Leary.’

‘
Doctor
Leary.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.
Doctor
.’ She paused for a moment. ‘May I ask what sort of doctor you are?’

‘I’m a General Physician.’

‘Good. It might make this easier to explain. We think your wife has experienced some sort of mild psychotic episode, specifically some non-paranoiac delusional beliefs.’

She paused to allow the news to sink in. Patrick’s face dropped a little and he pushed his fingers through his hair.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I mean, I understand what you’re saying, but why has this happened?’

‘That, we don’t know. We’re trying to discern whether the underlying causes are physiological or psychological, or even…’ Doctor Bailey’s eyes met Patricks then quickly moved off.

‘What?’

‘Doctor Leary, has your wife ever taken any hallucinogenic drugs?’

‘Jesus Christ, no.’

Bailey nodded slowly. ‘I’m sorry. We have to ask. It’s one cause we can discount. In that case the main possibility we’re looking at is a mental trauma brought on by delusional dreams.’

‘Oh God.’

‘You know something about this?’

‘I knew she was having bad dreams, but only just recently. Look, is she okay?’

‘She’s currently sedated.’

‘No antipsychotics?’

‘No, just a little Nitrazepam to calm her down.’

‘Can I see her?’

‘By all means – in fact seeing you might be good for her, it should stabilize her mind on reality. But please, don’t ask her about her dreams – she needs to forget about them.’

‘Sure.’

‘Okay then. Please follow me.’

Soon Patrick was at Rozita’s bedside. Her washed-out face was pointing back at him, but Patrick wasn’t sure whether she recognized him. Then one side of her mouth twitched and a hand reached out and stroked his arm, and then he knew.

She croaked out a ‘Hi’ that was more of a high pitched groan.

‘How are you feeling?’ Patrick said, grasping her hand and squeezing it gently between both of his.

‘I’m not feeling anything. It’s kinda weird.’

‘That’s the mogadon.’

‘I wish it could make me… forget.’

‘It will, Rozita. Just try to think about the children if it helps.’

A crease slowly materialized on Rozita’s forehead, and she brought a heavy hand up to cover her eyes.

‘I meant our children,’ Patrick said, ‘not…’

Her face crinkled, threatening to collapse in on itself. ‘Oh, Patrick, it was terrible. Those poor children.’

He wanted to ask, to find out every detail, to know dates, times, places, people, the whole shebang.

‘You don’t need to tell me about it,’ he said. Inside his mind a voice screamed, ‘Yes, you do!’ But he simply leaned over and gave Rozita an awkward hug, putting his head next to hers, feeling her cheek, cold and wet, against his. And there was that inner voice again, fighting to the last, urging him to ask more.
Where did this happen? What children? Our own?

A nurse entered the room. ‘Everything okay?’ She walked around the bed for a better look, then threw a stern look in Patrick’s direction. ‘Perhaps that’s enough for today,’ she said.

Patrick nodded and forced a flat smile to the nurse. Half of him wanted to stay by Rozita’s side because this was burning his heart and he wanted to protect her from her demons. But the other, hidden part, needed to know what had happened in her dream, and he cursed himself for not having the courage to ask.

He told the voices in his head to shut the fuck up, then stood. He gave Rozita one last tender kiss, and left.

‘So where do we go from here?’ Patrick asked Doctor Bailey back in the consultation room a few minutes later.

‘We’d like to keep her here under observation for another day or two.’

‘Is that really necessary?’

‘Oh, I’m not suggesting she’s any danger to anyone should she suffer more delusions, but if that were to happen at least we could see it first hand, perhaps judge whether some antipsychotic medication might be in order.’

‘Jesus. It’s that serious?’

‘It might not be.’ Doctor Bailey closed the folder she was holding and paused to draw breath. ‘Doctor Leary, do you know anything about a Red Barrow Parade?’

‘A what?’

‘It’s what your wife started talking about once she’d calmed down – or, to be accurate, once we’d calmed her down and we could make out what she was upset about.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Are you sure it’s not something in her past – some tragedy or other?’

‘Tragedy?’

‘She kept talking about a Red Barrow Parade at a school, where thirteen schoolchildren were shot dead.’

Patrick shrugged. ‘Did you check the news? Is it something that happened recently?’

‘I hope not, for your sake, Doctor Leary. You see, Mrs Leary told us that it was her that killed the children.’

‘Oh no,’ Patrick said. ‘Please God no.’

‘I take it you know nothing about this?’

‘It’s another bad dream. She’s been having a few of them lately.’

‘We thought it was just a dream too. We put this to her but she still insisted it wasn’t just a dream, that it happened.’

‘But that’s not possible.’

‘We’ve been through all this with her, Doctor Leary. But she said there was no way a dream would be that clear, and, to be fair, she did seem to know every detail – or was making them up as she went along with great storytelling skills.’

‘Details like what?’

‘If you really want to know…’

Patrick’s throat locked up. He’d witnessed enough tragedy of his own. He didn’t want to know – he just
had
to.

‘She described everything down to the stonewashed black jeans and green top she was wearing and where she bought the gun. She said she took a small boat down the river the night before and slept the night in the ruins of an old ice-house at the edge of the school grounds. Early on the morning of the parade she broke through the storeroom window where she hid for a few hours. Again she could remember it in detail: the polished wooden floor, the tables and chairs and sports equipment in storage there. And when the children filed into the main hall she ran out killing them indiscriminately, shooting most of them in the back as they ran to escape.’