Transition (41 page)

Patient 8262

L
ast night I left this bed and this room and this level and I took me down to the floor below, the ground floor, where I witnessed
something I found most terrible just yesterday. I found the silent ward. I was there, I was in it, I lay there with them for
a time. It did not last long but it was long enough. I found it terrifying.

It happened after I fainted in the office of the broad-shouldered lady doctor. I still don’t know quite what happened there.
It ended up as some sort of bizarre hallucinatory experience, a lucid nightmare of voodoo cause and effect that ended with
a keeling-over that I was frankly thankful for at the time and, despite the fact it meant it makes it harder to work out what
did happen, that I am still thankful for.

Usually, I’ve found, there is a distinct point when one realises that one is asleep and dreaming. I can’t remember one in
what happened – what seemed to happen – yesterday. Was it all a dream? It can’t have been. At the very least, I went or was taken
somewhere else yesterday, out of my room.

I was brought back here on a trolley after my time in the silent ward (we’re coming to that). I am certain I was as awake
at that point as I am now. Though, when I think about it, I felt just as awake at the start of the experience with the broad
lady doctor as I do now. Well, we must leave that aside. There is a continuum of banal experience between waking up in the
silent ward and now. No manipulated dolls causing people to have breathing difficulties or heart attacks or whatever and then
to throw themselves out of windows. I imagined all that anyway, so I’m told.

This needs thinking about, obviously. That is why I am thinking about it. I am lying here, eyes closed, concentrating. I may
have to get up and carry out further investigations in the day room amongst the droolers and perhaps ask further questions
of the nursing staff, but for now I need to lie and rest and think without distractions.

Having said that, I am very aware that the door to my room is closed and I will open my eyes the instant I hear it open, just
in case my assaulter from the other night has the audacity to attempt a repeat visit during daylight hours.

Two things. First, I cannot see where the visit to the broad lady doctor went from rational to absurd. It appears seamless
in my memory. This is most vexing. Like not being able to see how a simple trick is performed in a magic show, or the join
in a piece of mending where it ought to be obvious.

The second thing is what happened after I regained consciousness.

I woke flat out in a gurney, a trolley bed. It was dark; only a couple of soft glows from night-lights illuminated a large
space the size of the day room at the end of my own corridor, maybe bigger. The ceiling looked higher than in my room or the
day room. I felt groggy and sleepy but in no pain, unharmed. I tried to shift a little, but either the sheets were very tight
or I had temporarily lost a lot of strength – I was too groggy to tell which – and I had to remain lying flat out. Listening carefully,
I could hear gentle snores.

I turned my head to one side, then the other. I was at one end of a large open ward, the kind of thing you see in old photographs,
or poor countries. My trolley was at the end of a line of beds, lying conveniently near the set of half-glazed double doors.
On the other side of the room, beneath tall windows, was another line of beds. To see more, I tried again to raise my upper
torso, attempting to bring my arms up so that I could support myself on my elbows, but without success.

Whatever sense we possess that informs us of such matters was busy informing me that I was not exhausted or hopelessly weakened;
my muscles were working normally and were simply being physically prevented from accomplishing their allotted tasks. Something
was stopping me from moving. I forced my head up as far as I could, to the point where my neck muscles were quivering, and
realised, as I looked down the length of the sheet covering my body, that I was strapped in.

Strapped in! I felt a moment of panic and struggled to release myself. There were four straps: one across my shoulders, another
over my belly, pinning my arms to my flanks, a third securing my legs at my knees and a fourth gripping my ankles. None of
them seemed prepared to release me by as much as a millimetre. What if there was a fire? What if my attacker from the other
night came back to find me helpless? How dare they do this to me? I had never been violent! Never! Had I? Of course, obviously,
yes, ha, I had been extremely violent in my earlier life as a famously inventive ultra-assassin, but that was a long time
ago and far far away and in another set of bodies entirely. Since I’d been here I had been a lamb, a mouse, a non-goose-booing
paragon of matchless docility! How dare they truss me like a psychopathic lunatic!

All my struggles were to no effect. I was still tied tightly to the bed. The straps were as tight as they had been when I’d
started and all I’d done was raise my heart rate, make myself very hot and sweaty and half exhaust myself.

At least, I thought, as I tried in vain to find any sort of seam or opening or purchase with my wriggling fingers, if the
person who had tried to interfere with me in my room the night before did discover me lying helpless here they would be faced
with the same problem of absurdly tight sheets as I was. I had to hope that it would be as impossible to squeeze a stealthily
insinuating hand into the bed as my hands were finding it going in the opposite direction.

Nevertheless, I was still terrified. What if there was a fire? I’d roast or bake or burn to death. Smoke inhalation would
be a mercy. But what if my attacker did return? Perhaps they couldn’t get a hand under my sheets without undoing me, but they
could do anything else they wanted. They could suffocate me. Tape my mouth, pinch my nose. They could perform any unspeakable
act they wanted upon my face. Or they might be able to undo the bedclothes at the foot of my bed and gain access to my feet.
There were torturers who worked on nothing but feet, I’d heard. Just being severely beaten on the feet was allegedly excruciating.

I continued to try to free my feet, and to work my hands towards the sides of the bed where it might be possible to find some
weakness in the confining sheets and straps. The muscles in my hands, forearms, feet and lower legs were starting to complain
and even go into cramp.

I decided to rest for a while.

Sweat was running off me and I had a terribly itchy nose that I could not scratch or move my head enough to relieve against
any part of the sheets. I looked around as best I could. There must have been two dozen people in there at least. Still not
much detail visible, just dark shapes, lumps in the beds. Some were snoring, but not very loudly. I could just shout, I thought.
Perhaps one of these sleepers would wake, arise and come to my aid. I looked at the bed next to mine, about a metre away.
The sleeper appeared to be quite fat and to have his – her? – head turned away from me, but at least there were no straps securing
them to their bed.

I was surprised that my struggles to free myself hadn’t woken anybody up. I must have been quiet, I supposed. There was a
funny smell in the ward, I thought. That terrified me too for a moment or so. What if it was burning? Electrical burning!
A mattress burning! But, when I thought about it, it wasn’t a burning smell. Not very pleasant, but not the smell of burning.
Perhaps one of the people in the ward had had a little night-time accident.

I could shout. I cleared my throat quietly. Yes, no problem there; everything felt like it was working normally. And yet I
was reluctant to shout out. What if one of these people was the person who had attempted to assault me? Even if that wasn’t
the case, what if one of them was of a similar proclivity? Probably not, of course. Anyone dangerous would be in their own
room, wouldn’t they? They’d be locked away, or at least restrained as I had been, erroneously and absurdly.

Still, I was reluctant to shout out.

One of the other patients in the ward made a grunting noise, like an animal. Another one seemed to answer. That smell wafted
over me again.

An appalling thought insinuated its way into my mind. What if these were not people at all? What if they were animals? That
would account for the lumpen misshapenness of so many of the shapes I could see, for the smell, for all the grunting sounds
they were making.

Of course, over all the time I had been here, there had been no hint that the clinic was anything other than a perfectly respectable
and humanely run establishment with impeccable medical and caring procedures. I had no reason beyond whatever my highly constrained
senses could supply to my already terrified mind and feverishly overactive imagination to believe that I was in anything other
than a ward full of ordinary patients, asleep. Nevertheless, when a person has a completely bizarre experience, faints, and
then finds themself strapped helpless to a bed in an unknown room full of strangers, at night, it should come as no surprise
that they start to imagine the worst.

The corpulent figure looming dimly in the bed next to mine, from whom it now occurred to me there was a good chance that the
strange smell had been coming – as well as some of the grunting noises – made motions as though they might be about to turn over,
bringing them face to face with me.

I heard myself make a noise, a sort of yelp of fear. The thing in the bed stopped moving for a moment, as though having heard
me, or waking up. I decided I might as well make more noise. “Hello?” I said loudly. With a tone of authority, I trusted.

No reaction. “Hello?” I said again, raising my voice somewhat. Still nothing. “Hello!” I said, almost shouting now. A few
snores, but the shape in the bed next to mine made no further move. “Hello!” I shouted. Not a soul stirred. “HELLO!”

Then, slowly, the shape in the next bed started to turn round towards me again.

Suddenly, a noise outside, on my other side, forcing me to look in that direction. There was a shape advancing on the barely
lit glass of the half-glazed doors as someone or something came down the corridor. A figure, backlit, and then the doors swung
open and a male nurse padded in, humming softly to himself, walked up to my gurney and looked, squinting, for a moment at
the notes attached to the footboard. I took advantage of the slightly increased light and looked briefly round at the man
in the nearby bed. I saw a dark, fat but entirely human face with a week’s worth of beard. Asleep, dumb-looking, mouth and
facial muscles slack. He snored. I looked back and saw the young male nurse stepping on the wheel brakes, releasing them.

He wheeled me out into the corridor and let the double doors swing closed themselves, seemingly careless of the noise. He
unclipped my notes from the end of the trolley and held them up to the light. He shrugged, replaced them and started pushing
me up the corridor, whistling now.

He must have seen me looking at him because he winked at me and said, “You awake Mr Kel? You should be asleep. Well, don’t
(
I didn’t understand this middle bit
) out of those and into bed. I don’t know why (
something something
).” He sounded friendly, reassuring. I suspected he was surprised that I’d been trussed up like that in the first place. “Don’t
know why they put you in there with the…” I didn’t get the last word, but the way he said it it probably meant something mildly
insulting, one of those snappy, honest but potentially shocking terms that medical people use amongst themselves that are
not supposed to be for public consumption.

We went up in the big rattly lift. It always went very slowly and he started undoing the straps pinning me to the bed while
we made the ascent. Then he wheeled me along to my room, released me from the trolley and helped me into bed. He wished me
night-night and I wanted to cry.

The next day, the young mousy-haired lady doctor visited me and asked me questions about what had happened two nights before.
I did not understand everything she said but I tried to answer as fully as I could. No insulting dolls nonsense this time,
for which I ought to have been grateful, I supposed. No apology or explanation regarding my being strapped to the trolley
in a strange ward for the first part of the previous night, either, mind you. I wanted to ask her why that had been done,
what was going on, what was being done to identify the perpetrator and what was being done to prevent them trying to interfere
with me again. But I lacked the vocabulary to express exactly what I wanted to say, and anyway felt shy in front of the delicate
young lady doctor. I should have been able to deal with this sort of thing myself. There was no need to trouble her and risk
either of us being embarrassed.

The day passed. I sat up in bed or sat in my chair, mostly, thinking, eyes shut. The more I thought about it, the more I felt
there had been something odd about that ward downstairs.

The atmosphere was too placid. The man who turned over to face me looked too out of it. Could they all be sedated? I supposed
they might be. Problem patients often are – the chemical equivalent of the restraining straps I was unjustly subjected to. Perhaps
the place would have been in uproar if they hadn’t all been given sedatives.

And yet it seemed to me more than that. There was something about the place, something almost familiar that woke a half or
a quarter or a smaller fraction of a whole memory in me, something that might be important, one day if not now. Was it just
the feel of the place, the atmosphere (I feel there ought to be another word, but it eludes me)? Or was it some detail I noticed
subconsciously but which slipped past my attentive mental processes?

I resolved to investigate. I was aware that I had resolved the day or the night before to investigate the matter of my attempted
assaulter, to ask questions of the staff and the slack-jaws in the day room, but had not done so. However, I decided that
perhaps it was all best forgotten about and that so long as it did not happen again we’d say no more about it. It wasn’t worth
granting the fellow the attention. The mystery of the very quiet people and the silent ward: that seemed more important somehow,
more serious. That definitely did deserve a degree of scrutiny. I would take a look down there tonight.