‘I said that you can tell me, whatever it is. Did something happen last night?’
A flash of cold, a blinding light. Lauren’s nostrils filled with that muddy fish smell. Goosebumps, as all the hair on her arms stood up. Could it have been real?
‘No,’ she said, ‘not really. I thought I saw something. I thought there was someone here who couldn’t have been. Doesn’t matter now.’
‘Of course it matters,’ said Patrick, leaning in, all concern. ‘It sounds scary, you mean like a waking dream or something?’
‘Yes, I think so. I wasn’t asleep though – I hadn’t slept, I haven’t slept properly in three days—’
‘Well, that’s it then, isn’t it? You’re not crazy, you just need some sleep.’
Yes. That was it. So obvious.
Patrick went on, ‘No one can sleep in hospital, it’s so hot and noisy. You know, I read an article about sleep deprivation, it’s more important than you think, to get good rest. No-brainer, really.’
Fatigue rolled over Lauren, pressing her down into the hard mattress, pulling on her eyelids, stinging her eyes.
‘I feel like I’ll never sleep again.’
‘Oh, but don’t worry. It’s not forever, it’s only for a few weeks. Then the sleep gets better.’
This seemed impossible. ‘Really? Only a few weeks?’
‘That’s what Mother said. I slept through the night at six weeks, apparently.’
‘You did?’
‘And, if you come home, you’ll have all our own bedding, our own loo. I’ll be there to help.’
Lauren felt the tantalising pull of normality, but she was a patient now. It was her duty to lie there and be treated. She’d been institutionalised, in two days flat.
‘I want to. But I’m not sure I’m ready. I think, maybe I should stay, just for a few more days . . . ’
Patrick took hold of one of Lauren’s hands, where a drip needle attachment was taped in place. ‘Lauren, honey. It’s a big deal, having a baby. Having two at the same time is huge. But. You’ll be better off at home. I don’t like the idea that you were here, all alone, seeing things and losing it in the middle of the night. You need to be where I can make sure you’re OK.’
Lauren was thinking about the emergency, the bleed. If she’d been at home then she might have died. A tear dropped onto her front. They seemed to come so easily. ‘I think I might need to stay here,’ she said, thinking: near the drugs. Near the doctors.
‘You hate hospitals. And, no offence but, you stink. No one’s looking out for you here. Has anyone even offered to run you a bath?’
She hadn’t thought about the bathroom. She couldn’t go back in there. Just hearing him mention the bath caused the fear to rise again. It put her straight back to the night before, when she’d been sitting in the bathtub, rocking her two babies under the strobing strip-light as the locked door was opened from the outside and a dark figure came towards her. No no no no get away get away from me. She’d screamed and screamed. But it wasn’t her, it wasn’t the disgusting black-tongued woman, it was a nurse and behind her a man in a green uniform, then there were others, crowding into the small room, more nurses, and a doctor, but she kept screaming, searching the shadows behind and between them. Where is she? Where’s that woman, the one with the basket? Get her away from me, I’m not going back out there, I’m not, I’m not—
‘There’s no one there,’ someone kept saying. ‘Look, see for yourself.’
The crowd opened up, various people stepped aside so there was a clear view. She looked and looked, through the open door into the bay. Things kept happening in her peripheral vision. Near the ceiling, something was hanging from sticky feet, reaching long fingers to curl through the gaps in the air vent, but when she looked straight at it there was nothing there, only a shadow, a cobweb. A pedal bin became a squatting demon when she looked away, then became a bin again when she looked back. She knew she was breathing too fast because the nurse kept saying, ‘Breathe slowly, Lauren,’ and her heart, her racing heart, she thought it might burst.
The man she later learned was Dr Gill held a white paper cup to her mouth and tipped in two blue pills, then held up another of water to wash them down.
‘What did you give me?’ she asked, holding the pills behind her teeth.
‘They’ll help you to calm down and think straight,’ said the doctor.
She swallowed hard, the pills sticking in her throat despite the water, a dry, bitter taste. But the panic was lifting. The woman had gone.
‘You’re safe, Mrs Tranter. Come out of the bath now.’
She wasn’t going to hand the babies over to anyone so they pulled her up as best they could and helped her step down from the bath onto the floor. Through the open bathroom door, she could see that the curtain, which had been drawn around the cubicle where she’d seen the woman, was back against the wall, exactly where it had been all day. The dawn had bloomed and bathed the room in buttercup yellow.
Everything was clean, surfaces spotless but nevertheless she thought she could detect a damp smell of mildew. Strong hands led her back to bed, past the chair where the woman had been sitting. No, where she thought she’d seen the woman sitting. As she shuffled past, with a baby son gripped in each arm, the nurse and the security guard holding her upright, she saw, she thought she saw, three silverfish spiralling out from the centre of the pale green vinyl seat in an almost synchronised wheel. She heard a clattering, a rapid tick-ticking sound of hundreds of tiny insect feet, which she surely must have imagined, and they disappeared over the edges of the chair and into its crevices.
‘Lauren? Are you OK?’ Patrick’s voice was distant, as if heard through a wall. The ward and the people in it had dissolved slightly, back into blocks of smudged colour.
A thought occurred to her. If the woman with the basket was real, she might come back again. No one had stopped her, no one saw her. Not the nurses, not the patients. After DS Harper had left this morning, Lauren had asked Mrs Gooch, tentatively, if she’d seen anyone on the ward in the night who shouldn’t have been there. The other woman had shaken her head slowly and given a long and ponderous ‘no’, implying that even the question was insane. ‘I heard you, um, shouting,’ said Mrs Gooch. ‘That was what woke me up. I couldn’t really see what was going on, because the curtain was pulled across, but there wasn’t anyone suspicious here, I’m quite sure of that. This is a secure ward. Are you . . . OK now?’
‘I’m fine,’ Lauren had said, hearing the tremor in her own voice, smiling to cover it up. Mrs Gooch had cleared her throat nervously, and although Lauren wanted to ask her about whether she heard the singing, she sensed that any more questions would only make Mrs Gooch more uncomfortable.
So, the creepy woman was sly. She knew how to get past security, how to make sure she wasn’t seen by anyone. Therefore, Lauren should go home, where the woman would not think to look, and wouldn’t be able to come after her. That was the answer.
That’s if it was real. But the drugs, and the daylight, had created
