A Strange Fire (Florence Vaine) (19 page)

 We go back down to the ground floor and around to the back of the
hospital where there’s a small staff lunch room. A middle aged woman wearing a
white apron and a hair net serves us chicken with mashed potatoes and mushy
peas, which I wouldn’t have found half as appetising if I weren’t so starved
after all that work. I never knew a person could get so tired from just sitting
on their arse while sorting through papers. Well I know now.

 To drink we’re given a glass of orange cordial, which is as sweet as it
is sour but it does the trick to quench my thirst so I’m not complaining. There
are some young nurses and care attendants about, but they don’t bother to come
and talk to us. Only one or two of the older nurses come over to tell us what
great girls we are for giving up our Saturday to help out at the hospital.

 Punctual as ever, Gerty comes to collect us at ten past one, but she
doesn’t take us back up to the filing room. Thank God for that. Instead she
leads us to the common room we passed through earlier in the morning.

 “You girls are going to assist in supervising while we take this group
out the back to the patio for some fresh air. It’s warm out so we decided that
some of the residents might enjoy to sit in the sun,” says Gerty.

 “Sure. Sounds like a good idea,” Caroline replies, she’s going to have
to be our spokesperson when it comes to communing with Gerty. Lia and I remain
silent under the tension of her authoritative air, both of us not brave enough
to speak for fear of being put in our places. Even as I glance at her aura,
Gerty’s colours show me that she’s all business, as distant and unemotional as
an automaton in her workplace.

 The group to which Gerty had referred consists of about twenty elderly
men and women. Two other care attendants join us as Gerty rounds the patients
up into groups of four and we escort them out of the common room, through a
narrow hallway and out of a back door that leads to a big, spacious patio area
with wicker tables and chairs spread all around.

 About thirty yards directly in front of it is the forest, and I try not
to think of Lauren’s bones when I look at the expanding cluster of conifer
trees. The attendants do most of the work getting the patients outside, while
the three of us walk along behind, probably in case something happens and they
require a helping hand.

 Once everyone is out Gerty tells us that we have to sit apart. She
instructs us to keep an eye on the patients, and to inform one of the
attendants if we notice anybody requiring assistance or getting out of hand.
Then she leaves, marching off to carry out some other important errand I’m
sure.

 As I focus on the patients, I begin to make out which of them are
genuinely suffering from some kind of illness or another, and which ones are
simply degenerating due to old age. The aura never lies. Those with an illness
show either erratic, disjointed colours that are in a constant struggle, one
colour battling to break past another, or else the nurses and doctors have them
so pumped with drugs that they show nothing in their aura but the ghostly white
of the chemically inebriated.

 Those who aren’t ill, but just old, show colours similar to those of a
healthy person, though much more faint, as though slowly fading until finally
death takes them away completely. How bad must the doctors be if they can’t
tell the difference between true dementia and simple forgetfulness?

 My leg muscles still ache, so I lean back in my chair and stretch them
out in an effort to reduce the pain. It works for only the duration of the
stretch, once I sit back properly the ache quickly returns with a vengeance. My
arms and back aren’t much better, but perhaps the suffering is worth it if it
teaches me a lesson to stay away from the pills. I make a vague promise to
myself that I’ll flush them down the toilet the minute I get home, no amount of
anxiety relief is worth this kind of repercussion.

 So I sit there and try to ignore the aches, while I watch the patients
do the same thing they had been doing this morning in the common room, except
now with the addition of the open air and the sun. I raise my face to it,
absorbing the rays.

 I watch as a man with no hair playing chess with another man with grey
hair gets upset over something and lifts his hand to pelt his companion. He’s
got the queen piece grasped intently between his fingers. An attendant gets
there just in time to stop him, pulling his raised hand back and away from the
other patient.

 “Now, now Marcus,” says the attendant in a calm, monotone voice, “I
think it’s time for your afternoon nap.” Then she gets him to his feet. At
first he resists, but after only a minute’s struggle he gives in and allows the
attendant to take him back inside the building. It’s not a nice thing to have
to witness. When she returns she shakes her head and grins at the other
attendant on duty, as though sharing some private joke.

 I shift in my seat, needing the bathroom. I get up and go over to the
attendant who’d taken the upset patient back inside and ask her if it’s okay
that I leave to go to the toilet. I stammer because she’s a stranger, but also
because she seems kind of devious. It’s in her colours, though I can’t tell the
source of it. She probably pushes the old people around when nobody’s looking. She
smiles and tells me to go through the door, down the hall, then keep going
until I see a big white door that leads to the ladies. I thank her and set off,
but even as I am telling myself to remember the directions I am also instantly
forgetting them.

 My mind is somewhere else completely, off and away, meandering through
abstract ideas and images. I turn off at the end of the hallway but don’t
exactly remember if I went left or right. I find myself in a corridor painted a
horrible lime green, the smell of urine is all about but I can’t seem to find
the toilets anywhere. All hospitals seem to have that smell whether you’re
close to a toilet or not. I try not to ponder the reason for that.

 I’m sure I’m lost now because there isn’t any big white door in sight,
only dark grey ones. Surreptitiously, I glance inside the open door of one of
the bedrooms. A woman in her late thirties or early forties is sitting on a
thin single bed, she shakes her head and mumbles to herself but I can’t hear
her words. I don’t really need to. Pain and trauma shatter her aura, it’s clear
to me that she’s had a mental breakdown after some massive shock or heartache.

 I wonder if I could fix her fragmented colours with my new ability. No,
I scrap that thought, it’s too much responsibility. I linger a moment, feeling
a strangely powerful pull towards the woman, a need to help her. So strong it’s
like a calling. I drag myself away and continue my search for the bathroom.

 In the end I do find a toilet, but it’s definitely not the one the nurse
had given me directions to. I’ve almost come full circle and end up close to
the side entrance from this morning. Feeling quite clever, I decide to avoid
more confusion by simply exiting the building through the nearby side entrance,
then going around to the back of the building where the patio is.

 As I leave and walk around the side of the hospital I see a nurse coming
towards me, there’s a patient with her who she seems to be talking for a
stroll. The patient is a man in his seventies or eighties, he’s still in his
pyjamas and slippers, even though it’s well past midday. His hair is a wisp of
messy grey, and he has a hold of the nurse’s arm for support as he walks on the
gravel with unsure feet.

 As they approach I notice something odd about the man - he doesn’t have
any aura at all. It stops me in my stride. I have never come across this
before. I’ve seen some very unusual energy since moving to Chesterport, but
never a live person with nothing at all surrounding their body.

 Once back in Tribane, when I’d been walking home from the supermarket, I
passed by a road accident and saw the dead body of the driver lying on the
ground surrounded by paramedics. That body hadn’t had an aura because it was
dead, the soul had departed. But this man is up and walking, clearly very much
alive. The nurse must recognise me as one of the volunteers as she approaches
because she smiles warmly and dips her head to me in greeting. I can barely
return the gesture because I am too caught up in the absence of an aura in the
patient she is helping along.

 An empty shell, that’s what he strikes me as, living but not really
alive. His eyes are a dull white, grey irises, hardly any pupil and thoroughly
bloodshot. They wander about, looking at the scenery but not really taking
anything in. Is this what a person looks like after having a stroke, or after
going through some massive ordeal? I wish I knew why he’s showing no signs of
life outside of the fact that his eyes are moving and he is upright. Then, when
his wandering eyes come to gaze at me, that’s when everything goes to hell in a
hand basket, from strange to outright petrifying.

 The red in his eyes seems to multiply until they’ve become entirely
scarlet. He stops dead in his tracks, the nurse tries to urge him on, but he
isn’t moving.

 “You!” he snaps in a voice as dead as his gaunt face. He raises a frail
arm and points his index finger straight at me.

 “Come along Larry,” says the nurse pleasantly, “leave the lovely girl
alone now, there’s a good man,” demonstrating quiet persuasion, though I can
tell she’s slightly alarmed at the patient’s odd reaction to me.

 This time he shouts, “You! Girl! You’re who she wants!” and with
strength that seems to come from nowhere, he rips his arm from the nurse’s hold
and charges towards me. I stumble backwards, tripping over a loose stone in the
gravel, but quickly I find my feet in time enough so I don’t fall over. He’s
running now, and his speed doesn’t match his aged body. I continue walking
backwards, too afraid to turn my back from him in case he jumps at me. The
nurse is too slow to catch up.

 “She drained me! Drained me because of you!” he bursts, saliva dripping
from his mouth, his slippers ripping on the stones as he moves from the neat
paving to the rough gravel. His toes press down on a particularly sharp one,
and I see blood seep from the wound. He doesn’t even flinch at the pain,
instead he continues to come at me, full speed ahead. His eyes are manic and
his face is contorted into an expression of untamed violence. Oh God, what am I
going to do? He wants to kill me. No other cause for it, I run.

 “Larry! Get back here!” Shouts the nurse from the distance behind me,
her voice is breathless. How come she can’t catch up with him? I don’t
understand how a young nurse would be too slow to catch a man in his eighties
already half dead. But I can’t concentrate on the nurse’s screaming nor the
reason for her lack of momentum, because all I can hear are Larry’s feet, now
bare, slapping off the gravel, his breath grunting as he runs unnaturally fast,
closing in on me.

 I speed up, putting my all into running despite the aching state my
muscles are in. We’ve passed the front of the building now, and I can still
hear Larry behind me as I speed down the winding pathway that leads off from
the main road and directly to the hospital.

 Then, when I’m halfway to the main road, the sound of Larry chasing me
subsides. Did the nurse catch him? Has he quit his pursuit? I make the sorry
mistake of slowing down and turning around to see what has happened. He isn’t
gone, but he has stopped running, now he is stumbling toward me, seemingly
having lost his surge of energy.

 “You! It’s all your fault!” he wheezes, repeating his insane ramblings.
He looks dizzy and confused, like he’s not completely certain why he’d been
chasing me. The red in his eyes dies down and they return to a more acceptable
shade of bloodshot. I look down at his feet, they are cut up really badly and
bleeding profusely. Glancing over his shoulder I see the nurse closing in on
him. Okay, I just have to keep him here for a moment longer until she catches
up. I muster a voice of calm and reassurance.

 “L-larry, everything is all right. Just calm down okay,” my hands are
spread out in front of me, in the universal gesture of “stay calm”. He appears
to be relaxing, bewilderment colouring his features. But just as the nurse gets
to him, carefully placing a hand on his shoulder, his fury returns.

 “No,” he snarls, head whipping behind him to meet her and his sudden
movement knocks her backwards. “Don’t touch me!” Then he swings around to glare
at me again. “Little girl, it’s all your fault!” he hisses, his false teeth
have come loose and are hanging halfway out of his mouth.

 Oh crap. Time to run again. I dash down the pathway, the only reason
Larry doesn’t catch me is probably because I’m wearing bouncy converses and all
he’s got to work with are a pair of horribly cut up bare feet. Still, he’s only
about three yards behind me. Inside my head I am screaming,
run, run, run,
get away from this crazy person!

 In this moment I know that if he catches me, he will kill me. And I
can’t bear the thought of his cold, deathly fingers on me. My heart lifts when
I near the main road, surely someone will be driving by in a car and stop to
help me when they see the eighty year old maniac chasing after me.

 As it happens, a car does come by, just as I get to the end of the
pathway and leap out onto the main road.

 Fortunately, it stops. Unfortunately, that’s only because it’s hit me.

I’d like to say that I can’t remember what happened next, because that
would be just lovely, to be unconscious to the screaming agony in my knee. The
car did hit me, but it had been going fairly slow so I didn’t get injured as
badly as I might have been. As it stands, it came to a screeching halt when I’d
run out in front of it, but not in time to prevent me from being run into by
the bumper and knocked to the other side of the road.