Lost Lives (Emily Swanson Mystery Thriller Series Book 1) (16 page)

“Your mother’s dead, your mother’s dead! Fell out of bed and bumped her head!”

“Stop it Phillip!” Emily shrieked. “Will you stop it!”

And before she could register what she was doing, her hands flew into the air and brought the stack of worksheets down hard against the desk. Papers scattered into the air and onto the floor. Phillip Gerard fell silent. A child at the back began to cry.

Then, it was as if Emily had woken from a dream. She stared down at the mess of papers, at Phillip Gerard, whose face had hardened like stone. Before she could say she was sorry, Phillip leapt from his desk and bolted from the room. Emily turned to the rest of the class. Wide, frightened eyes stared up at her.

“Get out your books,” she whispered. “Fifteen minutes of silent reading.”

She returned to her desk and sat down. The child at the back continued to sob.

They heard the screams soon after. Phillip Gerard had leapt from a top floor window and landed in the playground at the feet of the school caretaker.

***

Emily’s mouth hung open in a silent scream.

“All that unendurable pain you feel right at this moment,” Doctor Adams said. “It can be taken away.”

“How?” She was broken, a ship smashed onto rocks. Nothing could ever take away the pain. It was constant and unrelenting, and she deserved every second of it.

“You tried to end your life. You failed. This leaves you with two choices—to live the rest of your life in a continual, futile state of self-flagellation, or to try again. As your psychiatrist I highly recommend the latter. I don’t believe in ending a life when it can be saved, Ms Swanson. And I believe yours
can
be saved.”

She tried to stop the tears, but they were remorseless and wilful, sliding down her face.

“I want to go home!” she sobbed. “I don’t want to be here!”

“I can see this is upsetting for you. Perhaps a little more sleep will settle those nerves.”

“No, I want to leave.”

Emily wrapped her fingers around the arms of the wheelchair. Her joints were painful and stiff. She tried to push herself up, but gravity held her down.

She looked at her legs, concentrating. Her left foot slipped from the foot rest and hit the carpet like a slab of dead meat.

“You’ve been asleep for some time,” Doctor Adams said. “Your body needs to reacclimatise to the conscious world. Your muscles need exercise to strengthen.”

Hysteria was coming. She could feel it building inside her, growing in momentum. And when it grew too great for her to contain, it would erupt like the guts of a volcano and her mind would be instantly incinerated.

“How long have I been asleep?” she asked.

“Perhaps we should discuss this when you’re in a calmer state.”

A horrible sense of déjà vu clawed at her insides. “How long?”

Doctor Adams cleared his throat. “I really think—”

“
How long?
”

Doctor Adams leaned back in his chair. He stared at her for a moment. “With the exception of two events of waking, and give or take a day or two—”

“Tell me!”

“Almost twelve weeks.”

The room swayed from side to side. Emily gripped the edges of the table.

“You’re lying to me!” she cried. “You’re trying to confuse me!”

The doctor stood, flexed his fingers, and pulled on the chord of the window blinds. Dazzling sunlight blanched the room. Emily squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, her gaze fell upon a garden.

Rich heads of pink and white blossom flourished on tree branches. Shrubs and perennials sprouted from tended beds. Thick golden buds of daffodils had woken from their wintry slumber and were stretching open their petals. Birds sang out from the trees. Above the canopies, hung a tapestry of blue sky.

Emily trembled uncontrollably.

“It must be a shock,” Doctor Adams said, picking up the telephone receiver, “but think of it this way—you’ve missed the worst of winter, you’ve avoided weeks of unhappiness, and in time you’ll reap the benefits.”

Emily wasn’t listening. She stared at the lush green lawn, watching a lone Goldfinch search out fallen seeds. The rest of the world disappeared. There was only Emily and the garden and the bird. Nothing more.

A door opened somewhere behind her.

Nurse Stevens’ soothing voice floated between the clouds. “Everything is going to be all right.”

Outside, the Goldfinch spread its wings and leapt into the air. The window was moving away. Doctor Adam’s office was moving away. Emily drifted through a long corridor, watching strips of florescent light pass overhead.

She closed her eyes. Sleep embraced her. As she burrowed into its arms, she heard a voice cry out in the darkness.
Alina
.

Days passed. Her conversation with Doctor Adams played over and over in her head. Three months of her life were gone, each day taken from her without consent. An empty chasm separated her past and her present. And it would never be bridged. It would never be filled in.

Emily dragged herself into a sitting position. Her limbs ached. Her head felt as if she were underwater. She looked through the window, at the expanse of lawn and the red brick wall that bordered it.

Sleep and medication had pacified her frantic mind, deadening the edges of the depression that nestled inside her. More memories had begun to piece together: her childhood spent alone with her mother; her relationship with Lewis, which had been wonderful until her mother had fallen ill, until she had needed him most; and poor, poor Phillip. She knew she wasn’t the reason the boy had taken his life—no matter what the newspapers had written about her—but hadn’t she stolen his last ray of hope? Wasn’t that why she had allowed herself to be the scapegoat for the community’s guilt?

Feeling the dull throb of a headache, Emily rubbed her temples. Looking down at her legs, she willed them to move. They twitched. The big toe on her left foot began to spasm.

Other, more recent memories had begun to return to her. There was that name.
Alina
. The woman in the painting. The painting she had found in her apartment. She had been searching for Alina. But why? Had she known her? There were still so many blank spaces, as though her memories had been papered over like old walls.

Emily’s toes creaked as she flexed one foot, then the other. Her ankles protested with aches and pains. Her right leg began to move, bending at the knee, bringing her foot towards her body. A thin line of perspiration beaded her brow.

Another name surfaced in her mind. Jermaine. No.
Jerome
. Why was that name important?

She said the name aloud and a soothing warmth momentarily emerged from her melancholy. It was quickly followed by frustration.

None of this made any sense. Why move to the city just to kill herself? She could have done that back at the cottage. But she hadn’t. She had survived the death of her mother. Contrary to everyone else’s wishes, she had survived Phillip’s suicide.

The guilt she felt about that day in her classroom had kept her afloat like an island she could swim to whenever she grew exhausted.

And moving to London, starting over again—it was like finding another island to swim to. Perhaps these names—Harriet, Jerome, Alina—perhaps they were part of her new life, her chance to begin again. When she thought about it that way, trying to kill herself made no sense.

If she was right, if she hadn’t attempted suicide, then it meant one of two things. Either there had been some terrible misunderstanding, or someone had orchestrated the whole event—and if that was true, what had she become involved in?

Her efforts spent, she collapsed back onto the bed. Her knees, ankles and toes ached. Emily embraced the pain. Pain meant she could feel. Feeling meant that she was alive.

Sooner or later (she hoped the former) her mind would recover the events of that night, and she would prove to Doctor Adams that he was wrong, and to everyone who had ever doubted her that she was strong—a survivor.

Lying on the bed, staring out into the perfect blue sky, Emily felt a chill that pierced her core. It didn’t matter how nice and private St. Dymphna’s might be, she was trapped here against her will, and until her memories returned, she didn’t even know why that was.

***

“She’s a television actress. The paparazzi photographed her snorting cocaine at an AIDS benefit. The one next to her, she’s the wife of some celebrity lawyer. She’s also an alcoholic.”

Emily sat as Grace ran through the reasons for each patient’s residency at St. Dymphna’s. Her limbs ached from the morning’s physiotherapy session. She’d suffered no significant neurological damage and so unlike other coma patients recovering from brain injuries, she had no relearning to do. It was simply a case of regaining the muscle that had wasted away while she’d slept. Her physiotherapist, Keera, was confident she would be running around in no time.

“What about that one?” Emily asked, nodding in the direction of the young woman crouched at the window.

Grace shuffled her cards. “Everyone’s calling her Bird Girl. She came in a month ago. Doesn’t talk, except to her feathered friends in the garden. This isn’t the right place for her.”

Emily watched Bird Girl as she tapped on the glass, attracting the attention of a sparrow. She was like a child awed by nature, the rest of the word ceasing to exist.

“That one over there, she’s a jumper.” A middle-aged woman sat alone, a book held open in her hands. “Bridges, buildings ... she’s been talked down from them all. I couldn’t do that. I’d have to shut my eyes all the way down.”

Emily looked from woman to woman. Time was floating away from her. From them all. The daily medication left her processing skills fuddled and slow, but she took the pills without complaint, without questioning what they were giving her. She had no idea of her rights while detained under the Mental Health Act, and no one in authority was volunteering the information. Refusing to comply, she feared, would only result in extending her incarceration. For now, she would remain the model patient.

Nurse Stevens had informed Emily that a personalised programme of events was being tailored for her. In addition to her ongoing physical therapy, she would begin cognitive behavioural therapy sessions both in a group and individual setting, and there would be art and gardening classes she might like to attend. A range of alternative therapies was also available. Nurse Stevens recommended Shiatsu massage. Doctor Adams would meet with her again at the end of the week. In the meantime, Emily should make herself comfortable, explore the activities on offer, perhaps engage with the other patients.

“I suppose you want to know why I’m here,” Grace said. “Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. And I tried to burn down my school.”

Emily stared at her.

“Don’t look so judgemental. I waited until it was empty.”

“How long have you been here?”

“This time? A while.” Grace snapped the cards together. “Okay your turn. Why are
you
here?”

Uncomfortable in the confines of the wheelchair, Emily said, “You know why I’m here.”

“No, I know what they told you. But you said what they told you is a mistake.”

Emily stared at the girl, wondering if she could trust her. Before she could reply, Grace leant across the table and gripped Emily’s arms.

“I saw them bring you in,” she whispered.

“You did?”

“Yes. It was still dark, before dawn. Sometimes, I palm the night meds—who wants to be under their control all the time? You can get away with it quite easily if you know how, and they don’t check unless it becomes obvious. It’s not the sixties anymore. You—”

“What did you see?” Emily interrupted.

Lines creased Grace’s forehead. “I like to go for walks. Sometimes that room feels like it’s crushing the life from me. There’s a skeleton crew at night, so you can take a walk if you’re careful, if you know how. They brought you in all strapped down to a gurney, hands and feet. They took you through there.” She nodded to the electronic doors on their left. “You didn’t come back out. Not until last week.”

“Last
week
?” Emily stared in disbelief. Surely she’d been conscious for longer than that.

Grace leaned in closer. “What did they do to you?”

“I don’t know. Doctor Adams told me I was asleep.”

“For three months?” Grace’s raised voice attracted the attention of a nurse, who sat at the far end of the room filling out paperwork. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m not sure what kind of hospital you think this is, but it’s not the kind where they keep coma patients. Something isn’t right. They’ve kept you hidden for a reason, just like Helen.”

Memories were stirring inside Emily, trying to break free. “Tell me about Helen.”

The nurse stationed at the end of the room stood up and began walking over. She smiled at the two of them as she passed by, heading towards Bird Girl. They watched as the nurse attempted to speak to her, and they winced as Bird Girl let out a distressed, ear-splitting scream.

Grace leapt up from her seat. “Come on.”

Spinning Emily around in the wheelchair, she pushed her out of the dayroom and along a corridor, rattling the handles of each door they passed.

“It’s not safe to talk in there,” Grace said. “They listen in.”

They turned a corner and Grace sped up. The next door she tried swung open and she wheeled Emily into a small bathroom.

“I’ll tell you about Helen,” she said, leaning against the toilet cubicle. “Helen was my friend. She was the only one in here I could stand. She was Borderline too, so she got it. She understood how awful it makes you feel.”

“What happened to her?”

“She vanished three weeks ago. They say she came to the end of her treatment. That she went home.”

“You think they’re lying?” Emily watched the door.

“Of course they’re lying! What did they do to your brain? The day before she disappeared, Helen told me she was thinking about killing herself. Her medication wasn’t working. She was a formal just like you and me. They don’t just let you go—there’s a whole step down procedure to follow.”

“Maybe her family intervened. Maybe they had her removed.”

“What family? Helen was in and out of foster homes since she was five years old. Nobody cared if she lived or died. Nobody but me.”

An odd prickling sensation ran down the length of Emily’s neck.

“Perhaps she ran away. Is that possible here? Where are we?”

“Kent. In the middle of the Downs. And of course it’s possible. This isn’t Broadmoor.” The girl paused, her eyes growing dark. “Helen didn’t run away. Don’t you remember anything? Are you sure you didn’t see her?”

“I’m sorry. Doctor Adams told me—”

“Doctor Adams will tell you a lot of things. Most of which you mustn’t believe.”

“Why not?”

Grace looked towards the door. They heard the distant squeak of shoes on floor tiles.

“Because he thinks he’s God. He and that other doctor, they—”

Emily froze. “What other doctor?”

Images began to form in her mind. A grand old building surrounded by trees. An elderly woman with a sleeping dog in her lap. Notebooks filled with newspaper clippings.

“Most people come and go here,” Grace said. “They self-admit, throw money at the latest treatment, then a few weeks later feel like a brand new person. For a while at least. But formals like us, Emily ... we’re here because someone’s signed a piece of paper, stripping us of our freedom. Don’t you see? We belong to them now. They can do whatever they want with us. That’s what Helen didn’t understand. She didn’t play their game and now she’s gone.”

The footsteps were getting closer.

“Do you know someone called Alina?” Emily asked.

Grace shook her head.

“What about where they kept me?”

“You can’t get through those doors without a key card. They did something to you, Emily. They got inside your brain. Manipulated the way it works.”

“Come on, Grace. Isn’t that a little science fiction?

Grace thumped the side of the cubicle. “The Egyptian Book of the Dead contains rituals of torture, hypnotism and drug use as methods of enslavement. In the thirteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church used the Inquisition to strengthen their hold on Europe through persecution. The Nazis had Project Monarch. The CIA had Project MKUltra. London had the Tavistock Institute. It’s not science fiction, Emily! People in power will always try to control the masses. And we suck it up. We open the newspapers and we read the headlines and we believe everything we’re told because we’ve been trained to. Because we’re under their control! And it’s happening right here in this hospital!”

Out in the corridor, the footsteps came to a halt.

“Believe what you like, but I’m telling you—they’ve done something to you. Just like they did to Helen.”

The door swung open. Nurse Stevens stood looking from patient to patient, suspicion creeping over her features.

“Emily, are you all right?” she asked.

“Oh of course, obviously it’s me who’s up to no good!” Grace huffed.

Nurse Stevens folded her arms.

“Well, Doctor Adams was expecting you five minutes ago, Grace. You go ahead now, and I’ll take care of Emily.”

“Fine.”

Grace shot Emily a sideways glance, then with her head down, stomped out of the bathroom.

“I’d be careful of how much you believe where Grace is concerned,” Nurse Stevens said, as she wheeled Emily towards the dayroom. “The actual truth and what Grace convinces herself to be true are very often two different things. She’s gotten more than a few patients riled up with her stories. And most of the time that’s all they are—just stories.”

They were back in the dayroom. There were more women in here now. Bird Girl was still at the window.