The Regret

by Dan Malakin

  Ring Hyderabad to get the name of someone who works on eMAR support, fire a spear phishing e-mail to Gurvinder – spoofed to look like it’s from someone at Principia – and you should find yourself with a copy of the low-level design for the software.

  Tomcat 8.0 as the HTTP server? The admin console is set to the default address?

  You’d think companies would upgrade their infrastructure software to the latest versions, that they’d realise the vulnerabilities in the old versions are well known and easy to exploit. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong.

  For software, see people – know their vulnerabilities, and exploit them.

  It’s as easy as breaking into the admin console, creating yourself a superuser in the central eMAR database, and changing Rachel’s password.

  As easy as logging into her account and going cut, paste, edit, delete.

  Easy as calling Linda, the ward manager, with an anonymous tip off from a concerned colleague about Rachel’s patient recordkeeping…

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Knife

  The same sounds that any other night would have been nothing – a bird twittering, a wind chime two doors down, the faint fizz of energy from the lamppost outside her window – seemed as loud as gongs. Rachel had hoped that, despite everything, the Oxy throbbing in her blood might help her sleep. She could still feel it, a spacey undertone to the heavier leaden sensation of shock that had rolled across her mind, flattening her thoughts into a single and debilitating stupor. But nothing short of a general anaesthetic was going to put her away tonight. How was she going to work tomorrow if she got no sleep again? She could call in sick, but even thinking about sitting at home all day sent her skittering to the edge.

  She drifted downstairs, filled a mug with milk – it always helped to soothe her stomach – and put it in the microwave for a minute. How was anyone supposed to be normal in this world? Physically, in the thousands of years since we lived in caves, we’d barely changed. We had the same limbs, the same ribs, the same eyes, nose, mouth. Our brains were a little bigger, but they were still the wrinkled grey synapse factories they always were. And yet, although a prehistoric human baby was probably similar to one born a minute ago, the world was completely different.

  Back then, as long as you protected the front of your cave, you were safe – now you had to be prepared to defend yourself at all times, from anyone in the whole world. People you’d never meet in person could reach into your life and shake things around, just for the lolz. How were we supposed to adapt to that? Was it a surprise everyone was such a mess?

  If it wasn’t anorexia, it was depression. If it wasn’t depression, it was stress. If it wasn’t stress, it was anxiety, or paranoia, or a cold and terrible void where your self-esteem should have been. And the worst thing? These were the traits being passed down the family line, from mother to daughter, from father to son. Forget genes – this was modern evolution. The horrors of our personality going from generation to generation, as unstoppable as time, until there weren’t enough psychiatrist chairs to treat them all.

  The microwave pinged, but Rachel ignored it and opened the fridge. She leaned into the light, closed her eyes, and let the cold air rest on her skin. The mingling smells twisted her guts – grated cheese and leftover pasta and something citrus, the half lemon she’d squeezed over a salad days earlier. Her hunger felt as fresh as a razor slicing inside her abdomen. She took long deep breaths. To be this hungry, and resist food. How many people could do that? How mentally strong does someone have to be to do that?

  She slammed the fridge door and took her milk through to the living room. For a while, after Konrad left, she’d entertained the possibility that he’d planned the whole thing, that she’d been the unwitting star of an elaborate masquerade. She imagined him scurrying away, sniggering as he sent that text, to meet his goon mates and sink jeroboams of champagne bought with her bloody wages, but quickly dismissed that idea. How could Konrad plan for her to get wrecked on red wine and painkillers, to the point where she hallucinated passionate fumbling into sexual assault? It was Griffin, no doubt. He probably had a camera in a tree facing her house. He saw Konrad leave, the way he stormed out, and sent that text. Griffin wanted her to rush into the streets, screaming for him to come out, so everyone would think she was losing it. Send her back to psych where she belongs!

  Rachel sat on the sofa, logged into LinkedIn, and carried on building Sophie Thomas’ employment history. She examined profiles of other recruitment agents, read their blog posts, looked up stuff on Google or Wikipedia. Soon she’d created what seemed to her a convincing past – two years as a junior recruiter at a consultancy called Global Enterprises, then five years as a senior recruiter at Apps IT, before joining Hays Recruitment as a business resource manager. She added in an education history, a degree in management at UCL, and joined interest groups like techUK, Recruitment Analysts, and the Independent Agency Group.

  When she checked the time, it was gone two. The next day stretched ahead like a Royal Marines obstacle course – the breakfast battle, the nursery run, a full day on the ward, then getting Lily from Mark, who no doubt was still in a mood with her.

  Too much, way too much.

  She trudged upstairs, shoulders slumped, feeling like she was heading to the gallows. At the airing cupboard door, she unfolded the step stool. This was wrong, definitely wrong, and she didn’t like it – what if there was a fire? Or someone broke in? – but she knew she was going to take something anyway, because if she didn’t do something to soften her brain, she really thought it might crack.

  Rachel shot up, as fast and breathless as if she’d been drowning. Where was she? On the upstairs landing? She vaguely remembered moving her bedding to outside Lily’s room before whatever she’d taken – Ambien? – dragged her into sleep.

  She heard a noise, soft voices, cutlery faintly clattering. What was that? Was someone in the kitchen? She patted around, found her phone next to her pillow, the sound going muffled when she picked it up. She unlocked the screen and saw a video of a family table, laid with a turkey and all the trimmings. Cut to the kitchen, Tom Kerridge, still in his twenty-stone days, shredding Romaine lettuce by hand into a silver bowl. She pressed the back button. YouTube. Two hours into a cookery compilation. What the literal shit. She couldn’t even remember putting that on. To be so out of it that she didn’t remember searching for YouTube videos while clobbered unconsciousness on sleeping pills. That could never happen again.

  She remembered last night, Konrad leaving, the text from Griffin. Oh god, her wages. What was she going to do?

  First question, Lily. She was supposed to go to nursery – should she pull her out? But she was probably safer there than anywhere, with the chain-link fence, and one-in one-out collection policy, that in the past had felt to Rachel like ridiculous overkill, but which now was a godsend. What next? The money? If she went to the police, the first thing they’d do was bring in Konrad, and there was no way she could do that to him, not after how she’d acted last night. Even thinking that her wages were gone for good made her want to weep. Mark would help them out, he’d have to. He was picking up Lily today, so she’d ask him later, when she went to get her. It was time to tell him about Griffin as well, although she might leave out the bit about trying to meet him. She wasn’t sure yet. She’d see.

  She flipped onto her front, wishing she could stay asleep for the whole day, pull the sheets over her head and block out the world. She slid her hand under the pillow – and yelped at a sharp pain.

  She pulled her hand out, stared at the slash running over the ball of her thumb, and jammed it in her mouth. Her fingers trembled against her forehead as she probed the wound with her tongue, the metal taste of her blood tainting her saliva.

  What was that? Some kind of trap?

  She knocked her pillow aside and saw the ceramic vegetable knife from the kitchen, the white blade stained red. She lifted the handle like it was the tail of a dead mouse she thoug
ht might still be alive. Obviously, she’d freaked out during her Ambien haze, gone downstairs, found the knife, brought it back to bed and hid it under the pillow, all without waking up. As you do. It was a miracle she wasn’t lying here with slashed wrists.

  ‘Mummy? Why you sleeping here?’

  Rachel pulled the knife under the duvet.

  ‘I – I made a fort. Last night.’

  ‘But you a grown-up. Grown-ups don’t make forts.’

  When the dirty nappy did she become so clever? What happened to being barely able to make a word without drooling? Her three-year-old daughter was outsmarting her.

  In the grey light, she noticed Lily’s lip quiver. ‘Mummy? Are you hurt?’

  She looked down. Her cut hand was out of the duvet. Blood had run down her finger and collected in her palm.

  ‘It’s nothing, angel. I just need a plaster. You get back in bed, and I’ll come for a snuggle.’

  Lily still looked unsure, and stayed where she was, until Rachel shooed her back in her room and closed the door. The knife. She gathered it in the duvet and flung the lot in her bedroom. Next, her cut.

  As she hunted for plasters in the bathroom cabinet, she spotted the money box in the bath. It was open, the bags of medication strewn about. Some had been emptied, the blister strips from inside neatly stacked, while others had been ripped apart, like her stash had been raided by a junkie raccoon.

  What had she been looking for? What had she taken? Best not think about it too much – she’d never know now anyway. She rushed the pills back into the box. Sort them out later. Better yet, bin the lot.

  She got into bed with Lily and brought the duvet tighter around them, the comfort of having her warm little body beside her finally slowing her heart. If only she could stop time and live in this moment, just her daughter’s morning breath, her beautiful brown eyes, her smile. She’d never want anything else.

  Lily put her hands on Rachel’s cheeks and, her face grave, gave her a kiss on the lips. ‘That means I love you.’

  ‘I should hope so too,’ Rachel replied, kissing her back.

  ‘You’re my favourite mummy.’ Lily crinkled her nose and shook her head. ‘I don’t like my new mummy. She looks funny.’

  Rachel felt a crunch of anxiety deep in her core.

  ‘Your new mummy?’

  ‘It’s a secret,’ Lily said, working out her hand and pressing a finger to her lips. ‘Shhhhh.’

  ‘What’s a secret?’

  ‘Daddy said not to tell.’

  She pictured Mark in his new smart clothes, his preppy jumper and chinos. Was he leading a double life? Did he have a wife and kids shacked up somewhere in the suburbs? And what? He was behind it all? He was trying to drive her mad so he could steal Lily and add her to his other family? Good one, brain! Outdone yourself this time. Couldn’t they have been playing families with her toys? Or maybe her daughter was making up nonsense, what with her being three years old.

  Except… was it so impossible?

  What if everything he’d ever told her was a lie?

  ‘Come on, sweetness,’ Rachel said, taking her arm, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘You can tell me.’

  ‘Let’s go downstairs.’

  ‘Just tell me, okay?’

  ‘Off me, Mummy. You’re hurting.’

  Rachel’s fingers sprang back. She stared at her hands in horror as Lily rolled away, off the side of the bed.

  Have you finally lost it?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  eMAR

  After she dropped Lily at nursery – on time, for once – she set off for work. Her shift didn’t start until nine, so she ran the long way, skirting Parliament Hill, London city rising in the distance, the cold morning misting her breath, the metronome motion of her arms and legs soothing her mind. It was good to be out, the fresh air blowing away the residual grogginess from those sleeping pills. And whatever else she’d maybe taken. That had to stop.

  She needed some support, but from who? Spence was in Greece. As for Becca, on top of her performance the other night, which Rachel was still fuming about, her WhatsApp message yesterday, a rather tepid happy birthdat beeyatch :-) xxx, showed how much she really cared. So little that she couldn’t even be bothered to spellcheck birthday.

  That left Mark, who she was going to tell tonight. Except… something was off with him too. The way he was with her when she rang him yesterday morning – I’m sick of being your skivvy. And that wasn’t her being paranoid. He’d never spoken to her like that before.

  I don’t like my new mummy.

  No, no way. She wasn’t going back there again. That was just a silly comment, some game they must have been playing.

  If she couldn’t trust Mark, she couldn’t trust anyone.

  Maybe you can’t.

  Rachel rushed into the break room and glanced at the wall clock. Nearly nine. Always ten minutes behind! She didn’t have time for another shower, but she had some wipes in her bag, so that would do. She dug them out along with her rolled nurse’s dress, and was heading for the door when it beeped.

  Linda bustled inside. The ward manager was a motherly woman in her sixties, keen on pastel cardigans and cameo brooches, who seemed to start most sentences by softly saying, well now. Some of the managers Rachel had worked for were ex-matrons who liked to stalk the corridors, helping with admissions or a dressing if it was busy. Not Linda. Although trained as a nurse, she’d spent more than twenty years in admin. Unless Rachel popped into her office to chat about a change to her schedule, or a problem with a patient, once a week at most, she didn’t see her.

  ‘Hi Lin…’ Rachel began, but the sorry-for-the-bad news set of her eyes – it was one of the first things you learned as a nurse – shut her up. A shiver went down her back. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Well now,’ Linda said. She tried to smile reassuringly, but the effect was dampened by the dismay in her voice. ‘Can you come to my office, please? Once you’re dressed.’

  Five minutes later, Rachel was in her uniform and meekly entering Linda’s narrow air-freshened office. How was it possible for her heart to beat like this and not burst through her ribs? It was going so hard she could feel the vibrations in her tongue. Something had happened – but what? The photo? Had Griffin distributed it round the NHS? Did Linda think she’d brought the ward into disrepute?

  ‘Take a seat, please,’ she said.

  Rachel sat stiffly in the plastic chair while Linda laboured over logging into the eMAR software, using only two fingers. She was one of those women who kept the same healthy snacks on her desk for years, a box of Ryvita thins, an opened packet of pumpkin seeds, but the amounts in the packaging never went down. They were probably only there to be stared at glumly once all the Maltesers were gone.

  ‘Well now,’ Linda said, turning the monitor so they could both see the screen.

  Rachel leaned in, but all she saw was the eMAR dashboard – buttons to add new records, to edit existing records, to run a report. She felt her shoulders relax. Maybe this was nothing to do with her. Maybe the student nurse wasn’t updating her patient records properly, and Linda wanted Rachel to keep a closer eye. It could even be about the software itself; in the six months they’d been using it, it was already more despised than a Clinical Commissioning Group. The fields were forever freezing, and occasionally a record deleted when you saved it. Not great when a patient may be taking ten types of medication over a day.

  ‘We’ve found an issue with your records,’ Linda went on. ‘Some of them are… incorrect.’

  Rachel’s pulse kicked up again. Once or twice, when she’d been in a massive rush to get away, Bel or Spence had filled them in for her, but that was so rare as to be inconsequential. And besides, they were as conscientious as she.

  ‘Let me show you,’ Linda said, opening a slim brown patient file beside the keyboard. She copied the name into the search field, double-checking the page on every letter.

  ‘It’s the software,’ Rache
l said, as the search ran. ‘Everyone hates it. It keeps freezing. Sometimes–’

  ‘Please,’ Linda said in a harsh tone Rachel had never heard from her before. ‘You’ll have a chance to respond in a moment.’

  Chance to respond? What was going on? The page loaded. She scanned the screen. Everything looked okay; the medication fields were filled with sufficient details. ‘I still–’

  Linda held up the folder. ‘They don’t correlate.’

  A wave of dizziness slammed into her. ‘What – what do mean?’

  ‘The medication details are not the same between here and here. And this isn’t the only example. On some days there are no records entered for your shift at all! Don’t you realise how vital good record-keeping is to patient care? Don’t you understand you could kill–’

  ‘No. No, no, no – wait.’ Rachel thrust out her hands, waving them as though trying to stop a car reversing over her. ‘I’m being stalked by someone, by a man. He’s trying to ruin my life.’

  Linda frowned at her for a long second, then said, carefully, ‘While I appreciate you may be having personal problems, nurse, you must ensure that they do not affect the quality and standard of your care.’

  Rachel sat back, feeling her cheeks go red. ‘It’s not… I don’t…’

  ‘If you are not emotionally fit to be on the ward, then you need to make that clear. There are processes in place to assist with your mental well-being, and I can certainly put you in touch with the correct resources, if you require. But I cannot allow you to put the health of our patients at risk in this manner. So while I’m sympathetic to–’