by A. A. Bell
‘It’s a brand-new day, Mira. Anything’s possible. I’ll speak to Matron and the kitchen staff for you. Now try not to be so bleak. You’ll ruin my already rusty reputation as a social worker.’
‘You mean case worker.’
‘Not exactly.’ He straightened her ponytail, startling her briefly. ‘It depends a lot on who I’m working with. For example, at the moment my job is to help you become more socially interactive with the other women who’ll be moving into your ward this week. Most of them will be much older than you, but I want to get you all started on a range of fun programs and activities to help you become a self-supporting community. And in the meantime, I’ll be doing one-on-one sessions with you to boost your personal skills and confidence.’
Her chair rolled unexpectedly — towards the door, she guessed. She gripped onto the arms in case he crashed her into anything. He was still talking.
‘. at your own pace of course, starting right after your appointment with the VIPs this morning. Lucky us,’ he added as he pushed her into the lemon-scented hallway, ‘we can take the long way up, through the breeze and sunshiii. Strike that. It’s raining.’
A vision of floodwater jolted her thoughts, as painful as any sting from the Taser. She clenched her eyes tightly behind her blindfold and tried to force out the image.
There’s no such thing as ghost people, she tried to reassure herself. It’s all in my head.
Her fingers and feet crossed automatically to deny the lie that might otherwise confuse her perception of what was real.
‘Oh, just a sun shower,’ he corrected. ‘So you have a choice.’ He drew her wheelchair to a halt and she heard the doors chime in a nearby elevator. ‘There are three ways to get to the admin building from here, although I’m guessing you don’t want to hitch a ride in the golf buggy with Neville, so we’ll scratch option one. Option two: we can take the elevator up two levels and use the covered overpasses from building to building. Or option three: we can take the path through the rose gardens, provided you don’t mind getting a little drizzle on your face.’
‘You’re letting me choose?’
‘Sure; why not? I don’t mind getting wet if you don’t. In fact I enjoy it.’
Me too, she thought, but her mind clouded with suspicion. ‘I lost my privileges to choose anything.’
‘Nobody will know except you and me.’
She sighed, still suspecting a trick.
‘Shall I flip a coin?’ he asked.
Clothes rustled behind her, then coins jingled with a bunch of keys.
‘Heads, we take the garden path; tails, the covered overpass.’
Skin slapped against skin.
‘It’s heads. Last chance to argue?’
A jolt of excitement thrilled her as the chance for freedom lurched unexpectedly closer. The paththrough the garden would take her close to the main gate, but what would she have to do to him in order to escape? Her stomach tightened as dread tempered her excitement.
‘Oh, well,’ he said, rolling her towards the garden. ‘I’m happy to take silence as consent.’
FOUR
Another scream, male this time, issued directly from a third-floor window of the administration building.
Leaping onto the covered steps, Zhou shook a light cobweb of rain out of his long black hair. Raking the unruliest strands with his fingers, he brought two lengths forward to ensure that his scarred ears remained hidden.
He paused at the great timber door and looked up, his instincts warning him to back away, but Mitch Van Danik and their two plain-clothed bodyguards didn’t hesitate. Van Danik shoved open the door, stepping over tins of paint in the reception hall and dodging workmen, ladders and a long plank to get to the enquiries counter.
Zhou followed the same paint-splattered path, escorted front and rear by the two guards, both playing their parts as medical assistants, carrying the doctors’ bulging bags of equipment, while nonchalantly keeping a hand free for their concealed weapons.
No sign of the receptionist. The green chair, desk plant and counter had all been packaged up like individual presents in clear plastic and duct tape. Sohad the visitors’ bell and the sign instructing them to ring if the desk was unattended.
Van Danik reached for the bell and discovered the receptionist must have had a cruel sense of humour. The clapper inside it had been padded with more plastic and duct tape. He shook it, but the bell made no sound.
As if in response to the silent knell, a door opened further down the hallway.
‘Hello!’ called a portly young woman with porcelain-pale skin. She waddled towards them in a blue nurse’s uniform with a plunging collar that accentuated her ample attributes.
Zhou was distracted only briefly by her dress and the electric blue and black streaks in her tastefully spiked hair, his professional training homing automatically to her shrivelled left arm, elastic knee support and the tall rubber heel of her right shoe which compensated for a lack of four inches in height for that leg.
Van Danik bristled and shifted his feet uncomfortably as she approached. ‘We’re here to see the matron, honey,’ he said. ‘Save your efforts and let her know we’re here, please?’
‘You’re looking at her, honey. And it’s no effort.’ She sized up Van Danik with a cheeky smile. The gold badge on her collar introduced her as Matron Madonna Sanchez. ‘You must be Doctor Mitchell Van Danik. Colonel Kitching warned me about you, but who could have imagined that anyone could grow so big with such a tragic case of foot-in-mouth?’ Her wink disarmed him of a reply, while her hearty handshake, with her good hand, turned his cheeks pink with embarrassment.
‘Oh, ah, sorry. call me Mitch,’ he flustered.
‘His sweet tooth is an even bigger problem,’ Zhou said, offering his hand to shake too. ‘I’m Zander
Zhou, the project leader. I’ll keep him in line, I assure you. And these are our associates, Private Adam Lockman and Sergeant Hank Hawthorn.’
‘Of course.’ The matron’s attention diverted only briefly from the two doctors. ‘The colonel warned me to expect a pair of comedians but I’d assumed that was his own sense of humour.’
Zhou nodded. ‘You’d be right, Ms Sanchez; the colonel is a little odd in that department. Rest assured we take our jobs very seriously but we’d been expecting an appointment with Matron Harriet Turtledove, who sounded very much older than you when I spoke briefly to her over the phone a few months ago.’
‘Oh, didn’t the colonel tell you?’
Zhou shrugged. ‘We’ve been overseas and out of the loop.’
‘Harriet retired four months ago, but she briefed me on Colonel Kitching’s long personal association with Serenity and the strictly hands-off nature of your line of questioning. Otherwise, I would have overturned her decision to let you work here. A health survey by military scientists reeks a little too strongly of experimentation for my liking, so if I find out it’s anything different, you’d better have your lawyers and battleships on stand-by. Am I clear?’
‘Absolutely,’ Zhou replied. ‘There’s no foundation for concern, Matron. We’ll be here and gone in under a fortnight. A week, hopefully.’
She nodded and waddled behind the reception counter, where she opened a drawer, withdrew a handful of pre-printed VIP nametags and handed them around, along with a clipboard register that they needed to sign as visitors.
‘I know the colonel was hoping his brother might choose to participate,’ she said, ‘but there’s still hope. Ibelieve the persona Freddie’s recently adopted suggests a willingness to change his spots, so to speak.’
‘Pardon?’ Zhou said, momentarily stunned. ‘I wasn’t aware the colonel had a brother here.’
‘Oh, well. ‘ She blushed. ‘Client confidentiality is paramount, of course, but the fact that Freddie lives here is hardly a national secret. I’ve no doubt he’ll make himself known to you soon enough. He certainly knows that you’re here. He’s been protesting all week.’
‘Protesting?’ Z
hou asked. ‘Why?’
‘Same concerns as me, mostly.’ Her expression softened unexpectedly. ‘It’s nothing you need worry about as a security threat. Freddie protests against everything, from the taste of his wake-up juice to the colour of sunsets.’
She motioned for them to follow her to the end of the hall. ‘I’ve reserved a room for you on the third floor of B-block. This way. Sorry about the painters,’ she added. ‘This should all be cleaned away by tomorrow.’
The stairs spiralled up as well as down into darkness. Sanchez switched on a light and headed up with the sprite of a teenager. ‘This place was desperate for a makeover, I can tell you.’
‘Is your festival a showcase of your facelift?’ Zhou asked.
‘That’s the plan, but not my priority. Healthy homes make for healthy minds, bodies and families.’
‘That’s quite a family,’ Zhou remarked. ‘Almost five hundred volunteers made me wonder what your total population might be?’
‘Nearly twice that, but only twelve are exercising their rights to abstain — like Freddie Kitching. The rest are too ill or unsuitable. I was an orphan myself, you know, but now, as matron, I’m their legal guardian, which is why I just referred to them all as family.’
Zhou reached the second floor behind her, to hear many voices shouting from an adjacent hall. Then one shrill woman’s voice sounded above the others: ‘The raging rocks and shivering shocks shall break the locks of prison stocks!’
‘Shakespeare?’ asked Van Danik.
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ agreed the youngest of their group, Private Lockman. ‘Not the classic version, which doesn’t rhyme so much.’
Van Danik glanced at him, as if surprised that a young soldier and culture could mix without precipitating a toxic sediment.
‘Rhymes make the lines easier to pronounce and remember,’ Sanchez said.
A well-padded man dressed as a sixteenth-century weaver burst into the hallway. He waved to the matron as he ran past with a jolly crowd of toga-clothed peasants hot on his tail, wielding branches and rulers as weaponry.
‘That’s Shakespeare, Grenada style,’ Sanchez explained. ‘Punishment by a critical audience is all part of the performance.’
‘Tough crowd,’ Zhou replied. ‘But doesn’t that encourage violence?’
‘Not in this neighbourhood. Closely supervised, it’s akin to sport. King Oberon is my chief medical officer, while a few other cast members are nurses, and I’ll be the Greek sea nymph who narrates other skits between acts. All for a worthy cause, obviously. I’ll put you down for four tickets.’
‘Ah, but I —’ Van Danik started.
‘Can’t wait?’ she replied. ‘Glad to hear it.’
She reached the top floor and ushered them into the first room that was open. The tables and chairs were arranged as in a school classroom, with a cardboard box placed conspicuously on one of the tables.
‘My staff will ensure that you’re never left alone with a client,’ she said, ‘but please remember, gentlemen, that you’re the outsiders here. You haven’t just come into a hospital; you’re inside a home now. Most of our residents are new, but others were sent here years ago when the place was an asylum, for petty crimes that couldn’t be dealt with elsewhere. So please guard your belongings, and be aware that some of our residents may become even more frustrated with you than you may get with them. Be patient, though, for here, but for the roll of the DNA dice, live you.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Van Danik agreed, still attempting to recover his graces with her, ‘the chaos of quantum mechanics is often unkind.’ He smiled, but her expression failed to soften.
‘I prefer to think that we each have our own hell to conquer, and forewarned is forearmed. Get my drift?’
She flicked on the fluorescent lights, adjusted the blinds to let in more natural light, despite it being heavily overcast outside, and opened the cardboard box, from which she took and opened five packets of red jelly snakes. ‘Let me know if you run low. There’s plenty more where these came from.’
Van Danik reached for one, but she slapped his hand as though he were a naughty child.
‘Your coffee and fruit trays are on their way. These are for clients. Only a small token, obviously, but something I’m sure you won’t mind administering?’
‘Of course,’ Zhou said. ‘Thanks again, Matron.’
He signalled for Hawthorn and Lockman to set down the equipment bags on the desks but noticed she didn’t leave. ‘Was there anything else?’
‘Yes, actually.’ Her expression grew serious. ‘If you find anything medically suspicious with any clients, as their legal guardian I expect to be the first to know.’
She waited until she had nods from all four of them, then headed for the hall, promising to return in five minutes with the first client in order to lead by example.
Zhou waited until her footsteps had faded down the stairs, then glanced at Van Danik. ‘Maybe I should have explained that our results are confidential, even from her?’
Van Danik shrugged and stole a jelly snake. ‘That’s Colonel Kitching’s department. We’ll have enough problems if she figures out that our health survey is more than a health survey.’
As the wheelchair splashed through a puddle, Mira stayed alert to every sound and movement around her: electronic doors sliding closed behind them, a chorus of frogs to her left, and a muffled ringtone ahead.
‘Bump,’ Ben warned, almost too late. A hollow-sounding timber ramp took them up a short slope and onto another cobbled path.
A fine mist of rain dampened her cheeks; the first time she’d felt it in a decade.
Stretching her hands wide of the chair on each side and hoping to catch a wet leaf, she did; from a damp thicket that smelled like honey. She plucked a leaf and sucked the raindrops off it before Ben could stop her.
‘Hey, that could be poisonous!’
‘Such a sweet death, though! It’s like runny honey!’ Grinning, she leaned with both hands into the bushes as they sped along, but he swerved the chair aside, running one wheel off the path to put the plants out of reach.
‘Hey, I only want a flower!’ she complained.
‘I’m serious!’
‘But it’s only honeysuckle. Can’t you smell it?’
‘No, but...’ He slowed their pace and returned bothwheels to the path. ‘Go on. Now that you mention it, I heard that all the toxic plants were removed from the grounds when Matron Sanchez started renovations.’
‘Oh?’ She tried to hide a sudden jolt of disappointment. ‘Not the boronias too? They’re not poisonous, are they?’
‘The what?’
‘The woody hedge with little brown flowers.’ She envisioned it plump with buds, just as it had been the first day she’d arrived. ‘It was outside the gate.’ Inside too, but she didn’t want to let him suspect that she could follow the hedge around the circular driveway to the gate, then downhill to freedom — if only she could get rid of him. ‘It smells like lemons.’
Turning up her nose, though, she could only smell the wet honeysuckle, a fresh deposit of horse manure nearby and an assortment of roses. Faintly, from the right, she could hear the static-impaired call of a horse race, along with the lengthy flap of a page turning, not unlike that of an overly large newspaper.
‘Lucky you.’ He manoeuvred around a sharp S-bend and splashed through another puddle. ‘There’s still a hedge out there. I didn’t notice any lemon smell as I came in — it doesn’t really smell like anything.’
‘Only a quarter of people can smell them.’
‘Do you mean only blind people, or only a quarter of blind people?’
‘Did I say blind people? No. I said people, as in a quarter of all people. It has to do with genetics, not how well noses can compensate for vision loss. I’m not as stupid as you think.’
‘I never suggested you were stupid. A little touchy maybe. How did you know the flowers were brown, though?’
‘Don’t ask stupid questions
.’ She tapped her nose. ‘I wasn’t always blind.’
‘Argh!’ He braked the wheelchair to a halt in a place where the sound of a tin roof intercepted the light rain. ‘I almost forgot.’
Mira heard pages flipping, then felt him fossicking through a pocket at the rear of the wheelchair.
‘Damn, I knew it.’
She chewed on her lip, realising that he must be onto her escape plan, as fledgling as it was.
‘I forgot to collect an extract from my staff file this morning,’ he said. ‘We’ll need it for my half of our session with the VIPs. Unfortunately, you’re categorised as a red-tag client, which means I can’t take you into the admin building unless. well, unless you’re sufficiently sedated or restrained.’
She sighed, knowing his only other option was to take her back to her cell first.
‘Sorry, Mira. It’s a safety precaution for you too. Scissors and other sharp desk items can be dangerous if you make a grab for them. Even flower vases in the hall. Unless...?’
‘I know; unless you lock me back in my cell.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep referring to your room like that. It’s painted such bright colours now. And yes, I know that’s no use to you, and no, that’s not what I meant anyway. Actually, I was hoping you wouldn’t lodge a complaint against me if I left you out here alone.’
‘Out here? Is that a trick?’
‘Not completely alone. There’s a guard at the big gate to your right.’
‘You can’t leave me out here. It’s not allowed; stop teasing!’
‘I’m not teasing. Look, you’ll be fine. The file I need should only be two rooms down the hall on the ground floor. I’ll be five minutes tops. Okay?’
He manoeuvred her wheelchair again until herknees bumped into a low woody shrub. The familiar scent of lemons shook loose from the flowers to greet her.
‘There are no thorns in these so you can safely pick a whole bunch... if you’d like?’
Stunned, she couldn’t think of anything to say. Surely he had to recognise this as the same plant that grew outside the main gate? If he’d parked her under the awning that guarded the front steps to the main building, as she suspected he had, then it should have been even more obvious, since the same hedge led all the way from captivity to freedom; or it had on the day she’d arrived.
