Being

by Kevin Brooks

  He nodded.

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good.’ I put down Cooper’s pistol, placing it on the trolley beside me, then I gave Casing another short jab in the belly. ‘If I think anything’s wrong – anything – I’ll pull the trigger. All right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK – get what you need.’

  With shaking hands, Casing plucked a small box from the instrument tray, opened it up and removed a pre-threaded needle. The blue-black thread trembled in his hand as he held out the needle for me to see. I nodded at him. Then I glanced at Kamal. He was standing over the two unconscious bodies with his hands behind his back.

  ‘I don’t want to hear you move,’ I warned him. ‘OK?’

  He didn’t answer, just bowed a little.

  A final look at Casing, then I leaned back slowly and lay down on the trolley. The pain in my belly reared up, raw and hot, and I couldn’t stop an animal sound escaping from my lungs, a low growl of agony. I was beginning to feel weak now. The bright light above me was burning into my eyes… the gun in my hand was getting heavy. I felt faint. Dizzy. Sick.

  ‘Go on,’ I said to Casing. ‘Do it.’

  Once again, I felt those latexed fingers taking hold of my flesh. And then the pain as the needle started stitching. Pure and sharp – jab… pull… jab… pull… jab… pull…

  I moved to the rhythm – clench… grip… moan… hiss. Feeling the pain. Forcing myself to feel it.

  Feel it.

  Don’t think.

  Just feel it.

  I had to feel the pain to stop myself thinking. I didn’t want to think. What’s happening to me? What’s going on? What am I? No, I couldn’t allow myself to think those things, not then. It would have killed me. All I could do was swallow it up, stick it in a hole in the darkest corner of my mind and try to ignore it.

  But it was still there.

  Dazzling in its horror.

  If I’m not normal – what am I?

  The answers were unthinkable: robot, automaton, android, cyborg, beast, machine, alien – no no no no no no no no… get those things out of your head… get them out, get them out, GET THEM OUT!

  Just feel the pain.

  See?

  How can you feel the pain if you’re anything but a sentient being?

  How can you be anything else?

  You have lived. You have hurt and bled. You have seen things and heard things and felt things and done things. You have considered yourself. You have a self. A mind, a body, a consciousness. You have memories. You remember things.

  Memory is life.

  You have lived.

  You are alive.

  You eat, you drink, you breathe.

  You shit, you piss, you fart.

  You hurt.

  What else can you be but human?

  ‘That’s it. Done.’

  I didn’t know where I was for a second.

  Tink. The needle dropped into a metal tray and the tiny sound brought everything back into focus. Professor Casing – anxious eyes and bloodied hands. Kamal – waiting calmly, quiet and still. And me. They were both looking at me. I sat up slowly, with just a slight groan, and looked at my stomach. It was ugly. Badly stitched and smeared with strange colours – yellowy-black, dirty red, pink and brown. But the wound was closed. The horror inside me was hidden away.

  I gestured for Casing to move back, then I swung my legs round and stepped off the trolley. As my feet hit the floor, my legs gave way. Liquid pressure burst behind my eyes. I leaned on the trolley and sucked in air until the waves of dizziness subsided.

  I was naked.

  I could feel the cold metal of the pistol resting against the bare skin of my thigh.

  I looked at Casing. ‘Get Ryan’s clothes off,’ I told him. ‘Shirt and trousers, jacket, shoes, socks.’

  As Casing knelt down beside Ryan and started wrestling with his clothes, I glanced over at Kamal. He was younger than the others – mid-twenties, maybe. He was quite tall, thin and lean, with a long head, a slender body and loose limbs.

  ‘See all that stuff?’ I said to him, indicating the papers and photographs and videos on the metal table. ‘Find a bag for it.’

  As he moved over to the table and started scooping all the papers and stuff into somebody’s old brown briefcase, I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to think. Clear your mind, I told myself. Think. Reason. Put things in order. Forget all the unknown things, forget all this madness… concentrate on what you know. What do you know? What do you remember?

  I pictured myself leaving the house that morning… putting my coat on, shutting the front door, walking down the street to the bus stop. It was Monday morning, eight o’clock. The skies were grey, the wind was cold… everything was perfectly normal. Bridget was supposed to be driving me to the hospital, but her sister had got sick at the very last moment, so she’d had to rush off to see her, and Pete had already left for work…

  ‘It’s all right,’ I remembered myself saying. ‘I’ll get the bus. I don’t mind.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Bridget had said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, OK… but make sure you get a taxi back.’

  I remembered it all – waiting for the bus, getting on the bus, sitting on the bus… getting to the hospital, showing my appointment card… walking down the endless corridors, following the signs… putting on the hospital gown, sitting in the waiting room… standing at the window, gazing out at the hospital grounds, trying to convince myself that everything was going to be OK… it was just a routine examination… all they were going to do was stick a tube down my throat and take a good look inside my stomach…

  What was there to worry about?

  I opened my eyes and looked down at Ryan. He was almost naked now, only his underwear left. Silk boxers. In the cold light, his skin looked hard and white, like white plastic. Casing was standing over him with his clothes in his arms, looking bemused and out of place. I’m a surgeon, the look on his face said, I don’t carry things.

  ‘Bring them here,’ I told him.

  He shuffled over to me, dropped the clothes on to the trolley, then backed away. I looked across at Kamal. He’d finished putting all the papers and stuff in the briefcase and was standing there looking at me. I told him to leave the briefcase on the table and sit on the floor.

  ‘And you,’ I told Casing, ‘get back over there and face the wall.’

  I started dressing in Ryan’s clothes. Trousers, white shirt, socks, jacket. They were all a bit too big for me, but it felt good to be clothed again. It gave me a sense of security. Cloth against skin. It made me feel human.

  I stepped into the shoes, glanced up, then knelt down and tied the laces. I stood up and stamped my feet, then went over to where Kamal was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  ‘How do I look?’ I asked him.

  He gazed up at me. His mouth was thin-lipped and slightly crooked, and he had small milky-white teeth.

  ‘Fine,’ he said.

  I told him to get up.

  He rose in one lithe movement.

  I said to him, ‘Get Casing’s coat and mask and bring them over here.’

  As Casing removed his white coat and mask and handed them to Kamal, I looked down at Cooper and Ryan, wondering who they were, what they were. What could they be? Police? Government? Some kind of…

  No.

  There wasn’t time.

  I stopped thinking.

  Kamal was approaching me now, bringing me Casing’s white coat and surgical mask. He stopped in front of me, and I reached out to take them.

  Then someone knocked at the door.

  4

  Knock knock knock.

  ‘Hello?’

  Knock knock.

  ‘Sir?’ A woman’s voice. ‘Sir? It’s me – Hayes. Let me in.’

  For a moment or two I just stared at the door, hoping stupidly that if I didn’t do anything – that if I didn’t move or make
a sound – everything would be all right. The knocking would stop. Hayes would go away. Everything would go away.

  But then Hayes started rattling the door handle, pushing and shoving against the locked door. ‘Sir?’ she called out. ‘Mr Ryan… are you in there? What’s going on?’

  And I knew that nothing was going away.

  I pointed the pistol at Casing. ‘Answer it,’ I whispered. ‘Get rid of her.’

  ‘How?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t care – just do it.’

  He stared at me for a second, then started moving towards the door. I followed him across the room and stood with my back against the wall. He looked at me again. I levelled the gun at his head.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ I warned him. ‘If she gets in here, you’re dead.’

  He blinked once, took a deep breath, then unlocked the door and opened it a little way. ‘Yes?’ he said confidently, peering through the gap.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I heard Hayes say. ‘Where’s Ryan? I need to see him.’

  ‘Not now,’ Casing told her, his voice spiked with arrogance. ‘We’re busy.’

  ‘I need to talk to him about –’

  ‘We’re busy,’ Casing snapped. ‘Come back later.’

  Hayes didn’t say anything for a moment, and in the silence I imagined her mind ticking over – assessing what Casing had just said, wondering if she should accept his authority or not. As I kept my eyes fixed on Casing, hoping his confidence would hold up, I could feel something inside me – my heart? – pumping hard.

  Then I heard Hayes say, ‘Tell Ryan that Morris is with Peter Young. Tell him it’s under control. And give him these.’

  I held my breath as Casing nodded and reached out to take something from Hayes, and I listened hard, willing her to turn round and leave. I heard the scuff of a shoe… a single step… a slight pause… then the slap of busy footsteps disappearing down an empty corridor.

  I breathed out.

  Pete’s here, I thought to myself for a moment. Pete’s here, Pete’s here, Pete’s here…

  But I knew it didn’t mean anything.

  Pete was nowhere. A million miles away.

  Casing closed the door and passed me a tattered brown folder. His arrogance had gone again now. His eyes were full of self-pity. ‘Your records,’ he said wearily.

  I took the folder from him and put it in the briefcase with the rest of the stuff.

  ‘Lie down on the floor,’ I told him.

  He looked at me.

  I stared back at him.

  He lowered himself to the floor.

  I turned to Kamal. ‘Anaesthetize him.’

  While Kamal crouched down and stuck a needle in the back of Casing’s hand, I put on the surgeon’s white coat and hung his surgical mask round my neck. A dull pain gripped my stomach for a moment, like the jab of a short blunt knife. It didn’t hurt very much, but it felt really weird – as if it didn’t quite belong to me. It felt like someone else’s pain… but inside me.

  I didn’t want to think about it.

  I closed my eyes. Breathed in, breathed out.

  I was so tired now. Drained and exhausted. I didn’t want to do this any more – acting tough, ordering people around, trying to keep control… it was too hard. I didn’t want to do anything. All I wanted to do was sink down to the floor and go to sleep. Go to sleep, wake up in the morning and start all over again. But I knew I couldn’t. I had to get out of that room. Get out. Get out. Go somewhere else. If I didn’t, I might as well be dead. And I didn’t want to be dead.

  When I opened my eyes again, Kamal was standing over Casing’s unconscious body, looking at me.

  ‘Have you got a car?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In the car park.’ He waved his hand. ‘At the back.’

  ‘How far is it? How do we get there from here?’

  ‘This is the basement,’ he explained. ‘There is a back exit, a fire door. The car park is just outside.’

  ‘Can we get out without being seen?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know who is here. These people… I don’t know.’

  I really didn’t care any more. I just wanted to go. Get out of that room. Go somewhere else.

  I grabbed the briefcase from the table and took one last look at the scene I was leaving behind: three unconscious bodies, a trolley, machinery, instruments… madness. I went over and emptied the tray of scalpels and needles into the briefcase, then beckoned Kamal to the door.

  ‘We’re going to walk out of here,’ I told him. ‘You and me… we’re going to walk out to the car park, get in your car and drive away – OK?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You go first,’ I told him. ‘Walk in front of me. Not too fast and not too slow. Don’t say anything to anybody. The pistol’s in my pocket. I’ll use it if I have to – all right?’

  His brown eyes looked back at me. ‘I understand.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, gripping the pistol and nodding at the door. ‘Open it.’

  I watched him as he cautiously opened the door. He moved very slowly, as if this might be his very last moment, and just for a second I thought it might be mine too. We could both see it happening – the gunshot, the scream, the rush of armed guards – and we both stopped breathing as the door inched open…

  But nothing happened.

  No sound.

  No movement.

  Kamal paused for a second, breathing out quietly and steadying himself, then he breathed in again, opened the door a bit wider and peered outside. He looked left and right, then left and right again.

  ‘Is anyone there?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head. ‘No one. It’s empty.’

  ‘OK, let’s go.’

  I followed him out into a low arched corridor. A bare light hung from the ceiling, showing white brick walls and a grey stone floor. The air was chilled. To our left, the corridor ran straight for about fifteen metres, then turned a corner. To our right, ten metres away, another corridor crossed at a junction.

  ‘This way,’ Kamal said, moving off to the right.

  I closed the door and followed him. At the junction, we turned right again into another brick corridor that led us down a gentle slope past several closed doors. ‘What is this place?’ I asked Kamal.

  ‘Mostly storage rooms,’ he said. ‘The laundry. There is a boiler room somewhere, I think.’

  His voice was soft and precise, tinged with an accent I couldn’t quite place.

  We walked on.

  My legs didn’t feel too steady, and I was leaning slightly to one side to ease the pain in my stomach. The hard soles of my shoes – Ryan’s shoes – were slapping unevenly on the sloping stone floor. Sallap slap sallap slap. Ahead of me, Kamal was walking quietly.

  ‘How much further?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not far.’

  We’d almost reached the end of the corridor when a porter pushing a laundry basket came round a corner. A hefty blond-haired man with a stubbled jaw, he was smoking a cigarette and kicking irritably at one of the basket wheels, trying to make the trolley run straight.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ I whispered to Kamal. ‘Just keep walking.’

  When the porter looked up and saw us – doctor and anaesthetist – he snatched the cigarette out of his mouth and hid it behind his back. Kamal nodded his head at him, and the porter returned a false grin. I couldn’t do anything. I just stared straight ahead, trying to look like a doctor, my hand sweating on the grip of the pistol in my pocket.

  The laundry basket squeaked and rattled as the porter passed us by.

  At the end of the corridor, Kamal turned left and led me up a short flight of steps. At the top of the steps was a door.

  Kamal stopped.

  ‘Is this it?’ I asked him.

  He nodded. ‘The door leads out to the car park.’

  I looked at the door – it was closed, barred. FIRE/SMOKE DOOR, it said, DO N
OT BLOCK OPEN.

  ‘Is it alarmed?’ I said.

  Kamal looked at me.

  ‘The door,’ I said. ‘Does it have an alarm?’

  He shook his head and shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  I thought about it for a moment, but quickly decided it didn’t matter.

  ‘Open it,’ I told him.

  It was dark outside. Early evening. The darkness surprised me. A light rain was falling – misty and black, like spider silk. We were standing at the edge of a small rectangular courtyard at the back of the hospital. The main hospital building – a towering monolith of concrete and glass – stretched up into the night sky behind us. There were office buildings either side of us and an area of open ground in front. Soft white lights glowed in the distance.

  As we moved out into the rainy night and headed across the courtyard, a pigeon flapped in the dark, then settled again.

  I followed Kamal down a path that ran alongside the rain-snaked windows of empty offices. Through the windows I could see desks and computers waiting for the next day to begin.

  It was Monday evening.

  The next day was a long way away.

  Nothing happened as I followed Kamal into the car park. The rain fell silently, the sky was black, the air smelled faintly of smoke. It was hard to believe that anything was wrong.

  I took the gun from my pocket and held it down at my side.

  ‘Which is yours?’ I asked Kamal, scanning the cars.

  ‘The white Fiesta,’ he said, reaching into his pocket for his keys.

  We walked across to the car and stopped beside it.

  ‘Open the passenger door first,’ I told him.

  He opened the door, then walked round to the driver’s side.

  ‘Open it and get in,’ I told him.

  As he opened the door, I leaned inside the car and placed the briefcase on the back seat. I took off the white coat and stuffed it behind the passenger seat, put the gun in my jacket pocket, then got into the car. A blunt pain gripped me again for a second and I could feel something cold dripping beneath my shirt. The pain eased as I slumped into the seat.

  The car was a mess: books, CDs, newspapers, empty Coke cans, sweet wrappers, all kinds of rubbish all over the place. The floor was littered with empty cigarette packets and the dashboard ashtray was heaped with cigarette ends.