Mr. Nobody(38)
* * *
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That afternoon Rhoda finds another story in the papers. The tone suddenly different from before. They use her name. She realizes that the questions she was asked in the lobby by the reporters on that first night have been threaded into this article. She knows now she shouldn’t have spoken to those reporters. Her words sound foolish at this remove.
Thankfully, she sees it first, before the rest of the hospital staff. She’s set a Google alert, to know when to get the paper; her niece had shown her how to over Christmas.
Somehow they’d managed to get a picture of Matthew walking in the garden. He’s not wearing his puffer jacket in the picture, so it must have been taken the day before, the day he moved to the psychiatric ward. She has no idea how they took the photo; no one noticed a photographer on the closed ward. You’d think someone might have seen them, she thinks, but then that wasn’t usually something they had to worry about at Princess Margaret’s. That would have to change from now on.
The article accompanying the picture was wrong, Rhoda thought. This time they hadn’t got it right.
The picture was misleading. It showed Matthew, his dark hair tousled, his jaw stubbled, standing in the ward’s garden, his face contented, calm, his good looks somehow more pronounced against the rich greens of the bushes. And in his hand, its text clearly visible, one of her books from the library, a book she knows he only happened to be holding, just one of many language books he’d tried to look through that day. In the picture Matthew is holding a Ukrainian language book.
On the fifth day the story hits the national headlines. More details about Rhoda herself, about Matthew’s new name, make their way into and across the tabloids and broadsheets. The story of a wandering man with no name found on a beach, a man who did not speak but could disarm a man and defuse an incident. Theories. Appeals to anyone who might recognize him. Questions about how the patient was being dealt with in the hospital.
A video of Rhoda talking to the reporters appears online.
When Rhoda is called into Nick Dunning’s office on the patient’s sixth day and ushered into a seat next to someone from HR, she realizes what the full impact of her words may have been, that she might be part of something much bigger than she had anticipated. The hospital isn’t angry with her, how could they be, she hadn’t been aware that the reporters she’d spoken to had been filming her, on a phone, as she spoke to them. That much was clear from the footage, but as Nick explained firmly, “This can’t happen again.”
Nick calls a general staff meeting. The hospital is crawling with press, and while he understands it isn’t a doctor’s or nurse’s job to act as a bodyguard, he informs them that there will be security on all wards going forward, in light of the current situation and in light of the recent incident on a ward. Protecting patient safety and privacy must be a priority moving forward.
Nick mentions one last thing before the staff mill out: There will be a new doctor coming. A specialist from a London hospital. Someone for Matthew, someone who specializes in his exact condition, an expert.
And to her surprise a little shiver of dread passes through Rhoda as she joins the others shuffling out. The idea of Matthew remembering his real name makes her frightened, because in her heart Rhoda knows that as soon as he remembers who he is he’ll leave.
20
THE MAN
DAY 8—FIRST SIGHT
It’s her.
He sees her as soon as she rounds the corner of the ward, and his skin starts to thrum.
He knew something would be happening today. They brought him to the dayroom earlier than usual this morning. There were less staff on the ward. He’d felt instantly that something was coming.
And now he sees her, striding down the corridor, flesh and bone as real and solid as the building around her. Walking confidently toward the dayroom, toward him. He watches her from his safe position as she stops to talk to someone; she’s too far away yet to notice him. He studies the gentle swish of her chestnut hair, her face in motion, pale and strong. The clean lines of her jaw, her cheekbones. But it is her eyes he can’t stop looking at as they brush over the ward, over nurses, doctors, other patients. Her intelligent eyes, picking up everything, missing nothing. She’s stopped at the nurses’ desk just outside the dayroom. Surreptitiously, he scans the other patients around him. To see if anyone else sees what he sees. Do they too recognize her?
But the other patients are oblivious, they haven’t noticed. His eyes glide back to her, he watches her talking, listening, that open, beautiful face. It’s her. She’s come. For him. He doesn’t remember who she is yet but he knows she is the one he’s been waiting for.
His head wound prickles along his scalp, still not fully healed. With a shudder he remembers the word written on his hand in ink, the word he’d rubbed away.
A warm burst of laughter flutters and snaps him back to the here and now. She’s laughing at something one of the nurses is saying. It’s a generous laugh. He can tell from her body language that it’s not a great joke but she’s invested in them liking her. She wants them to know she’s not a threat, they are safe, all is well. The group she’s talking to relaxes, he watches it happen, they open to her, softening instantly.
And then a realization creeps over him: he can’t remember what it is he has to do. The panic he felt on the beach begins to flex inside him. She’s coming and he can’t remember who she is. All he knows is time is running out, he has to do something. Fear, cold and clinging, grips him as he struggles to remember what it is he’s supposed to do now that he has found her. He knows with crystal clarity this first meeting is crucial. It’s the most important thing he’ll ever do.