Mr. Nobody(95)
“And we’d need to remove it? This cyst?” he asks finally.
I measure my response. These are hardly clinical conditions. What I have is only a theory, but a cyst might be fixable. “Matthew, I think—I’m not certain—but I think you possibly can be cured. There’s an operation we can do. But we’d need a neurosurgeon, you’d have to go back to the hospital with me, we’d have to do tests.”
“An operation?”
“Yes. But in the hospital. We’d take it out and, if I’m right, the episodes would stop. The resets. I’m confident they would stop.” As confident as a hostage can be about anything.
I watch the light in his eyes burn bright for a moment, then implode as he realizes what the price of this operation will be. He’ll need to go back to the hospital. Other people would become involved. This is not the answer he wanted. This is not part of the plan. He would be anesthetized pre-op and then God knows if anyone would even operate on him or if he’d go straight into custody. I’d be long gone when he woke and he’d be left with nothing. All this for nothing. I see him think it through, the careful plan he made for himself falling away beneath him. Curing him means he gets caught. He would lose his freedom. I watch him realize he can’t ever escape this situation.
And as if on cue, deep in my coat pocket my hospital pager bursts to life. I jump as the piercing bleeps cut through the silence of the small house. I’d forgotten all about it. Adrenaline suddenly courses through both of us; Matthew’s eyes narrow hawklike as I fish the violently vibrating object from my coat and quickly flick it off. I hold his gaze, my breath high in my chest. We both know what that sound means—someone has noticed I’m not where I should be, someone is looking for me. I place the silenced pager gently on the wooden floor between us, a peace offering, a trust exercise. We both look down at its retro bulk sitting there, an undeniable reality between us.
When Matthew finally looks back up at me, I see there’s a new brand of sadness in his eyes. That’s when I realize we aren’t going back to the hospital. He isn’t going to have an operation, that isn’t going to happen for either of us. He’s made his decision. And that is when I run.
I bolt wildly for the door, and for a bright and shining second, I feel certain I’ll make it. I feel certain he’s letting me escape—after all we’ve said, after everything that’s happened, somehow I’ve won my freedom. Then his body collides with mine and I slam down hard onto the floor. The breath is torn from me. My body pinned beneath him, he lets me kick and flail for a moment.
“Sorry, Emma,” he whispers as he grasps my hair and raises my head. Everything goes black.
45
CHRIS POOLE
DAY 13—DIRECTIONS
Chris pulls into the lay-by Rhoda left less than thirty minutes ago. The shingle roars as he brakes and bursts from the car. Phone in hand, he bounds out toward the shoreline, eyes desperately searching for two figures.
As he nears the opening out onto the sand he tries Emma’s mobile again. Still no signal; he pockets the phone and scans the dunes ahead. He scrambles up a bank, grabbing clumps of snow-crusted grass as leverage to pull himself up the steep slope. He rises panting to the top, hair buffeted in the wind, and searches the glistening sand in all directions.
There’s no one on the beach.
“Shit.” He fishes out his phone. One bar of signal. He dials Emma’s number again. It rings. He waits to hear the soft hum of her voice picking up. Perhaps everything is fine now, perhaps she’s okay and she’s gone back to the hospital, he thinks. Rhoda told him Matthew had disappeared and they’d come here to find him. Perhaps Emma found him already, perhaps they went back.
Emma’s phone diverts to voicemail.
Chris curses. Emma asked for him specifically, Rhoda said. She didn’t want the police. Chris frowns, his features to the wind, the roar of it around him. What the hell is going on? She might still be here, they could have walked around the cove. Chris recalls his strange first meeting with Matthew on this beach two weeks ago. Yes, they might have walked farther.
He bounds down the dune, and heads out in the direction of the bend in the shoreline, covering large stretches of sand with each stride.
Then he sees something ahead.
He pulls up short. There are fresh footprints in the sand. Small footprints first. Female. But a long stride. A female, running. He follows the footprints out, running alongside them now, out toward the shoreline. The woman’s footprints meet with another set. Larger, male. A man. The prints move in a wide semicircle, a dance, a conversation. This is where she found him.
Chris follows the movements of that meeting. The two seemed to come together and then the male prints lead the female away. The stride is slow; she wasn’t chasing, she was following. The male ahead of the female. Her following him. Strange for a doctor to follow a patient. Chris jogs alongside the tracks, looks ahead; the steps seem to lead toward the main car park.
Chris bursts into a run.
He skids to a stop on the edge of the car park. Unlike the windblown beach, the whole car park is still covered in deep snow, and the two sets of footprints are crisp and clearly defined in its unspoiled canvas. Farther out he sees the tire tracks, the speckled brown of gravel visible beneath the compacted snow.
They left in a car—but, Chris slowly realizes, Emma didn’t have her car with her. And that’s when he knows for sure that something is very wrong with the picture he’s seeing. He races to the tire tracks and slows to study the pattern of footprints around the ghost of the car. What he sees makes his blood run cold. The footprints on the driver’s side are male, not female. Chris might have no medical training, but he’s pretty certain that patients on psych wards should not be driving their doctors. Something very strange happened on that beach, he’s not sure what exactly but he doubts it was a good thing. He pulls out his phone again and dials Emma. The phone goes straight to voicemail.