CHAPTER THREE

COMA WARD

Girls’ purses had always been an intriguing mystery to Sky. They seemed to carry so much junk in them! Now he wished he’d left it mysterious. Kristin claimed she’d taken most of her stuff out to make room for the five runestones, one quartz chisel, one cigarette lighter, and one hawk. But some sort of brush was definitely digging into him. And the perfume that Kristin wore had doubled in intensity when he’d squirmed earlier on. He had to be lying on a dispenser, each slight shift spraying another burst of fragance onto his feathers. She’d done the zipper almost all the way up, leaving only a slight gap at the top, so there was hardly any unpolluted air. He hadn’t realized hawks could sneeze. Apparently they could, and once they started they couldn’t stop.

The banging motion caused by his cousin’s swift surging through the streets was making him nauseous. Could hawks be sick as well as sneeze? He thought they would be finding out quite soon. How far was this bloody hospital anyway?

Then they did stop…paused, anyway. The bag rose.

“We’re here,” came a whisper. “I’m going in.”

Motion again, the hiss of a pneumatic door, street sounds fading, cut off by another hiss. In the darkness, hawk sight didn’t operate, but powerful hawk hearing kept getting sharper. Heels tapping on a linoleum floor, something being rolled nearby, a squeak from one of its wheels, ten conversations at once: complaints, football results, the weather—typically English, at least five were on that subject. A child ran yelling toward them, a hushing mum in pursuit. Underneath it all, he heard the clear, high-pitched cry of a mouse. He reacted first as a human, with outrage that a mouse should be in a hospital; then as a hawk, with a sudden stab of hunger.

His surroundings halted. He heard Kristin mumbling. She’d rung the hospital to find out where he’d been taken—the coma ward, apparently. “Merrydown, Brookes, X-Ray Department, Electro…there it is! Hanson Ward.”

She turned a hard left; Sky got another squirt of scent. A bell dinged, a door slid open. “Which floor?” came an older male voice.

“Eight, please,” Kristin replied.

The elevator started, soon stopped.

The door opened, closed. Immediately he was lowered, the zipper was unzipped. Light and Kristin were above him. She was wearing a white coat, stolen from Trinity’s laboratory.

“Thank God!” Sky muttered, attempting to squeeze out.

“Not yet,” she said, raising a hand. “Just thought I’d give you some air.”

“About time!” He sneezed. “What the hell is this scent?”

“Oh, sorry. Did I leave it in there?” She sniffed. “It’s called Mystery.”

“It should be called Vomit.”

“Dirk gave it to me.”

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me!”

She reached past him, pulled out one of the objects that had been causing him pain. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Voice recorder.” She flicked a switch. “I examined the draug for signs of decapitation,” she dictated in a formal tone, then smiled. “People don’t like interrupting you when you’re talking. Especially in England.”

Before he could comment further, the elevator slowed, the red number settling on eight. “We’re here.”

Ping! She zipped the bag. Darkness, and Mystery, surrounded him again.

“Hanson Ward, left,” he heard her say confidently. Then her heels were clicking again.

She’s enjoying this, Sky thought, suddenly annoyed. Because he wasn’t, not at all. Apart from the discomfort, every moment away from his human body was hurting him more. No, not hurting. It was almost the reverse, a sort of numbness spreading through him, as if he’d been given some drug that was slowly paralyzing him. It had been seven hours since he’d been “separated.” Of course, he’d wanted to rush straight to the hospital; but when she’d called to ask after him, she’d also discovered that no visitors were allowed anywhere till after 2 p.m. And only immediate family were allowed into Hanson. Cousins didn’t count. Hence the white coat, the Dictaphone…and her obvious enjoyment of the role!

The sound of beeps came, numbers being punched into a keypad. At the same time, Kristin started talking very loudly. “The patient appears blotchy and his temperature is—’scuse me, can you hold that door? Thanks so much!—above normal for the third day in succession. We can almost assume…”

Other footsteps moved away. Her voice trailed off. “Good,” she whispered. “We’re in! Now just find the room….”

He couldn’t feel his claws anymore. The tips of his wings had long gone. And when he wasn’t sneezing, he was yawning, huge gulps, his beak stretched wide.

The footsteps slowed, stopped. “This looks like—” he heard her begin.

“You! Who are you? What are you doing here?” The voice was loud, female, and authoritative, and went on, “This is a restricted area.”

“Let go of my arm….”

“Security!”

“Oh, no, no!” Sky couldn’t help the cry that escaped.

“What was that?” said the woman. “What have you got…?”

“Kristin?” A third voice joined the conversation. But this one Sky recognized.

“Aunt Sonja!”

Mum! Sky squirmed down into the bag. How had she…? Then he remembered the cell phone his mother had insisted he carry. They’d have called her as soon as they found his body in the hotel. Shropshire to Cambridge had to be six hours minimum. She must have driven like a lunatic, which was unlike her….

“What’s going on?”

Dad! Of course. His dad was a lunatic driver!

“It’s Kristin, dear.”

“It’s an intruder, madam. Sir.”

“No, no, nurse. This is my niece.”

“She’s impersonating a doctor.”

“No, I’m not!”

“Why are you dressed like that, Kristin?”

“Uh…”

Sky was sure he was not the only one who craned toward the answer.

“Party. Doctors and nurses,” she giggled. “Came straight here when I heard.”

A snort from the real nurse. “A party? At two p.m.? Rubbish!”

“You’ve obviously never been a student.”

“But how did you hear?” It was Henry, Sky’s ever-practical father, asking.

Another “uh.” Sky winced again. Kristin was digging herself deeper in the dog doo with every statement. “Text message,” she said. “Sky texted me. Said he wasn’t feeling well.”

The woman again. “How? When he’s in a coma.”

“Uh…I only just turned my phone on?”

It came out more like a question, a plea. But before anyone could challenge her, a new voice chimed in. Male. Authoritative. With one of those pompous, upper-class English voices. “Well, you may have been the last person to hear from him, young lady. You are family, are you?”

“She’s my niece, Doctor Abel. Sky’s cousin.”

“Then you may as well join us. Help us unravel this knot.” A harrumph came. “That’s all right, nurse. I’ll take responsibility.”

The nurse went away, muttering. Sky was carried again. The bag was set down, and Kristin managed to open the zip halfway. As she stepped away, part of the room was revealed through someone’s legs. Corduroy trousers. Work shoes. His dad. Beyond him, Sky saw the edge of a bed. On it was a hand he didn’t recognize immediately, which was strange because it was his own. His body’s, that is.

And then another hand took it up and his mum sat down on the bed. “So where were we, doctor?”

Henry stepped away to join his wife at the bedside. A suit’s trousers came into Sky’s vision. “I was telling you, Mrs. March, about the tests we are running. We are trying to ascertain the type of coma your son may be in, what may have caused it. There is some response to stimuli—pinpricks on the soles of feet, that sort of thing. In the ambulance, coming in, the paramedics reported a severe thrashing around…”

That would be the crow attack, thought Sky.

“…but since then, nothing. We have taken blood and should get the results back soon. That will tell us if the coma is drug-induced—”

“My Sky would never—”

“Mrs. March, if I had a pound for every time I’ve heard parents say that…I’d have about twenty pounds!” He chuckled, walked into sight, a gray-haired man in glasses, blocking Sky’s view of the bed. “But the blood tests will confirm or deny. And we’ll do a computerized axial tomographic scan—”

“Sorry?”

“CAT scan to you. To rule out trauma. There does not appear to be any to the head, though some strange marks have emerged on the shoulder and foot.”

Bloody crows again, thought Sky as the man continued. “But if, as I suspect, there’s nothing to see, and the blood tests also rule out viral encephalitis, we’re left with doing a lumbar puncture for meningitis—relatively common in students, actually….”

“Oh, God!”

“Yet there are few other signs of it. No rash, for example, just those strange markings.” He moved again and Sky looked at his mum’s anxious face. “We also have to consider psychogenic causes.”

“What?”

“Once organic reasons for the coma are removed, we seek psychogenic or psychologically based reasons. Has he been very depressed, for example? Listless? Or the reverse—prone to mania? Bizarre outbursts? Uncharacteristic behavior?”

“Well,” said Henry, “he has been away for a year. We have no idea where. Just came back.”

“And he’s always been a sleepwalker, doctor,” Sonja added. “Ever since he was a child.”

“Hmm!”

“And we didn’t know he’d come here to Cambridge. We’d have worried because…” Sonja hesitated. “…because his cousin’s here, and we had a little trouble last year when they ran away together to Norway—”

“I’ve told you, Aunt Sonja, it wasn’t what you thought….”

The doctor queried, “Which was?”

“My aunt thought we—Sky and I—were in love. Which is nonsense.”

“But you did go off together, dear, and—”

The two women started to talk over each other. The doctor interrupted. “Leaving that aside, what did he come to Cambridge for? To see you, obviously, and…”

Maybe it was the perfume, but Sky was starting to feel drunk. Go on, tell them, he thought. I came to kill you, drive our grandfather’s Fetch out of you, then bring you back to life. Stick that in your CAT scan and smoke it, doctor!

Instead, Kristin said, “It’s…it’s a bit of a long story.”

“You’re telling me,” Sky chirruped. Except it came out in hawk speak.

“What was that?” asked the doctor.

“My cell,” Kristin said quickly.

“Well, if it’s a long story we might as well hear it over a cup of tea, what? My office is just down the corridor here.”

He moved toward the door. Sky saw Sonja squeeze his hand. “I don’t want to leave. In case he wakes up….”

“Mrs. March, should he do so, our battery of machines will alert us. And we need to get all the details down. The backstory, as ’twere. Even something trivial could be vitally important. There are consent forms to sign, as well, for treatment.” Sky saw his mother’s hesitation. “Don’t worry. We’ll have you back here in moments if there’s any excitement.”

Sonja reluctantly rose. Henry’s legs passed in front of Sky. “Coming, young lady?”

“Of course. I’ll just grab…” The door opened behind her as Kristin reached into the bag, running the zipper all the way open. “Be quick,” she hissed, then followed the others out the door.

As soon as it clicked shut, Sky thrust his beak through the opening. He blinked at the room, the medical equipment—drip, monitors, the LED showing his heart rate in green light and beeping faintly. Awkwardly he thrust his shoulders out of the bag. It tipped, sprawling him onto the floor. He hopped onto his feet, his talons clicking on the floor like Kristin’s heels. Then with a beat of his wings, he rose, settling onto the metal rail at the end of the bed…

…and looking at the body on it. In Corsica, he had seen himself like this every time he’d left to “travel,” and on each return. It wasn’t something you ever got used to. Two versions of himself, both spirit, both flesh.

He swayed on the bed rail, nearly toppled off. “Time,” he said aloud, dropping to the ground. Closing his eyes, he remembered Pascaline, in Corsica, how she’d taught him to leave his body at will, the one quiet moment needed, a breath out, a surging up. It was the same going back, a breath in, a merging. And he couldn’t do that as a bird.

He breathed deeply. His exhaustion made it so hard to shake off feathers. But he did it. And then he was standing there, shivering because he no longer had down to cover him. He was as naked as he had been on the fire escape, watching his body being taken away.

This body, he thought, Sky looking down on Sky. As he stared, the one on the bed gave a little groan, his legs shifting under the sheet. The heart monitor showed an accelerating rate. If it was hard for him, the Fetch, to be separated from the body, it must have been equally tough for the body to be separated from his Fetch. “Time,” he mumbled again. Taking another deep breath, he bent, eyes seeking eyes behind the lids of the sleeper, hand reaching for hand. One quiet moment, he thought. At last.

And then the hands touched…and those other eyes jumped open. “Hello,” said Sky….

…The one lying on the bed.