APRIL 21 I have set myself a target. Three days. In three days the Doctor will be dead. Any longer and I am sure I will be discovered. It seems so simple, when I write it down. The Doctor will be dead. There must be a thousand different ways of killing, in a place like this, and I’ve had plenty of time to think about it. But the more I think the less simple it seems. Perhaps that is fear.
If nothing else works I will attack him openly, but that must be my last resort. There is a chair in the television room with legs that screw out. One of those in my hand feels good, the right weight to swing. It would just be a matter of coming up behind him, letting go a frenzy of blows to his head, until it is a head no more. I could do that. I could plead insanity easily enough, the Doctor has already made the diagnosis. There would be a price to pay though, a lifetime maybe in a place like this. But I could talk again, and there would be visitors too. It would be worth it. The biggest problems are the possibility of someone intervening, pulling me off before the job was finished, or my strength failing me. I know I couldn’t bear that. I couldn’t live with another failure.
I have thought of poisoning him. I have even collected all the pills I pretend to take, hidden them here with my book. Only I don’t know what they are, or how they might affect him, and I have no idea how I would get him to take them. It is not as though he is in the habit of sitting with me as he eats his dinner. And it would happen offstage, his final pain. I don’t want that. I want to be there, I want to see it. I want to be part of it.
We are on the third floor here and there is concrete down below. It has become my favourite fantasy, watching him fall through the space in between, calling out for help, grabbing desperately for something solid, while his life rushes past and the world looks away. Not that they’re stupid enough to leave windows unlocked in a place like this. It wouldn’t be long before a flying competition was organised. If only there was a way of luring him out onto one of those balconies. I am thinking I could confront him during his rounds, show him I can talk, lead him there. I have wondered about charging him too, propelling him through the glass. There is a fire escape but I can’t see how to get to it. Maybe if I set off the fire alarms there would be a chance. It is still only half of an idea, tied to the picture of the Doctor falling.
I could get someone else to do the job for me. There must be people here who would only need the smallest nudge to get them going, a prod in the psychotic direction. A riot could start, with him in the middle. That would be wild, watching the shit get kicked out of him by a bunch of crazies. Unpredictable though. Risky. Sometimes I wish he was a cat, so he might die nine times over. I would find a way of being there at every death, directing the proceedings.
Or there is the real world. Me here, alone in this little room. It feels colder today. Cold in the air and cold in my bones. The cold of knowing that he must have plans of his own, plotting them right now as I write this down. Three days left and so much work still to be done. I will follow him, next time he comes on the ward. I need more information.
Now I must find words for something else which can no longer be put off. It is the thing that can make sense of all of this, the hardest thing to write.