APRIL 16 This is my writing place. I stumbled across it yesterday. It was a risk, taking to walking, but I knew I couldn’t stay in that bed any longer, feeling myself wasting away, waiting for him to return. My whole body ached as soon as I moved. I must have been badly hurt, even more than I realised. If I bend too far forward my back is paralysed with pain, my ribs cut at me when I breathe in, and much of my body is yellow with dying bruises.
From my bed I have a view of the corridor and I have been able to watch the other patients shuffling by. There are many ways of looking crazy and I have developed my own. I walk stooped, as much as my back allows, small steps with my feet barely letting go of the floor, and my mouth hanging open so I can feel the dribble puddling behind my bottom lip. It is the eyes that are most likely to give me away. It’s hard to stop them from focussing, to make them slow to turn, slow to notice. I have found that if I fight the urge to blink, a film of tears forms, keeping the world at a distance.
Not that anyone seems to watch that carefully. I am sure this place is only a temporary ward, it feels half-finished; the people here are distracted, as if they have something more important they wish to be getting back to. The few people there are. Sometimes it is hard to find a nurse at all and they are always rushing, always looking tired. It must be like this everywhere, because of the earthquake. It makes it easier for me. It is only the Doctor I have to fear, and as far as I can tell the doctors only come in once a day, usually in the evening or at night, to hurry through their rounds.
So I’ve taken to walking, and it’s such a relief to be out of the room that I have to be careful not to let a smile show. Along the corridors, lapping the ward. Past the nurses’ station, then the toilets, through the day room where visitors sit with patients, trying to pretend they don’t smell the piss in the air, trying not to watch the television. On to the rows of rooms, with our names written on cardboard tags, in case we forget. Mine says Chris, a name someone has made up for me, and I’m not telling them any different. I’m not telling them anything. Walking and watching, because it beats doing nothing.
Then on my third lap I didn’t turn. It was as if part of me was trying to run away. To leave all of this. To pick up a phone, talk, listen to a voice I know, leave behind my unfinished business. I walked out through the doors as if I wasn’t a patient at all, just some guy called in to check the wiring, wearing hospital pyjamas. Out past the deserted reception, beyond the lifts and the stairwell, understanding the danger but feeling lighter with each forbidden step. I could only go so far though. Fate has bound me here.
There was a door which looked interesting, with a small glass window I couldn’t see through because the other side was so dimly lit. I was surprised to find it unlocked and walked through to a short dark corridor, ending in an exposed concrete wall. I just stood there and breathed in the musty dampness, pretending I was someplace else, pretending I was nowhere. For a moment I relaxed.
Two more doors led off from the corridor. One said Cleaning and was locked. The other said Boiler and I opened it—into this room. It’s not a proper boiler room, just a space for the valves and switches regulating the heating in this wing of the hospital. A small space, enough for someone checking the equipment to move around, and not enough air. There is a fold-up chair. Perhaps I am not the only one who escapes here. It reminds me of a cupboard we used to have at home, where I used to go to draw when I was little. That’s what made me think of writing. I had seen an exercise book in the waiting room and went back to get it. I found a pen in the reception area and walked back here with both stuffed down the back of my pyjamas. I am sure no one saw me.
As soon as I began, the words came on in a rush, a rush of remembering, a rush of relief. Writing it down will keep me sane in this time of waiting and plotting his death. And it will help me to order my memories, which are still liquid when I try to grasp them, turned to slush by the drugs.
I have another reason for writing this. It is my backup, in case I fail. I am going to post a letter to myself at the school. I am hoping that if I never make it back, if the Doctor wins, someone will think to open it. It will tell them where they can find this book, in the cavity of the wall behind the board I have managed to pull back, where I leave it hidden each day. So if I write it down, all of it, everything that happened, then even if I cannot kill him, there is a chance the world will know what he has done. But that would be a small consolation, a poor second best, and I don’t want to think about it now.
I should tell what little I know about how I came to be here. I remember the five days up in the bush after the earthquake, but they are part of the Doctor’s story and I will write them separately to keep this in order. What happened later is less clear and mostly I am guessing. I must have been found by somebody and brought here, to Palmerston North, the closest hospital still standing. I was injured, concussed perhaps, exhausted, and badly dehydrated. But this is not a ward for the physically broken, instead I take my sleep each night amongst the mentally disturbed. The Doctor must have seen me come in. He must have felt so lucky, that the only witness fell into his hands this way. Then he found some excuse to have me transferred, it can’t have been too difficult amongst the mayhem. And he prescribed me the cocktail of drugs that I’m sure were meant to take my mind away. That’s the way I figure it anyway. A simple plan, or just the first step, while he decides how to deal with me.
Only something went wrong, something I don’t understand. Somehow I stopped taking the pills. I don’t know how. I wish I did. All these empty spaces in my head frighten me. It could have been an accident I suppose, the pills knocked to the floor when a nurse’s back was turned. However it happened I have been set free. It was like slowly coming awake after a long sleep, still half-trapped in dreams, all the surroundings both familiar and strange, as if I had slept the whole time with my eyes open. Memories from the bush broke over me, and with them came the waking nightmares, all I have seen, the Doctor’s face at the centre of it always. The nightmare sits here still, just below the surface of my thoughts, revealing itself in part each time they move.
I remember lying awake all through the night, trying to make some sense of the jumble, trying not to scream. Then the nurse came round that morning, pushing her trolley right through the middle of my panic.
‘Morning silent Chris,’ she chirped, not looking me in the eye, as if she knew there was nothing to be seen there. ‘Have a good night did we?’ She continued to chat as she took my pulse and my temperature, and while she did I made my decision. It just seemed easier, safer, to stay quiet, flood my mind with nothingness, stare straight ahead, give nothing away. But not that easy. There was a part of me that wanted to break down sobbing, cling to her, ask her all the questions that float without answers, ask her to tell me impossible things, to tell me everything will be all right. Instinct stopped me.
That evening, after two more visits from the trolley, two more rounds of pretending to swallow, I saw the Doctor and no sight could have brought more certainty. Instinct had saved my life.
Now I will keep pretending. I will wait until the time is right and then I will show the world that Marko Turner is not as useless as they all thought. I will make the Doctor pay.