Prentice
Dawn fails to wake him at seven thirty. The bells of St Bart’s strike eight, then nine, also to no effect. The cat is likewise defeated at nine fifteen. Only his bladder finally makes it through, by sidestepping ears and eyes that are dead to the world and heading straight for his pain receptors.
Daniel staggers naked from his bedroom across the kitchen floor, garnering cat fur and crumbs with his toes as he goes. Neither the photo album on the table nor the clean dishes on the drainer succeed in alerting him. Some kind of an alarm is raised by a line of crushed Stellas, a drained Johnny Walker and a well thumbed Smirnoff, but only to remind him of his mother of all hangovers. He wavers dangerously over the toilet as he pees, using the sonar of water-into-water as his guide – the stream itself vanishing into a mist before reaching the pan. There’s a moment when he knows he’s about to be sick. But the heat flush, salivation and pounding chest leave as suddenly as they’d arrived. He shakes himself and pulls the chain. Danger over, for now.
As his feet slap the vinyl for a second time Daniel becomes aware that something is different about the kitchen and he stops. Scoff wastes no time in badgering again; flagpole-tailed, Morris-Dancing through his legs in a figure of eight, purring like a road drill. Jesus, he must have hit the drink last night. What day is it? Does he have to go to work today? There is something he has to do. But surely it’s Boxing Day. Isn’t it?
So what happened Christmas Day?
Daniel is suffering: a jangling head and a condition he calls Morning Mouth. Morning Mouth is like having gargled puréed Bombay Duck. Still naked, he flicks up the switch on the kettle and attacks the Kenco. Whatever went on last night, whatever it was he was supposed to do, it couldn’t be more urgent than drinking strong coffee.
And it’s the coffee, or rather the smell of coffee, that does it. In the space of a second he sees it all: the cemetery, the man on the ground, the ambulance crew, the photograph, the boxes, and of course he sees the girl. ‘I think maybe he was abducted,’ she repeats in his head. It takes a moment to be sure this wasn’t just some awful drunken nightmare he’d been having, one of those recurring dreams where Alex is an ambiguous presence – just out of sight, not really quite there, alive and yet dead, an adult but still a child. But no dream could have prepared him for the bombshell of realising now that his brother might indeed be alive, languishing right now in the local hospital. He decides he might be sick after all.
Surely not. Surely. There must have been some mistake. Just because some deranged halfwit got done over in the churchyard, a guy who maybe looked a bit like Daniel on a bad day, it didn’t mean he had to go spinning off into this spiral of assumptions, or let himself be egged on by that drama queen who’d followed him home. He must have been out of his mind last night. And yet, the more they’d dug into the past, the more they’d picked through that album, the more plausible and real it had all become.
And on top of all that, of course there was the photograph.
So maybe it was true. Alex really had survived the accident, and has been living a life somewhere all these years. And chosen now of all times to drop back unannounced into his world.
Daniel sinks to his knees before the kitchen drainer. All those years ago, that family tragedy had torn through and shattered their lives. But it had long since been consigned to history. He runs a finger through the dust. So unfair. It should be dead and buried, water under the bridge. His brother’s death was supposed to be the one thing that gave meaning to everything that came after. He swivels round and rests his back up against the base unit. What point was there in having suffered that childhood, in having witnessed his mother’s slow death, having lived an adult life stripped of a very part of himself, if in fact Alex had survived the fall? What value in all that pain, if Alex could have ended it with a simple phone call letting them know he was alive? And yet, surely Daniel’s greatest wish has always been to rejoin his lost twin, to have the two halves once more made whole. So why this numbness? Why this inability to feel? He finds that he’s scribed two stick men hand in hand in the dirt.
‘I’ll wait in till ten.’ Her voice again. All of a sudden, coffee is not the most important thing. The most important thing is to find a timepiece in the flat that works. He’s on his feet now and swearing. For months he’s been meaning to fit the alarm clock with a new battery – and to buy a new watchstrap, once he’s remembered where he last saw his watch. He tears through each room. In the end, it’s the radio that comes to the rescue. ‘Pip-pip-pip-pip-PEEP. BBC news at ten o’clock. The Iraqi appeals court will announce today…’
The phone is nearly pulled from the wall. But there’s no way he can dial. Bloody brain – what the hell was her name?? Where had she written her details? In the fog of panic the idea plants itself that by clutching onto the receiver he can somehow stall her from leaving home, at least until his memory kicks in. Think, think, think. His head is thumping. They were having supper and looking through the album and came up with a theory to account for Alex’s reappearance. Then… then… she promised to come with him to the hospital if he rang her. It couldn’t be, surely, that neither of them had thought to swap numbers. The room spins. He’s definitely going to be sick. Then she went home and he went to bed. Except that he didn’t. No. He went back to the scotch and the vodka and back to the boxes and got more and more depressed leafing through that album and all those wretched photos.
The wire doesn’t reach the kitchen table. As if hoping she won’t notice, he gently replaces the receiver and steals across the room. He spots the pad at once, but not immediately her writing in the corner. It’s a relief when he does to see not only the number but her name as well. It’s Gulnaz, of course. And the number’s a mobile – no problem if she’s already left home. He rips the corner off the sheet and picks up the phone again.
‘Ring the hospital first. Explain who you are and that you think you might be family,’ the voice in his head reminds him. But should he waste time doing as she says and risk missing her, or phone her first, only to be told later by the hospital that the visit isn’t possible? It must be ten fifteen already. While his head dithers his hands are already dialling directory enquiries and being put through. A disjointed voice informs him that he is number – ‘twenty’ – in the queue, before blasting his ears with Slade. The NHS, adding insult to injury. Well, no, actually he isn’t ‘having fun’ and perhaps to ‘look to the future’ is an arse-stupid suggestion to give out to people who are phoning hospitals. But at least the bureaucracy gives him a pretext for not having called Gulnaz sooner. Well before advancing to number – ‘nineteen’ – he is dialling her number and listening for the ring tone.
“You have reached the 02 voice mail service for…”
The preamble feels interminable. At the tone, Daniel begins to babble down the phone. He’s been up all morning trying to get through to the hospital. Idiots keep putting him on hold or cutting him off. He’s phoning her now in order not to miss her. Hopes she got home safely. Would she please phone him back the moment she gets this message.
He quite forgets to leave a number.
The moment he replaces the receiver it occurs to him how much there is still to do before he can leave. He desperately needs a shower, but no time for that now. A wash and a shave will have to do. And breakfast – coffee! Something, anything, to settle his stomach and silence this throbbing head. Priorities: coffee, Paracetamol, food, wash, shave, dress, teeth. And it is half way through ‘shave’ that the phone rings. The razor nicks his top lip.
Gulnaz’s voice is cool and neutral. Whether she is pleased to speak to him again or not isn’t clear. He wants to reach down the wire and touch her, to reconnect with the intimacy of last night. She has left home, but only to buy a paper, and can be ready in ten minutes. She gives instructions on where to meet, clearly unwilling to reveal her address, only a street corner where she’ll be waiting. Afterwards, he wishes he’d put the time back another ten minutes, but promises made, he scoops out the sh
aving cream from the ear piece and downs the phone.
Ten minutes. Five to get there, three to get the car out, leaving two to finish shaving and throw on some clothes. No problem.
As it turns out, the ten minutes is used up twice over even before leaving the flat. Little things add their toll; wrongly buttoned up shirt: one minute. Mislaid keys: three minutes. Scoff’s insistence on being fed: three minutes. Nuisance phone call touting the wondrous economies of double-glazing: four minutes. Over-hasty tying of shoelaces: two minutes. A cold, neglected car engine adds another five. By the time he thunders round the corner into her street Daniel is over twenty minutes late. But when she sees him she smiles and waves. The excuse he’s had at the ready proves redundant. As she opens the door he tries his best to maintain a matter-of-fact tone.
“All right?”
“Hello Daniel,” she says, gently.
At the sound of her voice, the wave of urgency that had swept him along dies utterly. So, the frenzy had not been to get to the hospital, only to be sure of her company. Her legs arrive first. Mid-length skirt over dark tights. Nice. Then her hips and woolly jumper. She faces him now, hair tied back and a little colour added to eyes and lips. He tells her she looks good.
“And you look tired,” she replies.
“I’m alright. Late night – a lot on my mind. Just give us a moment.”
“Of course.”
Never mind a frenzy to get to the hospital; he knows he’s stalling now from making the visit at all.
“Gullnazz, maybe it’s better if we… No, never mind. Appreciate you coming.”
“That’s okay.” She grins. “And it’s Gulnaz. With a long A. Or I may just have to start calling you Danny. Say it right for a week and you might even get to call me Guli.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll try.”
He hadn’t anticipated her frivolous mood.
They set off through the ominously quiet streets, past rows of houses besieged by flashing reindeer and dancing lights. Daniel fumbles among some papers in the tray of his door for some gum. Old Morning Mouth is back. Two or three of the pellets he pops into his mouth straight from the wrapper in a single thumb gesture, not unlike flicking a cigarette lighter. He offers her the pack, but Gulnaz declines.
It’s all rather weird. They’re behaving like a married couple. He’s unsure how he feels about that.
“So, is it an Indian name or something?” He chews furiously, all too conscious of his uncleaned teeth and the lingering stink of booze.
“Gulnaz? No, Persian. I’m Iranian.”
“Iran!” Daniel frisks her up and down with his eyes. “A Muslim. Okay! Tell you what, the moment we get Alex out of there, you go right ahead and blow that disease-infested monstrosity of a hospital to kingdom-come.”
“Stop the car. If you’re determined to be offensive, you can drop me here and go on your own.”
For once she makes no attempt at eye contact.
“Whoa, whoa, sorry. Only a joke.”
So, Gulnaz has a temper on her. A raw nerve. His turn to cross a line. He’d better watch himself. They’re not a couple yet.
“I don’t appreciate jokes like that. There’s much I could tell you about my life. But somehow I doubt you’d be interested.” She sounds bitter. “But you might like to know that not all Muslims are terrorists, and not all Iranians are Muslims. If you must know, I’m Christian. My father converted. His family were Kurdish.”
“Right, gotcha.” Daniel gives her a suitably punished look. It’s back to the uneasy standoff of the night before. Both fix their sights on the road ahead. He can sense her pain, but is only confused by it. He eases the tension by turning on the radio and taking more gum. When Gulnaz speaks, she has that dutiful voice again.
“I take it you never got through to the Mountjoy.”
“Nah. Waste of bloody space.”
Already she has her mobile open and is waiting for a dialling tone. What number in the queue will she be, he wonders, reaching over to switch off the radio. The town is probably awash by now with anxious callers, hanging onto a lifeline that feeds them nothing but Christmas tunes and pre-recorded assurances that their health is their number one priority. Hearts, lungs and livers all packing up from Yuletide excess as the countdown brings them ever closer to a human being, only to be tantalised by the number – ‘one’ – before being mercilessly disconnected. But to his astonishment, Gulnaz is speaking to a real person already. She’s managed to find out which ward Alex is on. Daniel takes his eye off the road and studies her. She is waiting to hear of his condition. Visiting hours? Ah, they must have asked whether she’s family. An oncoming car toots its horn. Daniel corrects his position and presents two fingers. She’s telling them about Daniel. His hands are becoming sweaty and slipping on the wheel. They clearly haven’t yet established their patient’s identity and yes, as she’d guessed, they are most interested. The car is heading towards the ring-road now and everything is happening too fast. Gulnaz’s account of the night before sounds too clinical for all this. In all honesty, he’s not sure he can actually see himself setting foot…
Daniel yanks the car over and pulls up at the roadside. He simply can’t do it. He’s bottled out. Not that hospital again. No way.
Gulnaz hastily ends the call. “What’s happened?”
“Bugger it. I’m just too freaked by all this.”
He is careful to look only at his hands.
“I know this must be hell for you,” she says, after a tactful silence. “Why don’t we just sit for a minute?
“The thing is,” she continues at last, “I know you’ve a million and one questions to ask this man, but please don’t get your hopes up too high. Apparently he hasn’t regained consciousness yet. They might let you be with him for a short time, but there won’t be much to see.”
Daniel rubs his face. “It’s not just that, it’s… Nothing. Doesn’t matter.”
She returns an understanding look. “They do want to talk to you though. They’re considering a DNA test to determine whether you two really are related.”
No, no, no. If the doctors think they can let themselves loose on his body then they can think again – needles the size of skewers gouging their way into his flesh to suck up their forensic secrets. Some TV reality programme or other flashes before his eyes, of a woman’s midriff being routed by a suction pipe and splattering down a tube into a vessel of mango and blackcurrant smoothie. But then again, it’s vital to know one way or the other about Alex, so that he can get back to normal and move on, or…
Or what, exactly? For the first time he wonders what he might do if the unimaginable proved to be true. The amazing George twins, reunited after so many years of separation. The human interest angle; their identical gormless faces peering out from the centrefold of some local daily. Another twenty-four years on, would they be walking the streets together in identical clothing, same hairstyles, living like spouses – a middle-aged Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee? The brothers grim? Or after a brief spell of forced nostalgia might they simply drift apart, each as good as dead as far as the other is concerned, like nothing had ever brought them back together?
But to take his DNA. He searches her face anxiously. “What would they do exactly?”
“Don’t be a wuss,” she mocks. “It’s just a swab, like a lolly stick. They scrape it gently across the inside of your cheek. Nothing to worry about.”
Oh that. He’s seen them do that on ‘Silent Witness’. That he could just about handle. Forgetting to signal, he pulls back into the road and steps on the accelerator.
A sign to the hospital directs them off to the right, just beyond the next junction. They’re getting close. Signposts dominate the roadsides now. Arrows to the left, arrows to the right, arrows pointing up at the sky. So many entrances to so many departments, it all depends on who you are and where’s your pain. Accident and Emergency… Out-patients… In-patients… Paediatrics. Radiology.
A tremor has hijacked his left leg and Da
niel’s hands are wet again as he pulls up at the lights. His foot all but slips off the clutch. He throws the car into neutral, tugs at the handbrake and rubs his palms on his jeans.
“You really do hate hospitals, don’t you?” Gulnaz says.
He begins to shake more visibly. Of course he hates hospitals. It stands to reason. What is there not to hate about hospitals? Already he can smell the disinfectant and the urine, hear the squeal of trolleys along corridors, see those sick people with their germs, bewildered families mooching about like zombies, the patronising smiles of doctors.
She chews on her lip. “Your mother?”
“Yep. Her last twelve months. Ward 10a.”
“Here, at the Mountjoy?” Gulnaz looks genuinely shocked.
He nods.
“Right, I see. For some reason I’d imagined you only moved to the area after she died.”
“God, no. The only point of leaving Devon was for Mum to be near family – mainly her mother, but also her brother. Some use he turned out to be, the tosser.”
“So you’re originally from round here?”
“Not me. My parents. Dad and my uncle were old schoolmates. That’s how Dad met Mum. Then him and my uncle went to Devon together as Navy cadets. Mum followed later when they got engaged.”
“But you say you came up here to be near your uncle, so he’d already moved back by then?”
“Yeah, got discharged from the Navy and came home.”
He gives a motorcyclist both barrels with the horn for attempting a right turn without a proper hand signal, then smiles benignly at Gulnaz and falls back into his seat.
“We’ve still plenty of time,” she says. He knows she really means he should bloody well calm down and stop driving like an arse. Her fault for dwelling on such prickly topics. But apparently she still hasn’t learnt.
“What actually happened with your mother?”
Ah, the very question he’d been braced for last night. It’s as well she waited. He can just about go there with her now.
“1982 was our first Christmas without Dad.”
“He was away at sea?”
“Hang on –.” The lights have turned green. Manoeuvring into a right-hand lane and negotiating a turning across oncoming traffic with a hangover is challenge enough, without having to recount a childhood sob story at the same time.
The junction safely behind them, he says, “And after Alex’s fall she had a kind of nervous breakdown. I was too young really to know what was going on.”
They’re heading down the final stretch to the hospital now. Even the road seems to foreshadow the approaching wards. Houses line up on either side like patients in their beds, each guttered with drips and tubes, little garages for their side tables, weed gardens for blankets, fences for bed rails. Every one of them looks terminal; condemned. Their darkened windows stare out in despair, unlaced and stripped of hope. The efforts made by a few to maintain some dignity feel purely token. Feeble applications of makeup, a cursory neatness of dress. A futile staving off of demolition.
“As Mum got worse, my stupid uncle Martin decided I should be sent to live with my gran for a while. I think because she had quite a bit of money – Mum’s side of the family was more posh than Dad’s. But then Gran became ill and eventually had to go into care, which pretty much wiped out her savings. My uncle wasn’t going to have me, so I was duly packed off back home. By then, Mum was pumped full of pills. She’d been getting home-help, meals on wheels, that sort of thing. Most of it useless. Having me back there just made things worse. We couldn’t remotely cope, so a few months after that my uncle had us both shipped back up here. You see, moved round and round, like some bloody pawn on a chessboard, as and when it suited others.”
Half way along the street now, the houses are all boarded up. These are the patients who’ve sunk beyond remedial care, whose eyes are bandaged shut, left to face death in darkness and in silence. And beyond them: the end of the road. Nothing but vacated beds of earth.
“Gran’s place was sitting empty, and we just kind of moved in. My uncle was supposed to take charge of my schooling and things. The fuck he did. The Navy had really messed him up. And he was a shit anyway. Once Mum had gone a bit doollaly he didn’t want to know us.”
As they turn and climb towards the brow of the hill, the hospital fortress begins to rise from behind the rooftops of new-builds, a gaol of Victorian brick and glass that holds the whole estate in its grip. He can just picture the residents’ paranoia; all those young professionals paying their dues for painless, healthy living, for eternal youth, forever staring in the mirror, checking their pulses, reading the scales, watching their backs, lest the finger of fate should single them out and imprison them behind one of those thousand windows. Life’s lottery. ‘It could be you!’
“Second left,” Gulnaz tells him.
“I know where I’m going.”
Didn’t he just? How many bus journeys had he taken along this route? Over a decade later he can still picture every detail. Cross the mini roundabout ahead, past A&E, ignore the first bus stop, alight at the second by the main entrance and head diagonally towards the dreaded sign. The one that reads ‘Oncology’.
“No, I mean, they told me Blue Zone, Car Park F. The main car park is closed for improvements.”
Closed it may be. Improvements, Daniel very much doubts. As the temporary road signs pull them off the perimeter road and around the side of the hospital, whole areas are indeed cordoned off by wire fencing, peppered with work huts and squares of cauterised tarmac, if not with any actual workmen. Beyond the car park, an entire wall of the building stands loosely draped in tarpaulin, the mark of yet more decay, of hopeless patching; a house of the sick which has itself become fatally afflicted.
Gulnaz is talking again. “So what happened after that?”
“Uh? Oh, don’t ask. I did what I could. You know.”
They slot the car in between a badly parked motorbike and a BMW. Daniel switches off the engine and sits motionless, staring ahead at the cancer-riddled edifice and the bandages that flap around its gaping wound. He laughs dryly. “Maybe she just died of a broken heart.”
To be sure it ends there, he shovels up a fistful of coins from the glove box and skulks off to the nearest pay station, staring for a moment at the scale of charges before feeding in the money. Coin after coin after coin. Eventually the machine capitulates, coughs up its thankyou and lets him go.
“They’d rob the sodding shirt off a dying man’s back round here,” he growls, slapping the ticket onto the windscreen.
Gulnaz laughs. “Only to charge it back to him later – as a surgical dressing!”
“Yeah, too right. Come on.” Her humour has briefly emboldened him. “Let’s get this bloody thing over with.”
They cross the car park to the entrance of glass and steel: an unfamiliar new wing. Inside, the queue from reception snakes around almost to the door. Daniel’s heart is thumping so loudly by the time their turn comes that he’s certain they’ll take one look at him and rush him straight through for cardiac surgery. But no, the receptionist doesn’t even look up when she speaks. What name? Daniel George. Nobody brought in with that name. No, his name is Daniel George: the patient is called Alex. No Alex listed either. No, obviously, that’s why he’s here – to make formal identification. Is he family? Well how can he know that until he’s done the identification? And isn’t there to be a blood test? Or a cheek test?
Not according to her records.
“Look, what’s your problem? We’ve already bloody well phoned…”
At last, she actually confronts him.
“If you continue in that manner, young man, I shall have security remove you from the building. You’ll have to wait over there until you’re called.”
Before he can argue further, the crowd behind has sensed movement and edged them aside. The receptionist is already busy with the next in line, and he and Gulnaz are left with nothing but the two plastic chairs in the far co
rner to which they’ve been assigned.
The minutes tick by. Hospital orderlies wander around like extras on a film set, heads down to avoid the faces of anxious first-timers. In all, four doctors in white coats stop to exchange words with the receptionist (regardless of whether Joe Public is midway through a sentence). Each time, Daniel holds his breath, convinced that he’s about to be called through to the wards. His head screams with the thousand and one questions he has lined up for Alex. But only paperwork is handed over, a laugh shared and the white coats lost again among the crowds. Anyone would think that they’re doing it deliberately – testing Daniel’s patience; his nerves are racking up. After thirty minutes he gives in and marches over to the desk, forcing himself back into the line. As the crowd turns on him, an ugly scene is averted only thanks to the timely arrival of yet another white coat – one that sidesteps reception altogether and walks straight towards Gulnaz. Daniel can only watch the pair of them in growing amazement, Gulnaz preening herself and making cow eyes; the doctor all over her. So, not out of concern for Daniel then that she’d agreed to come today; not out of respect that she’d smartened herself up. Just a chance to advance some cheap, work-based romance. She’s pointing Daniel out now and gesturing him back. The doctor scans the faces in the queue with a predictably disinterested smile. Despite himself, Daniel is forced to return a half-hearted wave.
“So you’re the mystery brother,” croons the doctor, once Daniel has re-joined them. “We’re ready for you now, if you’d like to come this way.”
Once again, Daniel’s chest is pounding and sweat welling in his palms. Gulnaz squeezes his arm and tells him, “You go with Doctor Prentice. He’ll look after you. One of this hospital’s finest.” The sickly smile that flashes between them does nothing to lower Daniel’s blood pressure.
The doctor leads him away from reception and stops at the corridor for them both to cleanse their hands. “I’m afraid your brother rather has us baffled,” he confesses. “He does appear to have led something of a tough life. He’s had a nasty blow to the side of the face, which could have caused the coma. Brain shake – we’re conducting some tests. There are a number of older injuries too. He’s also very underweight and in need of a good dose of TLC.”
“Is that a drug?”
The doctor chuckles. “Kind of. Tender Loving Care.”
To Daniel it sounds like a personal swipe. “He fell against the gravestone when I found him, knocked his head. But he was already unconscious before that.”
“Ah no, I’m not referring to the little scratch on his forehead. That’s only superficial. But of course the coma could be any one of a number of things. Is there any history you know of?”
“History?”
“Diabetes, epilepsy, migraines, severe narcolepsy, anything like that?”
“Whoa, I’m just here to confirm who he is, not to tell you what’s wrong with him.”
The doctor looks startled. “Sure, sure. So, when did you last see your brother?”
“1982. On the day everyone thought he’d died.”
Not quite the answer the doctor was expecting, perhaps, but Daniel isn’t inclined to make this any easier for him. Let him do the job he’s paid for. Going through the whole story again is too much like hard work. He’s a wreck. His head is pounding. The cut on his top lip stings. This place is raising every phobia he’s ever had. The corridor down which they’re walking may be new to him, but the smells and sounds are the old ones, doorways every few steps of the way opening out into wards that are only too familiar. The stark spectacle repeats itself over and over; identical equipment separating identical beds, attended by identical nurses, crammed with identical patients. The same sterile, cold, anonymous NHS production line. Somewhere along this route the doctor is going to stop and take him through to one of these wards and stand him beside an identical twin. A truly surreal moment, like a foretaste of his own last chapter.
But Prentice keeps him moving, beyond the clatter of tiled flooring through more swing doors to the soft tread of carpet.
Daniel eyes him suspiciously. “So where is he?”
“Along here. It’s a brand new wing,” Prentice says, as proudly as if he’d personally funded the build. Something about the way the corridor divides and slopes gently upwards begins to ring bells.
“But I’ve been here before, surely?”
The doctor feigns interest. “You’ve visited us before?”
“Not for several years.”
“Ah, well, the refurbishment is new, but the building itself isn’t. I believe this was the way to the old cancer wing.”
Daniel nods grimly. “That’ll be why.”
An approaching plaque overhead insists on ‘Authorised Persons Only’. Daniel’s apprehension deepens. So, a standard ward isn’t good enough for Alex? They take a left, following a sign that only alarms him further. The three initials, I – C – U. Next thing he knows, he’s being ushered into a small private room, just one bed, a single window and a mass of budget-crippling equipment. Like groupies around a superstar, the tubes and bottles, monitors and wires gravitate towards the figure who lies there, all donned in white; the man who may or may not be Alex. The ends of those tubes disappear into plasters on his flesh or directly up his nose.
“What in Christ’s name? Is he dying?”
“Goodness me no, Mr… er.” Prentice checks his clipboard. “Mr George. It looks a lot more drastic than it is. His breathing was very erratic when he was brought in, so we put him on a ventilator for a time, but this has now stabilised. This machine isn’t even being used. But because he remains unconscious and dehydrated, we still need to monitor his vital signs and get fluids into him. He’s poorly, for sure, but in no immediate danger, as far as we can tell.”
As far as we can tell. The cunning disclaimer. Everything is fine, but if your nearest and dearest drops dead in two minutes you can forget about suing. The time has come to approach the bedside, to make formal identification. In Daniel’s ears the thunder of his own breathing builds to a roar. He feels weightless, like an astronaut aboard some futuristic spacecraft, approaching a crewmember in suspended animation. There’s a good chance he might faint. He peers over the face, deep into the folds of skin, the details around eye sockets, lips and nose. When he’d scanned that same face last night it was an emaciated doppelganger that had stared back. But was Gulnaz right in saying that his mind had been overloaded with suggestion – the anniversary, his mother’s grave, the photograph? Last time there had been no trace of doubt in his mind. Now, with the face scrubbed up, the hair plastered back behind a skull cap, the vile plastic tubes connecting him to all the technology, and with the benefit of sober impartiality, in all honesty Daniel can’t be sure. The features refuse to connect with each other. Individually, yes, they’re like his. No question. But when Daniel encounters his own face in the mirror he doesn’t go ticking off some checklist of objects; he knows himself instantly. This face beneath him remains an assortment of parts – Daniel in cheap kit form. Taken together, these parts say nothing whatsoever.
“It might be him. It might not,” he admits at last.
“Don’t worry, Mr George. You don’t need to be certain. You just need to sign to say you’re willing to give a DNA sample. That way we can tell immediately.”
The pen is waving at him and the clipboard proffered. Though he’s known this was coming Daniel is racked by renewed misgivings. He doesn’t trust this man, whatever Gulnaz might say of him. DNA is a very private thing. Through his mind flashes a trail of petty misdemeanours, each leaving its trace of tell-tale chemicals.
“Actually, I’m pretty sure he’s not my brother. There’s probably no point.”
“It’s your decision of course, Mr George. But there’s nothing to lose; it would help us enormously and it only takes a few seconds.”
“And they won’t start taking fingerprints, or anything like that?”
“Goodness, no. And they wouldn’t help anyway. Twins don’t s
hare the same fingerprints.”
“So… this DNA thing, does it get onto the database – police records, or whatever?”
“No, no, not at all. We’ll take a note of your contact details, but whether a match is found or not, your DNA data won’t be retained, only that of your brother.”
This, given the circumstances, will have to be assurance enough. To walk away now from the chance to settle things would be madness. Daniel snatches the pen and signs.
“Excellent. Now, I’ve cleared it with reception that you’re free to come and visit whenever you wish. You don’t need accompanying from now on. So, if you’d like to follow me, a nurse will take the swab and that’ll be that.” Professional smile, pen back in top pocket and white coat flourish; the doctor leads Daniel from the ICU back to the new wing and offers him a seat in a small waiting area off the main corridor.
“I’ll tell the nurse you’re here.”
A nervous wait follows. Even here the old smells seek him out; a cocktail of bygone waiting rooms, of times spent shrinking into tatty seats pushed against grey walls; of fighting down a rising panic by reading and re-reading boards of dumb health notices. Eventually a nurse calls him in and he rises shakily to his feet. He is thirteen and terrified, the next in line to receive the BCG vaccine. Now he is seventeen and about to have a needle flush out his right ear. He is seven and tortured by toothache. But he clings to Gulnaz’s promise of, ‘Just a lolly stick in the cheek’, and sure enough, there it is – longer and thinner than he’d imagined, but a lolly stick nonetheless. He just wishes now that he’d cleaned his teeth. They might not find any DNA among all the other crap in his mouth. But the nurse seems satisfied. It’s over in a trice. Hard to believe that one little scraping of cells is all it takes to resolve the riddle of the thin man in the white room.
She drops the swab into a plastic bag. The hospital will write to his GP, who will inform him of the results some time in the next fortnight. Daniel is free to go.
By immediately, it seems trusty Prentice had meant two whole bloody weeks.
On the long return to reception Daniel is careful to keep his eyes from the wards. Emerging from the corridor, it’s a relief to see that Gulnaz hasn’t moved from the corner. It’s somewhat less of a relief to find Prentice leering over her again. The doctor’s fake smile lights up the moment Daniel comes into view. Gulnaz’s gaze is more anxious.
“How did it go? Are you okay?”
Then the giveaway hesitation.
“Um, would it be okay if we get going now? You can tell me all about it on the way. I’m working at the care home again this afternoon.”
If this is downright insensitive then Daniel frankly doesn’t care. He needs no encouraging to get the hell out of this place. “Don’t worry; I can take you straight there, if it helps,” he offers, putting himself squarely between Gulnaz and the doctor. “It’s not much out of my way.”
Her smile dies a little.
“Thanks, that’s really kind, only I need to collect my bike so I can get home again after work.”
“That’s no problem. I’ll pick you up again afterwards.”
But again Gulnaz demurs. “I really couldn’t say exactly what time I’ll be finished. Supposedly six, but so much depends on the residents.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll wait for you. I’ll take a historic novel or listen to Classic FM.” He gives the doctor a cutting smile.
Despite the look she returns him, reluctantly Gulnaz gives in; a little mental arithmetic probably convincing her there is no way she could be dropped off at home, cycle the three miles to the nursing home and still be on time. She says her thanks and warm goodbyes to her doctor friend, and at last she and Daniel are heading out to the car.
“Why were you so rude to Dr Prentice?”
“Was I rude? I didn’t mean to be,” he lies.
Nothing more is said until they’re finally freed from the network of hospital roads.
“I’d very much like to know what happened, when you’re ready,” she says at last.
What exactly did happen? That’s the question. With every yard Daniel puts between them and the ‘thing’ in that ward, the more his uncertainty grows. How could such a creature possibly have been the explosive, hyperactive bundle of energy that was once his twin? By the time they’re back on the ring road the very idea of it seems preposterous. As the familiar sights of town surround them once more the whole experience becomes little more than a bad joke. The only thing that remains crystal clear in Daniel’s mind is that fate, on Christmas night, chose to bring him and Gulnaz together.
“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Alex. They did the DNA thing, but I bet it’ll be a waste of time. I’d made a mistake, for the reasons you’d said.”
So, this is his chance to win her over – now or never, judging by the attentions of her smarmy doctor friend. Daniel will cook her a meal, clean his flat, change his sheets, take that long overdue shower and clean his teeth.
“Oh, I am sorry, Daniel. Really sorry. But don’t give up yet. Let’s wait for the results.”
She puts her hand briefly on the wheel over his. He smiles at her. And does not withdraw his hand. This time he knows it’ll be perfect. Instead of ten minutes, he has six whole hours to get everything prepared.