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Dr Bennett’s eyes seem to cloud. ‘The symptoms match – the agitation, stupor, and repeating words and movements.’
‘But why now?’ I ask.
‘A defence mechanism. Perhaps the bodies in the water triggered a memory.’
‘How do we bring her back?’
‘There are several possible treatments. One of them being ECT.’
I picture Evie being strapped on to a table with a rubber mouthguard clenched between her teeth as an electric current is passed through her brain.
‘There must be another way.’
‘A drug – lorazepam. It’s used to treat anxiety and sleep disturbances, but it can also bring patients out of a stupor.’
Dr Bennett seems to weigh up the options, mentioning possible side-effects. ‘My preference is to wait until the morning,’ she says. ‘I’ll give Evie a mild sedative and let her sleep. Hopefully, her mind can heal itself.’
‘Can I stay with her?’
‘You’re not family.’
‘I’m all she has.’
A room is arranged in the neurology department. Paperwork has to be filled out. Evie waits, sitting in a wheelchair, staring at the wall like a dementia patient. As I wheel her towards the lift, I hear a shout from the emergency room.
‘Incoming!’
Doors swing open. A trolley barges into view, being pushed by paramedics. A drip is held shoulder-high, and stats are shouted – blood pressure numbers, systolic rates, body temperature. The detective from the beach is behind them. They found a survivor.
The patient is a teenage boy with an oxygen mask over his face. He raises his hand and pulls the mask aside, repeating the same word over and over again.
‘Motra. Motra. Motra.’
He tries to sit up. A paramedic holds him down, as a doctor prepares a sedative. The needle finds his arm and the boy’s gaze goes out of focus. He slumps backwards onto the trolley bed, moaning, ‘Motra.’
Was the boy’s mother among the dead? Did I see her on the beach?
‘Motra. Motra. Motra,’ says Evie, as I push her wheelchair along the corridor, following a nurse.
I touch her shoulder. She stops. When we reach the room, I help her into bed and pull the covers over her. I hold up her phone to her face, unlocking the screen, before changing her security settings to let me have access.
‘I’m going to pick up some things from the guest house, but I won’t be long,’ I say.
‘The guest house,’ she says.
‘That’s right. Don’t go anywhere.’
‘Go anywhere.’
7
Cyrus
DI Carlson sucks on a vape and expels a cloud of peppermint-scented vapour that looks like a winter’s breath. He has found a quiet corner in the ambulance bays, taking a moment to himself. I watch him from a distance, making judgements, reading his body language, his mannerisms, his unconscious actions.
He’s young to be a detective inspector and this case is probably the biggest of his career to date. He’s anxious about making a mistake and keen to earn the respect of his team. He’s married (the wedding ring), near-sighted (the glasses), and a new father (the dried vomit stain on the shoulder of his jacket). He’s also worried about his weight and wears a fitness device on his wrist.
Understanding human behaviour isn’t about intuition or second sight or ESP. Everything is evidence-based. Some people want to imagine that psychologists have Sherlock Holmes-like abilities and can determine someone’s entire life story from a smudge of chalk on a coat sleeve or a cat hair on their lapel. That’s not how it works, although I had a university lecturer who could pick holes in every excuse that I ever gave him for delivering an assignment late. He seemed to know instinctively when a student was hungover, lovesick, homesick, jilted, stoned, penniless, sleep-deprived or just plain horny, which was most of the time in my case.
