In The Garden Of Stones Read online

  In The Garden

  of Stones

  by

  Lucy Pepperdine

  A Wild Wolf Publication

  Published by Wild Wolf Publishing in 2015

  Copyright Jillian Ward / Lucy Pepperdine 2013

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  All characters and locations appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.wildwolfpublishing.com

  Edited by Poppet, cover designed by Poppet

  This ebook is licensed for your personal reading only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the law.

  With grateful thanks to Defence Imagery

  Supporting Combat Stress

  For Derrick. My beacon of light in a dark and frightening world ♥

  Chapter 1

  She treads carefully between the headstones, the grass velvety and cool under her bare feet, droplets of dew wetting her toes, soaking into the fabric of her long skirt.

  Above her, through the quivering leaves of the mountain ash, gold edged white wisps drift lazily through the shifting palette of early morning pinks, purples, and mauves. Soon the sun will breach the horizon to bleach the colours to a uniform blue, banishing the mist and kissing the exotic day-lilies, strengthening warmth and light, awakening their resting blooms and releasing their fragrance.

  From its perch on the granite obelisk the bright eyed robin’s song is a delightful melody, filling the dawn with innocent joy, adding another dimension to the clean, crisp, freshness of a new day.

  She wants to fill herself with this purity, sampling the air, closing her eyes and breathing in…only there is nothing there. No dawn, no dew, no grass and no air, only beetles and snakes in the darkness, clicking and hissing.

  A snake is in her mouth, its head down her throat. It hisses air into her, too much, filling her lungs until she fears they might burst, and then with a click steals it back.

  Hiss. In. Click. Out. The rhythm is all wrong. She has to get the snake out or she’ll suffocate.

  She gropes blindly, fingers scrabbling to grab its tail and yank it out. The snake resists, probing the back of her throat with its forked tongue.

  Now she can smell flowers, sweet and heady jasmine, knowing this is what Heaven smells like, and that death is near. She wants to scream, but there is no air in her to make the sound.

  And then the hissing and ticking cease, something cool – smooth - rubbery takes hold of her hand, easing her fingers from the serpent’s ribbed body.

  “You’re okay, Grace. Keep still and let me take this out for you.”

  A soft, female voice. An angel?

  A tug, followed by a sharp burning sensation on her cheek.

  “Take a deep breath in for me through your mouth please, Grace,” the angel says.

  Grace tries, but the snake won’t let her. Fight it. Fight!

  A gasped inhalation fills her lungs with warm fresh air, and the snake moves, the length of it sliding up her airway, touching the back of her throat, making her cough and retch to the point of catharsis.

  It is gone. The serpent expelled.

  She swallows rapidly, convulsively, throat burning and sore.

  “Well done. It’s out. Now let’s have a proper look at you.”

  The darkness shifts, allowing light to filter through lids fused closed. Cool wetness bathes them, softening and loosening the seal.

  “Try to open your eyes.”

  Grace forces her lids apart, scratchy and dry against her corneas as if they are lined with sandpaper.

  Everything is too bright in the cone of light from the overhead lamp. Hot salt water, Nature’s own lubricant, floods into her eyes and she blinks rapidly to spread it around to relieve the dry burning.

  Through the blur a face swims into view, heart shaped and delicate, surrounded with a halo of golden curls. Angelic but not an angel, and the scent of jasmine is not a heavenly perfume, it’s coming from her. And then someone else is there. A man.

  “Hi Grace, how’re you feeling? I’m Doctor Burke. I’ve been looking after you. It’s nice to see you awake again, so I must have done something right. Mind if I sit down? Been on my feet all day and my dogs are barking.”

  Grace still can’t see properly, his features are indistinct, but she can tell he is youngish, dark haired, and is wearing a blue shirt. When he speaks, telling her what a lovely day it is outside and what a shame she’s stuck indoors and missing it, she can hear a friendly smile in his refined Edinburgh accent.

  “Now then, I just want to carry out a few tests to make sure there’s no damage done,” he says, taking something from his breast pocket. He fiddles with it, muttering under his breath because he can’t make it work. “Ah, got it now. I was pressing the wrong button.”

  He places a cold thumb against Grace’s left eyelid and forces it firmly but gently upwards. The light from his tiny torch is blindingly bright, then gone.

  “That looks okay” he murmurs. “Now the other.”

  He’s been eating cheese, Grace can smell it on his breath – cheddar, with tomato chutney. She can smell soap and aftershave too.

  Her right eyelid is lifted. Another beam flares and dies.

  “Follow the light with just your eyes, please Grace.”

  The pinpoint of light moves slowly from side to side, and then up and down, and her focus follows it. The light goes out, leaving a purple shadow on her retina.

  “Good. How many fingers am I holding up?”

  There are two and she tries to tell him so, but her throat is clenched, all the moisture gone from her mouth, and she only manages a dry croak.

  “Can you show me then?” he says.

  She puts up two fingers of her own.

  “Not exactly the sign I was looking for, but it will do,” he says. “Now this next test may hurt a wee bit, but not much, I promise.”

  He frees her feet from the bed sheet, presses something sharp against the sole of her right foot, and scratches it toward her toes. A sharp pain flares and she flinches. “Ow!”

  “Sorry.”

  He does the same with her left foot, getting the same reaction, but seems satisfied and covers her again.

  “Okay, the patient is awake and compliant, pupillary reaction equal and normal. Reactions to stimuli are also normal. Do you know where you are, Grace?”

  She nods, rips her tongue from the roof of her mouth and tells him, although it comes out as no more than a lisped breathy whisper.

  “Hothpital.”

  “That’s right. The smell’s a dead giveaway, eh? And do you know what day it is?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Me neither. I’ve been on duty so long…” He laughs lightly. “Not much wrong with you that a good rest won’t put right, so I’ll leave you in Anika’s tender care and pop back later for a chat. Okay Grace?”

  “’Kay.”

  At the foot of the bed, out of Grace’s earshot, he confers with Nurse Anika, scribbling his instructions on a clipboard. He then fights his way out of the privacy screen
and leaves to see to his next patient, the clicking of his heels on the hard floor gradually fading.

  Nurse Anika draws the privacy screen fully back and Grace can see where she is. The high dependency unit. Nobody comes here unless something has gone spectacularly wrong with them.

  There are at least eight other people in here with her, stretched out or propped up in their beds, attached by wires and tubes to all manner of gently beeping machinery. Some have snakes in their mouths too, hissing and ticking as they ration the air.

  The air hums with restrained chatter and that low background drone that seems to permeate all hospitals.

  So thirsty. Throat is on fire. Mouth feels like it’s lined with carpet and hairballs.

  “Anything I can get for you, Grace?” asks Anika, as she unplugs the intravenous drip from Grace’s wrist.

  Grace puts a finger to her hard, cracked lips. “Can I have a drink please?”

  Anika takes a beaker from the bedside cabinet and presses a fine tube to Grace’s lips.

  She takes in the offered straw and sucks on it. Liquid fills her mouth. It tastes tepid and flat, like it’s been standing too long, but it is wet, which is all that matters.

  Grace lets the water sit on her tongue before releasing it to slide down her throat and quench the fire. The thirst is overwhelming, she needs more, much more, and sucks again, and swallows, and sucks and swallows and… The straw is withdrawn.

  “Easy now,” Anika says. “Take a little bit at a time. Too much and you’ll be sick, and we don’t want that do we?”

  She’s right. The water is swilling around in Grace’s empty stomach and already nausea is building.

  Grace’s eyes fall closed again as a sudden draining tiredness overwhelms her, so intense that her whole body might well have been stuffed with straw. A pounding headache starts up, making her eyes throb, and a light frown creases her brow, giving away her discomfort.

  “Headache?”

  Grace nods.

  “I’ll get you something.”

  Anika returns after a few minutes with a tiny paper cup containing two small white pills. Grace swallows the tablets with a mouthful of the stale water.

  “You should have a nap, to gather your strength,” Anika says, plumping the pillows and straightening the sheets. “When you wake up, I’ll bring you a cup of tea and a little toast. After that we’ll see about getting you moved into a general ward.”

  Grace takes more water, grimaces as she swallows, her hand to the base of her throat.

  “Your sore throat is from the endotracheal tube,” says Anika. “We had to put you on a ventilator for a while after your seizure. It will pass soon.”

  “Seizure? I don’t remember –”

  “It will all come back to you when you are rested. You’ve had a rough time and you’re going to feel pretty washed out, so you need to take it easy. The doctor will talk to you again when you are feeling better. Now, are you comfy?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Then sleep.” Anika reaches over the head of the bed and turns out the lamp.

  Safely swaddled in her cool cotton cocoon, Grace lets her leaden eyelids fall closed. Her ears, however, continue working.

  They are attuned now to Anika’s slight Eastern European accent, and pick it up even when it is reduced to a hushed private murmur as she confers with her colleagues. There is the scrape of a chair on the tiles as she takes a seat at the desk, and there she will sit while she writes in Grace’s notes. She won’t move from it, she has her instructions. Her patient must be kept in sight at all times, not left alone for a minute, because a minute is all it can take.

  That’s what they do with people like Grace. They call it ‘suicide watch’.

  Chapter 2

  The door swings open and a man bustles out. Jeans, sweatshirt, Converse trainers. A pair of rimless spectacles are pushed up into a shock of sun bleached hair, and he has a fashionable goatee that really doesn’t suit him. A thirty something professional sliding towards middle age, desperately trying to cling onto the last vestiges of fashionable youth.

  “Hi, Grace. I’m Doctor Pettit, Malcolm, you can call me Mal if you like. I don’t stand on ceremony with titles and formality.”

  English accent, educated, every T sounded, clipped sharp. He holds open his arm, inviting her into the room. “Come into my parlour –”

  Said the spider to the fly.

  When she is safely inside, he pushes the door closed with his heel and it slides into the frame with a solid thunk.

  Grace gives the room a cursory going over – walls painted institution green, threadbare carpet, desk and chair that look like they’ve been rescued from a skip.

  On one wall are a couple of framed certificates, on another a painting that looks like it might be of a cow … or a giraffe, she can’t really tell. A set of wooden shelves overflow with books and magazines, and at the window a pair of mismatched armchairs keep company with a chrome and glass coffee table. All in all the whole room looks pretty shabby, as if it has been furnished down to a budget rather than up to a standard.

  “Take a seat, make yourself at home,” says Pettit, guiding her to the chairs.

  Grace pauses, weighing up which one looks the cleanest – no telling what other people have been doing in them - selects the green one and sits, clutching a faded tapestry cat scatter cushion to her stomach like a protective shield.

  A triangular plastic sandwich holder, empty, a can of diet Coke and a half eaten bag of cheese and onion crisps lie on the coffee table. Mal snatches them up and drops them into the waste bin.

  “Sorry about that. Late lunch. You comfortable?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “Warm enough? Too warm perhaps? Don’t you find hospitals to be overly hot and stuffy? I know I do. I can open the window if you like.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “So how are you feeling?” he says, dropping into the chair opposite hers. “Been quite an adventure for you.”

  Shrug. “Fine … considering.”

  “Good.”

  They fall into the kind of silence that often occurs between strangers on a train, neither knowing what to say for the best, so choosing to say nothing.

  Grace keeps her eyes on the motes of dust dancing in a beam of late afternoon sunshine leaking between the slats of the partly closed blinds, each passing minute making her feel more uncomfortable, more awkward in her chair, especially with him sitting opposite with that expectant look on his face as if he’s waiting for her to start the conversation because he doesn’t want to be seen to be leading her.

  She’s not ready to talk just yet. What she really wants to do is rearrange his books. They are all over the place, higgledy piggledy on the shelves – big ones next to small ones, thin ones next to thick ones. He hasn’t even alphabetised the authors for goodness sake! Surely he must have noticed. How can he bear such disorder? Unless he put them like that on purpose - to test her.

  Devious bastard.

  Well more fool you. I’m not playing your power game.

  She sits tight in the chair with her legs tucked under her, trying not to look at the books, getting pins and needles in her toes. Having her knees bent so tightly is cutting off the circulation to her feet.

  They tingle and burn but she can’t, won’t, get up and walk around to relieve the discomfort, because she knows the moment she does she’ll be pulled toward the bookcase. And when she’s sorted it, she’ll have to adjust that picture. It’s ever so slightly out of alignment. Just a touch should put it right.

  Now her toes have gone numb.

  Don’t move, because the second you do, he’s won.

  She won’t let him win.

  How many minutes have passed now? Five? Ten? It feels like half a day and he still hasn’t moved, hasn’t spoken. What is he doing now?

  I bet he’s watching me. No. Don’t look at him. Keep your eyes on the dancing dust. No eye contact.

  She takes the briefest glance fro
m the corner of her eye. He’s just sitting there, waiting. He’s not looking at her though, he’s watching that fat pigeon waddling up and down the window ledge outside. But she’s not fooled. She knows what he’s thinking.

  He’s making his judgements of me, weighing me up, wondering which pigeonhole to try and stuff me into and how he’s going to get me in there.

  He’s either working out which drugs to give me, to make me so docile and compliant I’ll do anything he says, or he’s going to suggest I need a course of electroconvulsive therapy - wants to wire up my brain to the National Grid and spark it up like Frankenstein’s monster.

  Newsflash, Doc, been there done that, got the T-shirt. Save the leccy for brewing your tea, because it doesn’t work. It will only disrupt my synapses temporarily. They will find their way back to how ‘they’ want to work, not to how you think they should.

  Want to know why? Because my mind is the wrong shape, that’s why I see things, feel things, sense things differently to what your textbooks say is ‘normal’.

  Normal is … a setting on the tumble dryer. A ship that sailed long ago without me because I wasn’t even on the dock.

  Pumping me full of drugs won’t change the way I work either. I’ve swallowed enough antidepressants to cheer up a whole graveyard full of emo-Goths, and look where it got me.

  You’ll keep on trying this and that and the other, each thing more desperate than the last, but do you know what happens when you try to force a square peg into a round hole when it doesn’t want to go, when you keep on hammering and hammering and hammering until it’s in there good and fast where you think it belongs, when you sit back with the metaphorical mallet in hand, admiring the way the hole is filled and how you did it? Probably not, because you’ll be so self satisfied with your ‘success’, you won’t even notice that you’ve destroyed the peg in the process.

  “– would you like some, Grace?”

  His question shatters the silence like a brick through a glass window, startling her out of her skin.

  “Wha’? Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

  “I said I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready for my mid-afternoon caffeine fix. Would you like some coffee? Or tea?”