A Trick of the Mind by Penny Hancock Read Free Book Online

glad this was a small one – the ones I disliked most were those vast teaching hospitals more like
underground cities, with long tunnels of blank walks, and double doors and signs to departments where people must be suffering, or gasping their last breaths, with hurried harassed overworked
medical staff and grieving relatives and anxiety. I even hated the car parks, the endless rows of vehicles that have carried the wretched and the bereaved to this building no one really wants to be
in.
    But I forced myself. If I could just do this, reassure myself the victim was alive, recovering, I’d be able to relax.
    It didn’t take too long to find, on the outside of the town, and the visitors’ car park was full, it being Saturday. I prowled around the bays for a while and
finally squeezed into a space at the far corner near a spinney of trees. A gaggle of people were smoking beside the entrance, under the sign saying ‘Secondary smoking – think of the
people who are breathing it.’ That was something Finn and I would have laughed at once.
    ‘Ah. Yes. Patrick McIntyre. Came in last night,’ the receptionist, a woman with platinum-blonde hair and geek-chic glasses told me, checking her screen. She glanced
up at me. ‘He’s on the trauma ward – third floor.’
    I got into a lift and pushed through the double doors. My heart was thumping. I didn’t know if I’d be allowed into the ward. And I hadn’t worked out what I was going to tell
the nurses about why I was here. Let alone what I’d tell the man himself, or any relatives that might be hanging around. I had a half-baked idea I could say I was a journalist, covering the
incident, but I hadn’t thought it through.
    All I knew was I had to prove to myself for once and for all that even if there was the tiniest chance I had knocked this man down that at least he was OK. He would live.
    The ward doors were locked. I pressed the button on the intercom and a man’s voice asked who I was. I said I was here to see Patrick McIntyre and the door clicked
open.
    There were two nurses at the station, a man and a woman. The man barely looked up when I approached and muttered Patrick’s name.
    ‘He’s in recovery still,’ said the woman, who was about my mother’s age. Her blue eyes ran up and down, assessing me.
    ‘And you are . . .?’
    ‘I . . . I’m a friend.’
    She smiled.
    ‘Tom’ll show you.’
    The male nurse got up, his legs so long and spindly they barely looked as though they’d hold him, and told me to follow him. Wasn’t he going to ask my name? Any other questions?
    ‘How is he?’ I asked Tom’s back, as he strode ahead of me. ‘How’s he doing?’
    ‘He’s doing well,’ he said. He turned his head without stopping, glanced at me. I wondered if he was older than me, or younger or about my age. He still had acne and he wore
lots of silver in his ear. Younger, definitely.
    ‘The consultant’s doing an assessment on his scans, will have the results later, but he’s comfortable. The op went well. He’s heavily sedated. You might not get much
sense out of him yet.’
    ‘How long will it take for . . .?’
    ‘Hard to tell, if he continues like this he could be out in a week. But you never know, there can be complications with head injuries.’
Head injuries!
‘On top of the
blood loss.’
    I swallowed.
    ‘You’re his girlfriend then?’
    I nodded. I couldn’t speak. He didn’t look round, didn’t seem to care one way or another.
    He pushed open another door. ‘Don’t be shocked by all the equipment. It’s not as bad as it looks. He’s lucky, his back’s OK.’
    We went into the room.
    I looked over my shoulder three times, to make him be OK.
    ‘Please be OK. Let me not have caused you any serious harm,’ I whispered. ‘If it was me. Please though, please let it not have been me, let me get away from here. Back to my
new life.’
    He was on a bed under the window.
    Beyond, the trees were tipped with green, just coming