Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [60]
He made an appeal to her with his large, droopy eyes. ‘I won’t bite.’
Julia sighed, unable to resist a patient in distress. She crossed the room and hooked her arms under his shoulders and lifted the naked man back on to the slab. He seemed completely oblivious of his own nudity. She covered him with a white sheet.
Julia’s mind was racing. How the hell had this happened? If she were in a college hospital she would have assumed that she was the victim of a medical student prank. It was a frequent occurrence back in the States – but out here in the middle of the English nowhere?
‘Now, would you mind telling me how you came to be lying in my morgue?’
His brow furrowed and he blinked in surprise. ‘I was rather expecting that you were going to be the one to do the explaining.’
‘Me?’ Julia looked at him: he appeared to be quite serious. ‘What have I got to explain?’
‘Everything. Why you’re kidnapping people off the streets of London will do for a start. Then I’d like to know what that black cab is? And how you’ve managed to create something far beyond the technology of this planet in the mid-twentieth century? Who’s helping you?’ he added, fixing her with a hard stare. ‘Aliens? The government? What do they want? Hmm?’
Julia felt her heart sink. He wasn’t a zombie: he was a patient. One that was clearly lost, deep in a psychosis. The poor man was hopelessly and clas-sically delusional. He must have been left behind when the last experimental ward was closed and the patients were transferred to the mental hospital at Chelmsford.
A misplaced schizophrenic, playing dead amongst the corpses. Damn, that was all she needed. Didn’t anyone bother doing a head count when they bussed the inmates out?
She patted him sympathetically on the arm. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you sorted out. I’m going to have to leave you here for a moment while I go and find someone who’ll arrange to have you taken to your new home.’
He was staring back at her, thoughtfully. ‘You’re patronizing me. How interesting. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?’
Julia felt her training kick in. ‘No. The things you describe aren’t real. They only exist in your mind. They’re part of your illness. You won’t have had your medication today, will you? Damn, your records will already have been transferred. I’ll have to phone Chelmsford and get them to have a look at your medication requirements. Can you tell me your name?’
The naked man had started muttering to himself, something about barbarism and twentieth century psychiatry. He glanced up at her in response to 102
the question. ‘My name? How much time do you have? A literal translation has thirty-eight syllables – or at least it did last time I counted. And anyway, mine keeps changing. Call me the Doctor. Everyone does. Where are my clothes?’
Time for some reality confrontation. ‘You think that you’re a doctor? If that’s true, why are you lying naked in a mental hospital?’
‘I’m not a doctor. I’m the Doctor,’ he snapped, clearly annoyed.
It was quite common for a patient to feel anxious and angry when the safety of a delusion was being threatened by rational confrontation. Julia found herself wondering how long it would take for an ambulance to come and pick him up. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have other things to do.
‘But why am I lying naked in a mental hospital? It’s a good question,’ he continued. ‘As I said before, I was rather hoping you were going to tell me.
Feel free to gloat while you explain your plan. Well?’
‘I think that you may have been left behind when the coach took the other patients to your new home,’ Julia said, patiently. ‘This facility is being closed down.’
The patient who believed that he was a doctor shook his head and looked puzzled. ‘No, that’s not the right answer. The last thing I remember was being inside the gelatinous creature. I put myself into a trance. Jack too.’ He wagged his finger excitedly in the air, as if suddenly remembering having left something in the oven. ‘My goodness, Jack!