Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [64]
Footsteps approached. The bolt scraped in the lock. ‘...might be coming around,’ Scale was saying, ‘but I’ve got him tied –’ The lid lifted and the Doctor shot out like a hare.
‘Scale, you idiot!’ he shouted as he slammed into whoever had opened the box. ‘They’re going to kill you!’ He leaped past the man he had knocked over and looked for the door. It was blocked by a large familiar figure: the sanatorium orderly O’Keagh. The Doctor spun to see behind him. Scale was standing stupidly in the middle of the room, and Chiltern was angrily picking himself up off the floor. ‘Oh dear.’
Chiltern stood for a moment regaining his breath and straightening his clothes. ‘Mr O’Keagh,’ he said finally, ‘please return the Doctor to the box.’
The Doctor let O’Keagh grab his arms and propel him forward. As they came up to where Chiltern was standing, he yelled, ‘Scale, will you for goodness’ sake, get out of here!’, snapped his head back into O’Keagh’s teeth and swung both feet up into Chiltern’s stomach. All three went down, but the Doctor was up in an instant and heading for the door, pulling the stunned Scale behind him.
The Doctor wondered where they were. This was no part of the old wing he’d seen. He and Scale hared down the flagstone corridor, around a corner, and right into a locked door. A second later, O’Keagh barrelled into the Doctor, knocking his breath out, and shortly after that he was back in the box, with Chiltern sitting on the lid.
The Doctor breathed deeply, holding his aching stomach muscles. Before dragging the Doctor away, O’Keagh had punched Scale hard in the head. Now he’d apparently gone back after him. The Doctor felt the sour misery of failure. He himself needed to ride this out until he actually found out what was going on; he was almost certain that if Chiltern didn’t have the time machine himself he knew where it was. But he wished he’d saved Scale. Of course, maybe O’Keagh was even now paying him, had only hit him to stop him panicking... The Doctor grimaced in self-disgust at his own enforced, self-protective naiveté.
He began to shiver. His heart raced. Too much time in a box. He had an absurd but pressing desire to curl into a ball which the narrowness of his prison prevented. Whence this claustrophobia? Had he been traumatised by an early game of hide-and‐seek? He really should ask a psychiatrist about it sometime. It occurred to him that an opportunity was even now presenting itself.
‘I have a question,’ he said. No response. He raised his voice. ‘I said, I have a question.’
‘Be quiet,’ said Chiltern.
‘No, seriously. You see, I’m always uncomfortable in a box.’
A pause.
‘Are you often in a box?’
‘Well, not a box as such, no. Small confined spaces in which I’m, erm, confined, yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Sort of a professional liability.’
‘You’re not getting out of there till O’Keagh comes back.’
‘I understand that. You’re missing my point.’
‘Which is?’
‘Well, why?’
‘Why are you in a box?’
‘No, I know why I’m in a box. I have been put in a box. What I want to know is why it bothers me.’
‘It would bother anyone, I imagine.’
‘But it bothers me particularly.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, panic and such.’
‘Ah, I see. You’re phobic.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And you don’t know why.’
‘I don’t, no.’
‘Probably something that happened in your childhood.’
‘I don’t remember my childhood.’
‘Many people don’t.’
‘And how do they explain it?’
‘One doesn’t really need a specific memory. The symptoms themselves symbolise what the experience probably was. More importantly, they reflect the underlying emotional reality the experience has become.’
‘Such as?’
‘The conviction that you’re shut in with something you can’t get away from.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘Well,’ there was a shrug in Chiltern’s voice, ‘what else is in there with you?’
Terrific, thought the Doctor morosely. Insight from a man who had him imprisoned in a box. As if the