Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [10]
Benny shrugged on the inside. Cristián seemed like a resentful teenager caught in the body of an old man – like someone who hadn’t had a chance to grow up in their own time. Like someone who’d been pushed and pulled until they had no direction of their own. At least Benny was prepared for the strange twists her path took. At the age of eighteen, Cristián hadn’t been ready for…
Whatever.
Bernice knew that whatever was going to happen – whenever it was going to happen – she would live through it. Or at least, if what Cristián was telling them were true, and the time‐line didn’t change or do whatever it did, and…
‘You must want to ask me a million questions,’ said Cristián.
Bernice pushed a counter forward. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure I want to know the answers.’
‘The Doctor says maybe the same thing won’t happen again. Maybe none of this will have happened to me. Just think. Who might I really be?’
‘I don’t understand how this time‐line business works,’ Benny admitted. ‘Not properly. I do know that the Doctor will do whatever he can to help you.’ She hoped. If someone was using Cristián as bait, what might the Doctor use him for?
‘I’m sorry about the nurse joke,’ said Cristián hesitantly. ‘I appreciate your staying with me.’
It hardly seems fair to answer your communiqué and then galumph off without you, does it?’ She smiled. ‘“They also serve who only stand and wait”.’
‘Is it a quotation?’
‘Milton. He was talking about being blind. His idea was that he could serve God by just bearing the burden he had been given.’
Cristián looked up for the first time. His eyes were watery.
Bernice, feeling awkward, said, ‘Do you want something to drink?’
Cristián shook his head.
He heard her rattling about in the kitchen, the old fridge humming as its thermostat kicked in. He heard the distant sounds of traffic, the wind blowing through the ravines of the city.
He heard the sizzling of a moth caught in an electric trap in the fast‐food shop downstairs. He heard his own blood pushing through his capillaries.
He gripped the edges of the table as the badness kicked in, starting just under his ribs, just to the right of his stomach. The badness crawled to the back of his neck, to his scalp, pushed an angry finger up between his lungs.
He took this for a panic attack. It was not.
Bernice came back in, carrying a shot glass of tequila. She put it down on the card table. ‘Cristián?’ she said, seeing his eyes distracted, bright sweat standing out on his forehead.
‘WHO ARE YOU?’ he shouted, standing up like a spring uncoiling. ‘WHO?’
The shot glass fell off the table and spat onto the rug. The phone rang.
For a moment Bernice sat in her chair, horribly torn between Cristián, the phone and the tequila.
Then the Mexican shot across the room to the phone. ‘¿Diga? ¿Si?’ he yelped into the receiver. ‘What? What? Wait a moment, will you?’
He held the phone out at arm’s length. Bernice took it from him, feeling his forehead. He was burning hot, and his eyes were glazed and blank. Cristián’s cheese had slid right off his cracker.
‘Hello?’ she said.
* * *
The morgue attendant looked around. What was he doing here?
He blinked hard, as though someone had been shining a bright light into his eyes. He was in the psychiatric wing of the hospital. ‘How appropriate,’ he said out loud. It had been a strange pair of nights. Perhaps he had spent too long watching over the dead.
There was a thick electric feeling in the air – he had felt it in the mountains, in the green jungles. A storm was coming. The small hairs on his arms were standing erect. He could hear voices, and there was a light – one of the cell doors was open! According to the signs, this area was for those who required permanent care.
What was going on?
A little quiver of fear went though him as he went to the door, irresistibly attracted. He had never been into the chronic wards before, though he had sometimes heard the sounds… Visions of horror films danced in his head. He had to look.
Seated on the floor of the padded cell were a little