Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [1]
The woman by the trolley was wearing a tattered, shapeless green jumper. The detail of stitches and holes held his eyes, keeping them away from the spray hypo she clutched in one hand. ‘No,’ said Forrester. ‘No drugs.’
They tipped the gurney until it was almost upright, and pushed him backwards against it. There was a strap that went around his ankles, and another that went over his throat. He stopped struggling when he felt the cold fabric across his neck.
Forrester pushed him up. The strap cut into his throat.
She unclipped the cuffs, threw them away. She and Cwej took an arm each and tied him down. They tilted the gurney back on its hinge until the Doctor was staring up at the ceiling, at their faces looking down at him.
‘Why are you doing this?’ he gasped.
Cwej looked as if he was about to burst into tears.
Forrester elbowed him out of the way and started pushing the gurney, fast. The others had to scurry to keep up with her.
He wanted to fight, but he was choking against the strap.
Anyway, you could never move or run in nightmares. ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t sedate him?’ said the green woman. She was naggingly familiar. Someone he’d once met? What random piece of his subconscious did she represent?
‘We don’t know which of your drugs are safe for him,’
said Forrester. ‘Anyway, he’s not going anywhere.’
He shouted as the gurney crashed through a pair of metal doors. He couldn’t turn his head to get a proper look. It wasn’t an operating theatre. Some sort of lab? A computer lab, much of the machinery as old and banged-up as the woman’s jumper.
The gurney slid to a halt. Forrester booted its kickstand, locking it in place. Someone was waiting in the room.
‘Bernice!’ He almost sobbed with relief. ‘Help me, Benny.’
She came up to the gurney. She took his hand. ‘I’ll stay with you. No matter what happens.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked again. The green woman pushed cold metal against his skin, turned his head to get at his other temple. ‘Have I done something terrible?’
he said to the opposite wall. He shook his head, but the electrodes wouldn’t dislodge. ‘Tell me what I’ve done!’
Benny’s voice: ‘I’ll stay with you.’ She squeezed his hand, fiercely.
The green woman: ‘We’re ready.’
Forrester: ‘Get on with it!’
The sound of a machine warming up. An electric sensation in his temples.
The panic hit him again, and he wrenched against the straps and screamed.
He sat bolt upright in bed, yelling, catapulted back into wakefulness.
He flopped back down against the pillow, breathing hard, making himself relax, to wait for the nightmare feeling to drain away, for his breathing and heartsbeat to quieten.
It was just dawn. White curtains were moving in a soft cool breeze, glowing with the early light. The ceiling seemed strangely far away, the window too high up.
On one of the bedroom’s wooden walls, a clock ticked backwards, the numbers reversed around its face. He folded his arms behind his head, breathed out a sigh, and relaxed back onto the futon.
The beach house...
He hadn’t been here for... decades, at least decades.
Decorated the place himself, which had meant dragging some of the centuries’ accumulated junk out of the TARDIS
and scattering the knick-knacks about at random. If he wasn’t mistaken, there was a half-read paperback of Flaubert’s Parrot in the study. Maybe he’d finish reading it after breakfast, if he could find something else to prop up the desk’s leg.
When he got downstairs, breakfast was ready. Two butter croissants were waiting for him on a tray in the kitchen, along with a mug of cocoa and a single boiled egg.
He extracted a clean paisley handkerchief from his pocket, tucked it under his chin. He pulled off a bit of croissant and dipped it in the cocoa. Then he allowed himself to think back over the dream.
Nasty. The usual themes — betrayal, captivity, revenge, all the usual self-flagellatory flotsam from the depths of his mind. Jung had called dreams a theatre ‘...in which the dreamer