The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [190]
‘Yes, I found it. No mistaking it.’ His lips quiver in what is almost, but not quite, a smile. ‘It has to come to you four times on the journey, to be certain, but I recognized it immediately. A blackbird.’
That’s so much like Fran that I laugh with relief. ‘That’s all right, then. Thank God one thing is.’
The lift arrives with a ping and the doors open; shiny steel walls reflect our blurred outlines as splashes of colour. He catches my arm before I can walk in. ‘No. You don’t understand.’ His eyes are anxious. ‘I found it, but it wouldn’t let me near, kept hopping away, head on one side, looking at me. I couldn’t catch it to give back to her.’
I feel the smile fall off my face. ‘It’s bollocks, John.’ The lift doors are trying to close on me, and I shake his hand off my arm. ‘Doesn’t work even on a symbolic level. Sorry.’ I push into the lift and punch the button for Frannie’s floor. The doors begin to shut again, but he’s not moved.
Indy…’
‘What?’ I hit the doors-open button.
‘Tonight. I’ve a bad feeling about us not being in the same place…’
‘This is spooking me, and none of it’s real! I jab the button again, more viciously this time. ‘Look, I said I wouldn’t go back to Trusloe. I’ll be fine at Martin’s.’
The doors slide together, cutting off the sight of his worried face.
Fran’s awake, though groggy, and chirping merrily as I stow the new nightie in her locker.
‘I’m a pickle, in’ I?’ Head on one side, exactly like a blackbird. ‘Look at the shiner I give meself.’ She points proudly to her black eye–or what would be her black eye, if she was pointing to the right side of her face. ‘Nurse brought me a mirror when she helped me comb my hair, couldn’t believe the state of me. And me wrist…’ She pulls back the covers with her left hand to reveal a cast on the right. ‘Plastered up this morning.’
‘Doctor been round yet?’
‘Ooh, yes. Lovely girl, not much older than you, ever so clever. Nurse said to tell you, if you wanted to talk, go and find her at the desk before the round’s finished. Go on, I’ll be all right. Might have another little nap. Can you plump up my pillows?’
I help her to shuffle forward, and adjust the backrest. My eyes snag on the whiteboard above the bed, where the nurses write each patient’s treatment details.
Nil by mouth.
* * *
‘How long’s she been nil by mouth?’ I ask the nurse at the desk. ‘And why?. Are they going to operate on the wrist?’
She shrugs. ‘You’ll have to ask the doctor.’
John’s coming up the corridor. I wave at him, and go back to Fran’s bedside. Her eyelids are already drooping. ‘You go ahead and snooze, love,’ I say. ‘John’s here now. We’ll both sit with you, after I’ve found the doc’ I stoop to give her a kiss on her forehead.
‘Love you, darlin’.’ Her anxious eyes hold mine. ‘You will be taking me home soon?’
The doctor leads me into a side room. She has thin, stooped shoulders and pale hair escaping from a scrunchie, and looks about a year older than me. Probably is about a year older than me. In doctor terms, I’d bet she’s my equivalent in the food chain at Overview TV.
‘You’re Mrs Robinson’s next-of-kin?’ I nod. ‘Your grandmother’s in no immediate danger, we think, but she is over eighty, and she’s had both a shock and a fall. Lucky not to have fractured more than a minor bone in her wrist.’
‘Is that what the operation’s for?’
‘No.’ She tugs nervously on the stethoscope slung round her neck. ‘The nurses noticed some bleeding today that wasn’t apparent last night.’
‘That cut on her forehead again?’
‘Not her scalp. Down below.’
Beyond the pale doctor’s shoulder is a fearsome piece of equipment with an array of lights on the top, looking like something that could reassemble itself any moment into a robot and stomp out of the room to destroy the planet. It’s easier staring at it instead of her.
‘Down below?’ My voice comes from a long, long way off.
‘Vaginal bleeding. There are a couple of possible explanations. One would be a gynaecological problem of some sort–anything from fibroids to cancer,