Police Constables Morgan and Flynn were heading back to the
station. All but three of the forty-nine missing hospice residents were now
accounted for, and it didn't take a great stretch of the imagination to account
for the missing.
They were passing the graveyard when Morgan stopped abruptly
and called to a woman crouching beside a headstone. She had the look.
She didn't respond, and Morgan elbowed Flynn sharply.
"Is the zapper on?"
Flynn pulled out the stun-gun, and checked that it was set.
He'd used it more than enough today.
"Miss?" called out Morgan again, pushing open the
cemetery gate, "Miss, can you hear me?"
The woman didn't respond. She was shaking; on another day,
beside a fresher grave, Flynn would have thought she was recently bereaved, but
the gravestone was heavily speckled with algae and lichen, and the weeds peered
undisturbed from around it.
As they drew closer, Flynn became aware that she was
rocking, and he and Morgan spread a little further apart. It was all too easy
to trip on a partner if you were unexpectedly attacked - if Officer Macintosh
had stood just a couple of feet further back yesterday afternoon, Detective
Grimes might not be having surgery on her trampled ribcage today.
"Ma'am?" Flynn called out cautiously, "would
you be so good as to turn around?"
She turned, and Flynn's grip on the stun-gun relaxed. The woman
was in need of help, by the look of her, but not restraints.
"Officer?" she queried in a faint voice.
"Are you in need of assistance, ma'am?"
"I'm - I'm fine, thank you, officer."
She wasn't fine. Her face was pale and tearstained, and her
clothes looked like she'd been rained on. She had two carrier bags with her,
but she wasn't dressed like a vagrant. She didn't speak like one, either.
"Are you sure of that, ma'am?" Flynn risked
putting a hand on the woman's shoulder; her coat was soaked, and she flinched
at his touch.
"No," she stood uncertainly, and looked at him
more closely, "I'm not fine. Not for a long time. I thought I could cope
with it, but -"
"I know you," said Morgan, "You're Mrs.
Chase."
"Do I know you?"
"I know your daughter, Megan. She called the station
last night saying you'd gone. You've got her worked up something awful,"
Morgan couldn't have failed to notice the impact his words had on the woman's
already fractured state, because he added, more considerately, "Let's get
you checked out and take you home to her, shall we?"
***
Megan was sick. Last night she'd thought her peaking
temperature was just a side-effect of the worry, but this morning, as she
opened her eyes, she knew it was more.
It took her a while to realise that she actually was awake
through the dizzying disarray that her eyes presented, and even that came
sluggishly. The ceiling swum into a distant approximation of focus, and she
realised that she was sweltering.
There was a glass of water on the night-stand. She reached
for it, but her arms were heavy and unsteady, and even when she managed to get
it to her mouth, as much of it poured onto the sheets as into her mouth.
Presently she gave up trying to drink, and was vaguely aware
of the glass, still half full, tumbling from her hand and spilling on the
carpet. She tried to sit up, but after several failed attempts, drifted back
into something like sleep.
Her eyes opened again several hours later. She ought to call
the hospital. She managed to sit up, this time, and get to the phone on her
desk, but trying to dial was a different story.
She realised she'd passed out when she woke up on the floor.
She was still too hot. She rolled onto her belly, and crawled under the bed. It
was a little cooler down here.
She peeled back the dressing on her hand, and gazed blearily
at the semicircular wound. It was pale and bloodless, quite without signs of
infection. She was probably reacting to the antibiotics.
She'd feel better for a little more sleep. And something to
eat. Once she could walk, she'd open the windows, get herself feeling a little
fresher.
***
"I feel a little silly, really. There's nothing wrong
with me - I just got a bit of a scare."
"Better safe than sorry, Mrs Chase," Doctor Farran
put the folder down on the desk, "But no, there's nothing wrong with you
beyond a slightly elevated heart rate."
"I'd not been out for a while, you see, and I'd
forgotten about crowds. I've always had issues with paranoia, as though there's
some aggressive element in the crowd, and I'm afraid I got into a panic."
"A lot of people got a bit of a scare around the
hospice yesterday," Farran leant forward in a reassuring, almost
conspiratorial manner, "Megan will tell you all about it, I've no
doubt."
"Is she around?" Chase glanced around the room as
though her daughter might be standing behind her, "She usually works on
Tuesdays. I thought I'd tell her I was fine before I headed home."
"Oh, no. She's off, today; there was a bit of an issue
with an aggressive patient yesterday, and we felt she needed the time away.
She's fine, absolutely fine, just a bit shocked."
"I suppose that goes for the both of us, then,"
Chase laughed nervously, "I don't suppose there's a payphone nearby, is
there? Only, I'm not sure that I'm comfortable walking back -"
"I'd leave that in the capable hands of Miss Turner, if
I were you," Farran rose and opened the door to his office, "we call
her the cab-whisperer."
It wasn't necessary, as it turned out. Constable Morgan had
returned, no longer in uniform, and was waiting for Chase in the reception. He
asked if she was alright three times before she had a chance to say anything,
and then offered her a lift home. She thought that it was adventurous that
she'd said yes.
***
Megan hadn't reached the sink. She'd collapsed on the floor
almost as soon as she'd managed to stand, and now that she could stand again,
couldn't remember why she wanted to.
She couldn't remember much at all. She was giving up trying
to, and instead was drifting in and out of a state of consciousness. She had
managed to face the almost searing heat of the boiler-room and turn down the
thermostat. Even though it had taken several attempts, she couldn't remember
any of them right now.
She'd found a cold corner in her mother's room, and as she
stood there enjoying a draft from a faulty vent in the wall, she briefly
realised that she was slipping away.
And then that slipped away, too.
***
Officer Morgan opened the car door for Mrs. Chase, and she
walked to the house feeling as though the world was better than she'd pictured
it. It was a strange realisation, especially after the people, barely people,
outside the hospice - and after her night alone in the graveyard.
But it wasn't all bad. Morgan held her shopping bags as she
unlocked the door, and then followed her in. She was relieved to see the coat
hanging on the back of the kitchen chair.
"Megan?"
Her voice echoed through the halls, and in a corner of an
upstairs bedroom, something that had once been Megan heard.
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