Harold sipped his tea, wincing as he picked up the mug. He raised it to his lips with effort, almost as if it were made of lead instead of porcelain. The brown liquid tasted bland on his furred tongue.
Someone asked him to move his chair and Harold turned to see a very attractive woman standing behind him. She was dressed in a white coat, open to reveal the full swell of her breasts beneath the blouse she wore. The skirt hugged her slender waist and hips and as Harold looked into her face he found himself captivated by a pair of the brightest blue eyes he’d ever seen. Her thin face was framed by short, brown hair. She was smiling.
For long seconds, Harold gazed at her, realizing from her attire that she was a lady doctor. He woke up to the fact that he was blocking her way and hurriedly pulled his chair in, allowing her through. She smiled again and thanked him, and he watched her as she made her way up to the food counter and began picking things out, talking happily to the women there. Harold touched the scarred side of his face with a shaking hand, his one good eye still riveted to the woman in the white coat. All the other sounds in the canteen seemed to fade as his attention focused exclusively on the doctor. She had carried her tray of food to a table where a number of other doctors sat and he could see her laughing and joking with them. He lowered his head again, once more aware of the pain which gnawed at the back of his neck and head. The voices in his mind continued to mutter and mumble their incomprehensible dialogue and Harold gritted his teeth until his jaw ached.
Finally, he got to his feet but as he did so he felt his knees buckle and he shot out a hand to steady himself. His flailing hand caught the edge of the plate and, before he realized what was happening, it had fallen from the table and smashed on the floor. Those nearby turned to see what had happened and Harold coloured beneath their curious gaze. He looked down at the mess of broken porcelain and baked beans and shrugged apologetically as a large woman in a green overall waddled across the canteen carrying a mop and bucket.
“I’m sorry,” mumbled Harold.
“That’s all right, love,” said the woman. “It happens all the time. But if you didn’t like our cooking you could have told us. You didn’t have to chuck it all over the floor.” She looked up at him, laughing loudly.
Harold swallowed hard, his body trembling.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, not seeing the joke. He hesitated for a moment then turned briskly and made for the exit door, imagining all eyes were on him.
“Who is that man?” asked Dr Maggie Ford, running a hand through her short brown hair. She watched Harold’s rushed departure with a feeling akin to pity. “I don’t remember seeing him around the hospital before.”
Frederick Parkin drained what was left in his coffee cup and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief, paying particular attention to the thick white moustache that overhung his top lip.
“His name is Pierce as far as I know,” he told Maggie. “He was a patient at the old mental hospital until recently.”
Maggie nodded slowly.
“I wonder how he got that terrible scar? Poor devil.”
“No one seems to know too much about him,” Parkin told her. “A fire I would think, looking at it.” His tone brightened and he smiled broadly at Maggie. “Why the sudden interest?”
“You know me, Fred,” she said. She pointed to her nose and winked. Both of them laughed. “I just feel sorry for him,” she added finally. “It must be an awful burden going through life like that. He’s got guts to walk about in that state.”
“Your compassion is overwhelming, Maggie,” said Parkin, good-naturedly. “Sometimes I think you’re in the wrong job. You should have been a social worker.”
“There’s nothing wrong with taking an interest in people,” she said, defensively. “After all that’s what we’re all paid for isn’t it?”
Parkin smiled.
“I bow to your superior logic,” he said. He got to his feet, said a few words to another man at the end of the table and then made his way out. Maggie sipped her coffee, her mind still unaccountably fixed on Pierce.
She was thirty-two and had been a consultant gynaecologist at Fairvale for the last four years during which time she’d built up an enviable reputation for herself. She had not, as might have been expected, encountered any resentment from her male colleagues – rather the opposite in fact. They had welcomed her eagerly into their midst, impressed by her abilities and also, she thought with a smile, by her female assets. She was the sort of woman who exuded that peculiarly ambiguous demeanour that combined sensuality with innocence; although, with a handful of lovers behind her, Maggie could scarcely claim the word innocent in its literal sense. She was a dedicated woman, single-minded to the point of obsession about her work, something which had caused conflict in many of her relationships but it was not a matter on which she was prepared to compromise. Her mother was always telling her that she should be married but, for Maggie, a career was the only thing which mattered. Men, when she found the time for them, were little more than a brief interlude. At the moment, she lived alone in a small flat about twenty minutes drive from the hospital and she went back to an empty home every night. She said this did not bother her and, on the surface, it appeared that she was telling the truth. However, somewhere inside her was a need which had to be fulfilled and fulfilled by far more than the occasional brief relationship or one night stand. Maggie harboured a brooding fear of loneliness. Some nights, lying alone in her bed she would contemplate the idea of sharing the rest of her years with a partner who cared for
her
above all else. But that thought was always tempered by the fear that she would not be able to reciprocate that bond no matter how hard she wanted to. If many people struggled with the problem of wanting to
be
loved, Maggie Ford was trying to come to terms with the fact that she wanted
to
love. It seemed as if that pleasure were to be denied.
She sat in the canteen and finished her coffee then, finally, she got to her feet. Glancing at her watch she remembered she had a patient to see in ten minutes.
It was almost 1.55 p.m.
Harold pushed the trolley out of the lift into the eerie twilight of the basement. He guided it over the polished floor, past the pathology labs, towards the furnace room. His head felt as if it were swelling and then contracting like some bulbous extension of his pulse. The voices inside his head continued to hiss but they were gaining a startling clarity now. Harold listened to his own footsteps echoing in the corridor as he approached the furnace room, surprised to see that the door was open.
He hesitated, his hands suddenly trembling and he gripped the handrail of the trolley until his knuckles turned white. The noise inside his head grew to a fresh crescendo and it sounded as if someone were holding two gigantic sea-shells against his head such was the roaring in his ears.
He could see the furnace through the open door, its great metal door yawning open to reveal the blistering flames within, competing with the ever-present hum of the generator. Harold’s world had become one of noises and he closed his eyes momentarily before walking on towards the room. He could already feel the heat from inside. He bumped the door open with one end of the trolley.
Brian Cayton turned as the door opened. He recognized Harold and smiled.
“Hello, Harold,” he said, reaching for a pair of forceps which lay on the trolley which he himself stood next to.
As Harold watched, he saw Cayton grip the forceps and clamp them around the limp and dripping form of a foetus which he took from a receiver. Its head lolled back as if the neck had been snapped and Harold saw blood running from its tiny mouth.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, stepping towards the other porter who was still holding the tiny body before him, trying not to inhale the rank odour which it gave off.
“You know what I’m doing,” said Cayton, a little impatiently. “I’ve just come from pathology.”
He held the foetus closer to the hungry mouth of the furnace.
“You’re going to burn that child,” said Harold, flatly.
The smile faded from Cayton’s face.
“Yes. Of course I’m going to burn it.” He paused, fixing his gaze on Harold’s good eye. “Besides, it isn’t a child.”
The words inside Harold’s tortured mind finally burst through the fog of indecision like diamond bullets.
“Stop it,” he said, moving closer.
Cayton raised a hand to ward him off.
“Look, Harold, I know it’s not very pleasant but it’s got to be done,” he said, forcefully. “Christ, you’ve done it yourself, what’s the big deal?”
Harold felt searing pain inside his head and he blundered towards the other porter who stepped back, bewildered. Then, suddenly, he turned and tossed the foetus into the flames.
Harold screamed. A high keening wail torn raw from his throat, the wild ululation of a creature in pain. He crashed to the ground heavily, pulling the trolley over with him. His last conscious thought and sight, one of the foetuses being devoured by the ravenous fire. He rolled onto his back, vaguely aware that Cayton was heading for the door.
“I tried to stop him.”
Words pounded in his ears, low guttural raspings, thick with power.
“I tried, I . . .”
Pain. Agonizing, white hot pain, filled his head for interminable seconds. Mercifully, Harold Pierce blacked out.
Maggie Ford yawned and reached up to massage her neck, allowing her head to rest against the rear wall of the lift. There was no one else in it and Maggie slipped one foot out of her shoe, flexing her toes. Her feet were killing her. Come to think of it, she ached all over.
“A good hot bath when you get home,” she said aloud, suddenly embarrassed with herself when the lift doors slid open, the car having bumped to a stop without her even noticing.
She saw Brian Cayton standing there, his face flushed, a thin film of perspiration on his face.
“Doctor,” he gasped, jumping into the lift. “Can you come down to the basement straight away? One of the other porters has collapsed.”
She was going to protest but the concern on the young porter’s face was such that she decided to remain silent. He jabbed the basement button and the lift dropped the remaining floors. When it came to a halt at its appointed place, Maggie found herself running behind Cayton, so infectious was his anxiety. She followed him to the furnace room, immediately struck by the foul odour of soiled linen and the blistering heat which poured forth from the still open metal door. She saw Harold lying prone beside the overturned trolley, arms outstretched.
“Go and get help,” she told Cayton. “Get someone to help you, we’ve got to get him up.” Even as she spoke, she slid back the lid of one eye and shone her penlight on it mildly repelled by the feel of the cracked skin beneath her fingers but she administered a swift mental rebuke to herself at her reactions, now more concerned when she realized that Harold’s pupil didn’t react to the light. She tried again, feeling mildly foolish when she realized that it was the glass eye she was gazing into. She repeated the procedure with the good eye, relieved to see that this time there was pupilary contraction. Even as she pocketed the penlight, he began to stir. He tried to sit up but Maggie restrained him.
“Just take it easy,” she said, softly and the initial look of fear on Harold’s face was replaced by one of pained bewilderment.
He found himself looking into the face which he’d seen earlier. That beautiful thin face framed with the brown hair.
Her
soft hands were touching his wrist, feeling for his pulse.
“Why do they do it?” he croaked.
“Do what?” she wanted to know, checking his pulse against the second hand of her watch.
“Burn the children.”
She looked puzzled.
“They burn babies in there,” Harold said, tearfully, motioning towards the furnace.
Maggie understood and was thankful that, at that precise moment, Cayton arrived with another porter. On her instructions, they helped Harold to his feet and supported him to the lift.
“Shall we take him to casualty?” asked Cayton.
Maggie shook her head.
“No. Take him to my room on the fourth floor. I think it’s time someone examined him.”
All four of them climbed into the lift and, in seconds, it was rising.
Harold sat on the edge of the couch, fidgeting uncomfortably. He watched Maggie as she crossed to her desk and selected a number of implements with which she obviously intended to perform the examination. He didn’t know what the things were although he had seen one or two of them many times during his spell in the hospital.
It was warm in the office, the gentle hum of the radiator reminding him of the furnace room. The walls were a brilliant white, the snowy expanse broken only by one large picture window to his right which looked out over much of the hospital below. The room itself was sparsely decked out, containing three hard chairs, a large desk and the couch upon which he now sat. There were filing cabinets against the far wall, each drawer marked with red labels bearing letters. On the desk itself there was a small pile of books, a pencil holder and a clock. The ticking seemed unnaturally loud in the silence.
“When was the last time you had an examination, Mr Pierce?” Maggie asked him, turning back to the couch.
Harold smiled weakly.
“I don’t remember,” he said. “You can call me Harold if you want to,” he added, falteringly.
Maggie smiled and asked him to take off his overall which he did. Beneath it he wore a slightly off-white shirt, the cuffs fraying and worn. She asked him to undo his sleeve which he also did, being careful not to pull the material any further than an inch or two from his wrist, ensuring that his forearm was still covered. Maggie took his pulse once again and scribbled something down on a piece of paper.
“How long have you been working here, Harold?” she asked him, reaching for the opthalmoscope, flicking it on and testing the tiny beam of light against the palm of her hand. Satisfied, she peered into his one good eye, adjusting the implement until she found the correct magnification.