The Sister (57 page)

He pushed his glasses up, rubbing at his good eye from below the lens allowing them to drop back onto his nose. He toyed with the idea of a cup of tea, but instead poured himself a glass of water from the jug Stella had thoughtfully left him. The water was no longer cold, but it slaked his thirst. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he continued sifting through the notes, coming across records of further conversations with Anderson. He drifted back in time, recalling once again.

"You know, Michael, before I decided to become a psychiatrist; I had an overriding interest in the latent powers of the human mind. I spent hours poring over old books and case histories covering impossible feats of strength or endurance."
Anderson appeared more interested in reading his newspaper than listening. Ryan carried on regardless.

"You know the sort of thing I'm talking about. Our bodies are built to last a lifetime at the limits normally placed on them, all of us have a spare capacity we can tap into when survival mode kicks in, and when it does, the mind can override those limits."

Anderson's lack of attention irritated Ryan, and he did a high, falsetto imitation of Anderson's voice. "Mm-m. Oh, yes, Doctor Ryan, I know exactly what you mean."

Anderson
sheepishly folded up the paper and sat up attentively.

"I'll give you a couple of examples. A slightly built woman lifts the front of a car to free a child trapped beneath its wheels. A mother slips over the edge of a cliff; her ten-year old son holds onto her with one hand and stops her from falling. They could never do these things normally. It just goes to show that when it's really needed, there are people who can tap into something special."

As he continued, Ryan took to fiddling with his pencil again, click - click - click. The rhythm infiltrated his speech, punctuating the phrases, lending them greater weight than they ordinarily carried.

"Michael, the two incidents I refer to, are borne out by witness statements. After all, in those cases there's at least one other person to corroborate the story. Cases of the individual surviving against all odds are far more commonplace, but not necessarily widely believed, because there are usually no witnesses, and because of that, the chances of survival are reduced. There isn't anyone to help, or call the emergency services, or whatever." He could see
Anderson wondering where he was heading with it all. Ryan held his index finger up. "At times the mind can also push itself outside of the comfort zone. When the effect of physical pain is too much to endure, the chances of survival diminish unless the mind and body can push through. Michael, some sort of dissociation takes place that allows the body's hardwiring to take over the running of things. Instinct takes over.

"We also have reports suggesting that the majority of near-death experiences involving visions occur whilst in this state. Many of these subjects speak of deceased friends and relatives waiting for them at the end of a bright tunnel, their mother and father welcoming them, taking them by the hand to lead them into the light.

"We wouldn't have heard these stories if these witnesses to near death weren't suddenly pulled away, back to earth with a bump. Sometimes the subjects recall viewing themselves from above as they are resuscitated or operated on."

"Have you got something wrong with that eye?"
Anderson said, narrowing his own as if it pained him.

He remembered how at that time, he'd needed to rub that eye with increasing frequency; always intending to have it looked at. He did, but much later, when the damage was irreversible.

In his recollections, he suddenly realised he was seeing with both eyes again.

"You know Michael, in many cases and there were studies - the survivors reported a heightening of the senses that lasted for a long time afterwards," he paused to push the lead back into the tip of the pencil, brows knitted together; concentrating the way a cat might, when the mouse is in its sights. The set of his jaw, tongue tip poking between his lips, he was intent on instilling orderliness into something as small and insignificant as a pencil lead.

A minute had gone by. He looked up as if awakened from a dream, blinking.

"Where was I? Oh yes, we have studied several cases involving young adolescents or children - cases where serious, life threatening accidents occur with a frequency that exceeds that of chance. In these cases where subjects have survived multiple incidents, they seemed to develop a type of early warning system, something that enables them to continue surviving." Ryan hesitated briefly, taking a sip of water from his glass. He raised his eyebrows, inviting comment from Anderson, who obliged with the question. "Are you saying that you think he has ESP?"
Anderson had the look of a pupil in the presence of a talented and inspiring teacher.

"One of the things that I am suggesting, is that I don't think proper attention is given to the fact that a few of these people may be psychic already, and that's how they have the capacity to get themselves out of these situations in the first place. It gives them an edge in the survival stakes." He reached into his pocket and produced a packet of mints; he took one, and offered the packet to
Anderson. "I think that because Milowski was so young when he began experiencing near fatal accidents and surviving them that it triggered the development of a survivor's instinct much earlier than you'd normally expect - and that it's grown stronger and stronger with each successive survival." Ryan considered the implications of what he'd just said. "He just gets better and better at it."

"He can't just go on like that though, can he?"

Ryan's good eye withered him under its gaze.

Anderson
squirmed. "Well, it's obvious isn't it? He'll end up dead."

"Yes, he may very well have a death wish," Ryan put his pencil down. "There's no doubt, subconsciously he sees a bleak future for himself. Scared of any form of human closeness, because he believes people die if they get close to him."

Anderson continued along the same lines, "And if he doesn't talk, we can't help him. What do you think will happen to him?"

"He'll die eventually by indirect suicide. Indirect, because he wouldn't knowingly kill himself, but he may very well put himself in a situation that is impossible to survive. In many ways, that's what he's been doing all along."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, accounting for all the near misses, and given the nature of what I believe was his biggest trauma, there may be some real significance to the fact that many of those incidents involved near-drowning."

"He told me he hates water, why would he continue to go in when he doesn't swim. He should stay away from the stuff."

"I think he's doing a sort of penance with his life at stake. He will just take greater and greater risks, until one day his luck runs out. Either way, it amounts to the same thing. He has a death wish. He'll die because he wants to."

"One thing I can't understand is why no one noticed all this years ago. You'd have thought someone would have been saying, 'Look, we have this accident-prone kid, who has nearly killed himself, what, ten or twelve times, possibly more let's have a closer look at him.'"

Ryan took a deep breath and sighed, "We had so many other kids that needed conventional help, and I didn't have time for them all. I tried to shortcut things. He was to have been part of something unconventional. In the end, his mother got wind of the plan, and it was taken out of our hands."

Anderson looked confused. "Whose hands, ours? And what unconventional treatment are you talking about?"

"It doesn't matter now."

A glimmer of understanding darkened Anderson's expression. "I can't believe you did that without consulting me."

Looking back now with the benefit of further experience, Ryan realised there was another possibility, one that he dismissed as ridiculous almost straight away, but then returned to immediately.

Somewhere in Milowski's notes, he'd written a theory about his grandfather training him. He'd had him guessing cards before he'd turned them over, he would predict what colours the next person coming around the corner would be wearing. He'd taught him to write his dreams down to help remember them, teaching him to make best use of the faculties he believed inherent in everyone. Was it possible that the near-death incidents were another form of training, and if that were the case, the question remained, why?

Chapter 121

Ryan screwed his finger knuckles into his closed eyelids in a vain attempt to rejuvenate them. He was no longer sure he could complete reviewing the files in time. It was almost one o' clock. Exhaustion threatened to shut him down. It had been a long, long time since he'd tested himself to such a degree.
Come on, Ryan, you can manage another half an hour.

Turning over the next page, he plucked up a long fine hair.
Penny had been through the file!
He held it up to the light. It floated like gossamer. It wasn't one of Penny's. "Mm-m?" He said aloud, before placing it back between the sheets where he'd found it. An almost invisible bookmark.

It hadn't taken long to get Milowski talking about the accident, he'd managed to hypnotise him before he realised what was happening.

Using the notes as an 'aide-mémoire', he skimmed through until he reached his record of their second meeting. Milowski seemed to realise how he'd duped him the first time, he was guarded and surly. His memory jogged; he found that he remembered the scene well.

"Bruce, help me to help you. Tell me about these things that disturb you at night . . ."

Looking for the notes he'd made when he'd regressed him to four years old, and then seven, Ryan turned the next page and found another out of sequence. He flicked his eyes over it. Once more, he was lured into the past.

"So you had this sense of foreboding?"

"If that means I knew beforehand what was going to happen, then yes."

"Mm-m, you already said it came too late for you to warn them, and obviously you feel bad about that."

The boy looked at the floor, with his hands clasped together and nodded, the fringe of his hair bobbing in the light coming through the window.

"I want you to think very carefully, back to that exact moment when you first had the sense. Can you remember what it was that made you think something was about to happen?"

Milowski looked up at the psychiatrist. "I can't explain it, I just knew . . ." he said trailing off; face pinched with concentration, pieces of the jigsaw fell into place, suddenly coming together. "Wait a minute!"

Ryan leaned in closer.

Milowski told him everything.

Foraging further into the notes, he found
Anderson again.

"I'm dropping him, he takes too much time I could be spending helping someone who really needs it. He doesn't need our help; he will outlive both of us."

"You don't know that. If we can't help him, he'll die, and you know it."

"On the contrary, Michael, I have a friend who knows about these things. The best thing we can do is leave him to find his own feet. If he doesn't, he'll be back here for help anyway."

Anderson frowned at him.

"Michael, don't worry, I'll explain it like this to his parents: 'Sometimes, we create more problems than we solve by mollycoddling our kids. I believe he broke down under unprecedented pressure. Time truly is sometimes the best healer, and I firmly believe that to be the case here.'"

His thoughts shifted into the present. He hadn't said where the name Miller came from. Picking up his pencil, he scribbled a note. He'd ask him tomorrow.

Looking at the clock, he couldn't focus on it properly.

Where was he? Ah, that's it, a note for Stella.
I must buy her an Easter egg . . .

He flipped the light off and stumbled up the stairs past Gracie. Tiredness thickened his tongue as he muttered, "G'night, m'love." She stared back coolly.

He managed to undress and then flopped onto his bed.

In spite of his weariness, he didn't sleep for a long time.

Chapter 122

Finding the hair in Miller's file had reminded him of Penny again. At one time so indispensable and well trusted, he'd given her a set of keys, not only to the offices, but also to his apartment.

Penny was the first of his patients to have visited Vera. When she was old enough, she sought him out in his new practice, and he'd employed her. Always so pristine and perfect in everything she did, he had nothing but respect and admiration for her. Widowed when she was twenty-five, she poured all her energies into work. Seemingly not interested in meeting another man, she'd worked for Ryan for over ten years.

Not so long after Grace died; Penny changed in her attitude towards him. She became friendlier, more caring, and he appreciated her empathy. Little by little, not so he noticed at first, she began to change. She cut her hair, dying it blonde. Losing weight, she took more care with how she looked; her style of dress became more fashionable and daring. She also started paying Ryan more attention. He was flattered, but he saw no need to tell her that he wasn't looking to have a relationship.

One evening, as they were preparing to lock up, she emerged from the ladies room. She fixed him with a look that left no doubt as to her intentions. The smell of her freshly applied perfume was heady and intoxicating. Completely transformed from the woman he'd known, she sashayed towards him and made a bold play for him. Tempted though he was, he gently turned her down. After that, she turned into someone else, someone he no longer recognised.

He recalled how he'd taken a week off to put some distance between them, to get away from it all and allow things to settle down. When he'd returned, he found that she'd slept with someone in his bed - the one he'd shared with Gracie - the love stain left behind on the sheets, plain for him to see. There had been no attempt to clean it up. She'd
wanted
him to know.

He asked her to return his keys. After that, things went from bad to worse. She bullied the other girl in the office remorselessly, took to smoking in the toilets in secret, and worse, she'd hidden a bottle of gin in the cistern. Penny was clearly unwell, but his sense of loyalty - after all she'd given him many years service - ensured that he gave her every opportunity to get better. After what happened, inevitably there was a confrontation, which ended in tears. Ryan agreed to give her another chance on the condition she got help. Ryan remembered noticing through the tear streaked mascara, how pudgy and unhealthy looking she'd become.

Unable to treat her himself, he sent her to another shrink – he hated the term – but the 'Shrink' in this particular case, was a friend of his who owed him a long-standing favour.

Ryan telephoned him and following a brief discussion; he'd agreed to take her on for a couple of free sessions.

Ryan allowed her the time off without deducting her pay. So every Thursday after that, at four o'clock in the afternoon, she would go off to her appointment.

For a while, she seemed to improve, but he had a feeling she was up to something.

"How much do I owe you so far?" he asked his friend about two months later.

His fellow practitioner looked quizzical. "Owe me? What for?"

"You know, for seeing Penny?"

"Oh…" his friend had replied, "This is sticky. I can't talk, because she's a
client
of mine."

"I only asked if I owed you anything . . ."

Falling silent, he said, "She's never been."

When Ryan tackled her about it, she stormed out, and he never saw her again.
Good Penny turned bad.

Then he drifted back further, almost to the beginning of his career, when he first met Gracie. Lifting the framed photograph of her from the bedside table, he held it tightly to his chest and finally closed his eyes. A deep sigh escaped his lips.

Chapter 123

April 6th, Good Friday

Stella had forgotten to set her alarm. Running late, she sped along the pavement balancing her bag in the crook of one arm and her jacket on the other. She couldn't believe how warm it was for early April. Resting her foot on a curl in the front gate's ironwork, she fished in the bag for her keys. Pushing the gate open, she anchored it there, and then made her way up the steps.

She unlocked the door and let herself in. Carefully replacing the keys in her bag she remembered how angry he'd been when she told him she'd lost the original set she was given.

Don't you realise how much it costs to replace a set of keys? If you had to pay for them yourself, you might be more careful!

She couldn't recall an occasion where he'd even raised his voice to her, let alone shouted. Her eyes stung, and she bit her quivering lip as she fought to contain her emotions. Seeing her reaction, he switched his angry expression to one of compassion. Unlocking his cabinet, he'd handed her a spare set, and told her to be more careful.
Don't lose these, and take a letter for me will you…

She smiled at how guilty he'd felt afterwards and tried to make up for it by making her a coffee. Although she was excited at the prospect of a new job, she was also sad. She would miss Doctor Ryan.

Flicking the lights on, she crossed the reception area, and noted the time was 10.55 a.m. She hung her jacket in the corner on the coat tree, and entered the cloakroom to freshen her makeup. A couple of minutes later she stood outside Ryan's office and knocked on the door. There was no answer, so she opened the door. He wasn't there, but he'd left a note on his desk. She picked it up and immediately had the feeling that something wasn't quite right.

Dear Stella,

I am not sure if I'll be awake in the morning when you come. If I'm not, you'll be reading this note :)

Anyway, since you are reading it, I want you to call Miller and ask him to come round to see me straight away.

B. Ryan

She grinned at how he'd caught on to the use of the smiley. He had upgraded his mobile telephone, and she'd introduced him to the fine art of texting. She sent him a short note and ended it with :)

"What on earth is that supposed to be?" He'd said, pointing to the symbol.

"It means you're happy, smiling in a text," Stella explained.

"Mm-m," Ryan said as he always did.

Her smile evaporated. She stopped in her tracks.
Dear Stella?
Ryan had never left her a note like that before. His apartment door was ajar; she listened first for any signs of life. Not a sound. She called out to him from the base of the stairs, and when he didn't respond, she ventured up. Gracie's portrait eyes followed her as she walked down the hallway to his bedroom. An uneasy feeling settled on her as she opened the door. "Doctor Ryan?" she said, gingerly poking her head through the gap. "Are you awake?"

The doctor was lying in his bed, holding a picture face down on his chest. He had one eye fixed open. It looked milkier than ever before. A lop-sided smile had frozen on his face; he looked happy. She wondered if he'd been thinking of Grace
.
He'd spoken of it often lately, how much he looked forward to seeing her again.

"What if it's just a lie?" She'd asked him.

"Then we're all doomed," he replied. "We must not let ourselves believe that, well you can if you want to, but me - I know I'm going to see Gracie again." She remembered the glint in his eye, the firm set of his jaw when he said it.

She wished she could have shared his absolute faith. For a moment, she saw everything with a new clarity.

"I'll see you again one day," she whispered and for the first time, found that she believed it. The barrier she'd thrown up against the enormity of it all broke down, and she sank to her knees. She cried, racked by sobs so deep that she was hardly able to breathe. She cried for Doctor Ryan, and she cried for herself and for all the things she couldn't change.

After a while, she regained her composure and prepared herself to dial 999. The buzzer sounded.
Someone's at the door.

Numb, she descended the stairs. The electronic drone persisted. She pushed the intercom and answered automatically.

"Who is it?"

"The name's Miller. I have an appointment for one 'o clock."

"Oh, Miller . . . Ryan is dead!"

Miller thought he recognised her voice. "Stella . . . Is that you?"

When the door released, he charged up the stairs two at a time.

Stella was slumped on an armchair in reception when he rushed in. She'd dyed her hair from blonde to black since the last time he'd seen her, but he recognised her instantly. The newly darkened hair matched the black of her smudged mascara.

"Stella, I don't believe this… Where is he?"

She nodded in the direction of the stairs.

He glanced at her as he went through the door and up the stairs. "Are you all right?"

Her lower lip tugged down at the corners and sadness dulled her eyes. She shrugged and followed him into Ryan's apartment.