Scaredy Cat Read Free Page A

there's something going on in here. There's stil somebody going on in here.
    Did I mention the tests by the way? Absolutely fucking excel ent. Wel , some of them. Basical y there's some sort of kit, literal y a kit, in a special case, which tests if you're a complete veggie or not. To see if you're in Persistent Vegetative State. PVS. Which I keep mixing up with I/'PL but PVS is a bit more serious. They just test al your senses. Banging bits of wood together to see if you can hear, to see if you react. Not quite sure what I did, real y, but they seemed pleased. I could have done without the pinpricks and that stuff they waft under your nose that's like the stuff you inhale if you've got a real y bad cold. But the taste test makes up for it. They give you whisky. Drops of whisky on your tongue. This is my kind of hospital.
    Anne did the tests. She looks dead attractive for somebody quite old. I can't see her very wel but that's the image I get of her. I'm not even seeing shapes, real y. More like the shadows of shapes. And some of those shadow-shapes are definitely policemen. Tim sounded real y nervous when he was talking to one of them. He was pretty young, I reckon.
    The man outside the house with the bottle of champagne did.., what? Turned me into a pretty dul conversationalist but what else? Hurt me somewhere but nothing feels like a wound.
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    Everything feels like.a scar.
    Did he touch me? Wil he be the last one ever to touch me? Come on, Tim. I'm alive. It's stil me. More or less. You're cracking up and I'm the one singing 'Girlfriend In A Coma' to myself...
    It was nice that Carol and Paul came.in. Christ, I hope al this business didn't bugger up the wedding.
    TWO
    'Are we looking at a doctor?'
    As soon as he had asked the question, Thorne knew what Hol and would be thinking. It was undeniable that Anne Coburn was the sort of doctor most men would look at. About whom most men would contrive painful jokes about cold hands and bedside manners. She was tal and slim. Elegant, he thought, like that actress who was in The Avengers and plays the old slapper in that sitcom. Thorne put her in her early forties, maybe a year or two older than he was. Although the blue eyes suggested that her hair might once have been blonde, he liked it the way it was now - short and silver. Perched on the edge of a smal , cluttered desk, drinking a cup of coffee, she seemed almost relaxed. By comparison with the day before at any rate.
    She'd sent him away from the Royal Free with a flea in
    his ear. Thorne could stil h+ar the laughter of thirty-odd medical students as he'd trudged away up the corridor. It was evidently a treat to take a short break from brain scans to watch the teacher give a high-ranking police officer a thorough bol ocking. Anne Coburn did not like to be interrupted. She'd apologised for the incident over the phone when Thorne rang to rearrange their appointment back at
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    Queen Square where she worked. Where she treated Alison Wil etts.
    She took another swig of coffee and repeated Thorne's question. Her speech was crisp, efficient and easy on the ear. It was a voice that could certainly wow impressionable medical students or frighten middle-aged policemen. 'Are we looking at a doctor? Wel , certainly someone with a degree of medical expertise. To block off the basilar artery and cause a stroke would take medical know-how. To cause the kind of stroke that would induce locked-in syndrome is way beyond that... Even if someone knew what they were doing, the odds are against it. You might try it a dozen times and not succeed. We're talking about fractions of an inch.'
    Those fractions had cost three women their lives. Thorne flashed on a mental image of Alison Wil etts. Make that four women. Perhaps they should count their blessings and thank God for this lunatic's expertise. Or, more likely, worry that now he thought he'd perfected his technique he'd be eager to try again. Dr Coburn hadn't finished.