The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood

Author:Benjamin Wood [Wood, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Psychological, Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780670023592
Publisher: Viking Books
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Her Ideal Life

Cedarbrook was typically quiet when Oscar arrived on Monday morning, an hour early for his shift. The lobby was empty as always, and the lights had yet to be switched on at the nurses’ station. A cleaner’s cart stood at the foot of the stairs and a short, broad-shouldered Filipina woman he’d never seen before was dousing the seat of the stairlift with disinfectant spray. The place was still half-asleep: thirty-four beds were still thick with dreams. In the dim light of the staff room, he made himself a coffee, browsed the front and back pages of the paper so he’d have something to discuss with Deeraj and the other nurses later. Then he went to find Jean in her office, to hand in the time sheets she’d been asking him for since the start of the month. She had her own little room marked MATRON, between the kitchen and the parlour, and he knew she’d be there sitting at her desk with her portable TV on as always, watching a repeat of some American sitcom with the volume down low and laughing her dockyard laugh.

It was when he got to the parlour that he saw Dr Paulsen. He was sitting dull-eyed in a wingback near the window. A plate of scrambled eggs was set on the tray-table in front of him and he was peering down at it vacantly, turning his plastic spoon around in his right hand. The features of his face were drawn to the left as if they were caught on a fishhook. There was an atlas of foodstains on the front of his pyjama top. He looked like he’d been sitting there for hours.

‘You’re down early, aren’t you?’ Oscar called out, but the old man didn’t move a muscle. ‘Dr Paulsen?’

Slow as the winching of a crane, Paulsen moved his right eye to look up at him. His body stayed rigid, apart from the spoon he kept turning around in his dry fingers—flick, flick, flick.

‘Dr Paulsen, are you alright?’

Flick, flick, flick.

The eggs were cold to the touch. When Oscar went to move the plate, the old man didn’t try to stop him, and after it was taken away, he just gazed down at the space where it used to be, probing the corner of his mouth with his tongue. ‘I’m going to get you some more, okay?’ Oscar said. ‘I’m going to get you some more.’ A numb feeling was starting to gather in his feet. He felt something clutching at his heart, trying to drown it, like the way his cousin Terry used to duck his head under the water at the swimming pool to time how long he could hold his breath.

Flick, flick, flick.

‘Just wait there. I’ll be back.’

Jean was sitting at her desk just like he knew she would be. The clock in the corner of her TV screen read 7:06. ‘Hello, lovey,’ she said. ‘Can’t pay you any extra for being early, you know.’

His voice was steady, even. ‘Is everything okay with Dr Paulsen? I just saw him in the parlour.

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