Where the Shadow Falls by Gillian Galbraith

Author:Gillian Galbraith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780857900340
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2011-10-06T22:00:00+00:00

The intensive care unit was intimidating, leads and monitors beside each bed and frail lives depending upon them. The staff, however, seemed relaxed, busy measuring out the medications for the evening, so familiar with proximity to death as to be blasé about it. If they had been employed on a confectionery production line in a sweet factory they could not have looked less troubled, more at ease in their own environment. But the air was not scented with chocolate or peppermint, it had an astringent quality, the smell of disinfectant and mortality.

Alice peered at the beds through the windows of the locked double doors, but was unable to make out Nicholas Lyon’s figure. Her view was obscured by two closed sets of curtains in the middle of the room. Like oversized shrouds, she thought. And suddenly, the sight of the whole set-up filled her with such despondency, such a feeling of leaden hopelessness that she weakened, and began searching for an Exit sign. As she was wandering down the corridor she noticed a single room opposite the ‘Care of the Elderly’ ward and decided to investigate it. If he was not there, then she would go, she had done her bit, done her best. Peering round the door gingerly, she recognised the old man in a solitary bed, accompanied only by a single monitor, and came to stand beside him. Little evidence of the injuries he had sustained was visible. One side of his face was livid with bruising, his temples sunken. And his complexion had become colourless, near translucent, as if he had been sculpted in pale marble. The only sign of life in the room was the flashing of a little red light monitoring the flow in a tube running between the patient’s hand and a drip pack. Briefly, she watched it pulse, mesmerised.

‘Who are you? Are you family? Only family are allowed now.’ A nurse had entered and looked disconcerted to find her charge with company.

‘Yes, Mr Lyon’s daughter.’

On impulse it had emerged; a clear, conscious and defiant lie. But without her he would be alone, and she sensed that he was near journey’s end. The nurse left the room discreetly and Alice remained, on tenterhooks in case of her return, unwilling to leave him on his own whatever the proprieties might be. A few minutes later, Nicholas Lyon let out a deep sigh, as if of relief, and it was immediately followed by the mechanical scream of the monitor, signalling that his heart had ceased to beat.

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