Peter May - Entry Island

Catherine Li was, he guessed, in her early forties. She wore a white, open-necked blouse and black slacks, an attractive woman, slim, with short-cut black hair, and the beautifully slanted dark eyes of someone whose ancestral roots lay somewhere in Asia. Canada was such a melting-pot of different ethnicities, and although he considered himself a native French-speaker, it nevertheless seemed odd that this woman should speak to him in French.

The plaque on her door had told him that she was a Ph.D. and Clinical Director of the unit.

There had been no preamble. No chit-chat. She had asked him to sit, opened a file on the desk in front of her, and taken notes as he responded to her questions. Wide-ranging questions about his upbringing, his job, his marriage, his feelings on various topics, political and social. She had asked about his symptoms. When they had begun, what form they took, how often he slept. Did he dream?

For the first time she sat back and looked at him. Examining his face, he thought. A face that had grown increasingly unfamiliar to him as he examined it himself in the mirror each morning. Eyes bloodshot, deeply shadowed. Sunken cheeks. He had shed weight, and his hair had lost its lustre. Every time he looked at his reflection he felt haunted by the ghost of himself.

She smiled unexpectedly and he saw warmth and sympathy in her soft brown eyes. ‘You know, of course, why you are here,’ she said. It wasn’t a question. But he nodded all the same. ‘Your employers at the Sûreté have sent you to me because they fear that your condition is affecting your ability to do your job.’ She paused. ‘Do you think it is?’

Again he nodded. ‘Yes.’

Again she smiled. ‘Of course it is. In fact, it’s a given. The toxins that have accumulated in your body through lack of sleep are certain to have impaired both your physical and mental performance. As I’m sure you are aware, your concentration and memory will also have been affected. Tired during the day, irritable and fatigued, and yet unable to sleep at night.’

He wondered why she was telling him what he already knew.

She interlaced her fingers on the desk in front of her. ‘There are two kinds of insomnia, Monsieur Mackenzie. There is acute insomnia, which lasts for a short period, usually just a matter of days. And then there is the chronic variety, which can be defined as suffering sleep impairment for at least three or four nights a week for a month or longer.’ She stopped to draw breath. ‘Clearly you fall into the chronic category.’

‘Clearly.’ Sime was conscious of the sarcasm in his tone. She was still telling him nothing new. But if she was aware of it she gave no indication, perhaps writing it off to the irritability she had just described as one of his symptoms.

‘The cause of your condition can also be defined in one of two ways. As either primary or secondary insomnia.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘Well, primary insomnia is unrelated to any other physical or mental conditions. It is simply a condition in itself. Secondary insomnia, however, means that your sleep problems are related to something else. There are many things that can affect your sleep. Arthritis, asthma, cancer. Pain of any kind. Or depression.’ She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Which is, I believe, your problem. Extreme depression brought on by the break-up of your marriage.’ She inclined her head slightly. ‘Are you aware of being depressed?’

‘I’m aware of being unhappy.’

She nodded. ‘The vivid dreaming that you have described to me is frequently a symptom that accompanies anxiety or depression-induced insomnia.’

In an odd way it was almost a relief to have his dreams explained to him in this way. As a symptom. A condition brought on by something outside of his control. But normal, if the symptom of a psychological problem could ever be described as normal.

He became aware of Catherine Li watching him closely. ‘Are you still with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘There is a school of thought which argues that dreams are actually a chemical event. That they are directly affected by modulations in the brain’s neurotransmitters. You know what REM is?’

‘R-E-M?’

‘Yes.’

‘A band, weren’t they? Losing my religion?’

Her smile indicated anything but amusement. ‘You know, I’ve never heard that one.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He lowered his eyes, embarrassed.

‘REM stands for rapid eye movement. It describes a phase of sleep that you go through, typically, four or five times a night, accounting for anything up to 120 minutes of a night’s sleep. It is also when most dreams occur. During REM sleep acetylcholine and its regulators normally dominate, while serotonin is depressed.’

Sime shrugged, incomprehension written all over his face now. ‘Which means?’

She laughed. ‘It means that I might recommend prescribing you SSRIs.’

‘Of course, why didn’t I think of that?’

This time her smile was wry. She said, patiently, ‘Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. That would increase serotonin levels and elevate your mood.’

Sime sighed now. ‘In other words, an antidepressant.’

She shook her head. ‘Not just any antidepressant. In fact, most popular antidepressants would probably only make your condition worse. I think this could help.’

Sime was unaccountably disappointed. He wasn’t sure what he had expected. But another pill just didn’t seem like any kind of a solution to his problem.

The apartment seemed colder and emptier since his return. Even just a few days away had robbed it of its sense of being lived in. It smelled stale. Dirty dishes were piled up in the kitchen. There had been no chance to wash them before leaving. Or to empty the garbage. Something in the kitchen bin smelled like it was a long way past its sell-by. Unwashed laundry spilled over from the wicker basket in the bedroom. The bed was unmade, as it always was. Clothes lay on the floor where he had dropped them. Dust gathered in drifts along every surface in every room. Things he had almost stopped seeing. All classic symptoms of a mind kidnapped by de pression.

He sat that night in the living room with the television on. But he wasn’t watching it. He was cold, but somehow it didn’t occur to him to switch on the heating.

He remembered the advice of a lecturer at the academy. Sometimes you can think too much and do too little. And he looked around the apartment and saw the result of thinking too much and doing nothing at all. It was as if somewhere, somehow, he had just given up on life, become paralysed by inertia. He didn’t want this, any of it. And yet it was all he had. He was desperate to sleep, but not for the sake of sleeping. He wanted to escape. To be someone else in another place and time. He glanced at his ancestor’s painting on the wall. That bleak, dark landscape. And he wished he could just step into it.

The pills they had prescribed were on the shelf above the sink in the bathroom. It was almost time to take them. But he was afraid of going to bed now, in case he still wouldn’t sleep. The doctor had said they would take time. But he couldn’t face another sleepless night.

He stood up, fuelled by a sudden desire to take back his life. Right here, right now.

He spent the next hour gathering clothes from the floor and stuffing them into the washing machine. While it went through its wash cycle he filled the dishwasher and set it going, then sprayed all the work surfaces in the kitchen with disinfectant before washing them down. He took the garbage down to the disposal unit in the basement. And it was while there that he remembered Marie-Ange’s words to him on Entry Island. When he had asked her about her things she had said, I don’t want the stuff. Why don’t you just chuck it all in the trash?