Nicola Griffith - Always

“Taste those eggs.”

“Thank you, but I’ve already—”

“Taste them, Dornan, or at least get the tray out of my sight. They taste vile, and they smell even worse.” Or at least that’s what I tried to say, but it came out as a river of muddled syllables. I stopped. Tried again. Stopped. His eyes glistened. “Bad,” I said. “Bad food.”

“The eggs are bad?”

“And the butter is rancid and the milk for the tea curdled.” Cremble degg. Runny kid. I took a deep breath. “Butter. Milk. Ranky— ran cid.”

“I see.”

“Do you? My taste. They’ve done something. The drugs. Everything tastes of sulfur.” I stopped, this time in surprise, because I had made sense, and was shocked to see Dornan half close his eyes in relief. Brain damage. My mother hadn’t mentioned that possibility. He hopped up, lifted the tray, carried it to the dressing table, grinned as he popped a strawberry in his mouth. “Shame,” he said, sitting down again. “They’re delicious.”

“The fruit was all rall— right ,” I said.

“You want me to bring that back, then?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Forget the food. Why did you let my mother take over?” Mumbly ho-taker. But most of it had come out all right.

“All her suggestions seemed like sensible ones.”

I said carefully, “Why her hotel?”

“Better than being in hospital under restraint.”

“Wasn’t that bad.” I should have signed those papers, made sure he had power-of-attorney for health care.

“You weren’t making any sense whatsoever. And you were seriously alarming the natives. One of the police officers who was brought in had to be treated for a bruised shoulder and seemed pretty cross about something. They had to Taser you, Torvingen. Twice. I’m guessing that if it weren’t for your mother you’d have a few bruises of your own and be facing charges.”

“You were at the hospital?”

“I was. I have to say you seemed to be happier when you were stoned. You might have been talking gibberish, but your smile was radiant.”

Poison had made the world so beautiful. But I wouldn’t be able to say that. “Strawberries,” I said. “Bring me them.”

He brought me a napkin, a fork, and the dish of fruit and put them by me on the bed.

I ate one. “Still at the Edgewater?”

He nodded. “I’ve kept your room there, too, just in case. But I thought you might like to stay here, perhaps, for some privacy.” He said that with a slight question, but I had no idea what he meant by it. When I didn’t respond, he said, “Your mother wanted me to stay with you. She isn’t easy to refuse.”

“No.” We sat in silence for a moment. “So. You met her. Tell me.”

DORNAN FORGOTto take the tray with him when he left and I was too tired to call out to Suzanne.

When Eric Loedessoel arrived five minutes later, his eyes strayed to its contents while he explained why he was there.

“I have an M.D. but am not a practicing physician. I can’t treat you or formally advise you in a medical capacity, but I have consulted with colleagues at Harborview Medical Center, and believe I can help you with any questions you might have, on a stopgap basis. But I want to make it clear that in my opinion tomorrow you should consult a fully qualified and licensed physician.”

“Thank you,” I said. “For your help so far.”

He looked at the tray again. “I see you didn’t eat much,” he said. “Was it the taste? But you can still smell?”

I nodded.

“Many of the other victims are displaying similar symptoms.”

Victims.

“Those that are conscious, that is. One of the as yet unidentified compounds has a tendency to depress the autonomic nervous system. Two of the victims are being assisted with their breathing. There was a third, but he is already managing to breathe nicely on his own again. The reasonable conclusion is that the effects are probably temporary.”

I had never been a victim before.

“…worry about, as long as you avoid over-exertion. I’d like to look at your notes, if I may?”

I nodded.

He left and came back with the clipboard. This time I noticed his faint scent of cologne, and knew whose pajamas I was wearing.

“…few days, probably an unnecessary precaution.” He was looking at me.

“I’m sorry?”

“Suzanne noted an arrhythmia. It’s probably nothing to worry about, a result of toxic stress, but I’d suggest avoiding taxing your heart in the next few…”

I lost track again of what he was saying. All these favors mounting up. Reduced to relying on the kindness of strangers. I had to get back to my own hotel.

“…emotional lability…”

It was all that caterer’s fault. Kuiper. She should watch her coffee more carefully. Dancing in Pioneer Square.

“…hallucination flashbacks…”

I woke midafternoon. My breathing was a lot better. When I sat up, the walls shimmered but didn’t dance.

My clothes on the chair were carefully chosen: Eileen Fisher trousers in black linen, with pockets; a layering T-shirt, white; a V-necked silk sweater; underwear; cashmere socks; low-heeled boots. They would do for any occasion and temperature. I knew as surely as though I’d seen my mother do it that she had chosen them. I looked around the rest of the room: my laptop on the dressing table, not where it belonged, but where I would see it when I was well enough to sit up for any length of time; my jacket laid casually over the back of an armchair; my luggage stowed beneath the window, again, not where it belonged, but where I would see it and infer that the rest of my belongings were in the closet. My wallet, I knew, would be in the pocket of the jacket; my toiletries would be in the bathroom.

After five minutes of sitting and turning my head this way and that without dizziness, I felt confident enough to drag myself to the bathroom.

I sat on the toilet, and thought about beauty and poison, and the fact that my mother knew me so well she could use my own belongings to send the kind of message that would get through the drug fog: I was able to leave anytime I needed to. I stared at the silk pajama bottoms pooled at my feet and kicked them off, then unbuttoned the top and dropped it on the floor. My skin still smelled of cologne, but faintly.

I came to with a start, cold, and hauled myself to my feet, and flushed the toilet. Suzanne came into the room just as I got to the bed. The left side of her hair was flat; she must have been taking a nap, too.

“Need some help?” She reached out, but hesitantly, unwilling to touch naked skin without permission. Or maybe she had just never seen healed knife and bullet wounds.

“No. Thank you.” I climbed onto the bed, trying to look as though it cost less effort than it did, wondering, even as I did so, why I bothered. Suzanne wasn’t a predator waiting to pounce at the first sign of weakness; she was a nurse.

“Actually, yes. You could help. My laptop. It’s on the dresser.” Four-word sentences were now easy.

She brought me the laptop, set it up—it didn’t take long; the signal here must have been better than at the Edgewater—and refilled my water glass. “Make sure you drink it,” she said, and left.

I had two e-mails. One was from Luz, one from Rusen: the information I’d requested. While it was downloading, I fell asleep.

When I woke up, it was dark again. After midnight. I was viciously hungry, but couldn’t face the idea of fruit. Rusen’s document blinked at me. I scrolled through it. The text bulged and shrank on the screen like a squeezed accordion. I found I was stabbing the keys so hard the casing creaked. I drank the water. The fact that I had to annoyed me. The nasty nylon laptop case, the fact that my laptop was there—that I was in bed in this room—that my clothes were laid out neatly on the chair, that some strange woman was sleeping in the room next door and that I had had no say in any of it made me want to hurl the glass at the wall. I wasn’t even sure if I could. I didn’t even know if the room was registered in my name. Was I being treated like a dependent, like a child? I was wearing Loedessoel’s pajamas. Even my skin smelled of him, the man who had married my mother. My mother, who had crooked her finger and said, Come, and I’d climbed obediently onto a plane.