Page 50 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)

The next hour unfolded in flashes, one moment lurching unsteadily to the next.

They were like scenes from a film with a damaged roll, fuzzy and skipping.

The blue-and-red ambulance lights patterned against the exterior of the building, casting the room in a neon glow.

The rough, heavy footsteps of the paramedics as they moved in and around him, swarming the bathroom.

One of them knelt and pried Effy out of his arms. Then her body vanished behind them, obscured by the brisk but shockingly detached motions that were employed to keep her heart beating.

Rhia, Maisie, and Lotto were removed from the bathroom with the same dispassionate maneuvering.

A police officer parked himself in the corridor with his notepad and began taking down witness accounts.

Rhia was sobbing; Lotto was doubled over, hands on his knees, as if he might retch.

Even Maisie looked rather ill as she explained what had happened.

Preston was then forced to his feet by two of the paramedics. They pressed in on him with questions: how much did she take, when, how —that still felt unnervingly impersonal. As if they were working with machinery rather than human beings and were simply trying to mend a malfunctioning part.

One question they did not ask was why . Preston was grateful for that, because he would not have been able to answer.

It was not that he didn’t know—in truth; it was that there would have been far too many reasons and it would have delayed the paramedics by hours.

It was that he knew Effy’s greatest fear was being declared mad, of being strapped into a straitjacket and forced into a windowless room with padded walls, locked away and forgotten.

So already Preston was trying to come up with an alternative explanation.

If he could convince the rest of the world that it was an accident, perhaps he could convince himself, too.

The bright-white sterility of the hospital felt almost hostile. While Effy was wheeled through the double doors, Preston tried to follow, but a paramedic clapped him firmly on the shoulder and directed him toward the waiting room instead. “We’ll have the doctor come out and update you,” he said.

Preston sat. He was aware of almost nothing aside from his own breathing. If, for a moment, he allowed his mind to wander, the thoughts that occurred were too much to bear. You left her alone. You couldn’t give her enough. This is your fault.

“Preston Héloury?”

“Yes?”

A white-coated physician stood above him with a clipboard. He had slicked-back gray hair but otherwise a surprisingly young-looking appearance, no age spots on his skin or lines around his eyes. His gaze held the faintest suggestion of gentleness. Or perhaps it was pity.

“I’m Dr. Quinbern. I’ll be responsible for Miss Sayre’s care.”

Preston swallowed, his voice hoarse as he asked, “Is she going to be all right?”

“That remains to be seen. We were unable to rouse her, so she’s in a semicomatose state for now.”

Semicomatose. “She’s asleep?”

“It’s rather more than that,” Dr. Quinbern replied. “But I suppose you could say that she’s in a deep and—at least at the moment—imperturbable slumber.”

“But,” Preston started, and then had to swallow once more, around the lump in his throat, “you can wake her, can’t you?”

“We will do our very best,” Quinbern said.

“Unfortunately, this is one of those situations where the patient must be relied upon to do most of the work herself. Our hope is that, as she remains in this semicomatose state, her body will begin to recover its functions and she will grow strong enough to wake.”

Preston looked at the doctor for several moments without speaking. This man was old enough to be his father—perhaps exactly the right age to be his father. He had kind-looking brown eyes, light brown, a similar shade to Preston’s own. His name even sounded vaguely Argantian.

“The best thing you can do for her is to remain positive,” the doctor said, when it was clear Preston was not going to reply.

“She’s young. In all other respects, she appears physically healthy.

It will just take time.” He paused and gave Preston a rather probing once-over.

His gaze landed on Preston’s hands, clenched in his lap.

“Did you hurt yourself? Let me have a look at those.”

Instinctively, Preston drew his arms up to his chest. His knuckles were stippled with small cuts that he hadn’t even noticed before. From breaking Aneurin’s coffin , he realized dimly. He felt almost ashamed of them. Pitiful wounds. For what he’d done, he deserved worse.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m fine.”

Dr. Quinbern’s stare was unconvinced. “Are you certain?”

Preston nodded. His vision was starting to grow cloudy, though he felt no instinct to cry. “Can I see her?”

Quinbern tilted his head in a very sympathetic way. “Yes, son. Of course. But I expect you’d like to let her parents know. You shouldn’t be left to manage this alone. There’s a phone at the nurse’s station.”

Effy lay against a bastion of pillows in a half-upright position that was too awkward and stiff to appear at all peaceful.

It did not help that there were wires crisscrossing her unmoving body, one to the IV in her wrist, and the other to the oxygen plugs in her nose.

Preston recognized both—recognized everything, almost—from when he had visited his father in the hospital after the accident.

There was the noxious smell of cleaning solution, the low but insistent beeping of machines, the rumpled hospital gown, and most of all the complete and utter stillness, as if the room were cast in a layer of unmelting ice.

Preston approached her, his heart thrumming like the beat of blood behind a bruise.

He sat in the chair that had been pulled to her bedside, close enough that he could reach out and touch her easily—if he dared.

The tips of her fingers, minus that missing fourth one on her left hand, were blue, as if frostbitten. Her lips were chapped and white.

He tried to remember the last time he had kissed her there; he even lifted a finger to his own mouth, as if he could recall it through touch alone.

But all the memories that came were distant, fuzzy, and vaguely unreal, just as the memories of his father had been.

When was the last time he had been checkmated in chess?

When was the last time he had seen his father smoke a pipe over the morning newspaper?

When had he last pointed out one of the rabbits on their lawn?

Preston lowered his head into his hands. The beeping of the machines reasserted itself, to the point that he could hear nothing else. Not even the bells.

He couldn’t have begun trying to estimate how much time he spent there, hunched over in the chair.

His watch was filled with water and its hands had not turned in weeks.

There was no clock on the wall. Even when he closed his eyes, the white lights burned through his lids, and every breath that came up his throat felt like a scraping rasp.

It was all too much and too close and the naked reality was too painful to bear.

Effy breathed, but only barely. Her chest hardly rose and fell. This state she existed in was deeper than sleep and too far gone for dreams.

Hours must have passed in this manner, because the next time Preston raised his head, it was to a knock on the door. Blearily, he tried to peer through the window, but the shape on the other side was muddled in the frosted glass. The door opened anyway.

And then there she stood in the threshold, slim and silver-haired. She wore an unshowy overcoat of gray and had her face half-hidden beneath a beret, though it could not truly disguise her, at least not to his eyes. She pulled off the hat and held it in her hands.

“I’m sorry,” Preston managed, in scarcely more than a whisper. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

“Don’t be sorry for anything,” Angharad said.

She approached him, and Preston grew suddenly still, tense in his chair. As seemed to happen so often lately, words failed him. He just let Angharad wrap her arms around his shoulders and stroke back his hair as if he were a little boy again.