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Page 14 of Never Tear Us Apart

Chapter Thirteen

I’m in a coffin. There’s no air. I can’t see anything. All I can hear is this loud, booming clanking. Its volume is so great that it fills the air, suffocating me. The building must have collapsed on me. I am buried alive.

The din is so all-consuming that when I scream, I can’t hear my own voice. I can only feel the words vibrate and grate in my bone-dry throat: ‘Get me out, get me out, get me out!’

‘Maia.’ Dr Gresch’s voice crackles in my ears, shocking my eyes open in the dark. There’s light somewhere out of reach.

‘Can you get me out?’ I plead. ‘Can you dig me out? Am I dead?’

‘Don’t worry – we are bringing you out now. Take a deep breath. It will just be a moment or two. You are safe. You are in an MRI scanner at the hospital. You are safe and well.’

I can’t move my arms to touch my face, but I realise I have an eye mask on and, if this is the same as my last scan, a sort of cage over my face. Tears roll down my cheeks, falling onto my earlobes and neck: I am back.

Dr Gresch takes my hand as soon as I am out of the machine.

‘I’m so sorry, Maia. It must have been a shock, coming back to consciousness like that, but you are OK. You are safe.’

A nurse removes the cage thing from my head, and then my eye mask. Bright light makes me screw my eyes shut for a moment, cover them with the palms of my hands. They smell of something unfamiliar: smoky and sharp.

When the nurse removes the ear plugs from my ears, the ringing fades a little into the background.

‘What the hell?’ I say, sitting up too fast; the room tilts and spins a little before settling back on its axis. ‘Couldn’t you have woken me up first?’

‘Paula, would you fetch . . .’ Dr Gresch nods discreetly at the door.

‘That was the problem,’ she continues, turning to me.

‘We couldn’t wake you up. The nurse came to take your vitals this morning, and you slept through them, slept through breakfast, and when your cousin came, she couldn’t rouse you.

All your vitals seemed fine, but you would not be woken.

We were very worried. I’m sorry you came round in the machine – it must have been very frightening. ’

‘What do you mean you couldn’t wake me up?’ I ask her. ‘Why not?’

‘We don’t know,’ she admits. ‘And I’m afraid that I need to ask you to go back into the MRI machine so that we can complete the scan and try to find out.’

‘No.’ I shake my head. I’m still wrapped in the horror of those last few minutes between waking and sleeping, when dreams and reality became one.

‘Maia, please—’ she begins.

‘I’m awake now, right? So, problem solved.’

‘Maia, something is going on that we don’t understand. Please. I beg you. We need to be certain that nothing has been missed.’

‘She’s begging you, and I’m telling you.’ Kathryn appears at the door with the nurse who fetched her. She hurries over to my side, hugging me to her bosom.

After a moment, I put my arm around her waist. My arms are stiff and sore. When she lets me go, I notice they are bright red.

‘You scared me to death, Maia. Now, let them finish the scan. I’ll stay in here with you, OK? I’ll talk to you through the thing, but you are going back in for that scan. End of.’

When I run my fingers through my hair, little bits of grit and dust film my hand. I stare at my palms for a long, confused moment. It’s not normal to bring a little of your dream back with you, is it?

‘OK,’ I say. ‘I’ll go back in.’

* * *

‘It was so real,’ I tell Dr Gresch, back in my sun-drenched hospital room. ‘I felt like I was there, in real time. The heat, the smells. And then I wake up smelling of smoke, with dust in my hair? And with sunburnt arms. People don’t get sunburn in their sleep.’

‘No.’ Dr Gresch is thoughtful, her dark brows knitted together in a frown. She taps a silver pen against her bottom lip. ‘Yet your scan is clear for physical anomalies or concerns.’

‘What does that mean?’ I ask. ‘Does that mean I’m going mad?’

‘No.’ She studies the results of my scan again for a long moment, while Kathryn sits down next to me.

Getting up suddenly, Dr Gresch calls to a nurse in the hallway. A slight young man in scrubs steps in.

‘Gi, who did Maia’s stitches?’ the doctor asks.

‘I am not sure,’ Gi replies. ‘They were done when I came on shift. I did notice . . . but I thought perhaps an older member of staff or . . . ?’ He shrugs.

‘What’s wrong with my stitches?’ I ask, touching my fingers to where a sterile pad is fixed to my forehead. It stings.

‘Nothing.’ Dr Gresch comes round and, bending down carefully, removes the pad. ‘Fetch me another, please, Gi.’

The nurse departs.

‘Your stitches are very neatly and expertly done,’ Dr Gresch tells me, ‘but in a way I haven’t seen practised for .

. . well, ever! Very old-fashioned, using silk.

We haven’t used silk to stitch wounds in decades .

I’m not sure how this happened. We sometimes have older agency nurses, but where would they find silk stitches? ’

‘What does this mean?’ I ask.

‘Nothing, really – just another little anomaly to add to the mystery of Maia.’ She smiles at me. ‘I’ll take them out for you in a few days. You’ll hardly notice the scar.’

Kathryn is looking at me thoughtfully. ‘You were in Malta during the war?’ she asks me. ‘In your dream?’

‘Yes, and it was so real . . . I can hardly believe that my brain could come up with the details. I woke up in this place in Floriana, and there was this woman there. Her name was Christina Ratcliffe. And she told me my life had been saved by this flying ace called Danny—’

‘Beauchamp,’ Kathryn finishes.

My mouth falls open. ‘How do you know?’ I ask.

‘Because they are real people,’ Kathryn tells me. ‘Famous on the island. You must have read about them or heard about them somehow.’

‘I didn’t read that book, though,’ I protest. ‘So how could I have dreamt about real people I knew nothing about?’

‘It’s very possible that you know about them without knowing about them,’ Dr Gresch tells me. ‘You must have absorbed this information in the time you’ve been on the island, and while you slept, your subconscious brought them to life for you.’

‘And the dust in my hair?’ I ask, running my fingers through it again.

‘You have an abundance of beautiful, long dark hair,’ Dr Gresch says. ‘It was probably already there from when you fainted at the temple.’

‘But the sunburn?’ I ask.

‘Sometimes your body can manifest the physical attributes of a mental . . . event,’ Dr Gresch suggests, somewhat half-heartedly.

‘Well . . . why?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘And I also don’t know that the redness on your arms and face is sunburn. I will need to consult a dermatologist and also, perhaps . . . a psychiatrist.’

‘No, thank you,’ I say firmly. ‘I’ve seen enough of those to last me a lifetime. If I’d been wandering around imagining this world was real, maybe – but it was a dream . So I’m fine. Look, my head looks OK to you, right?’

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘but considering your history, we should exercise caution . . .’

‘Yes, I agree, but I’ve been under a lot of stress: coming to this island in the first place; seeing my father, with whom I have had a very difficult, practically non-existent relationship; then the crash; then I looked at the photos in the book Kathryn gave me and my brain went to town on me, right?

’ I look at Kathryn. ‘I’ve always had really vivid dreams, and now .

. . well, now it’s like all the things added up and created the perfect storm inside my head. It’s hit me hard – delayed, but hard.

‘I needed to sleep, so I slept deeply. But it’s like the physical trauma has sent my immune system into overdrive, which, instead of giving me psoriasis, which is what it usually does, it’s given me this hot, stinging rash.

And my past experiences of reporting from war zones all added up to a really, really vivid dream, and now it’s done.

And I could stay here and have a load of tests and talk to your psychiatrist, but I am pretty sure they would come up with the same conclusion after a few days and a lot of euros. Aren’t you?’

Dr Gresch sits back in her chair and thinks for a moment. ‘Without you undergoing the appropriate diagnostic tests, I can’t say conclusively that that is the case,’ she says. ‘But I am conducting a sort of sleep study at present. It’s to explore the link between consciousness and . . .’

‘No, thanks.’

‘I understand your reservations, but if you would consider letting me enrol you . . . ?’

‘No. Thank you, but no. Discharge me, please,’ I ask. ‘I’ll stay in Malta until Dad is OK to fly home, but I think all I need is rest and time and space from all this past – his past, my past. I’ve never been very good at thinking about all of that – I’m very much more of a now person.’

‘I see that.’ Dr Gresch smiles softly. ‘Very well – I will get your discharge papers ready. But if, in the next few days, you get any new symptoms, you will come back – agreed?’

‘She will, Doctor,’ Kathryn assures her. ‘I’ll keep an eye on her.’

‘Great,’ I say. ‘I guess I’d better go and see my dad while I’m waiting. I think it will help ground me. He has a way of bringing me down to earth with a bump.’

‘Want me to come?’ Kathryn asks.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Dad telling me what he thinks of me is something I’d prefer not to have an audience for.’

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