CHAPTER SIX

Headaches

'How are we today?' the starched, cheerful nurse asked as she bustled around sorting out the wires and sticky pads she was about to attach to my chest, ankles and wrists. As she did so a young man in hospital scrubs wandered into the clinic through the wall behind her. I averted my gaze but he came over to the couch where I lay and stared at me.

'Well I don't know about you but I'm less than stellar,' I said, determinedly avoiding looking at the ghost. My eyes felt like gritty pools and every muscle ached from the unaccustomed exercise over the last few days. 'Do you think we can cut back on the exercise? I'm aching all over and I'm not getting much sleep. So, all-in-all, I have most definitely felt better.'

'Oh no. Absolutely not. It's an integral part of the test. Gets the adrenalin flowing you know. In fact today I was going to introduce you to the weights. See?' She indicated a frame with a bench beneath and metal bricks on pulleys.

'What? You're kidding! Look, Jane...'

'Jenny.'

'...Jenny, I really don't feel up to it today. All I want is to take some painkillers and lie down for an hour.'

'Pain-killers?' Jenny sounded scandalized. 'You can't take painkillers. It will affect the test results.'

I took in Jenny's long lean frame and shocked expression and knew I was going to have a fight on my hands. 'You workout?' I asked.

Her face relaxed into a smile, 'Yes. I do as a matter of fact. And once you get into...'

'I don't want to get into it. I have zero interest in working out. All I want is to regain control of my muscles and believe me it is not going to happen on,' I nodded at the weights 'that. I need to get some sleep and get rid of this damn headache.'

'You have a headache?'

'Yes. And leg-ache and back-ache and arm-ache. In fact, I am one big ache with a short fuse so please, do your tests and let me go back to my room.'

Jenny smiled a soft indulgent smile as she finished sticking the pads to my chest and arms and moved to my ankles. It was the kind of smile guaranteed to make my short fuse spark to life.

'A headache is good, Grace. It means we are making progress. The test results have been inconclusive up to now but...'

I began to unstick the pads from my chest and arms pulling my feet away from her reach and swinging my legs to the floor.

'Headaches are never good, Jenny. Headaches hurt. Hurting is not good. I do not like to hurt. Now, as soon as I feel a little better I will return and you can re-stick all your little thingies and take your tests. Until then I'm going back to my room.'

Jenny was no longer smiling, she looked alarmed. Almost scared. She put her arm out to block my path and as she did so the silent ghost reached out and whipped a small metal tray to the floor at Jenny's feet. It landed with a clatter spilling its selection of syringes and vials over the floor. She jumped back and I slipped past her and out the door.

As soon as the door swung closed behind me the ghost said, 'Now will you speak to me?'

'Thanks.'

'Why do you insist on ignoring me I only want to...'

I stopped and turned to the shimmering ghost keeping pace with my hurried escape. 'Ask me to avenge your death? To find your body? To find out who killed you? Or to tell your family something of vital importance? Or do you just take a perverse pleasure in keeping me up all night?'

'I know who killed me, I know where my body is, I don't believe you are capable of avenging me and I doubt you would want to, and I have no family. Oh, and I'm sorry about the night thing, I lose track sometimes.'

'The fact I was in bed should have provided a clue! So what do you want?' I continued walking, anxious to get away from the treatment room and not wanting anyone to find me standing in a corridor taking to myself.

'I don't want what happened to me to happen to a friend.'

'What?'

'Jenny is, was, my... friend. She came here to find me after I disappeared. So far, Tina doesn't know Jenny's connection to me but it is only a matter of time. Once they find....'

'Tina?'

'Jeremy's mother.'

'Are you saying you died here in the clinic? Are you supernatural? Did you come here for help with your gift?'

'No, I'm not, was not, supernatural. I worked here, I had Jenny's job before her. I was a clinic nurse.'

'And?'

'And I tried to help one of the 'patients' escape.' He put far too much emphasis on the word, 'patients'.

'One of the patients? You tried to turn one of those dangerous supernaturals lose on the world?'

'No. She wasn't. When she first came here she was just sweet and confused and very young. She should have been at home with her parents, going to college and...'

'I'm sorry, what did you say you were called?'

'I didn't but it's, Peter.'

'Peter, no one in this clinic is here for no reason. They have all come here because they have gifts they can no longer, or have never learned to control. It makes them dangerous.'

'And you? Are you out of control and dangerous?'

I pressed the button for the lift. 'That's different. I'm here to help.'

'Just out of interest, are you well? Have you got more or less control over your abilities now compared to when you came?'

The lift doors opened and I stepped in, Peter followed. I thought of the ghosts now plaguing me. My short temper. My incessant headaches and constant worry about Beatrice and Henry. I thought of the curtain, the one I had created to protect myself from the full force of my abilities and how insubstantial it was becoming and I knew, if it weren't for risking Beatrice and Henry's safety, I would be out of here like a shot. 'I'm tired. If I could only get some sleep I would be fine.'

'Really?'

'Look, just tell me what it is you want of me and then leave me be.'

'I want you to make sure Jenny gets out of this in one piece. I want you to warn her and get her to leave before it's too late.'

I stared at him as the lift doors opened and a young girl and a guard stepped in. They walked straight through Peter as we exited the lift and I envied them. There was not even a flicker of anything being out of the ordinary. No acknowledgment of him at all. As the doors slid shut I rounded on him, furious.

'And how in hell am I supposed to do that? What do you think would happen if I tell her I've met your ghost?'

'You don't need to tell her that. If you just make friends with her...'

'Friends?'

'Do it and I'll tell you when they are about to inject you again.'

'Inject? What do you mean, 'again'? I haven't been injected.'

'Yes, you have. Three times now. Today was to be the fourth. Jenny believes it's anti-inflammatory and vitamins to help you cope with the unaccustomed exercise.'

I stared at him, my mind looking for any opportunity Jenny may have had to inject me. The only time she ever put a needle into me was when she was coupling me up to the machine while I was exercising.

'That's ridiculous. Why would they? Anyway, they haven't injected me with anything. Ever.'

'It's pumped into you by the monitoring machine. But only after they get the clean sample of blood first.'

'She said it was just to test my blood, to find out more about my blood chemistry.'

'It is. But it also injects you through the same needle just before it is withdrawn.'

'If what you say is true and Jenny knows I'm having stuff pumped into my veins how can you stand there and ask me to make friends with her?'

'She thinks she's helping you.'

I stormed into my room and slammed the door on him. Pointless. He walked straight through it as if I hadn't bothered.

'And as long as she believes that's what she's doing then she'll be relatively safe,' he continued. 'For now.'

'She is not sticking another needle into me. Ever,' I hissed, trying to keep my voice low.

'Then what? You'll walk out? You'll tell her and the clinic why you are suddenly so uncooperative? What do you think will happen then. To you and to her?'

I turned my back on two more ghosts in my room. Two of the parade of ghosts now plaguing me. One was most definitely in a loop as it endlessly picked up a small child wrapped in a dirty blanket, then screaming, dropped it only to bend and pick it up again. The other looked as he must have done at the moment of death. Nothing could look like that and live. My stomach churned and bile came into my mouth.

'You have to go along with them. I'll tell you when she is ready to inject you again and we can work something out.'

I shook my head.

'Please. Not just for her. You must know that they will kill you as soon as you stop cooperating.'

'Why should they? They need me.'

'Why?'

'They want me to negotiate between the clinic and the CSC.'

'And how is that going? Any further forward?'

'Well, no. I've not actually been to a meeting yet.'

'No, and you won't either. Do you think they would be injecting you with this stuff if they needed you stable?'

'I am 'stable'.'

'I doubt that but if by any miracle you're stable now, you won't be for much longer. Face it, they don't need an ambassador, Grace, they need a guinea pig. Someone they can...'

'Shut up.' I was yelling now, beyond caring what the microphones picked up. 'You're talking rubbish. Get out of my room and stay out.'

'But....'

'Just go!'

As Peter dissolved there was a knock on my door. 'Go away,' I yelled. 'I am not going back to that treatment room.'

The door swung open and Ross filled the space. His face was unreadable. 'Is there something wrong?'

'Wrong? Wrong? What makes you think there would be something wrong!' I snapped.

'Your headache, maybe,' he suggested evenly with soft emphasis. He fished a card of tablets out of his pocket. He held them out to me. 'Jeremy authorized pain killers.'

'From Jenny?'

'I didn't go to the clinic for them. These are from the guards' personal supplies.'

I hesitated.

'They are paracetamol and as you have decided not to continue your tests, at least for today, they are guaranteed not to interfere with the results. I take it that is what you are worried about.'

I made no move to take them and watched his face for any change in expression. There was none. What did he know? Had he overheard my conversation with Peter? Could he hear ghosts? I realized I had no idea if Ross had any supernatural powers and if he did, what they were. He flicked the card of tablets onto the nearby table. 'In case you change your mind.'

The distraught woman was still dropping and retrieving her child. The mutilated man still held onto his intestines and was looking imploringly at me. Ross turned to leave.

'Wait. Will you...I mean, if you're going to the dining room I'll walk with you. I need a coffee to wash these down.' I slid the tablets into my hand.

He nodded and held the door for me.

In the lift the uncomfortable silence dragged on. I decided to try out my old standard request. 'You ready to show me out?'

To my surprise, he turned to face me and studied my face intently. 'You know 'everything' yet?' he said with a trace of irony.

I stared at him, was he offering a way out? Or making fun of me? 'As much as I want to know.'

'What's changed?'

'I don't like how I feel.'

'Why did you chose to stay?'

'I thought I could help.'

'And now?'

'I'm... not so sure.'

'And that was the only reason?'

'There were also...personal reasons.'

'Are they no longer a consideration?'

I turned back to the doors as they slid open and thought of the Penningtons. 'Yes, and they always will be, I just have to find a way around it.'

The dining room was mercifully quiet when Ross left me at the door. No people and better yet, no ghosts. I helped myself to coffee and took a seat in the corner, my back to the wall and with a clear line of sight to the door. Okay, I acknowledged to myself, I was being a little paranoid but it was only to be expected in a place like this surely. There were all kinds of... unusual people about and not all of them were to be trusted. I was tired and over-worked and all the extra ghosts I was seeing around here could be accounted for by the nature of the clinic. Look at the type of people that were here. Look at how many didn't seem to make it out alive. But that last thought brought no comfort at all. It only raised more questions. How many of the troubled supernaturals that arrived here died? And if they gained control over their powers what happened to them? Clair and Lewis had mentioned they were expecting to be released soon. Where would they go? Back to their homes? Did they have homes? Or families? Lewis didn't sound as though he had a family he could return to. A halfway house then? Another clinic maybe? Or maybe the clinic that Tina was at? Wherever that was. I made a mental note to ask Clair the next time I saw her where she would be going when she left. Wherever it was I had a feeling she and Lewis would be going together.

As for the injections Jenny was supposedly pumping into me, well, if she really were injecting me with something, maybe it was as innocent as she believed it to be. I pressed two tablets out of the foil card and rolled them around my hand. Peter was obviously confused, as ghosts often were. But if I believed that, why was I so relieved Ross had not gotten these from the treatment room. And why was I trusting him more than I did Jenny? Simple, he had not been accused of injecting me with.... What was she injecting me with if it wasn't the vitamins she supposed it to be? If she's injecting you at all, I reminded myself. I threw the tablets into my mouth and swallowed them with a mouthful of coffee and put the cup back on the table. Who was I kidding? Something was happening to me. This would be the fifth day I had visited Jenny and each day I felt a little worse. I had been putting it down to stress and to all the unaccustomed exercise. But maybe it was something more. But why? Why was it happening? How was it happening? My head pounded making it difficult to think. If I could just get rid of this perpetual headache.

I closed my eyes resting my head against the wall willing myself to trust I was safe, at least for the minute or two this would take. I relaxed my shoulders and took a deep breath and reached deep inside to the calm place I knew was always there. My oasis of strength, the cool tranquil place that had sustained me over the worst of times. When I was very young a neighbor found me in a panic, I forget why. She persuaded me to sit down and sitting opposite me she taught me this technique. She hadn't even asked why I was so afraid. She just promised everything would be fine. At first, what I found with her guidance was no more than a warm safe place that no one but me could enter. Over time though, it became a literal desert oasis with clear blue water and green trees that welcomed me into their shade. I took another deep breath and put myself in the warm desert air above my oasis but something was wrong. The harder I strained toward the shade of the trees the further they retreated from me. I smoothed the sharp spike of panic and concentrated on relaxing. I unknotted my shoulders and stomach muscles. The oasis rose to meet me enveloping me, giving me balance. I sighed in relief and opened my eyes.

Peter was sitting at my table.