what if this was the first of those seizures the doctor had warned me about? if not this time, what if it was the next time or the next or the next? what if I never got another day in my life when I was normal again?
Once the fear took hold, I was fucked. I’d never known anything like it could exist: all-consuming, ravenous, a whirling black vortex that sucked me under so completely and mercilessly that it truly felt like I was being devoured alive, bones splintered, marrow sucked. After an eternity (lying in bed with my heart jackhammering, adrenaline firing me like a strobe light, feeling the last few threads that held my mind together stretch to snapping point) something would happen to break the vortex’s hold—a nurse coming in so that I had to make mechanical cheerful chitchat, an uncontrollable rush of sleep—and I would clamber up out of it, shaky and weak as a half-drowned animal. But even when the fear receded for a while, it was always there: dark, misshapen, taloned, hanging somewhere above and behind me, waiting for its next moment to drop onto my back and dig in deep.
* * *
About a week in, two detectives came to talk to me. I was lying in bed watching TV with the sound off—a bunch of cartoon trucks were trying to comfort a truck in a pink cowboy hat, who was crying big cartoon tears—when there was a tap at my door and a guy with neatly trimmed graying hair stuck his head in.
“Toby?” he said. I knew straightaway, from his smile, that he wasn’t a doctor; I’d already got the hang of the doctors’ smiles, firm and distancing, expertly calibrated to tell you how much time was left in the conversation. This guy looked genuinely friendly. “Detectives. Have you got a few minutes for us?”
“Oh,” I said, startled—which I shouldn’t have been, obviously this was going to involve detectives at some point, but I had had other things on my mind and it hadn’t occurred to me. “Yes. Sure. Come in.” I found the bed-lift button and whirred myself upright.
“Great,” said the detective, coming in and pulling the chair to the side of the bed. He was maybe fifty, or a little over it; at least six foot, with a comfortable navy suit and a solid, unbreakable-looking build, like he had been cast all in one slab. There was another guy behind him—younger and skinnier, with ginger hair and a slightly flashy retro tan suit. “I’m Gerry Martin, and this is Colm Bannon.” The ginger guy nodded to me, settling his backside against the windowsill. “We’re investigating what happened to you. How’re you getting on?”
“OK. Better.”
Martin nodded, cocking his head to examine my jaw and my temple. I liked that he was straight-up inspecting me, matter-of-fact as a boxing coach, rather than pretending not to notice and then sneaking glances when he thought I wasn’t looking. “You look a lot better, all right. You got a bad doing-over. Do you remember me from the night?”
“No,” I said, after a disorientated second—it was disturbing to think of them there that night, seeing me in whatever condition I’d been in. “You were there?”
“For a few minutes, only. I came in to have a word with the doctors, see what state you were in. For a while there they were afraid they might lose you. Nice to see you’re tougher than they thought.”
He had a big man’s voice, easy and Dubliny, with a comforting rumble running along the bottom of it. He was smiling again, and—even though a part of me knew it was pitiful to feel so grateful to this random guy for acting like I was a normal person, not a patient or a victim or someone to be handled with kid gloves in case he fell to pieces—I found myself smiling back. “Yeah, I’m pretty happy about that part too.”
“We’re doing everything we can to find out who did this. We’re hoping you can give us a hand. We don’t want to stress you out”—Flashy Suit shook his head, in the background—“we can go into more depth once you’re out of the hospital, when you’re ready to give us a full statement. For now we just need enough to get us started. Are you able to give it a shot?”
“Yeah,” I said. The slurring to my speech, I didn’t want them thinking I was handicapped, but I could hardly say no— “Sure. But