Sometimes he did one of those things when a nurse was in the room, because their startled reactions were amusing. That, however, seemed to be the extent of this new ability. He had tried and failed to turn on the television suspended over his bed, had tried and failed to close the door to the en suite bathroom. He could grasp the chrome handle – he felt its cold hardness as his fingers closed around it – but the door was too heavy and his phantom hand was too weak. At least, so far. He had an idea that if he continued to exercise it, the hand might grow stronger.
I need to wake up, he thought, if only so I can get some aspirin for this endless fucking headache and actually eat some real food. Even a dish of hospital custard would be a treat. I’ll do it soon. Maybe even tomorrow.
But he didn’t. Because on the following day, he discovered that telekinesis wasn’t the only new ability he’d brought back from wherever he’d been.
The nurse who came in most afternoons to check his vitals and most evenings to get him ready for the night (you couldn’t say ready for bed when he was always in bed) was a young woman named Sadie MacDonald. She was dark-haired and pretty in a washed-out, no-makeup sort of way. Brady had observed her through half-closed eyes, as he observed all visitors to his room in the days since he had come through the wall from his basement workroom where he had first regained consciousness.
She seemed frightened of him, but he came to realize that didn’t exactly make him special, because Nurse MacDonald was frightened of everyone. She was the kind of woman who scuttles rather than walks. If someone came into 217 while she was about her duties – Head Nurse Becky Helmington, for instance – Sadie had a tendency to shrink into the background. And she was terrified of Dr Babineau. When she had to be in the room with him, Brady could almost taste her fear.
He came to realize that might not have been an exaggeration.
On the day after Brady fell asleep thinking of custard, Sadie MacDonald came into Room 217 at quarter past three, checked the monitor above the head of his bed, and wrote some numbers on the clipboard that hung at the foot. Next she’d check the bottles on the IV stand and go to the closet for fresh pillows. She would lift him with one hand – she was small, but her arms were strong – and replace his old pillows with the new ones. That might actually have been an orderly’s job, but Brady had an idea that MacDonald was at the bottom of the hospital pecking order. Low nurse on the totem pole, so to speak.
He had decided he would open his eyes and speak to her just as she finished changing the pillows, when their faces were closest. It would scare her, and Brady liked to scare people. Much in his life had changed, but not that. Maybe she would even scream, as one nurse had when he made his coverlet do its rippling thing.
Only MacDonald diverted to the window on her way to the closet. There was nothing out there to see but the parking garage, yet she stood there for a minute … then two … then three. Why? What was so fascinating about a brick fucking wall?
Only it wasn’t all brick, Brady realized as he looked out with her. There were long open spaces on each level, and as the cars went up the ramp, the sun flashed briefly on their windshields.
Flash. And flash. And flash.
Jesus Christ, Brady thought. I’m the one who’s supposed to be in a coma, aren’t I? It’s like she’s having some kind of seiz—
But wait. Wait just a goddam minute.
Looking out with her? How can I be looking out with her when I’m lying here in bed?
There went a rusty pickup truck. Behind it came a Jaguar sedan, probably some rich doctor’s car, and Brady realized he wasn’t looking out with her, he was looking out from her. It was like watching the scenery from the passenger side while someone else drove the car.
And yes, Sadie MacDonald was having a seizure, one so mild she probably didn’t even know it was happening. The lights had caused it. The lights on the windshields of the passing cars. As soon as there was a lull in the traffic