I am upright and breathing and that is a pretty clear indicator that everything is continuing as it should.
Fifteen isn’t there either. I’m still standing, I remind myself.
‘What are you worried about?’ Clive asks, his crystal-clear eyes seeing right through to the place that is hidden. The place I don’t want anyone to see. The place no one else knows about.
‘I’m not sure you should meet Roy.’
‘Why?’
I’m not sure how to voice it in a way that makes sense. ‘You shouldn’t be in the same room together,’ I say, like that’s a reasonable explanation.
‘What will happen if we are? Am I about to set his pacemaker off or something?’ I hear the jest in Clive’s voice. It makes me relax a fraction, my arm a further half inch from my neck.
‘You’re in the same study. It might upset the results.’ Some clarity finds its way to my mind. There are no lightning bolts about to thunder down on the laboratory. There are four walls, a floor and a ceiling that aren’t going to crumble because they’ve met. The project will not be null and void because case study one and five are in the same place. I flop my arm down by my side. ‘Roy is part of the takotsubo study. I was concerned about two participants meeting.’
It’s Lucy that I miss in this moment. She would have pre-empted this. For all her klutz, she can also be the most methodical person I know when it comes to schedules. Seeing shapes and patterns and how they’d react way before it gets to breaking point. She would have pointed out this minor anomaly and fixed it before it became a problem.
‘Far too many broken hearts for one laboratory, huh?’ Clive says.
I nod. Far, far too many. And it makes me conscious once more of how this man, who is virtually a stranger, sees me in a way I never even admit to myself. Of how he sees through me and seems to understand… I am the one that is broken.
22
Clive
It had taken a couple of days, but Clive was getting used to the routine of being in the lab. Once he was dressed, he drank his beetroot juice, then walked to Tess’s Treats for a light breakfast of poached eggs and toast before heading back ready for the day to begin. The participants usually partook in several measures for each particular study. There were their vitals to be taken, a six-metre walking test, a cardiopulmonary exercise test and the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire to fill out. Even though some of the projects were studying different treatments, a lot of the measures used were the same. He was familiar with them all now. ‘They are quantifiable,’ Keisha said of the tests. Whatever quantifiable meant.
Admittedly, Clive’s favourite part of the day was making the hot drinks. He’d been left in charge of purchasing the biscuits and was making subtle upgrades from Lucy’s previous selection of plain digestives and rich teas.
Since Keisha had faltered over her pulse-taking the other day, Clive had been waiting for a moment to ask about it without startling her. It was while they were having their tea break without any study participants present that he decided it was the right time. He offered her a chocolate chip cookie beforehand to soften the blow.
‘When did it start?’ Big questions were always hard to ask. He wasn’t sure he was going about it in the best way.
‘What?’ Keisha responded with a jump, as if she’d spotted a spider and was ready to bat it away.
‘Taking your pulse. I’ve seen you noting it down. I wondered if you remember when you started taking it?’
Keisha’s skin turned pale. Every part of her was visibly tense, most noticeably her forearm, already prepped for action.
‘It’s just something I like to do for routine.’
‘Do you ever consider not doing it?’
‘It’s not hurting anyone,’ she said defensively.
‘I never said it was. I’m just trying to understand why. And I’m pretty certain there is a why.’
Keisha regarded Clive in a way he had never been looked at before, a piercing glare calling for deference.
‘Why does it matter?’
‘I think to understand a person you need to understand their quirks. Some are just more obvious than others.’
‘So what are yours?’ Keisha selected a cookie, not ready to give up her secrets yet.
There were several that Clive had, but which would he choose to share?
‘In my entire life I’ve never purchased a new item of clothing. I’m the original