The Ward (21 page)

‘Lock the fucking door,’ I hiss at her.

She nods and does as she’s told. I grab a metal foldaway chair and lodge it under the door handle.

Lisa stares at me with wide eyes.

Shit
. What was I thinking? I should have made Lisa stay outside.

If Katya sees what’s behind that mask… Christ.

‘Stay by the door,’ I say to her.

‘But—’

‘
Please
just do what I say.’

She nods. I slip behind the curtain. It’s dim in here, but I can make out a body shrouded in a sheet lying absolutely still on a bare mattress. I step forward. I’m hit with a waft of
sweat and another perfumed odour I can’t place.

Is it her?

I don’t know if I want it to be Katya or not. Knotted dark hair that could be hers, pallid skin – and then I see it: the birthmark shaped like a small hourglass on her left
bicep.

Her face is completely bandaged, not masked with the hi-tech appliance Lisa was fitted with. Even her eyes are covered and there’s only a rough hole where her nose should be. The dressing
is fairly clean, but a dark seepage of old blood shows through the upper layers in patches. There’s hardly a bump under the bandage but I can hear shallow breath sucking through the hole.
She’s sleeping or drugged, a greenish mixture flowing from the drip bag into her arm. But it’s her. It’s unmistakably her. I draw the sheet off her body. She’s wearing a
short hospital gown. Apart from the face, she’s unblemished. Her tight stomach, the hip bones. Her long legs, despite the stubble, are definitely hers. There’s the nightingale tattoo on
her ankle. Her toenails are still painted alternating green and yellow. If I don’t look at her bandaged face, it’s almost as if we’re back home again, and I’m watching her,
taking pictures of her while she sleeps.

‘That’s Katya, isn’t it?’ Lisa has come up behind me. ‘Is she… is she okay?’

‘Jesus! Get away! She’ll fucking freak if she sees you.’

‘But I’m wearing the… She won’t…’

‘Fuck it, Lisa. Please? Can’t you wait in the bathroom?’ I’m trying my hardest to keep it together, but Jesus fucking Christ. After another long glance at Katya’s
body, Lisa moves back around the curtain.

‘Wake up. Wake up, Kay,’ I say, shaking her, gently at first but with increasing vigour when she doesn’t stir.

‘Kay. Kay. Wake up.’

There’s a quiet knock on the door. ‘Client? Donor?’ A woman’s voice. ‘We realise you’ve misplaced yourselves and an orderly will be on his way shortly to
relocate you. There is no need to panic.’

I’m running out of time. As gently as I can, I remove the drip tube from Katya’s arm. I need her awake and I’m betting that she’s being pumped full of some kind of
sedative, like the kind they gave me.

Fresh air might help. I open the blinds on the wall, but instead of windows there are stylised posters of tropical beaches hastily tacked up in the recesses.

‘Uhng.’ Katya stirs in the bed.

I rush back to her side.

‘Kay, it’s me. I’ve come to take you home.’

‘Mm, gnn, hmn.’

Ignoring my terror at what I’ll find underneath, I feel around her bandages for her mouth, press against a space bounded by hard nubs of teeth. I finger the layers of dressing apart, and
pull out a blood-stained plug of cotton wool. Her breath rattles through her mouth in a mucussy wheeze.

At first I think she’s having some sort of respiratory attack, but then I realise she’s trying to talk. It looks like she can’t swallow or move her tongue properly.

‘Lisa! Bring me some water!’

I prop Katya up against the head of the bed.

Lisa pushes through the curtain and hands me a plastic cup. I nod my thanks and wave her away.

I hold the cup to the hole in the bandages; Katya rinses and drools bloody spit into the bandages and down her gown. It seems to help.

‘Jjjgh,’ she says. ‘Jgsh.’ She’s trying to say my name, and now she starts to scrabble at her face, trying to remove the bandages.

I stop her hands in mine. ‘No, Kay, wait. You don’t know… You should let it heal.’ But it’s really because I’m not ready to see what’s under there.
Katya’s hands are weak and they don’t put up a fight. There’s a small dressing on her left hand. That’s where she cut herself with the glass. I look at my scarred hand. For
the first time in however long I’ve been here, something feels real.

‘Ah wht… ah wht thee you.’ She twines her fingers between mine. Her throat makes a phlegmy wheeze.

‘Sweetie, I’m not sure if… if that’s a good idea. We’ll ask a doctor, okay?’ I lie.

She struggles to sit up and I prop her pillows behind her, then give her another sip of water.

‘I sh sho cared, Josh.’ She clears her throat and I can hear a hard wad of mucus detaching. ‘I was so scared.’ She grips my hand harder. She’s talking! Maybe this
was all just a misunderstanding, maybe I was wrong. Maybe Lisa doesn’t have her face after all.

But still that image is burned in my mind. The right face, on the wrong head. I trace the bandages with my fingertips, trying to feel the bone structure, trying to draw a picture in my mind of
what is really under there. All I feel is gauze, soft to the touch, and the hard patches of dried blood beneath.

Something thumps against the door. I ignore it.

‘Kay. That morning. The morning you left. Do you remember what happened?’

‘I’m always… I’m always… so…’

I have to concentrate to make out the words, and I can hear from the sounds in her throat that she’s crying. Do you need your eyes to cry? But then I remember: Lisa doesn’t have her
eyes. I consider opening up the bandages over them, but I don’t.

‘Don’t, Kay. So you’ll come home. That’s all I want to know.’

‘Yes.’ She squeezes my fingers again, then gasps and chokes. I feed her another sip of water.

Another thump at the door, louder this time.

‘Kay?’

‘Mm?’

‘How did you get here?’

She says nothing. Then, ‘I don’t know.’ I can imagine the frown on her forehead. The way her nose wrinkles when she’s confused.

‘What’s the last thing you remember? Before… here?’

‘Fight,’ she says.

‘After that.’

‘Supposed to meet Noli, and then… then… phone call.’

‘What phone call?’

‘Woman. A stranger.’

‘Was it work? What?’

She tries to shake her head. ‘She said I should come to—’

The curtain rustles behind me. ‘They’re trying to get in, Farrell.’

‘Please open the door, Mr Farrell.’ A different voice – more insistent.

‘Farrell,’ Lisa says. ‘What should we do? They’re going to break the door down.’

‘Who’s that?’ asks Katya. ‘Who’s here?’

‘Kay… it’s…’

‘Who, Josh? Who is she?’

‘I’m Lisa. I came with him to find you. Farrell, tell her.’

‘Tell me what, Josh?’

I don’t know where to start.

A heavy pounding, a screech as the barricade shifts.

Lisa pulls the curtain aside, grabs the bedside cabinet, and wheels it towards the door. She slams it against the chair that’s braced against the handle, but the furniture is flimsy and
cheap.

‘You haven’t got long, Farrell,’ she says.

‘Long before what?’ asks Katya.

I could have only seconds here. And I need to know.

‘Stay as still as you can, Kay.’

I start unwinding the bandage from her face, finding the first edge, peeling the layers carefully and gently so that I don’t hurt her.

The door bangs and there’s the crack of splintering wood.

‘Donor Farrell? Client Cassavetes? Open the door.’ I know that voice.

‘What else do you remember?’ I ask Katya as I unwrap her face.

‘Nothing.’

I’m on the last layer of crepe and the bandage is stuck together, I peel it apart, trying not to see, trying not to feel anything.

‘I got so fucked up, Josh,’ she says.

One of the chairs falls with a slam. I turn around. Lisa has shoved her body against the pile of furniture to add to the fortification.

The last strand of the bandage falls from Katya’s face. A blood-clotted cotton pad covers most of it, apart from the nose and mouth holes. Her hair is stuck to her neck with dried blood. I
can see the edge of the incision finely etched around the pad.

Another massive crash on the door and the latch lock comes skating across the floor. The chairs crash away and the cabinet smashes over. Lisa sprawls across the floor.

I remove the cotton from Katya’s face.

We’ll work this out. We’ll work this out. We’ll sort this out. We have to work this out. What can be done can be undone. We’ll work this out. We’ll sort this
out.

Bile floods into my mouth. Katya stares at me with massive, unblinking eyes. My God. She’s got nothing to blink with.

‘Mr Farrell,’ Nomsa says in the background. ‘We made such an effort to accommodate you. What more could you want? It was I who stuck my neck out and recommended gentle
persuasion, and all I get from you is this disregard and your ridiculous attempts to flee.’

All I can see is Katya, dissected like a medical project, angry strands of muscle webbed between bones, the last hitches of cotton wool stuck to her flesh like maggots, those bulbous eyes
staring. Hot bile soaks the bed between me and Katya.

Lisa struggles to pick herself up off the floor, hauls herself up against Katya’s bed, looks at Katya’s pillaged and seeping face and screams.

A skull slathered with raw hamburger. That’s what she looks like.

I don’t want to look again, I really don’t, but I can’t stop myself.

It’s worse the second time.

Her lipless mouth is fixed in a permanent grin, the teeth standing out huge and white in the mass of raw, red tissue. Her nose is nothing but a couple of crusted holes, but it’s the eyes
that are the most disturbing. They pop unblinkingly out of her skull, oversized orbs that look fixed in horrified surprise.

I want to help her. I have to help her. Farrell’s in no state to handle this by himself. She’s struggling to rip her hands out of his grasp and he’s doing his best to keep her
from touching her face, but tears are streaming down his cheeks and he’s shaking.

‘Mr Farrell,’ Nomsa says from behind me. ‘Let’s be reasonable—’

‘Stay back!’ Farrell yells, twisting his body to face her. ‘Don’t you come any closer!’

Katya manages to yank her hands free and her fingers fly to her cheeks. She scrabbles them over her non-existent nose, bats them against the skullish leer where her lips once were. ‘Joss,
Joss?’ she’s saying, over and over again. It’s difficult to make out the words through her breathy, lipless lisp, but I get the gist of it.

‘Joss? Ish ere… ish ere somefink wrong wiv my face?’

Farrell shoots me an agonised glance. ‘It’s… it’s nothing we can’t fix, Kay,’ he stammers.

Then it really hits me. The sheer absurdity of it, the ridiculous horror of it, the whole twisted
(go on, say it) fucked-upness
of what’s happening to me, to Farrell, to Katya.

‘Josh, Josh?’ she says again.

I hate myself for the thought, but she sounds absurd, like a bad ventril oquist. ‘Is there something wrong with my face?’ That has to be the understatement of the year.

The beginnings of hysteria burble in the pit of my stomach.

And how does Farrell think
that
can be fixed? A facial? A bar of Dove soap and some Body Shop moisturiser?

Before I can stop them, high-pitched gales of laughter rip out of me in jagged bursts, the force of them sucking away my breath, making my chest ache.

‘Lisa?’ Farrell’s staring at me, eyes wide and mouth half-open.

‘Client Cassavetes,’ Nomsa says. ‘Would you like me to fetch you a calmative?’

Another wave of humourless, uncontrollable laughter jags out of my throat.

‘Shut up!’ Farrell roars at me.

‘Josh? Josh?’ Katya says in that same eerily reasonable tone. ‘Why’s she laughing? Josh?’

Puke rushes into my mouth. I make it to the stainless steel bucket in the corner just in time; the force of my retching so violent that it feels like my stomach is rupturing. Nothing much comes
up, but as my body spasms the mask is dislodged and slithers onto the carpet. For several seconds I can’t do anything but keep absolutely still, clutching my aching stomach and trying to
catch my breath.

‘Josh? Please, Josh. I’m scared. What’s happened to me?’ Katya’s voice is becoming fainter, as if she’s giving up.

‘Shhh, Kay,’ he says, his voice wobbling. ‘Shhh. It will be okay. I’ll make it right.’

‘You promise?’

Whatever happens I can’t let her see me.

She won’t be able to face it.

Another bubble of laughter threatens to surface, but this time I keep it inside. I scrabble on the carpet for the mask and, keeping my head down, push my way into the bathroom. I shut the door,
and then lock it.

I run the tap, guzzle gulp after gulp of cool water, washing away the taste of vomit. I know I should reapply the mask. Go back into the room and help Farrell with Katya, but I need to get my
act together first.

I need to calm down.

I press my forehead against the cool glass of the mirror.

Now put the mask back on and leave
.

But first I just need to see. Just for a second. I raise my head and gaze at my reflection.

In this sharp, bright mirror, it’s unbelievable. A thousand times more perfect than I remember from that first look.

The skin is a shade or two darker than mine – olive skin – so flawless that it almost looks airbrushed. The only imperfection is a tiny scar just above the perfectly plucked left
eyebrow. They’re my eyes for sure, that muddy brown I’ve always hated, but the lips, the nose, the cheekbones are far more polished and refined than I ever dreamed of.

I pull my hair back. There’s a faint line along my jaw and around my hairline, like the tidemark left after applying a too-dark shade of foundation. There’s no sign of stitching or
even faint scarring. I press my fingers over my cheekbones, chin and forehead. The bone structure beneath has definitely changed, but I’m still not feeling any pain.