The Sandman

137

Saga smiles at the doctor and maintains eye-contact with him until she has the plastic cup. He closes and locks the hatch, but remains outside the door. She retreats into the room, pretends to put the pill in her mouth, gets some water and swallows, tipping her heard back. She’s not looking at him, isn’t sure if he’s still there, but she sits down on the bed for a while and then turns out the light. Under cover of darkness she quickly slips the pill under the inner sole of one of her shoes, then lies back on the bed.

Before she falls asleep she sees Bernie’s face again, the tears filling his eyes as he put the noose round his neck.

His silent cramps, the little thuds as his heels hit the door, follow her into sleep.

Saga sinks steeply into deep sleep, into healing, falling sleep.

At some point the hourglass gets turned over.

Then, like warm air, she drifts up towards wakefulness and suddenly opens her eyes in the dark. She doesn’t know what’s woken her up. In her dream it was Bernie’s helplessly kicking feet.

A distant rattling sound, perhaps, she thinks.

But all she can hear is her own pulse, deep inside her ears.

She blinks and listens.

The reinforced glass in the door gradually appears as a rectangle of frozen seawater.

She closes her eyes and tries to go back to sleep. Her eyes are stinging with tiredness, but she can’t relax. Something is heightening her senses.

The metal walls are clicking, and she opens her eyes again and stares over at the grey window.

Suddenly a black shadow appears against the glass.

She’s instantly wide awake, ice-cold.

A man is looking at her through the reinforced glass. It’s the young doctor. Has he been standing there the whole time?

He can’t see anything in the darkness.

But he’s still standing there, in the middle of the night.

There’s a faint hissing sound.

His head is nodding slightly.

Now she realises that the rattling sound that woke her was the key slipping into the lock.

Air rushes in, the sounds expands, grows lower and fades away.

The heavy door opens and she knows she must lie absolutely still. She ought to be sleeping soundly because of the pill. The nocturnal lighting from the corridor falls like shimmering powder on the young doctor’s head and shoulders.

She’s wondering if he saw that she only pretended to take the pill, that he’s coming to get it from her shoe. But staff aren’t allowed in patients’ rooms alone, she thinks.

Then it dawns on her: the doctor has come in because he thinks she’s taken the pill and is fast asleep.