-6-
Having suffered through weeks of having people talk over his head during his hospital stay, Ash refused to tolerate such bullshit today. He wanted answers, preferably now, and delivered in plain English.
Dr. Noren was in her fifties and spoke better English than he did, so communication shouldn’t have been an issue. Unfortunately, he’d been sitting in her consulting room for at least twenty minutes, and all he’d heard so far was a lot of preamble and pointless platitudes. Even ice man, Spook, was twitching in a way that suggested his legendary patience was wearing thin. It sure as hell didn’t feel as if the journey had been worthwhile.
“You know what, just tell me,” he blurted over her endless purr of comfort.
The perfectly coiffed individual before him raised her brows as if he’d sworn like a fishwife at her. Sure, he’d interrupted her mid-flow, but he didn’t want to waste the whole day here. He needed her to get to the point, so he could get out of here and get on with the important stuff, like making music and fucking Ginny.
“Am I, or am I not going to recover my motor skills enough to play guitar within a reasonable length of time?”
Her clearly botoxed brow struggled to show her displeasure. No doubt she’d be horrified if she saw the lines of irritation around her mouth, or the crow’s feet that appeared around her eyes as she squinted. She was a weirdly upholstered being, in the way that Ash normally associated with older royals or foreign diplomats. He’d met a few, courtesy of Xane’s family connections. Not a single hair on her head was out of place, and he’d lay money on her having weights sewn into her skirt hems to stop them lifting. Even her stockings were on rigidly straight. Yes, he’d noticed. He’d sustained neurological damage that affected his hand, not a personality transplant. Nylons were his thing. Only, hers were probably silk, and they were a somewhat unappealing tan colour that reminded him of Nora Batty and her wrinkled stockings.
“Straight up, all I want are the facts, and I’d rather not waste your time talking around the issues.” Or his time, but he was doing his best to humour her. Maybe his tone was a fraction too aggressive, for Spook curled his fingers around Ash’s forearm.
“Give her a chance to get a word in, eh?”
“Yes, thank you,” she said slapping on her fake smile again. “As I was in the process of explaining, Mr. Gore, the actual cause of your difficulties isn’t at all clear.”
It seemed clear enough to everyone else. “I was poisoned.”
She flipped through a couple of pages of his notes on her computer screen. “You were admitted having collapsed, and with breathing difficulties following an overdose of rohypnol. While use of rohypnol is sometimes associated with slurred speech and problems with co-ordination, that’s typically only in the short term, immediately following ingestion. At the point in time we’ve now reached post-use, I think we can rule out the drug being the cause of your current symptoms. To all intents and purposes it’s out of your system.”
“I’m not faking problems, or imagining them.”
“Obviously not.”
“Then what the hell is causing them? If you suggest they’re psychosomatic, I’ll…” He left that thought unfinished. He’d probably hit something.
“He took a nosedive onto his head when he collapsed,” Spook remarked, clearly seeking to get them out of the blind-alley they’d inadvertently seemed to have stumbled into.
Dr. Noren, showing signs of irritation, tapped her pen against the desktop. “Then, we might consider the possibility that you sustained a brain injury as a result of the fall. There is, however, no mention of such a suspicion in your notes I’ve had through from the hospital. My personal opinion is that we ascribe the damage to oxygen deprivation, due to your respiratory system being depressed by the near lethal dose of the drug you took.”
That he took!He hadn’t willingly taken anything. He’d been very deliberately spiked by that bastard Iain Willows, who he hoped would remain locked up for eternity. He didn’t much care for the judgemental tone that had crept into her voice either, but he doubted she was the type to follow the goings on of a rock band to know the truth. “So you’re saying that I have brain damage because my cells were starved of oxygen.” Great, so he could look forward to drunkenly slurring his words forever. “Is that likely to be permanent damage?”
“Not necessarily. In a lot of cases functional normality is resumed after a brain injury, although there may be a relatively lengthy period of recovery. Have you had any problems with your balance or swallowing?”
Only after Ginny had left him seeing stars.
“No, the issues I have are entirely with my speech and my right arm and hand. I told you that when I got here. My fingers lock up, and I have spasms.”
“No insomnia or fatigue?”
He shook his head. There was still something about the way she was leering down her nose at him that was niggling at him. It wasn’t just her being haughty, it was… it was suspicion? “Will I be well by say Christmas?” The Requiem for the Damned Tour was due to resume right afterwards. Obviously, he’d prefer to be functioning normally long before then, but if he could at least establish that he’d be okay by then, then it’d be a huge worry lifted off his shoulders.
“It’s impossible for me to say one way or the other. I can send you a program of exercises, and refer you to a physiotherapist and for speech therapy.”
“I’ve already seen both. I have lists of exercises.”
Her tongue flicked swiftly across her caramel-coloured lips. “Very good. I’d like to send you to a counsellor too.”
Ash squinted hard at her. A vexatious tingling had started in his nose, and there was something about her body language, so forcibly neutral that was making his hair stand on end. “Why?” he asked cautiously.
“I think it would really help you to talk things through with someone.”
Things, what things? How tedious it was to spend three weeks in the same room? What it was like to have one of your oldest friends try to murder you? How he was going to be responsible for one of the biggest rock bands on the planet breaking up, because he couldn’t fucking playTwinkle, Twinkle Little Star, let alone any of Black Halo’s most simplistic rhythms?
Ash let out a bark of laughter, because no, none of those were the reasons she wanted to refer him to psych. She’d looked at him and made a heap of assumptions about his lifestyle and mental health. “You think I deliberately took that shit.”
