Before i die, p.16
Before I Die, page 16
‘Check that powder. Check…’ Maureen could feel that she was losing focus. Elizabeth was looking back down the drive to where Dolores was chatting to her aging fan club. She tried again, gripping Elizabeth’s arm. ‘Please… check it. Killed Frank. And Bailey. I know it. Now… she’s given me something…’ Maureen felt the urge to vomit again and leaned forward, dry retching. The ground seemed to be moving beneath her, a strange, rolling movement. Terror made her cry out and pull back upright. She felt like the only stable point in a world that was shifting and changing. She grasped on to Elizabeth. Her arm felt solid.
‘All right. It is all right. Out of the way. I will take care of this.’ Dolores’s voice cut through the undulating atmosphere around Maureen like cold air in a sauna. The woman herself loomed up at Maureen, her red coat a crash warning, its colour radiating outwards.
Maureen decided she must be dying. She felt herself being hoisted to her feet, then led along the swaying driveway, her arms held on either side. She closed her eyes. The colours continued to undulate in her head, each emitting its own vibrating hum in a disturbing cacophony of sound. As she was being loaded into the coach, she heard Dolores talking to Elizabeth.
‘It is nothing. She is confused. I think she is…’ Maureen didn’t see it, but guessed a gesture of insanity had been made. ‘What did she say to you? You must not pay any attention. I think, for Maureen, it is time to… well, you know. But that is for her daughter to decide. Me, I think she cannot take care of herself. You see how it is?’
Elizabeth’s voice came as if from a great distance, and distorted. ‘Poor Maureen. I didn’t realise she was so far gone… She was talking some nonsense. About Bailey. And Frank. I didn’t pay any mind to it. You get her home safe, Dolores. The taxi will be along soon. You’re sure we don’t need an ambulance?’
‘Don’t worry. I have seen this before. You go with the others, Elizabeth. No need to miss your trip. I will take care of everything.’
As Dolores turned her gaze towards Maureen, her eyes seemed to flash around the edges with a strange glow, a backlight behind black circles. Maureen drew back in fear and watched through her fingers, like a child at a horror show. Dolores’s teeth glittered as she smiled and repeated her words. ‘Yes. I will take care of everything. Everything.’
28
Maureen gripped the arms of her chair and looked down at the floor. It was no longer moving. That was something. Dolores had hauled her into the house and deposited her into her armchair without ceremony. Despite the drama, and Maureen’s alarming symptoms, Dolores was calm.
‘It will stop soon,’ she had said to Maureen, who was weeping in terror. Then she had moved off into the front room, humming to herself. Maureen had closed her eyes and waited for it to end. Not that closing her eyes helped. The nightmare was in her head.
Dolores had been right, though. Things began to return to normal. The floor stopped moving; the colours stopped pulsing. Maureen felt exhausted. A sense of dread remained with her. She sat, unmoving, trying to make sense of her experience. It was clear to her that she must have been drugged. Whatever Dolores had given her, it had caused these… hallucinations. The only other explanation was that she had experienced a psychotic episode. She supposed such a thing was possible, but given what she knew of her ‘carer’s’ propensities, the drug option seemed far more likely. She checked the kitchen clock. Three p.m. The bus had left at ten o’clock in the morning. Without the clock, she could not have said whether the whole experience had lasted one hour or ten. Her tired brain couldn’t calculate it, but she guessed she had been home for some time. Dolores entered the room and stepped up close to Maureen, pushing her head back without warning so that she could inspect her eyes.
‘That looks normal. You are feeling okay now?’ Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed Maureen’s wrist and checked her pulse. ‘That is all right, too. Soon, I will call the doctor. He can come check everything.’
Maureen thought about this statement. The timing. It was like an admission of guilt. ‘You did this. That’s why you didn’t call him earlier. I’m okay now, but then…’
Dolores ignored her. ‘You are thirsty, yes? I will get water.’ With that, she bustled to the sink and ran the tap, returning to hand Maureen a large glass. She drank it with relief. By the time she had put the glass down, Dolores had gone into the front room and was talking on the phone. Maureen listened intently.
‘… it is your mother, I had to bring her home from the trip… she was not well… very confused. Paranoid. Her friend was worried. She was saying such strange things –’ Dolores stopped as the person on the other end of the line, Maureen presumed it was Alva, talked. When she resumed, her tone was reassuring.
‘Yes, she is fine now. It was just a little… episode, I think they call it? She was very confused, but now is all okay. It is what I was telling you, she gets these times when she doesn’t know… I think is all good now, but I will call the doctor to come and check her out, yes? No need for you to leave work. I will call you again after the doctor… Yes, okay. As soon as he is here.’
Dolores put the phone down and stepped to the kitchen. Her eyes were on the clock, now reading three thirty. She seemed to be making calculations in her head.
‘What are you doing, Dolores?’ Maureen forced herself to speak in a calm voice.
‘I am taking care of you.’ Dolores turned to Maureen and gave a tight smile. A smile of amused spite. ‘You did not think you could just go around saying such things about me, did you? Now it is clear to everybody. You are senile. Demented. Crazy old woman.’ Her last words were hissed into Maureen’s face.
With that, Dolores walked away. Maureen was too shocked to respond. Here, at last, was Dolores without the mask of caring and friendship. Even though she had suspected it, the exposed reality gave her a chill. She shuddered, her recent nightmare experience still in her mind. She felt disconnected, as if this, too, might be an apparition, but she knew it was not. This was Dolores. This was evil.
The doctor checked her pulse. ‘Fine. That’s okay. I’ll just…’ Without finishing his sentence, he wrapped a blood pressure gauge around her arm and inflated it. ‘A bit high, but you’ve had an exciting day, I hear?’
The question hung in the air. Maureen wondered what Dolores had told him. He wasn’t her regular GP, he was from an agency, taking care of the out-of-hours ‘on-call’ visits. The surgery was shut on Saturday afternoons. That was a blow; she had hoped for her own regular doctor. This man was a stranger, and all he knew about her was what he had been told by Dolores. He was going to be harder to persuade, and more likely to believe she was demented. She had no choice, though. She had to tell him what was happening.
‘I think she drugged me. I’m sure of it.’
The medic raised an eyebrow. ‘Who? Not Dolores, your carer, surely? She’s very concerned about you, you know.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Maureen realised that she was wringing her hands together from anxiety and made herself stop. She took a breath. It was important to stay calm or, at least, to appear calm. ‘She’s fooling you all. Listen to me. I believe she murdered my friend Frank. Frank Mahon. She inherited his house, and he was going to change the will. And she knows I know… that’s why…’
Seeing his sceptical expression, she felt a sense of despair. ‘She knows you all think I’m crazy. That’s what she wants. So that you won’t believe me. She killed Frank. I know it.’
‘Look, Maureen, I want to believe you, but you must see that what you’re saying is… a bit extreme? I mean, you seem like a sensible woman, but to accuse somebody of murder and drugging you… It’s hard to believe. Don’t you think you could be just a little bit… confused about it all?’ He looked at her, his face bland, but underneath, she read disbelief.
‘You must believe me.’ Maureen was aware that her voice had risen, but she was unable to control it. ‘You must listen. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s all true. I know it. I know what she did.’
He looked at his notes. ‘Well, you seem fine now. All I can say is that if you go into the surgery on Monday, they’ll run some tests. I’m putting a note on your file. It would be a good idea, in any case. Something happened to you today. We can agree on that.’
‘Dolores happened to me.’ Maureen was bitter.
‘Um. Dolores tells me you told – Elizabeth? – your friend, that she killed a dog, too.’
‘I think she did. Elizabeth’s dog.’ Maureen knew it sounded crazy, even as she spoke.
‘I see. And why would she do that?’ His raised eyebrow said all she needed to know.
She turned her face away in despair, then rallied one more time, looking him in the eye as she spoke.
‘Forget it. You don’t believe me. But you just listen to me…’ She leaned towards him, finger pointing. ‘If I’m found dead, whatever the cause, you just remember what I’ve told you. Do an autopsy. That woman…’
He nodded, unperturbed by her words. ‘I’ll certainly remember that. Now, you just take a rest and relax. I’m prescribing an anti-anxiety medication. Take twice a day, morning and evening. It will help you to relax and sleep. Dolores will ring the surgery and make an appointment for you. Then maybe we’ll get to the bottom of that little episode of yours. Okay?’ He patted her hand as he stood to leave, his voice that of a kind adult reassuring a child. Maureen tried one more time.
‘And if she did drug me, how much would still be in my system by Monday?’
The doctor sighed. ‘We’ll see. Just go to your GP surgery on Monday. They can do all sorts of tests. It will put your mind at rest, I promise. Now, don’t worry yourself. Plenty of rest.’ With that injunction, he left the room to join Dolores, who was hanging around outside the door. Maureen slumped in despair. The sense of dread that had gripped her earlier in the day still lurked in her mind. Tears stung her eyes, and for the first time since Frank’s death, she faced the possibility that Dolores might win. There was nobody on her side.
Dolores bustled into the room and crashed a glass of water down in front of Maureen, along with a pill. ‘Your daughter, she says she will come to visit later. She is still at work now. The doctor left some pills and a prescription. Take this.’
‘I don’t want to.’ Maureen’s voice was listless. She felt drained and exhausted and as if this were all happening to somebody else. It was an odd sensation, like watching herself from a mirror, with her true self on the wrong side of the glass.
‘You must.’ Dolores stood over her. ‘You must take it, or I have to push it down your throat, like with a dog, you know? You push it to the back of the throat and they swallow it.’
Maureen wiped tears from her face. She had no doubt that Dolores would enjoy shoving a pill down her throat. And she did feel anxious, her mind filled with a black sense of foreboding. She picked up the glass and swallowed the pill with a gulp of water. At least this was prescription. It would not kill her or cause hallucinations. In fact, as Maureen thought about it, she realised that if a doctor was monitoring her, there were limits on what Dolores could do. It might be in Maureen’s interest to play along with the doctor.
‘Good. Now you are not so crazy, just a little bit –’ she tapped her head, a taunting grin on her face ‘– loca.’
Maureen felt fury rising. ‘I’m not mad. You won’t get away with this. People will know. I know what you’re up to…’
‘Crazy, crazy, mad old lady…’ Dolores crooned the insult like a schoolyard tormentor winding up a victim.
‘Just shut up! Shut up, you vicious murdering bitch! I know what you did!’
Dolores stepped outside the room for a minute, leaving Maureen to shout after her, her voice cracking with the effort. She was weeping uncontrollably, thinking of Frank and of her own life, now forever altered in ways she could not have imagined just a few weeks before. Dolores stepped back inside the room, a taunting smile on her face.
‘Maureen…’ she crooned. ‘Maureen, time to take your pills…’
‘I’ve taken the bloody thing. What do you want from me? You’re a monster. An evil, murdering monster. I hate you. I want you out of my house, do you hear? Get out of my house!’ Maureen was screaming, her voice hoarse with the effort. Everything that had happened to her was flashing through her mind, and she knew, if she could have done, she would like to have killed Dolores.
Dolores stood smiling, as if enjoying a show. Then, ignoring Maureen, she turned away and placed her phone on the sideboard. Maureen wiped a hand over her face and was racked by a bout of coughing. Half choking, she continued to shout, ‘Out. Get out… murderer!’
As Maureen screamed, Dolores took a knife from her pocket and, without warning, sliced it across her arm and began to shout. ‘No! No! Maureen, give me the knife. Give me the knife… Ahhh!’ Her scream was loud and bloodcurdling and shocked Maureen into silence. ‘No, no, it is Maureen. She has cut me… she has attacked me with a knife… oh, the blood…!’
Maureen was bewildered into silence as she watched Dolores putting on a performance for an invisible audience. The thought crossed her mind that Dolores was crazier than she had imagined. Then she understood. The phone on the table was connected. A disembodied voice squeaked questions into the air. Alva’s voice. She had been set up, outmanoeuvred. Dolores had won.
As the realisation dawned, she looked, openmouthed, at her enemy. Dolores had a look of triumph on her face as she raised her arm and let blood drip on to the floor. With the other hand, she lifted the phone to her ear and spoke to Alva. ‘Alva? You must come now. I am cut, bleeding, and Maureen must not be left alone.’ She listened to the voice at the other end for a few seconds, then cut across it, her voice decisive. ‘You come now. We need to decide about Maureen.’
‘Está bien. It is all right, Alva. I will not sue. Maybe I should… but I am your friend, and I know poor Maureen didn’t mean to hurt me. But we must make sure she is no danger to anybody else, yes?’ As Maureen protested her innocence, upset and furious to the point of incoherence, Dolores had smiled a tolerant, kind smile. Only Maureen had seen the flash of triumph underneath. ‘Of course, Maureen, you do not remember. You did not know what you were doing. I understand. That is what I tell your daughter.’ Turning back to Alva, she had opened her hands in a gesture of ‘you see how it is?’ While Maureen watched, she mouthed the word ‘dementia’ and tapped the side of her head.
Alva had seen, or thought she had. More discussion with Dolores had followed, ending with the agreement that Dolores would not take the matter any further provided Maureen was, as she put it, ‘safe’ in a nursing home, at least until the doctors worked out what had caused her unprovoked violence. Maureen, sobbing and bewildered after the bizarre events of that terrible day, listened, horrified, as Dolores talked to Alva, her every word a torture. Dolores had known too well how to use Alva’s fear, giving every sign of being sweet reason itself, while her words wound Alva up into an ever-tighter knot of stress and apprehension.
‘Bueno. It is good. Alva, you will see, it is better for Maureen, and for you also. She will be comfortable in such a place.’ With a parting, lizard flick of her eyes at Maureen, she had gone, leaving Alva and her mother to work out the details.
‘It’s just for a little while, until things settle down. You don’t want Dolores going to court, do you? And if she did… well, who knows where you’d end up. Better to go along with this arrangement for a while. It would be voluntary, at least.’ Alva’s voice was urgent and pleading. As Maureen listened, she could hear the note of panic underneath the reasonable arguments. Alva was pushing hard. Dolores had terrified her. ‘I know a place, local enough… I think your health insurance would cover it for a week or two, at least. As convalescence. That doctor who saw you today will sign off on that. After all, something happened to you on that outing… If I can get you in there, they can do tests, make sure you’re okay… maybe get you out again quite fast if it all checks out. Maybe it was just a once-off aberration.’
‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. How many times do I have to say it? Why won’t you believe me?’ Maureen’s voice choked as she tried to fight back. Alva turned away, her face upset. Maureen cried in silence. The implied threat of courts and murmured talk of ‘involuntary committal’ to some sort of mental institution shocked her, as did Alva’s gullibility. She forced her mind to consider the options. A nursing home for a few days. How bad could it be? She would be out of Dolores’s reach, at least. Alva was right about one thing – they could do tests, make sure she was okay. Getting a clean bill of health might strengthen her position.
After a while, she wiped her tears and nodded. ‘All right. I’ll do it. But only for a few days, to stop Dolores and her lies. I’ll go in as a voluntary patient, because I had some sort of… episode… when I was out on that day trip. That’s all we tell them, though. I did not attack Dolores, and I won’t have anybody saying I did. They can do every test in the book, can’t they? Once it’s clear I’m okay, then I will come home. Is that understood?’
Alva had nodded her agreement. She had not looked hopeful.
Part III
29
The old man’s hands were twisted, the joints swollen with arthritis. He used both of them in his attempt to open the door, but they slipped out of his control, unable to grip and turn the key in the lock. His face was determined, but tears slid down his cheeks as he struggled. After a few minutes, a large attendant came to him and led him away in silence, his face impassive. The old man began to wail. His cries diminished as he was led down the corridor to his own room, becoming inaudible to the people seated in the day room only when the door was shut.
