She let go of me and I ran out of the kitchen and up to my bedroom. I still heard what she yelled up the stairs, even though I’d closed my door and put my hands over my ears.

‘You’re not to see Taylor any more. I don’t want her coming to this house.’

She can’t stop me seeing Taylor, we go to the same school.

I tried reading for a while, but I couldn’t concentrate, I kept reading the same sentence without meaning to. I threw the book on the floor and took Taylor’s broken bracelet out from the drawer next to the bed where I hide it. I unfastened the safety pin and tried to put it on, but the end of the chain kept slipping off my wrist. I wanted to go trick or treating tomorrow night, but I know there’s no point even asking now that she’s back. I can hear her down there, shuffling about, scraping the contents of casserole dishes into the bin and ruining my life.

Now

Friday, 30th December 2016

I’m flying feet first and it takes a while for me to remember that I am in the hospital. I still can’t move or open my eyes, but I can see the light shifting above, like I’m going through a tunnel. Subtle changes from light to dark. Then dark to light.

I realise I’m tucked into my bed and they’re moving me somewhere. I’m not sure what that means and I wish someone would explain. I ask the questions in my head but nobody answers:

Am I moving to a ward?

Am I better?

Am I dead?

I can’t shake the last thought from my mind. Maybe this is what dead feels like.

I don’t know where I’m going but it’s much quieter than before. The bed stops moving.

‘Here you are then. I’m off shift now, but someone else will be back to collect you in a little while,’ says a stranger. He speaks to me as though I’m a child. I don’t mind, though. Him speaking to me at all means that I must still be alive.

Thank you.

He leaves me and it is so quiet. Too quiet, something is missing.

The ventilator.

They’ve taken it away from me and the tube in my throat has gone. I panic until I realise that I am breathing without it. My mouth is closed but my chest is still inflating with oxygen. I’m breathing on my own. I am getting better.

I hear footsteps and then there are hands on my body and I’m afraid again. They are lifting me off the bed and I’m scared I will fall, frightened they will drop me. They lay me down on something cool. The surface chills the skin on my back through the open gown. I’m lying flat, with my hands by my side, staring up at nothing, unable to see beyond myself. They leave me there and it is the most quiet it has ever been. For a while.

Whatever I’m lying on lifts me up and backwards, head first again, swallowing me inside itself. The quiet is silenced by a piercing noise, like a muffled robotic scream. I don’t know what’s happening. Whatever it is, I want it to end. The relentless whirring is loud and strange and seems to be getting closer. Finally, it stops.

As my body rides back out into the brighter gloom, I hardly notice. The mechanical screams have rendered themselves into the sound of a baby crying and it’s so much worse. I feel wet and realise I have pissed myself. There was no bag attached to collect my liquid shame, the smell smothers me and I switch myself off.

The sound of whistling brings me back to somewhere a little less dark. I hate whistling. I am on my bed again and someone is pushing me feet first down another series of endless, long corridors. The shadows rise and fall overhead once more as though I am rolling beneath a conveyor belt of lights. The bed stops and turns and stops again several times. I feel like I’ve become a hoover, moving back and forth trying to suck up all my own dirt. We come to an abrupt stop and the whistled tune concludes at the same moment.

‘I’m so sorry to trouble you, could you remind me where the exit is, I always get lost in here,’ says the voice of an elderly woman.

‘Don’t worry, happens to me all the time, it’s like a warren. Back where you came from and take the first right, that’s the main exit to the visitor car park,’ says a voice I don’t want to hear. I tell myself it isn’t him, that I’m imagining things.

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

It is him. The voice of the man who is drugging me to sleep. I’m sure of it.

He starts to whistle once more and it triggers something, dislodges a forgotten memory. He used to whistle all the time when we were students. It irritated me then and it terrifies me now. I’ve been telling myself I was mistaken, confused, but any remaining doubts that were giving me hope, crumble. The man keeping me here is Edward. I know that now. I just don’t know why.

We’re on the move again and I panic, wondering where he is taking me. Surely someone will stop him, but then I remember that he works here. Nobody would question a member of staff pushing a patient around a hospital. I feel sick. Doctors are supposed to help people, not hurt them.

Why are you doing this to me?

The bed on wheels makes its final stop and the whistling is replaced by something worse. I hear the door close.

‘Here we are, just the two of us. Alone again at last.’

Then

Friday, 23rd December 2016 – Afternoon

The whole team is meant to be enjoying a Christmas lunch together before the holidays, but two people are missing: Madeline and Matthew. Given the latest Category 5 social-media storm and the story being picked up by several other broadcasters, I’m not surprised. The whole interview has been posted on YouTube and #FrostBitesTheDust is more popular than ever on Twitter, albeit for slightly different reasons than before. I wonder if she’s even had time to notice my final blackmail letter tucked inside her handbag. Not to worry, it can wait.

Madeline and Matthew are busy having crisis talks with the station bosses on the seventh floor. I can’t imagine how this story could possibly result in a happy ending for either of them. Matthew told the rest of us to head for lunch without him. He’s booked a small Italian restaurant round the corner, because nothing says Christmas like meatballs in tomato sauce!

The restaurant owner looks scarily happy to see us. There’s one long table, like we’re sitting down to a medieval banquet, complete with napkins and crackers and paper crowns. The others discuss leaving the seat at the top of the table free for Matthew when he arrives, I guess because he is the head of this dysfunctional work family. I seat myself at the end of the table nearest the exit and feel a moment of relief when Jo sits down in the empty seat next to me. Thank goodness she’s here.

‘Vino rosso?’ she asks, before reaching for an open bottle of house wine on the table.

‘Not for me, thank you.’ She pulls a face but I can’t even tell Jo the truth, not until I’m sure. ‘I’m fine, I just had a bit too much to drink last night.’

‘With Paul?’

‘No, an old friend.’

‘A friend who isn’t me?’