“Paracetamol if you need it, otherwise rest it as much as possible. I can strap it in a boot if you—”
“No, thanks.” I pull it off her lap and give it a quick rub before looking around for my shoes. When did they come off? “It’ll be okay.”
“Can you tell me what happened tonight?”
“Yeah, but I’d prefer not to if it’s all the same to you.” My jaw cracks open in an enormous yawn. “I’m sure Yuri and co will have a full rundown by morning if you’re that interested.”
She ducks her head and I have the sneaking suspicion it’s hiding a smile. “This isn’t for curiosity’s sake. It’s a medical test to see how much you remember.”
“Right.” I stare at her with narrowed eyes, but she doesn’t relent, and I guess it’s possible she’s telling the truth. “Well, I was at work, closing up, when my boss and a friend came in.”
I recite the events of the night, skipping lightly through the parts I don’t want to relive and pouring in far too much detail about my cousin’s junker car, the general traffic patterns, and the uselessness of bosses who could turn their businesses into so much more if only they weren’t trying to kill their employees.
“And then we turned up here,” I finish, waving a hand in the vague direction of the door. Not the entrance, my limited sense of direction lost that the moment I walked into the first corridor, but the door to this room. Where Yuri stands, not having shown the slightest change in facial expression from my first words to my last.
Yeah. I’m definitely going back to calling him Brick Wall.
“This is going to sound strange,” Doctor Alexander says, pulling a small device from her pocket. A mobile phone. My eyes light up and I reach for it before she even tells me what it’s for.
I’m not even put off when I spy the little ‘emergency calls only’ sign, which means it’s missing its SIM card. Or the exclamation mark over the wifi signal.
Emergency calls are all I need.
“You can’t use it to call,” she explains. “There’s a phone blocker in the house, but I want you to play a game for twenty minutes. Here.”
She reaches over and clicks an app and Tetris fills the screen. Not my first choice but I’ll take it. “What do I win?”
“It might help with invasive memories and flashbacks,” she says, signalling something to Yuri because he moves to take her chair as she rises. “Or at least it won’t hurt. Twenty minutes,” she repeats to him. “And tell Baxter I’ll be in my wing if he needs me.”
“Her wing?” I whisper, switching my attention from the phone to the guard. “She lives here?”
His stocky forefinger points to the device.
“Sure, sure. But you can answer my questions while I’m playing, can’t you?”
“If you wanted to know where the doctor lived, you should have asked while she was examining you.”
“I’m asking now.” When he doesn’t respond, I lift my eyes from the screen. “How many people live here?”
“Nineteen minutes.”
“You’re no fun. Can you pour me a drink? Whatever Baxter was serving is fine.”
No answer.
“He mentioned dinner. Is that still happening?”
No answer.
“I hear you like tea parties.”
“Eighteen minutes.”
“Is my car still sitting at the gate?”
“Where’s your accent from?”
“How long have you worked for Balabanov?”
