Run

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Danny slid out of the wheelchair and onto the bed. He lay back and opened The Alchemist. His eyes skimmed absently across the page. Carrie had enthused about the book six months ago, but Danny wasn't one for reading, so he'd just made the right noises and moved on. This afternoon the book had resurfaced, and Carrie had been most insistent that it would do him good to read a bit. He still had his doubts.

He glanced at the clock beside the bed. It was only nine-thirty. He could hear the TV in the distance and the hum of the central heating boiler. The itch in his leg was quiet now, so he fingered the rough skin on his sternum without wondering.

He read a few pages, realised he wasn't really reading them at all, and rested the book on his chest. Funny how quickly he had lost condition. All he'd done was wheel himself to the Glades and back and he was exhausted. Even by the time they had got home he could happily have slept most of the afternoon away, but that would mean he would not sleep much during the night. And if he could not sleep at night, he would not be able to take his now habitual run. It was this simple train of thought that made the decision for him. No pills tonight; just once more.

Less than twelve hours ago he had promised Carrie - and himself - that he was going to make the switch from dreams to reality, but it wasn't that simple. He just wanted one more night, maybe to prove to himself that the dreams were really just a pale imitation of what he had waiting for him some time down the line. He also knew he was a little addicted to his night runs. He had marvelled at the creativity with which Kerry had kept on smoking for months after she'd sworn off the coffin nails ('I'll just finish this packet, shame to waste them', 'If I don't smoke I've got no reason to leave the office for a few minutes of peace', 'I've had a bitch of a day', and on and on). Now he understood. There was always a reason to make that change tomorrow. Today it was just too difficult to make the leap.

He laid the book aside and turned the light off.

Carrie was on the phone. Added to the other sounds of the house now, he could hear her talking in the hall. He knew from her tone that it was her mother on the other end of the line. Since he had not heard the phone ring, Carrie must have called her. Elizabeth Marshall (Elizabeth; never Liz, or Bess, or, God forbid, Betty) had never been Danny's Number One Fan. She could never see a future in computers, let alone the 'internet', and saw no practical value in being able to run around field a bit faster than anyone else. At heart, she also had a deep suspicion of Oriental people. Her father had been in Korea (not China, but that was a technicality) and she had never forgiven Asia for what it had done to him.

He couldn't hear Carrie's words, but he picked up the familiar cheerful, casual tone. It was a tone that said she was struggling to justify the call as a spontaneous sign of kinship while suppressing its real reason. In her own way, Carrie was even more alone in this thing than Danny was. He had his doctors, maybe even the sympathy of the press; Carrie had (he shuddered) Elizabeth Marshall.

Carrie's relationship with her mother had never been a classic mother-daughter one of shared secrets and girly shopping. She had always been much closer to her father, and that she had called Elizabeth after their outing today spoke volumes.

He lay in the darkness for some time, lulled by the voice of his wife.

The sounds outside his room faded, maybe because Carrie was finally confiding in her battle-axe mother, or maybe because he was slipping away himself. He turned to look at the clock...

Then he was in the street. Icy ground, sharp stones beneath two bare feet, every detail pin-sharp and glowing with that eerie green hue, the air rich with the smells of the night. He was free again. He had lost that sense of wonder at being here, at being able to see in the darkness, at being able to detect a thousand different odours and see the tiniest detail, but he had not lost the wonder of that freedom.