-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 play Twinkle, 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.”

“What?” Spook rocketed out of his chair.

Dr. Noren shifted uncomfortably in response to the two of them, now on their feet, leaning across the desk towards her. Good, she made him uncomfortable too.

“Please sit down, gentlemen.”

Spook did as asked, but Ash didn’t budge an inch.

“I realise that it may not have been a deliberate attempt to end things—”

“Fuck you!” he bellowed. “I didn’t choose to do anything.”

“Many people feel they have no choice.”

“My former best friend tried to fucking kill me, you condescending bitch.”

“Ash.” Spook rose to his feet again. “That is what happened,” he said to Dr. Noren.

She just sat with her hand flat over the top of the pen she’d been drumming with.

“Fuck this. I am not standing here and listening to this crow tell me I tried to top myself. I came here because I have an issue with my hand I’m trying to fix, but she seems to think that’s all in my head, or if it isn’t, it’s my own fault for being so stupid as to swallow that stuff. Our drummer tried to take out half the band that night. He’s banged up at the minute. If you were offering me counselling to deal with that, maybe I’d consider it, but no, you took one look at me and decided I downed a cocktail of drugs and alcohol for kicks. Un-fucking-believable!”

“I in no way implied—”

“Oh yes, you did, and your tone is still saying it. Poor little metal head. He screwed up, and now he’s just gonna have to fucking live with it.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.”

Yeah, of course she was. “You needn’t get your tights in a twist, I’m going. Thanks for wasting my time, bitch.”

He blew through the waiting room like a hurricane, leaving stunned faces and scores of floating papers in his wake, paying no heed to the security contingent, hers or his. Spook didn’t catch up with him until Ash was halfway across the car park.

“We shouldn’t have come. How dare she? How fucking dare she? I’m not frigging suicidal, and I didn’t spike myself.”

Despite him snapping about an inch from Spook’s face, his friend retained his neutral expression.

“Given you’ve a history of depression and addiction it’s not an unreasonable assumption.”

“I had a hard time letting go of some shit a quack prescribed me aeons back, that doesn’t automatically make me a junkie, or a suicide risk.”

“I know that, Ash. You don’t need to yell at me. It wasn’t the meds that you had trouble letting go of, they were merely a symptom of a different malaise.”

Connie. And he knew now that Iain had been behind that monumental cock-up in some way or another. Short of tracking down the girl, there was no way of determining exactly what he’d done. In any case, Ash didn’t want anything to do with her, and putting him anywhere near Iain Willows would not end well. He’d dearly like to plant an axe through his skull.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. FUUCCK!”

He kicked at the front tyre of the car he was passing, causing the intruder alarm to start wailing. Spook dragged him away from the BMW. “I think we’d better leave.”

He didn’t want to get in the car and sit screwed up with his resentment boiling away inside of him. He needed space to flail and rage. He wanted to throw punches until his knuckles split, and scream blue murder at random passers-by. Being restrained, nope, just nope.

“Ash.” Ginny’s voice cut through the cloud of his anger. Suddenly she was right in front of him, her hands raised towards his face. “Was it bad? What did they say?”

“I have brain damage,” he yelled at her.

“Oh my God!” The colour leeched from her pretty face. She grasped hold of one of his hands and squeezed it tight. “How bad? Did they say whether it was permanent?”

“There’s a fair chance he’ll recover, it could take time,” Spook told her, playing down the bad news. “Ash, get in the car. We need to leave here. Ginny…”

She was quick enough to obey, but Ash refused to be herded. This was big. It was huge. He needed time to digest it, and he was rattled too by the bitch and her assumptions. Everyone always looked at him as if he was some kind of no-hoper. Where they got off on those assumptions he didn’t know. He had more brains than most, and a double first to prove it. He’d had a successful career in an intensely competitive field and made more money than most of them would see in a lifetime. He knew he shouldn’t let other people’s opinions affect him, but he’d never been able to brush that shit off. He wasn’t like Xane, or Rock Giant, who didn’t give a rat’s arse about the norms. Nor was he like Spook, who rarely ever got rattled. Perceptions mattered to him. God help him, he knew he was an idiot for wanting it, but he craved public approval. He wanted people to like and respect him. Was it really such a big thing to want to be loved?

“Ash, let’s go.” Spook stood waiting by the open driver’s side door. “We can work this out.”

Sure, they could all sit around and discuss his faults, but not one of them could fix him. Not even Ginny could do that, though it was her grasp upon his hand that finally led him to climb into the car.

He didn’t speak the entire drive home. What the hell was there to even say? Everything in his world was fucked up, and sitting around talking about it and mindfully colouring wasn’t going to fix that, nor were jigsaws or Lego or finger walking exercises. He was broken, and the only way he was going to survive was if he figured out a way to adapt.