Thicker Than Water

I hesitated for a moment, glancing around the room. She said she’d show me something, but there was nothing to be seen.

‘What?’ I said.

She made an impatient gesture. ‘Listen.’

I did. Nothing but the rough-edged breathing of the two men that would have been snores if there’d been more strength in their chests to push them out. I was about to say ‘What?’ again, for lack of any better ideas, but then the two men stirred in their sleep and spoke.

It was just the usual half-formed mumble of a dreamer almost but not quite breaching the surface of consc {rfay"">iousness.

The kind of sound in which you can perceive the melted outlines of words without being able to separate them out or decode them. They ended in a subdued, lip-smacking swallow, a slightly tremulous sigh.

Both men. Together. The same sounds, in perfect synchrony.

13

I swore, very softly, and Nurse Ryall nodded.

But she’d asked me to listen before the men spoke, and now I realised why. I could see it as well as hear it: Kenny’s chest and the other man’s rising and falling in unison, their in-breaths and out-breaths coming at exactly the same time.

With a slight sense of unreality, I looked at the nurse and she looked back at me. There was a strained inquiry in her expression: What does this mean?

‘When did you notice?’ I asked her, ducking the issue just for the moment.

‘Two nights ago.’ Nurse Ryall’s voice was tight, unhappy. ‘You can listen to it for ages and not hear it. Then it just . . . hits you.’

‘Do you have any other patients in here from the Salisbury?’

‘From the what?’

‘From the same postcode.

The Salisbury Estate in Walworth.’

She consulted her memory, shook her head doubtfully. ‘I don’t think so. I’d have to look in the admissions book.’

‘Is that up here or somewhere else?’

‘In the shift room. Listen, Mister - sorry, what was your real name again?’

‘Castor. Felix.’

‘What could make them do that? It’s not even possible!’

I crossed the room and picked up the black man’s chart. ‘Women living in the same house will synchronise their periods,’ I said.

‘Not right away, but after a while. Their bodies respond to each other’s hormones. Maybe this is like that - something autonomic that only kicks in after a while.’

‘That explains the breathing. It doesn’t explain the talking in their sleep.’

I looked up at her. ‘Do they do that a lot?’ I asked.

‘What’s a lot? They’ve done it before. Just like that, in chorus. But none of the other duty nurses has heard them do it.