Free A Note of Madness by Tabitha Suzuma Page B

And yet if alcohol managed to close down his senses and stop him from feeling so keenly, then perhaps there were pills that would do the same thing. But a psychiatrist? Was he really losing his mind?
    ‘How’s the old plink-plonk?’ Rami asked, breaking the sudden silence.
    Flynn rubbed his eyes and managed a wry smile. ‘Doing my head in.’
    ‘Professor Kaiser still as intense?’
    ‘He’s all right. Goes crazy when I’m like this, though.’
    ‘We all have our off days. Working on anything special?’
    ‘The Rach Three and “La Camp”, still.’
    Rami grinned. ‘No longer punching the piano over it, I hope.’
    Flynn smiled slightly in reply. He remembered the endless practising of ‘La Campanella’ in his early teens. One day he had got so frustrated with the piece that he had punched the piano, fracturing his little finger. Their mother had come back from the shops to find his hand swollen huge. There had been a big concert coming up the following week and she was aghast. So instead of admitting what he had done, Flynn had told her that the piano lid had fallen on his hand while he was playing. It was only when she had finished dismantling the lid that he finally admitted the truth.
    Rami elbowed him in the side. ‘Come on, let’s go and order pizza.’
    ‘I’m not hungry.’
    ‘Well I am!’

CHAPTER FOUR
    THE WAITING ROOM of the Watford General Mental Health Unit was about as appealing as a cold shower on a winter’s day. It consisted simply of the end section of a badly lit hallway, with a few plastic chairs and a coffee machine. Flynn sat on one of the chairs, elbows on knees, trying not to catch anyone’s eye. There was a Gothic-looking woman on one side of the room and an unshaven old man on the other. People drifted in and out. He glanced up occasionally to try to guess whether they were staff or patients and struggled hard against the urge to flee. He entwined his fingers, squeezing them until they hurt, battling the urge to gnaw at his nails. He desperately wished he hadn’t let Rami talk him into this.
    Hospitals were awful. Although Ear, Nose and Throat was slightly more cheerful than this, he didn’t know how Rami could bear to work there every day. He remembered how miserable he had been the time he had broken his collarbone after falling off his bike and had been kept in for observation. The nights were the worst – the strange smells, the moans and groans,the endless sound of footsteps and the exhausting lights that never went out. He would have escaped this if Rami hadn’t gone and stayed the night, at Harry’s suggestion. Rami had slept on the sofa bed and was up cooking Harry bacon and eggs by the time Flynn headed for the bathroom. He had refused to let Flynn go back to bed.
    ‘I spoke to Dario last night and made you an appointment for first thing this morning,’ Rami had said. ‘Don’t start arguing – he’s a friend and has put himself out to make time to see you.’
    Flynn hadn’t said a word to him in the car, despite Rami’s attempts at idle chit-chat. It was drizzling and the steady swish of the wipers made him want to scream. They sat head-to-tail in traffic all the way up Watford Road and then Rami had brought him here.
    ‘I’ll wait with you,’ he said.
    ‘Don’t wait with me,’ Flynn had whispered between clenched teeth. ‘I’m not a child!’
    ‘OK then. Come and find me when you’re done?’
    Flynn had nodded, desperate to get rid of him, and had now spent the last fifteen minutes anguishing about whether to stay or go. If he left, Rami would probably never speak to him again, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, yet a certain kind of loyalty entrapped him and, with a mounting sense of dread, he found himself watching the minutes tick by. I can’t believe I’m here. A psychiatrist? Christ. This is a complete joke.
    He started when a voice called his name. A dark-haired man in a stiff blue suit with a non-descript facehovered nearby. Flynn