The Fear Index

bed was lowered, and with a horrible feeling of helplessness he allowed himself to be wheeled along mysterious factory-like corridors, staring up at the strip lighting until, at a reception desk, he was briefly parked. An accompanying gendarme handed over his paperwork. Hoffmann watched as his details were registered, then turned his head on the pillow and glanced across the crowded room to where a television news channel played to a heedless audience of drunks and addicts. On the screen, Japanese traders with cell phones clamped to their ears were shown in various attitudes of horror and despair. But before he could find out any more, he was on the move again, down a short corridor and into an empty cubicle.
    Gabrielle sat on a moulded plastic chair, took out a powder compact and started applying lipstick in quick, nervous strokes. Hoffmann watched her as if she were a stranger: so dark and neat and self-contained, like a cat washing her face. She had been doing exactly this when he first saw her, at a party in Saint-Genis-Pouilly. A harassed young Turkish doctor came in with a clipboard; a plastic name tag attached to his white coat announced him as Dr Muhammet Celik. He consulted Hoffmann’s notes. He shone a light into his eyes, struck his knee with a small hammer and asked him to name the president of the United States and then to count backwards from one hundred to eighty.
    Hoffmann answered without difficulty. Satisfied, the doctor put on a pair of surgical gloves. He took off Hoffmann’s temporary dressing, parted his hair and examined the wound, gently prodding it with his fingers: Hoffmann felt as if he were being inspected for lice. The accompanying conversation was conducted entirely above his head.
    ‘He lost a lot of blood,’ said Gabrielle.
    ‘Wounds to the head always bleed heavily. He will need a few stitches, I think.’
    ‘Is it a deep wound?’
    ‘Oh, not so deep, but there is quite a wide area of swelling. You see? It was something blunt that hit him?’
    ‘A fire extinguisher.’
    ‘Okay. Let me make a note of that. We need to get a head scan.’
    Celik bent down so that his face was level with Hoffmann’s. He smiled. He opened his eyes very wide and spoke extremely slowly. ‘Very well then, Monsieur Hoffmann. Later I will stitch the wound. Right now we need to take you downstairs and make some pictures of the inside of your head. This will be done by a machine we call a CAT scanner. Are you familiar with a CAT scanner, Monsieur Hoffmann?’
    ‘Computed Axial Tomography uses a rotating detector and X-ray source to compile cross-sectional radiographic images – it’s seventies technology, no big deal. And it’s not Monsieur Hoffmann, by the way – it’s Dr Hoffmann.’
    As he was wheeled into the elevator, Gabrielle said, ‘There was no need to be so rude. He was only trying to help you.’
    ‘He spoke to me as if I were a child.’
    ‘Then stop behaving like one. Here, you can hold this.’ She dropped his bag of clothes on to his lap and walked ahead to summon the elevator.
    Gabrielle obviously knew her way to the radiology department, a fact that Hoffmann found obscurely irritating. Over the past couple of years the staff had helped her with her art work, giving her access to the scanners when they were not in use, staying late after their shifts had finished to produce the images she needed. Several had become her friends. He ought to be grateful to them, but he wasn’t. The doors opened on to the darkened lower floor. They had a lot of scanners, he remembered. It was the hospital to which they helicoptered the most serious skiing injuries, from Chamonix, Megeve, even Courchevel. Hoffmann had a sense of a huge expanse of offices and equipment extending into the shadows – an entire department stilled and deserted, apart from this one small emergency outpost. A young man with long black curly hair came striding across to them. ‘Gabrielle!’ he exclaimed. He took her hand and kissed it, then turned to look down at Hoffmann. ‘So you have brought me a genuine patient for a change?’
    Gabrielle said, ‘This is my husband, Alexander Hoffmann. Alex – this is Fabian Tallon, the duty technician. You remember Fabian? I’ve told you all about him.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ said Hoffmann. He looked up at the young man. Tallon had large dark liquid eyes, a wide mouth, very white teeth and a couple of days’ growth of dark beard. His shirt was unbuttoned more than it