Torchwood: Exodus Code

ministrations.
    ‘I don’t know who she is,’ said Gwen, tightening her hold on Anwen, aware of the manager waving his arms while one of the constables stared at her and the other unclipped his radio from his lapel, requesting back-up. This day was not going to end well.
    ‘She was already really agitated when I spotted her,’ Gwen told the medic. ‘I think she came into the shop that way.’
    The medic was cutting the jacket from around the woman’s head, her long hair matted to the fabric with her own blood.
    Gwen shivered, her anger becoming a dull ache in her limbs, the nausea dissipating. Oh God, if they could track the madwoman’s movements through the store then they could track hers and she did not need to give Rhys one more reason to be disappointed in her ability to lead a normal life. She was already on thin ice in that area. No, make that cracking ice.
    Finally, the medics had the madwoman restrained enough to peel the jacket off her. Her hair was plastered to her scalp. Sweat soaked the woman’s face. And blood. Lots of it. The woman squinted, confusion and pain masking her face. She held something up to the medic.
    ‘It’s all quiet now,’ she said.
    The medic fell back on his heels, frantically fumbling in his kit bag for an ice pack.
    ‘Call it in,’ he screamed to his partner, who couldn’t stop staring at the side of the woman’s head, at the pink pulpy flesh above her neck and the bloody ear gripped in her soaked fist.
    The medic looked up to tell Gwen she’d better give the police her statement, but Gwen and Anwen were gone.

20
    CRADLING A MUG of hot cocoa in her hands, Gwen stared out of the nursery window at the full moon. Behind her, Anwen was asleep, finally, and Rhys, finally, had headed to the local, for ‘some sanity’, he’d yelled.
    Gwen had edited her role in the events of the day considerably, saying only what supported the brief mention of ‘The Madwoman in the Supermarket’ on the local news. Rhys claimed he was sick of her self-deprecating taunts about her domestic capabilities – had she really told him she thought she was a bad wife? Her complaints were exhausting him, he claimed. He refused to be dragged into another fight with her over why she was so unhappy, why she felt so useless and why she’d had this terrible taste in her mouth ever since she’d come home from the shops. She had told him it tasted like hopelessness, which, he hollered, was as ridiculous as she was becoming. Slamming the kitchen door, he stomped off down the road.
    Gwen closed her eyes, trying desperately to let the silence calm her. How did she get to this place? To this point in her life where she had no idea who she was or what she was meant to do next? For a while, she had
been
someone – a member of a team, a formidable force, protecting the world from so many of the terrible things she hoped her daughter would never have to witness, and, oh she loved her daughter more than life itself. Why then was she so miserable, why was she so angry all the time and so, so terribly sad?
    She sipped her cocoa, wiping the tears from her face. Hopelessness, that’s what it tasted like.
    Maybe she just needed some company. Gwen watched the thin clouds cut across the face of the moon.
    ‘“The tide is full,”’ she whispered. ‘“The moon lies fair upon the straits”… and I’m going right off my rocker,’ she said aloud to herself, ‘reciting a bloody poem I memorised at school.’
    Behind her, Anwen rolled onto her side, kicking off her blankets, snuffling the way toddlers do, until she slipped back into sleep again. Gwen knew what her mum thought was wrong – the baby blues, post-partum depression. But Gwen knew that wasn’t it.
    PTD, more like. Post-Torchwood Depression.
    Maybe she should talk to someone about what was happening to her? After today’s outburst in the supermarket, she was sure that she needed some professional help, needed to find someone she could trust to help her make sense of her mixed-up feelings, to help her figure out the next steps in her life.
    She set her mug on the wide sill of the bay window and curled her legs under her.
    Where are you, Jack? I really need you. Something terrible is happening to me.

21
    GWEN WASN’T SURE how long she sat at the window, watching the rising moon, but it was long enough for her self-pity to begin to piss her off too. She needed to take control of the situation. She stood up, knocking her mug to the floor, a