The Road to Glencoe

Hope you like the little clip of my visit to Scotland.

The Day the World Went Black.

Ben patted his pockets for the tenth time. Where the hell were his keys? He'd checked the bowl by the front door; the kitchen table, the pants he'd worn yesterday, his jacket, under the couch cushions and on top of the TV. He was going to be late for work. Where the hell could they be?

"Daisy! Daisy," he yelled up the stairs and heard something unintelligible being mumbled from under a duvet, so he shouted again. "Did you put my keys someplace?"

There was a heavy sigh followed by the soft padding of naked feet on the landing. "Where did you leave them?" she asked sleepily as she reached the top of the stairs.

"If I knew that, I wouldn't be looking for them, now would I?" he snapped. She plodded down the stairs, her blond hair a messy cloud. She reached the bottom step, paused, and lifted his keys out of the bowl with the tip of her finger. He’d checked there; twice! She gave him a dirty look as he took the dangling bunch.

"They weren't there earlier," he said, embarrassed.

"Huff," she puffed, and turned her back on him before drifting back upstairs for her second sleep. He stormed from the house, late for work and he knew the traffic on the freeway would be terrible. That was a bad start to a day which got steadily worse. It was a day crowned by actually losing his car. He searched the multi-story car park for twenty minutes before finding the car five spaces from the exit. He never parked in that part of the building! How could he forget where he left his car?

When he got home, he vented his frustration at Daisy, not that she listened. She'd given up even pretend these days. It surprised him when she raised her head and asked, "Why don't you get Dave to check you over?"

"I'm not sick!" he snapped.

"I didn't say you were but it's not like you to lose things. Can’t do any harm to check," she said, then shrugged her shoulders and went back to eating. The rest of the meal passed in sulky silence but he was sure of one thing, he wasn't running to Dave about a set of lost keys.

Over the next few days, there were more...slips. He filled out the home insurance renewal, stuck it in an envelope for posting but when it arrived, they said it was blank. After that, his presentation went wrong. He'd spent hours working on a proposal for a new client but when he presented it, the slides were a mess. Full of misspellings and errors, it looked like a five-year-old had done them. There were other things but nothing as bad as the presentation. Normal stuff, like being sure you put something one place and finding it somewhere else. Small or big, these slips were starting to worry him and it was making him cranky. Daisy and himself were constantly at each other's throats. It all came to a head the day he arrived home to find Daisy and Dave waiting for him.

"What's she been telling you?" he demanded before they had a chance to say anything.

"Daisy is worried, and from what she told me, she has a right to be," said Dave, sitting forward on the couch, stabling his fingers like some dime-store headshrinker. God damn Daisy for dragging Dave into this. She had no right, no right at all.

"It's nothing. Have you never made a mistake?" he asked, his tone grumpy and defensive.

"Of course. Now and again, but Daisy told me these incidents are becoming more frequent and then there's your behaviour to..."

"What behaviour?"

"Aggressive, depressive, irrational," he listed coldly, each word like a slap to Ben's face.

"Jesus! You're making me out to be a looney!"

"Easy, Ben," he said, holding up his hands soothingly. Ben realised he had been shouting and in doing so he confirmed at least two of his friend's accusations.

"Sorry," he said, and let out a deeply held breath. He rubbed his hands through his thinning hair to steady himself. He knew his moods were swinging a bit but was it any wonder? He put his briefcase on the coffee table and flopped down into an armchair.

"All I...we're asking, is that you come in and let me check you over."

"And what will you be checking for?" Ben asked, sitting back in the chair.

"There could be hundreds of reasons for your symptoms."

"Such as?"

"Stress, depression, exhaustion, hormone imbalance, the list is a long one."

"Alzheimer's?"

"You would be abnormally young to develop Alzheimer's, but it's not impossible," said Dave, clearly reluctant to discuss the subject.

"What about brain tumours, or just going nuts?" said Ben angrily.

"Stop being ridiculous," he snapped.

"I'm not being ridiculous; I've been doing my own checking!"

"On Google, I bet?" Ben said, clearly annoyed at the suggestion a computer could know as much as he did. "Most often, the simple answer is the right one. Why don't you take some time off work? Relax, take time to unwind? It's not like you need the money." Dave was talking about Ben's inheritance. He wasn't rich but two million dollars from a maiden aunt he had barely known was better than a kick in the ass. The truth was he liked his work; it gives him a purpose for his days. Being stuck in the house day in and day out would drive him round the twist.

"I'll think about it," he said, sounding less than enthusiastic.

Dave stood up and gave him a steely look. "Think about it all you like but be in my office at ten tomorrow morning. I'm charging you for the session whether you show up or not."

"Alright, you bully. Are you leaving?" he asked seeing Dave getting out his car keys.

"You're not my only patient you know," he said with a wink as he bent down to kiss Daisy reassuringly on the cheek.

***

The following day, Dave gave him a full service, bloods and everything, before sending him back to work. Two days later Dave was on the phone at stupid O’clock in the morning. Ben wasn't even out of bed when he answered the call. "Your blood tests have come back. You need to come in to see me before work."

"That doesn't sound good."

"There’s nothing definite, but there are a few indicators...look, it would be better if you came in."

"Don't nanny me, just tell me what it is."

He heard Dave exhale loudly. Eventually, he began speaking. "You have unusually high levels of Adrenocorticotropic Hormone or ACTH." 

"And what's that in English?"

"It’s a hormone produced in the Pituitary Gland, part of the brain."

"Jesus," said Ben, sitting up in the bed. Daisy rolled over to watch him talk.

"I don't know what it is. It could be nothing but I’d feel better if you had a CT scan."

"I guess. If you think I should."

"I do and I've pulled a few strings to get you in early next week."

"Is it cancer?"

"It most likely nothing. I'll email you the time for the scan. And Ben..."

"Yea."

"Don't worry," he said, and was gone off the phone. Ben threw back the covers and sat on the side of the bed. How could he not worry after a call like that? The rest of the day was a blur. He couldn't help typing in, Pituitary Gland Problems, into Google and it made for terrifying reading.

***

Between that, and the day of the scan, he had a few more senior moments. People started to comment on it at work. His moods got worse, and he made Daisy cry a few times by being overly sharp.

When he arrived at the hospital for the scan, he found Dave waiting for him.

"What are you doing here?"

"What kind of a friend would I be if I wasn't," he said, giving him a hug. Ben felt a thousand times better having Dave by his side. The day was punctuated by periods of waiting, in between efficient bursts of testing. At the end of it all, Dave discussed the results with the consultant before coming to see Ben. 

"Good news; there's no tumour, or cancer, but the area is inflamed. You’ll need to take a course of medication to bring your hormones into balance and improve your mental state."

"Mental state?"

"You've been exhibiting signs of depression, which is likely down to your hormone imbalance. Antidepressants will help."

"I'm not depressed."

"Your brain is a complex system and it’s not running properly at the moment. You need to take the medication if you want to get better."

Ben didn't like the idea of being medicated, but he trusted Dave. "If you say it’s for the best, it’s for the best." Dave wrote a prescription before he went back to his practice. Ben left the hospital and filled the script on the way home.

Over the following weeks, Ben's condition got worse, not better. He felt strung out, more confused than ever, and his temper was all but uncontrollable. He went into melt-down-mode at the drop of a hat. In the end, he had no choice but to go see Dave again.

"These pills are doing nothing but making things worse," explained Ben after telling Dave he was going to stop taking the medication.

"You can't do that. You'll be taking a huge step back if you stop at this stage. It could be just a bad reaction to this drug. I'm going to move you onto something else. You should see a huge improvement."

Ben filled out the new prescription and like Dave had predicted, things improved, well they did up until the blackouts started. The first one was just a few lost hours on a Saturday afternoon. Daisy had gone out shopping when he started feeling funny. The next thing he remembered, he woke up on the couch and the house looked like a tornado had hit it. He tried to straighten up before Daisy got home but she knew something was wrong the minute she got back.

That night the dreams started, the most horrific and vivid dreams he'd ever had. He woke up crouched in the corner, beating himself around the head and screaming. Daisy was right in front of him, in floods of tears, as she tried to calm him down. There was a bruise on her cheek which was growing darker by the second. He was still panicking when the paramedics arrived. They treated him for a panic attack but made more than a few comments about Daisy’s injuries. They wanted her to come in and have an x-ray but she refused. In the end they left, but made them both promise to see a doctor in the morning.

***

Ben got to Dave's practice first thing but had to cool his heels in the waiting room until Dave's first patients had gone through. When a nurse finally showed him into the examination room, Ben was shaking and as pale as a ghost. His head was spinning and he could feel reality starting to slip.

"Crikey, you look like hell," said Dave, easing Ben into a chair. He took a tumbler from his desk and passed it to Ben. "Here, drink this."

"I don't feel well. There is something really wrong with me,” he said, once he finished glugging the water, not that water would help him. If anything, his panic was getting worse. His chest raced, gulping air into his lungs. Dave just looked at him, and Ben didn’t think he was taking him seriously. "You’ve got to help me, you've just got to!" yelled Ben, dropping the glass as he grabbed at Dave. He felt his feet go rubbery as his brain was hit by a vision so harsh, it was like being kicked in the head. He staggered and felt Dave's hands go under his armpits. That was when he blacked out.

As he came around, he felt someone tugging at him. It took a second or two before he recognised the tightness on his wrists as handcuffs.

“What are you doing?” he mumbled but whoever was at him persisted. “I said, get off me!” he snapped and tried to kick himself free, an act that earned him ten-thousand volts from a cops tazer. As he shuddered on the ground, he saw Dave come in. His face was bloody and he seemed dazed.

"Take it easy with him," he said through a split lip. "It's not his fault, he's a sick man, a very sick man." His friend's pleas fell on deaf ears as Ben was hauled roughly to his feet, and frog-marched to a waiting state cruiser.

What happened next was all so muddled, it felt like it was happening to someone else. The court appearance; being remanded to custody, then being sent to the state-lockup. Some court-appointed lawyer had represented him, but he was so out of it, he couldn't even remember the man’s name. When that same lawyer came to see him in prison, he broke the news they were charging him with, assault with intent.

"What intent?" demanded Ben, "I can't even remember doing anything!"

That started his, hand-me-down idiot, talking about a diminished responsibility defence. Ben's next court date was set, but Daisy still hadn’t been to see him. Perhaps the cops wouldn't let her come? A week after he’d been locked up, Daisy finally arrived.

Ben was shown into a visitor cubicle; Daisy was already seated on the other side of the glass. He smiled at her but she just glared back at him. He picked up the handset hanging to his left. Daisy paused for longer than he liked before doing the same.

"It's good to see you sweetie," he said.

"I never thought I'd see you in a place like this," she said coldly.

"Me either. I have no idea what happened, you got to believe me," he said, desperately needing to hear some comforting words. Instead, she asked a question.

"Are you still having the blackouts?"

"Not since that day. A few terrible dreams, or hallucinations, or whatever they are, but even they are going now. I’m actually feeling a lot better."

"Are you still taking your medication?"

"Yes. I must be getting used to it."

"That's good," she said, and looked down sadly.

"When are you getting me out of here?" he asked, leaning forward and placing his hand against the glass, as if he were trying to touch her face.

"That's why I've come," she said, but her voice held no joy. "I don't want you to come back to the house."

"I told you, I'm getting better. I'd never hurt you, you know that, right?" he said, trying to put every ounce of sincerity he possessed into his words.

"You don't get it. I don't want you coming home...ever. You're not the man I married; I don't know who you are."

"What are you saying?" he demanded, his voice rising enough to make the guard at the end of the room rise out of his chair.

"I want a divorce; I've already started the application. The papers will be served, any day," she said, and wiped away a tear.

"You bitch!"

She took the phone from her ear when he screamed it again, "Bitch!".

She dropped the handset and rushed away as Ben attacked the glass, screaming and hammering it with the heavy plastic handset. The truncheon blow caught him below the ear and sent him sprawling sideways. Back to black again.

***

The prison gate rattled back so slowly; Daisy felt they were doing it deliberately to extend her torture. She just wanted it all to be over and get as far away from this place as she could. She promised herself she wouldn't cry when she told Ben, but she’d failed. He’d been her partner for so long, it felt like he’d always been there; now that was over. 

Outside the gate, Dave was waiting to collect her in his sleek new Cadillac. He reached over and popped the passenger door for her. Once she was in, he pulled away.

"How did it go?"

"He went crazy, started screaming and smashing the glass," she said sadly.

"To be expected, I guess," Dave said matter-of-factly, as he maneuverer the car out of the prison car park. 

"I still feel guilty about it all."

"You shouldn't, it was the only way."

"To get the money?"

"And me!" said Dave, with a cheeky smile. "We won't have to sneak around anymore; I can have you as much as I want now."

She leaned across and kissed him deeply while he tried to keep one eye on the road. Having him all the time was the only reason she had done any of it. Even on the day of her wedding she knew she was marrying the wrong man. It always should have been Dave.

It had started by accident. A look, a touch, an unspoken desire, until the inevitable happened. An intertwining of two, paired by destiny. Ben was all that stood in their way. It was Dave that insisted she should have half the inheritance Ben refused to touch; it was he who masterminded the plot but it was she who had made it happen.

She was the one who’d hidden Ben's keys and then moved his car with the spare set. It was she who had replaced the insurance forms with blank ones, then sent them in. It was she who messed up his presentation in the middle of the night. She had done all that, but Dave had a hand in things as well.

He’d given her pills to exchange for Ben's prescription. He’d given her the liquid LSD to slip into his drinks, and told her how much to give. The time she gave Ben too much and he started fitting in their bedroom, she nearly called it all off. Instead, she rang Dave and he rushed over. He was terrified that Ben would OD, and the drugs in his system might be traced back to them. She pleaded with him to call an ambulance, demanded he come clean. He lashed out at her, catching her on the cheek with the back of his hand. He said it was an accident; the pressure just got to him. He gave Ben an injection of something, and soon, he stopped shaking. Only when it was clear that Ben would be ok would he allow her to ring for help. When she thought back on that night, she couldn’t help remembering the look in his eye after he’d hit her. There was cruelty there.  

She could have stopped it then, she should have stopped it, but she didn’t. She’d given Ben a half dose of LSD before he went to see Dave at his office, just enough to make him off balance for the final act. She was right there, hiding in the closet when Ben came in. She overheard them talking and knew Dave had given Ben another dose of LSD, a big one. When Ben was out, Dave called her out and said she had to hit him. She didn’t want to, but he said it had to look real. Before she swung, he stopped her and said, "Not the nose." She balled her fist and let one fly, barely touching him at all. Then she remembered the look in his eye when he’d slapped her and put a measure of intention behind her fist.

"Enough!" he said, after taking a couple of hits, and he pushed her away. He pinched his burst lip, drawing blood, which he smeared over Ben's hands and shirt. Daisy slipped out the back door as Dave got Ben to his feet, then he stumbled into the waiting area where a shocked receptionist called the police. After that, it was plain-sailing.

The divorce would go through and she stood to gain one point six million. Dave had his eye on a love-nest on the coast. He said he would put the deal in his name, it was much easier than joint ownership. Now that they had the money, they could live like they always wanted to.

Dave flashed her one of his devilish smiles. "Only we matter now," he said, and went back to watching the traffic. Daisy noticed the way one corner of his mouth curled up. Light danced in his eyes and she knew she’d seen that look before. It was the moment his hand connected with her face.

She felt a shiver run down her back, but she shook it off. Nothing was going to wreck this for her. Nothing.

The End