The Kingdoms

than it should have been. All the details landed in his mind like bright pins, sharp and pricking and very unpleasant.
The doctor explained that he would be there for a week, on the understanding that the accommodation fees would be waived. ‘Now, you’ve been referred from the Colonial Free, I see. I can tell you now exactly what you’re suffering from. It’s a seizure; a form of epilepsy. With any luck, it will go off soon.’
‘A seizure?’
The doctor set the notes down and smiled. He was young and smartly turned out, Parisian; on colonial placement, probably, to rack up experience before returning to France. Joe felt hopeless. The more he thought about it, the more he realised he knew general things, but nothing specific.
‘Yes,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m personally very interested in this particular epilepsy type, so I’ve been asking for cases, hence your referral. It’s what we’re calling silent epilepsy; it doesn’t come with convulsions, only the symptoms we would usually associate with an epileptic aura – amnesia, paramnesia, visions. Had anything of the latter two?’
‘What does paramnesia mean?’ Joe asked. The doctor’s voice was so posh that he could feel himself furling up inside with the urge to keep his answers short, and not to ask questions or to waste time.
‘The blurring of something imaginary and something real. Most commonly, déjà vu; the sense you’ve seen something new before. And its opposite, jamais vu, which is when something that should be familiar feels wholly alien.’
‘Yes!’ Joe said fast, and felt his eyes burn, desperately grateful to hear someone name the feeling. ‘Yes, that second one, ever since that man found me at the station! I didn’t think the Gare du Roi was in London, all the streets looked wrong, the – newspapers look wrong …’
‘Textbook,’ the doctor said gently. ‘Absolutely. Now, I can promise you that you do know Londres, because you’ve got a very strong Clerkenwell accent.’ He smiled again. ‘Let’s see what happens if we keep you here in the quiet for a few days. I’m putting you down as a curable,’ he added, motioning at the form in front of him.
‘What if it doesn’t go away?’ Joe said. He was having to speak carefully. It felt like he hadn’t spoken for a long, long time, which was absurd, because he had spoken before, at the other hospital, and the train station. But the order of words felt wrong. French, they were speaking French of course, and the man at the station had spoken English; maybe it was just the switchover.
‘Well, let’s talk about that in the—’
‘No, let’s talk about it now, please.’
‘There’s no need to be aggressive,’ the doctor said, sharp. He drew back in his chair a few inches, as though he thought Joe might punch him.
Joe frowned. ‘I’m not being aggressive, I’m really scared.’
The honesty seemed to take the doctor by surprise. He had the grace to look awkward. ‘You understand my caution. Your notes say you arrived at the Colonial Free speaking English, and that coat you’re wearing now has a tartan lining. The train you were on came from Glasgow.’ His tone turned from questioning to accusatory by the end.
‘Sorry?’ said Joe, lost.
‘If I say the Saints to you, does that ring a bell?’
Joe searched for it, but got nothing. ‘Is that a church?’
‘No, it’s a terrorist group that makes a habit of bombing trains and random sections of the Republic.’
‘Oh. And they …’
‘Speak English and wear tartan and occupy Edinburgh, which does not have a railway connection, for obvious reasons, to Londres. They use Glasgow.’
Joe stared down at the lining of his coat sleeve. ‘I … can’t see myself bombing anything. I think I’d go to pieces under pressure. I am going to pieces. Have … gone.’
The doctor must have thought so too, because he relented. ‘If it doesn’t go away, it means that there may be a lesion or a tumour pressing on part of your brain, in which case, there’s very little we can do, and it will probably prove fatal eventually.’ He said it bluntly, punishment for Joe’s having scared him before. ‘Meanwhile, we’re putting your details and description in the papers. See if we can find you some relatives.’
Joe knew he should say thank you, but it was an uphill struggle to say anything now. ‘And if no one comes?’
‘The county asylum is free, so you could go there.’ The doctor winced at the idea, and Joe tried not to imagine what the county asylum was like. ‘But as I say, we’re putting you up for the week, so we have until next Tuesday.’
‘Right.’
A huge dog padded in and put its head on Joe’s lap, and looked at him hopefully until he stroked its ears. It was a relief to see that there really was a dog, and that it wasn’t a patient who’d gnawed on the table leg.
‘Don’t mind Napoleon, he’s very friendly. However,’ the doctor continued, as if he hadn’t mentioned the dog, ‘I’ve never seen a case that hasn’t cleared in a few days, if not a few hours. And it’s an incredibly common condition. We had a rush of people with it a couple of months ago and they all recovered perfectly. Not so bad as this, but precisely the same thing.’
Joe looked up from the dog. ‘A group of people with the same thing in the same timeframe implies an external cause that affects all of them. Doesn’t it?’
The doctor widened his eyes, then laughed, as if it was surprising that Joe would know words like implies and external. ‘Well, yes. A cluster does imply an external cause. But there is no geographical cluster. Patients from right across the Republic have experienced it, from Rome to Dublin. We’re looking into all sorts: weather, water tables, crops, air miasma. But don’t worry yourself. We’ll work it out.’
Joe nodded.
‘Settle down, have a game of tennis with someone. Plenty of veterans here, wonderful fellows, they just don’t get on so well with sudden noises.