25
Snape walked with an old man's careful steps down the hospital corridor. He was still a bit unsteady on his legs. He was wearing a bathrobe the boy had brought him over his hospital gown. It was late in the evening, just after eight-thirty, which was when the nursing shift changed. It was a confused time—Snape had observed that all the shift changes were confused and chaotic. It was a time for exchanging gossip and patient reports, of drinking coffee at the nurses' station, which was just around the corner from the drinking fountain.
The room he wanted was just across from the fountain. He moved down the wide hospital corridor, which reminded him of a busy train station. The walking wounded perambulated up and down, some wearing robes, others holding the backs of their gowns together, still others limping using IV poles as makeshift crutches. Visitors came and went. Half a dozen different snatches of music came out of half a dozen different rooms. A man laughed in one room, while in another across the hall, a woman seemed to be weeping. A doctor wandered by with his face in a thick paperback.
Snape got a drink from the fountain and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The room he wanted was always locked—at least, in theory. In practice he had observed that it was sometimes both unlocked and unattended, usually during the chaotic half hour of the shift changes when the nurses were clustered like magpies around the corner.
He only wished he had another week or so to observe, to watch for patterns—he would only have the one chance. But he didn't have a week; probably not even two days. His status as ghoul in residence might not be known for two or three days, but it could happen tomorrow. And, once he was known, he would be watched constantly.
Casually, with no effort at concealment, Snape strolled across the hall and opened the door to the drug closet. If the woman who was supposed to be at the little desk in there had been present, he was only near-sighted Mr Craven. So sorry, dear lady. I thought it was the loo. Stupid of me.
But the drug closet was empty.
He stepped in and closed the door. He ran his eye over the shelf on his left: Nothing but eye drops, eardrops and nose drops. The shelf on his right: Laxatives and suppositories. Finally on the third shelf straight ahead was what he was looking for. He grabbed a bottle of Zolpidem, tucked it into his robe pocket and opened the door again. He stepped out, not looking around; a puzzled smile on his lips—that certainly wasn't the loo, was it? There it was, on the left side of the hallway.
He stepped into the men's bathroom, washed his hands, waited for thirty seconds and came back out again. Then he headed for his semiprivate room, which was now completely private after the departure of the Hon. Mr Cattermole.
On the table between the two beds was a plastic pitcher full of water and two plastic glasses. Pity there was no whisky, but the pills would send him off just as neat, no matter how they were washed down.
Snape reclined against his scant hospital pillow and poured a glass of water. He took three pills, followed by a sip of water, then three more.
It was really quite funny, wasn't it? After all those years jumping at shadows, of seeing half-recognised faces on park benches and bus and train stations, of listening for voices in the night, he had been recognised by a man he wouldn't have known from Adam. Yes, quite funny indeed.
He took another three pills. Across the hall, two old men were playing a grumpy game of checkers. Someone was laughing hysterically a little further down.
He refilled his water glass, but did not take any more pills right away. If he went too fast they would only make him sick, and he would throw up the pills. He had no intention of trying to take his life stupidly, like a drunk on a crying jag. They would pump his stomach of the residue and he would be submitted to whatever horrors the MBO had in store for him. No sir. None of that for him. When he began to get dozy, he would take three more, then three more. That would do fine.
As he lay there, listening to the sound of hospital around him, he remembered his years in America. They had such charming idioms, such delightful turns of phrase. 'I don't give a tin shit,' 'take this job and shove it where the sun don't shine,' 'money talks, nobody walks.' Such wonderful idioms.
They thought they had him, but he was going to basically tell them to stuff it where the sun don't shine. One last fuck you all.
He found himself wishing, of all absurd things, that he could leave a note for the boy. To tell him that even though he had not liked him, in the end he, Snape, had come to respect him, and that talking to him had, in the end, been much better than listening to the maddening run of his own thoughts. But any note, no matter how innocent, would cast suspicion on the boy, and he had no desire to do that. He wasn't that spiteful—at least, not any more. Maybe last year he would've done it, but not now. Now he was just tired.
The boy might have a bad month or two, waiting for some government agent to come knocking on the door and enquiring about a certain document found in a safety deposit box rented to one Severus Snape, aka Archibald Craven, but when no knock came, the boy would come to believe Snape had been telling the truth about there being no document.
No, there was no need for the boy to be touched by any of this, as long as he kept a cool head.
Snape reached out with a hand that seemed to stretch for miles on a taffy arm, got the glass of water, and took another three pills, then three more. He had never felt so much like sleeping, and his sleep would be long and restful.
Unless there were dreams.
The thought shocked him. Dreams? Please God, no. Not those dreams. Not for eternity, not with all possibility of awakening gone. Not—
In sudden terror, he tried to sit up. Skeletal hands seemed to be reaching for him out of the depths of his bed, avaricious hands with clawing fingers.
(NO!)
His thoughts began to break up in a soupy, chaotic mess, and he spiralled down and down, to whatever dreams there are.
His overdose was discovered at one forty-five A.M. The nurse who discovered him was named Amber Pembroke, and she was one of those older ladies susceptible to Mr Craven's slightly ironic charm. When she found him, she burst into tears. She was a Catholic, and she couldn't understand how such a sweet old man, who was going to be better as soon as they operated on him, could do such a thing and damn his immortal soul to hell.