that made up everything in the universe. So far it had yielded no clear answers but it offered infinite possibilities. And distraction. She might not have found meaning in the vagaries of the quantum world but she had found solace in searching for it.
The sheer intellectual rigour and hard work required to explore the contradictions and dualities of particle physics diverted her from the guilt and loss that clouded her peace of mind whenever she lay idle for long. But tonight, however hard she tried to contain her unresolved feelings for Ariel, they kept rising to the surface.
When Frankie popped her head round the door the puzzle on the screen changed to a crossword. 'I'm off home now,' she said. 'We've got a big clinical trial tomorrow, but there'll be a nurse in the observation room all night. Everything all right?'
Amber smiled. 'My mind keeps wandering and I'm tired. Does that matter?'
The nurse shook her head. 'Not at all. The stimuli are only used to get a broad read of mental activity and to keep you amused. Brian's fuzzy logic is flexible. If you need to drop off to sleep, don't worry about it. To be honest, for the baseline scan we get the most useful diagnostic data from the sleeping brain anyway. Good night and sleep well, Dr Grant.'
'Night. Thanks.'
She turned back to the screen and completed the crossword. Her eyelids began to droop and she didn't register the puzzles changing on the screen. Drifting in that hyper-lucid state between wakeful-ness and sleep, her mind returned to her sister.
On and off over the last thirty years she had been disconcerted to feel that her life wasn't entirely her own. Whenever she tried to forge any deep relationship she was frequently accused of being mentally 'miles away' or with 'someone else'. It seemed that, asleep or awake, Ariel was always buried somewhere in her thoughts, as if Amber couldn't let her go, couldn't get on witih living her life because it wasn't entirely hers to live. Only when she threw herself into her work and her research had she found peace, a distraction from the other person in her head.
The eight-year-old little girl she had loved more than she loved herself.
The eight-year-old girl who was once part of her.
The eight-year-old girl who had died for her.
*
The ward. Barley Hall
When Fleming entered cubicle five in the research ward, the first place his eyes went to was the ECG monitor. 'How is he, Emma?' he asked the nurse sitting by the apparatus. 'His heart steady?'
The nurse smiled. 'He's stable and should be fine for tomorrow.'
'Thanks. You take a break. I'll look after him for now.'
Turning to the bed, Fleming saw that the nurse had dressed his brother in his favourite faded black Ralph Lauren polo shirt and jeans, and his hair had been cut short in the military style he had favoured when he was in the army. Sitting upright on the motorized bed in his cubicle, Rob still looked good, although the shirt and jeans hung loose on his once powerful body.
Fleming walked round the bed to be directly in line with Rob's good eye. 'Hi, Rob - your cognitive exercises have been great and your heart's behaving itself so we should be on for the trial tomorrow. I've got a great surprise for you now, though. Would you like to see it?' He looked down at the computer screen directly below Rob's face. Sixteen words were displayed on a four-by-four grid. They had formed Rob's vocabulary since he had suffered the stroke to his brainstem, which had paralysed all of his body except his left eye. Using electro-oculographic signals, Rob's eye movements directed a cursor on the screen. When he had chosen a word, he blinked and a computer-generated voice said the word.
'No,' the computer voice said.
Fleming laughed. 'In that case I won't show it to you, you ungrateful bastard.'
He could tell that his older brother was trying to smile - and that the smile was as strained as his own banter. Rob had always been his hero, an action man who was always fitter,
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