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they were cloning perfect nurses in a shadowing theatre in the basement of this very hospital.
    After she had quietly performed the necessary checks, she left Kathy alone and as much as Kathy tried, she couldn’t remember what she had been thinking about. In the same way, she tried to place her hands where they had been before the nurse interrupted her but it had become an impossible puzzle. She would have to start all over again, find a new comfortable position and a new train of thought to steam her away from the hell of enforced sleep. She considered asking for some kind of sedative, but she didn’t want to give them any excuse to hold her for another day. And so she shut her eyes again and this time an ex-boyfriend popped into her head—or perhaps it was two boyfriends merged together, because however hard she tried she couldn’t remember his name and they hadn’t been together long anyway. This face, or a variation of it, would often pop up in the dark hours and she was able to relive a smile, a “You’re beautiful, Kathy,” or a kiss. However, in the cut and thrust of her day, far from missing being in a couple or the companionship, the sex or the laughter, there was a part of her now that felt it was all irrelevant. What was the point in any of it? She certainly didn’t have any needs that she couldn’t fulfill herself and her life was too full for a man to even fit into it. And then the psychologist in her spoke up. So why revisit the memory if it’s all irrelevant?
    Good point , she silently conceded and then her eyes suddenly sprang open with a sudden realisation; the man in her mind tonight was wearing a leather jacket, black t-shirt, and jeans.
    “Weirdo!” she quietly said to herself and then beckoned the nurse over to her. The nurse smiled warmly as she walked towards her and leaned over the bed to hear Kathy’s whispered request. “I don’t suppose you’d have something to help me sleep, would you?”
     

Chapter 4
    The time was approaching 8 a.m. and thirteen-year-old Kathy’s dad shouted up the stairs, “Kathy! It’s getting late! Don’t make me come up there!”
    Predictably, his raucous shout was followed by muffled words from her mother that Kathy could only just hear. “Leave her alone, Jeff. There’s no need to shout at her.” It was the same every morning.
    Kathy hadn’t the will to pull herself out of bed and turned away from her dad’s calls, but she was awake now and there was nothing she could do about it, so she eventually turned to face the day and couldn’t help smiling at the sight of the few posters that her mum had let her put up recently: a few rock bands and psychedelic mind swirls, alongside the Disney throwbacks that her mum had persuaded her keep, layered over the My Little Pony wallpaper, which she could only now appreciate ironically. One corner of the room still housed a collection of teddies that had accumulated a thin layer of dust, but she had gradually stamped as much of her developing character on the room as she could: on the bookshelves, with fiction and non-fiction way beyond her reading age, and with her pride and joy—the phrenology head that she would learn to understand as she embarked on her academic psychology career in the years to come. She sighed as she began to fully awaken.
    “Kathy, Breakfast!” This was still her dad, but his voice was softer. Yes, Mum had definitely got to him.
    Kathy dragged herself out of bed, skipped the look in the mirror—she really didn’t need to know how many new spots she had acquired overnight or how the thick grease in her hair had matted it—and began to dress in the grundy green uniform that she dreamt about burning. She dragged a brush through her hair and tied it back the best she could then threw a few things in her bag. And then she stopped. She was fully awake now and suddenly remembered what today was—what she and Brady had decided to do today. She grabbed the vapour rub from the high shelf and