They Framed Arthur He Returned as Lucas novel · Chapter 3 of 8

Chapter 3: The Man in the Mirror

Martin takes Arthur to a private clinic in Geneva, and Arthur agrees to the surgery while Maria's televised statement plays on the clinic wall.

We flew out of Luton at eleven and Martin slept the whole way with his coat over his knees.

I didn't.

Somewhere over France I took out my phone and looked at the photograph again.

It was the one the hospital used on the staff page. White coat, stethoscope round my neck.

I had that photograph taken on the day I got the consultant post.

I'd sent it to my mum and she'd printed it and put it on the fridge.

In Geneva a car was waiting and it drove us forty minutes out of the city.

The clinic sat behind a wall at the end of a lane, four storeys of pale stone, no sign.

A woman at the desk took my passport and didn't look at my face.

Martin did the talking. I stood by the window with my hands in my pockets.

The corridor was quiet. The floors were polished and there was no smell of anything.

That was the first thing I noticed.

No hospital smell. No disinfectant, no toast, no other people's fear.

"Mr. Red."

Dr. Hale was a small woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a cord.

She took me into a room with a light box on the wall and a chair and a mirror.

She put my scans up on the light box.

She'd already done the scans. Martin had sent them weeks ago.

"I've read your file," she said. "I've read the newspapers too."

"I'd rather you hadn't."

"I'd rather I hadn't," she said. "Sit down."

I sat down.

She turned the chair so I was facing the mirror.

"You understand what I do here."

"Facial reconstruction. Mostly for burns, mostly for people who can't go outside."

"Correct. And you're asking me to do it for a man who can go outside."

She took her glasses off.

"You're asking me to make you into someone else."

"Yes."

"Why."

I looked at my own face in the mirror.

Long oval face. Defined cheekbones. Straight nose. Full mouth.

My mum's mouth, actually. She'd know it anywhere.

"Because I have six weeks," I said. "And when those six weeks are up I go to prison for something I didn't do."

She waited.

"And because if I walk into that hospital with this face, they'll see me coming from the car park."

Dr. Hale put her glasses back on.

"The jaw can be narrowed. The nose can be changed. The cheekbones can be taken down."

"And the hair?"

"Cut short. It changes the whole head."

"Will I look like myself."

"To a stranger, no. To your mother, yes, probably. To a lover, almost certainly."

I thought about that for a second.

"Then it's enough."

She explained it the way she'd explain it to anyone.

Bone. Cartilage. Six hours under. Three weeks of swelling and bruising.

The risk of nerve damage in the jaw. The risk that I'd never feel my lower lip properly again.

"There's a version of this where you lose the use of your hands," she said. "Small, but it exists."

I looked down at my hands.

I have made my living with these hands for nine years.

"Small," I said.

"Small."

"Do it anyway."

She wrote something on a form and slid it across to me.

I signed it with the name Arthur Red, and it was the last time I ever wrote it.

That evening they put me in a room on the second floor with a television on the wall.

Martin sat in the chair by the window with his laptop open and his tie off.

At nine o'clock the news came on and Maria was on it.

She was outside the hospital, in the same slate-blue jacket, with four microphones in front of her.

Martin reached for the remote.

"Leave it," I said.

She was talking about patient safety.

She said the Okonkwo case had shown the hospital that seniority was no substitute for rigour.

She said the profession had to be honest about its failures.

She said she had given evidence because she had no choice.

The reporter asked her how she felt about the verdict.

Maria looked into the camera and her eyes filled.

"I loved him," she said. "That's the worst part. I loved him, and I still had to tell the truth."

Martin closed the laptop.

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the television.

The camera had moved on to a weather map of the south coast.

I could still see her face behind it.

"Arthur."

"She was on the ward at two in the morning," I said. "I was at home. She called me at half past one to say goodnight."

"I know."

"She said goodnight to me at half past one."

"I know."

Martin got up and came and sat next to me on the bed.

He didn't touch me. He just sat close enough that I could feel the mattress give.

"You don't have to watch the rest of it," he said.

"There is no rest of it."

He was quiet for a minute.

"Say the word and I'll put you back on a plane tomorrow," he said. "Bail holds. You serve the sentence. You come out at thirty-six and you start again somewhere quiet."

"And the log."

"The log stays edited."

"And she stays on that ward."

"Yes."

I looked at the television and then at the window and then at my own hands.

"She does the same thing to somebody else," I said. "In two years. In five. Some registrar who can't afford a lawyer."

"Probably."

"I'm not going to be the man who let that happen because he was tired."

Martin nodded slowly.

He'd known the answer before he asked.

At six the next morning a nurse put a cannula in the back of my hand.

Dr. Hale came in in scrubs and asked me once more if I was sure.

"Yes."

"Then count backwards from ten."

I got to seven.

I don't remember the recovery room.

I remember the ceiling tiles above the bed moving in and out of focus.

I remember my whole face being a hot band of pressure that wouldn't let me open my eyes properly.

There was a drain in my jaw and a nurse's hand on my wrist taking my pulse.

Somebody said my name but it wasn't my name.

They said Lucas.

I tried to say something and my mouth wouldn't do it.

Then the light changed, and there was a chair pulled up beside the bed, and I knew from the smell of the soap that it was Martin.

He was quiet for a long time.

Then he said, "The bail had a condition. You can't be Arthur Red until the trial."

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