Try Not to Breathe Read Online Free PDF

have to or you couldn’t do your job properly. I suspect being a reporter is much the same, psychologically speaking…”
    Alex wanted to make it clear that she really wasn’t a reporter, but thought better of it.
    “What I
can
tell you about Amy,” continued Dr. Haynes, “is that she breathes by herself, she has awake time and she sleeps, she is off the feeding tube and we’ve registered a degree of brain activity that shows she is not ‘brain dead’ as the papers used to love calling her.”
    Alex scribbled on her notepad. “So has she done the yes-and-no tennis experiments?”
    Peter Haynes frowned a little. “We’ve tried. We registered an ability to imagine, but the brain responses were somewhat haywire, and she became extremely distressed. You certainly couldn’t interview her via an MRI scan, if that’s what you were getting at. Not in her current condition.”
    “No, I hadn’t even thought of that at all. I mean, it would be amazing if it could happen but I understand if it can’t.”
    “It can’t,” he said emphatically. “Now, we have visitors who come and sit with the patients and talk to them and that seems to have a slight effect on Amy, but having gone through such a high level of trauma, we haven’t run many more tests on her. We’re still taking things slowly, as she’s prone to shock. No next of kin slows things down too.”
    Something buzzed sharply on the doctor’s belt.
    “Sorry, Alex, but I’m wanted in another part of the hospital.”
    “I really appreciate you giving me your time. I’ll let you know when the article is published.”
    As Alex shook Peter’s perfectly dry, smooth hand again, she wondered if he ever read his own press, if he would read her piece on Amy Stevenson. If she managed to get it published. If she managed to get it written.
    The doctor had bolted in the opposite direction and Alex headed to Amy’s ward before she could talk herself out of it.
    The doctor’s office lay at the heart of a coil of corridors, which eventually opened out into a main walkway. The shiny floors squeaked under every footstep, and the smell of chemical hand cleanser prickled Alex’s nose. She couldn’t begin to calculate how many ill people there were right now, all coughing and complaining into this same block of warm air.
    As she came to the thick double doors of Bramble Ward, Alex dropped a big glop of disinfectant hand gel so it sat like ketchup in her palm. She rubbed it slowly and carefully into her skin.
    She pushed the doors open, passed the empty reception desk and tiptoed quietly up to the open office door. Giving a gentle knock, she waited for the nurses to finish their conversation. Inside, the radio was burbling with mid-morning local news updates. A breezy voice announced the arrest of a wanted rapist, the results of a successful school fundraising event and the timescale for extended roadworks on the A21.
    After a minute or so, she knocked again. Eventually one of the nurses came out as Alex had made a fist to knock one last time.
    “Oh sorry, you should have knocked,” said the nurse, despite looking straight at Alex’s unfurling fist.
    Alex tried to peer into the office to see if the ward manager she’d met last time was in there, but she was nowhere to be seen.
    “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Alex Dale, I’m a journalist. I visited before because I’m writing about Dr. Haynes’s work.”
    “I’m Gillian Radson, and I wasn’t aware there’d be journalists on my ward today,” replied the nurse, pursing her lips.
    “I’ve just been interviewing Dr. Haynes and he’s agreed that I can write a piece on one of your patients, Amy Stevenson.”
    “I’ll have to check that with him,” replied the nurse.
    “Sure,” said Alex, “but while I’m here I wondered if I could sit with Amy?”
    “She has someone with her at the moment.”
    Alex tried to see into the corner cubicle, but there were pillars in all the wrong places. “I didn’t think