One Split Second: A thought-provoking novel about the limits of love and our astonishing capacity to heal

by Caroline Bond

  Nothing could tear them apart.

  Apart from the music stopping.

  The lights going on.

  And the teachers calling, ‘Time’.

  Chapter 6

  THE NIGHT OF THE ACCIDENT

  DOM’S NAME was the first to be called. It came as no surprise to the others, but it did cause a bitter spike of resentment. Why Dom? Why not them? Why should he be the first to discover what had happened to his child? The not knowing was excruciating, the waiting a test of endurance. How come Dom got to be released from such suffering before they did? But as Dom followed the nurse out of the waiting room, the others started to rationalise. Perhaps it wasn’t a good thing to be summoned first. Perhaps it was a sign of bad news. It had been impossible to deduce anything from the nurse’s composed, bland expression. Either way, as the door slowly closed, Sal had an overwhelming urge to run through it and demand to see Tish. She had as much right as Dom, didn’t she? This polite, humble patience was surely the wrong response. Perhaps it was time to start shouting and demanding action, and access. Wasn’t that what a parent should do? Fight tooth and nail to be with their child, not sit on their hands waiting to be given permission to leave the room, like obedient school children.

  But the door clicked shut, and Sal found that she hadn’t moved.

  The disturbance of Dom’s departure over, they went back to staring into the spaces between each other.

  Dom was told that Harry was on a ward up on the fourth floor. The nurse – who seemed too old still to be working – wasn’t very forthcoming about what state he was in. As they waited for the lift, Dom held himself rigid.

  The police arriving at the house had blown apart his refusal to think the worst. He’d had to reset. The policewoman had spoken slowly, calmly, clearly. A car had crashed, at speed. They believed the car to have been Harry’s. There were casualties. Harry was one of them. The occupants of the car had all been taken to St Thomas’s. Dom had listened, processing everything, saying little, building up resistance. Faced with the reality of the situation, he’d swapped his earlier defiant optimism for a realistic dark pessimism. It was better to be prepared. A full-on crash, into a brick wall, at speed. The driver would, undoubtedly, have come off worse. Dom had asked about the injuries sustained by the people in the car, specifically the driver, but the policewoman couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give him any personal information about who was involved or what state they were in. Dom had turned away from her and begun thinking through the practicalities. Martha! She was asleep. Should he wake her? And tell her what? That her brother had been in a crash, that he was in hospital, that he was injured – how badly they didn’t know. Dom went up and checked on her.

  She wasn’t asleep. His conversation with the police officer must have woken her. Martha was sitting up in bed, looking bewildered. He minimised the news, said that nothing had been confirmed, but she still started crying. She scrambled out of bed and began searching for her clothes, sitting down and standing up randomly. Dom hugged her to a stop, reassured her – then lied to her – saying that she couldn’t come to the hospital with him. The reality was that he couldn’t cope with Martha and with whatever had happened to Harry, at the same time. He never had mastered the knack of parenting both his children simultaneously. He laid the blame for Martha not being able to go the hospital on the police. He promised to ring her the minute he had any news. He told her not to worry. That Harry was big and daft enough to look after himself. Then he said that he was going to drop her round at Cheryl’s on his way to the hospital, so that she didn’t have to be on her own. And, finally, he told her that she must NOT look at anything anyone was posting about the crash on social media. It was all speculation and nonsense. She nodded and promised him faithfully that she wouldn’t. He didn’t believe her. He made a mental note to ask Cheryl to monitor her phone use.

  Daughter sorted, he turned his attention to the fate of his son.

  Yet, as Dom followed in the wake of the frustratingly slow nurse, he found himself still worrying about Martha. She and her brother were close, unusually so for an eighteen-year-old and a fourteen-year-old. It made sense. When your mum abandons you, you cling on harder to those left behind. Dom hated Adele for many reasons, but top of the list was the way she’d left, the mess that followed and the impact it had had on Martha. It had turned her into a worrier. She was often anxious about small, irrelevant things, always fearful of what might happen. That was all Adele’s fault. Christ, how was Martha going to deal with this? What if Harry really was badly hurt? Or worse? Why couldn’t the nurse just tell him, one way or the other?

  They came out of the lift and turned left. They seemed to be heading away from the action, into the quieter, calmer hinterland of the hospital. Dom rationalised that this must be a good sign. They were not going to A&E or the operating theatres; they were going to a ward. ‘Here we are.’ As the nurse laboriously punched numbers into the keypad, Dom tried hard to quell his mounting frustration. At last the door buzzed and they were through. She led him onto the ward. It was a long, old-style room with a lot of beds, many of which were filled with sleeping, unidentifiable forms. Dom spotted Harry straight away. He was sitting in one of the cubicles with the curtains open. The angled wall lamp cast a tight circle of light around him. Dom’s first instinct was to shout ‘Harry!’, rush over and hug his son, but something stopped him – respect for the other patients, the presence of the nurse, or was it something else? He wasn’t sure.

  He asked the nurse if she might be able to find someone to talk to him about Harry’s injuries and treatment – effectively dismissing her – then took a few moments to compose himself. Dom found that he wanted to assess the situation, examine his son, get a grip on his emotions, before he was ready to move. Harry was sitting on a plastic chair, staring at his feet. He looked in one piece. In fact he looked remarkably normal. He certainly didn’t look as if he’d just been in a bad car accident. This reality shook Dom, bringing with it a rush of pure, powerful relief. He wouldn’t have to smash Martha’s world. Thank God.

  And yet still he hesitated, processing the night’s events.

  Harry hadn’t moved. Why hadn’t his son moved? Why was he frozen to the spot?

  Dom crossed the room. On his approach, Harry looked up. The expression on his face stopped Dom in his tracks. Harry’s face wasn’t full of relief. It didn’t flood with love at the sight of him. It was blank. Totally devoid of any emotion. Instead of embracing his son, Dom put his hands in his pockets.

  Perhaps that was the moment – that fraction of a second when neither of them reached out to the other in their need and shock – when it all started to go wrong.

  ‘You okay?’ Dom asked, as if it was nothing, as if the last three hours hadn’t been some of the worst in his life, and Harry’s.

  Harry seemed to have to think before answering. ‘Yeah.’

  Dom leant awkwardly against the bed and looked his son over. A quick scan revealed a scatter of cuts and abrasions on his face and neck, a bandage around his right hand and dressings on both his arms. That was it. Given the photos of the crash, the state of the car, the amount of broken glass and bent metal, the lack of physical damage was a miracle. So why weren’t they celebrating? Why weren’t they clinging onto to each other, crying with love and gratitude?

  Harry had gone back to looking at the clumpy bandage.

  ‘Harry!’

  ‘What?’

  Dom asked the only question that seemed relevant, ‘What happened?’

  Chapter 7

  JAKE’S PARENTS were the second family to be called.

  They were escorted down to the bowels of the hospital, to the operating theatres, the place where the emergency cases were treated. The thought of her youngest being cut and stitched behind one of those frosted-glass doors made Anita feel nauseous. They walked the full length of the building, past one, two, three sealed-off areas, imagining the worst, until they were finally led into a curiously hushed and calm recovery
bay. Anita ran and actually skidded across the room into the trolley in her rush to get to her son. The jolt made Jake open his eyes. ‘What the hell, Mum!’ His voice was gravelly. He was battered and bruised. But he was alive. After so many hours of not knowing, the reality of being with him, seeing him alive and hearing him speak, was overpowering. It was not so much a relief as a release.

  He was half-sitting, half-lying on the trolley, his right leg hoisted up and attached to a complicated shiny contraption that arced over the bed. The pulleys and weights on the frame were wired into bolts that had been driven deep into his skin. Dave tried to avoid looking at his son’s smashed leg, but it was hard not to. There were patches of what looked like blue felt-tip marks around the holes and bolts in his skin. The sight made Dave feel light-headed. It was better to focus on his son’s top half. There was a drip in Jake’s arm and monitors attached to his bare chest, which was covered in sickly brown marks, like rust stains. There were cuts on his arms – some dressed, some not. He looked like some sort of weird hybrid creature: half-human, half-Meccano.

  ‘Oh my God, Jake,’ Anita sobbed.

  ‘Hey there, Bud.’ Dave’s emotions were too big to allow for anything other than small words.

  ‘Hey, Dad. Hey, Mum. Whoa! It’s okay, Mum. Calm down. I’m okay.’

  Dave didn’t know where to touch his son. Every bit of him seemed claimed by the hospital equipment. Anita stroked Jake’s hair across his forehead and kissed his face. ‘Are you in pain?’

  Jake rested his head back against his pillow and actually smiled. A dopey, very familiar expression. ‘Nah. They’ve given me the good stuff.’ He did sound high. ‘But I think I’m a bit fucked for the match.’

  Despite everything, Dave and Anita laughed.

  Chapter 8

  FRAN AND MARCUS were the next to be called. They got up quietly, their hearts skittering, suddenly reluctant to face their fate.

  Twenty minutes later, despite the doctor’s patient explanations of MRI scans and damage assessment, Fran was still struggling to put the sharp fragments of the night together and connect them to Jess. The transition from a normal Saturday night to the intensive care ward was so abrupt and abnormal that it was hard to take everything in. But above all, what Fran felt was relief. At least they were finally with Jess, able to hold her hand and talk to her, to see her face and touch her hair. They had their baby back. And despite the showreel of horrors that had been spooling through Fran’s head since the police had knocked at their door, Jess looked…okay. She was very pale and there was a nasty scrape along her jawline, but there were no dreadful contusions, no blood.

  The doctor spoke of how lucky Jess had been to escape any pelvic or leg injuries. They had not had to operate, though he stressed that surgery might still be necessary, depending on the result of the scans and on Jess’s progress over the next twenty-four-to forty-eight-hour period. Fran was struggling to listen. She couldn’t stop looking at their daughter. Whoever had got her settled had done a good job of cleaning her up and making her comfortable. Jess looked serene. Peaceful. Not in pain. That would be the drugs – the sedation the doctor had spoken to them about. For that, Fran was grateful. She didn’t want Jess to be frightened, or distressed. After the trauma of the crash it was good that she was sleeping, unaware of all the lights and activity and machines. Jess was stable. That had to be good news.

  Fran laid her head down on the sheet next to Jess’s hand and very lightly stroked her daughter’s fingers. They were cool, but not cold. The weight of Marcus’s hand resting on her own back was reassuring. They were together again. It would be all right, as long as they stayed together. The worst was over.

  Chapter 9

  IT WAS Sal’s turn next.

  The doctors gave her a choice: stay in the tiny side-room near the operating theatres or go up to the ICU unit and wait there. They stressed that Tish could be in surgery for quite a while, and that she would be very heavily sedated when she did finally emerge. How long she would be in theatre, they didn’t know. How conscious she would be, they couldn’t say. Sal panicked. The thought of being alone frightened her. There’d been a curious comfort in being trapped in that awful waiting room with the others. Or, if not comfort, then at least a solidarity of anxiety. They had been in it together. She couldn’t face the thought of being left on her own in the underbelly of the hospital, with nothing to do but wait and pray. When they told her that Marcus and Fran were already up on the ICU unit, that decided it.

  A porter with copious tattoos and a boxer’s face escorted her to the unit. He was kind, chatting away to fill the void in her social skills, pointing out where she could get a cup of tea twenty-four hours a day, where the nicer visitor toilets were, how to get to the staff canteen on the ground floor – where the food was much cheaper – all the useful things she was going to need in the coming days and weeks. Because this was where she was going to be for the foreseeable future.

  Tish was in a bad way. The doctors had been very clear about that. They’d used big, complicated medical words that she hadn’t fully understood, but the message had been stark. They were in for a long haul. Tish had life-threatening injuries, to her face and neck. Her jaw had been broken. They were having to repair a tear in her trachea – which was her windpipe. There was concern about her left lung. A respiratory specialist had been called in. Sal had nodded and tried to listen. This was important. The most important information she’d ever been given, and yet illogically it was the sound of Tish’s voice that filled Sal’s head, drowning out the doctor’s words. Tish singing, up in her bedroom, joyous, loud, inappropriate; nothing delicate about it, because there was nothing delicate about Tish. And that was because Tish was strong. Invincible. Sal didn’t push the memory away; she welcomed it, listened to it in preference to the doctor’s relentless, negative litany of what was wrong with her daughter.

  The porter buzzed and pushed open the door to the ICU, but didn’t come onto the ward with her. That Sal had to do on her own. It was scary, like voluntarily walking into a fire with nothing to protect you. Had it not been for Marcus looking up and seeing her arrive, she might have stayed in the entrance hallway for ever, too frightened to venture any further. He stood up and came straight over, put his arms round her and held her tight, squeezing hard. His ferocity helped to ground her. The sense of something shared gave her strength.

  ‘Any more news?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘She’s still in surgery. How’s Jess?’

  They both looked over at Jess. Fran was leaning over the bed, her hands fluttering above their daughter’s sleeping form as if performing some type of ritual healing.

  Marcus said, ‘She’s stable. They’ve sedated her. They’re doing tests. Lots of tests. She has a fracture behind her left ear, and some sort of wound at the back of her head. But no other broken bones. It’s the impact on her brain that they’re concerned about.’

  Sal nodded, though she didn’t understand what that meant, or where it put Jess on the scale of suffering and damage. Regardless, she returned his kindness by squeezing Marcus’s arm.

  ‘Have they told you much about Tish’s injuries?’

  Sal nodded and swallowed, then found that she couldn’t say anything in response to his question. But Marcus was sensitive enough not to expect an answer.

  ‘It’s a good hospital, Sal. Expert, professional staff. I’m sure they’re looking after her.’ They were hollow words, but they were well intentioned. They clung onto to each other for a few more seconds before separating; Marcus to go back to his daughter and wife, and Sal to present herself at the nurses’ station.

  An hour and a half later and the bed next to Sal remained empty. Tish was still somewhere else. The wait was excruciating. Sal couldn’t stop thinking about the surgeon, in the basement of the hospital, dressed in green scrubs, his rubber-coated fingers digging around inside her daughter. Cutting and stitching, stretching and suturing, mounds of red-and-white swabs on the metal tray next to him. She’d seen e
nough hospital programmes on TV, watched through splayed fingers as they hacked and hurt, in their attempts to heal. She’d shed tears for complete strangers, prayed for their survival; and she’d waited, on the edge of her sofa, for the weepy, post-surgery reunions and the ‘two months later’ miraculous transformations.

  Now it was her turn. But this time there was no way it was going to be neatly resolved in the next hour; and there was no audience to shed tears of relief, or sadness, for her and Tish. Sal looked across at Jess again. Fran and Marcus were curled around her, forming a protective barrier. Sal sat alone, fearful that she wasn’t going to be enough.

  Chapter 10

  SHAZIA AND Nihal were the only ones left in the room. They felt as if they had been there for days.

  ‘It’s because he’s dead.’

  Nihal took hold of his wife’s arms. ‘Shazia, stop it. Please.’

  But Shazia wouldn’t or, more accurately, couldn’t be comforted. ‘But this doesn’t feel right, does it? Why keep us here for so long without telling us anything? Everyone else has been taken off to be with their kids. But not us! He must be dead. That’s the only possible explanation. That’s why we’re the only ones left. They want us to be on our own when they tell us.’

  In the absence of anything to contradict her, Nihal closed his eyes, raised his hands to his face and started to pray.

  At last, as if summoned by Shazia voicing the unthinkable, the door opened. They turned and braced themselves, but it wasn’t a nurse or doctor who came into the room, it was the police liaison officer, accompanied by a woman. The officer looked at them, registered the panic on their faces and made a strange, air-patting gesture with his hands. Wired as they were, the gesture gave them a sliver of hope. The officer wouldn’t have signalled that they should calm down if Mo had died in the crash. This wasn’t going to be the worst day of their lives. They weren’t about to be led into a room and asked to identify the body of their son. The relief was intense, but short-lived. Because if Mo wasn’t dead, what then? Why were they being kept separate from everyone else?