by James Flint
‘There you go, Dad. One for the road.’
And found that she was sobbing.
‘Dad, Dad,’ she whispered, wanting to scream the words but not wanting to wake up Sean or her mother. ‘Dad, oh my Daddy, Daddy, oh my dear Dad.’ She did touch him now, touched his cheeks, his hands, his brow, her fingers trembling, as splayed and desperate as the wind-worn branches of that dead elm on the summit of the hill. ‘Oh Dad, Dad … I’m so sorry Daddy, I’m so, so sorry. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want it, but I couldn’t help it. Don’t hate me for it Daddy, please don’t hate me – I hate myself enough.’
Then it all tumbled out, years and years of it, like the words of an aria she’d been brought into the world to perform: how she couldn’t help it, how she hadn’t known how to stop it, how she despised herself for doing it, how she didn’t know what else to do. How it was just because she’d loved him, Daddy, how she wanted to die to join him, Daddy. Because how could she choose? Please don’t make her choose, Daddy, please don’t make her choose – oh God forgive her – please don’t make her choose, please Daddy please—
Because if this is what living was …
Then she didn’t want to live.
—————
Only Jamie moved as Caitlin fell. Sean had shouted but Jamie had moved, running twenty yards or so in her direction before coming to a halt. Watching her gave him instant vertigo – the path of her descent had become the axis around which the world now spun, the four men distributed as if pulled into an arc by gravitational forces created by the passage of her body through the air. Then she hit the hedge.
Dizzy and nauseous, feeling like he was being pulled both towards and away from her, it was all Jamie could do to stay upright. But a moment later he was running again, they were all running, speeding across the damp grass towards the gate in the corner of the field, deaf to any sound but the thump of blood in their ears.
Jamie reached the gate first and leapt over it. He caught his knee on the uppermost bar and landed awkwardly, his ankle folding under his weight, but if there was damage he didn’t feel it and he was up again at once, arriving seconds later at the motionless form on the ground. The huge gash ripped open in the hedge – five full metres of elder, hawthorn and sloe – told him that Caitlin must have landed right on it before rolling out into the field.
He dropped to his knees beside her body and felt for a pulse at the base of her neck.
‘Anything?’ Sean panted, as he, Rick and Matthew ran up.
‘I think so. But I can’t really tell if it’s her or me.’
‘Christ, she’s a mess,’ said Sean, reaching into his pocket for his mobile. ‘I’m going to call for an ambulance.’
‘Caitlin!’ Matthew urged. ‘Cait! Cait!’ But there was no response.
‘Don’t touch her,’ Jamie snapped. ‘Rick, is there anything in the truck we can use to keep her warm? Blankets or anything?’
‘There’s an old rug that my dogs use. But it’s pretty filthy.’
‘Get it. And then go park the truck at the end of the track and switch on the hazards. The ambulance will never find us otherwise.’
Just then there was the whine of an engine and a shadow slid across the field.
‘Christ – Emily.’ said Sean. ‘She can’t get down.’ He handed his phone to Jamie and started running back towards the Toyota on whose bonnet, in the panic, he’d left his walkie-talkie.
—————
Emily had seen the men rush over to the next field.
‘What’s the matter, what’s going on?’ she blurted as soon as Sean’s voice crackled back into her headset.
‘Something’s happened,’ Sean said blankly. ‘We’re going to get you down right now. Here’s what I need you to do.’
Whatever the problem was, it didn’t seem like a good moment to argue. Emily followed his instructions and was soon making a controlled descent into the centre of the meadow. When she had landed Sean ran over and took the weight of the cage while she unclipped herself from her harness.
‘Why did you leave me up there?’
‘We’ve got a problem. It’s Cait.’
‘What’s the matter with her?’
‘Over there. She fell.’
Emily’s hands went to her mouth. ‘Oh my God Sean.’
‘Come on,’ he said.
When they reached the others Emily fell to her knees alongside her brother, who had ignored Jamie’s order and was sitting holding Caitlin’s hand.
‘She’s not …’
‘No, no, there’s definitely a pulse.’
‘Oh Caitlin, Caitlin.’ Emily leant over the girl and with a tissue from her pocket tried very gently to wipe some of the blood from her face.
‘How long?’ Sean asked Jamie, taking back his phone.
‘At least another fifteen to twenty.’
‘Christ. That’s ages.’
‘Well they’ve got to come from Warwick. Nowhere local is equipped for something like this. The police will probably get here before that though.’
‘You called the police?’
‘Of course I fucking didn’t,’ Jamie snapped. ‘But they’re bound to show up. You’d better get your head around it fast. It was your equipment and you invited everyone. You could be liable.’
Emily turned to look at them. ‘It’s a bit early to be talking about legal action, isn’t it?’
Sean rubbed his face, which was drained of all colour. ‘Jamie’s right. The police won’t think so. We’d better prepare ourselves to give statements.’
‘You mean like match our stories?’ Matthew asked, incredulous.
‘No, that’s not what I mean,’ Sean said hotly.
‘I wouldn’t worry about it. We all saw her undo her harness, right?’ said Jamie.
Matthew stared at him, eyes hard as quartz. ‘You’re not suggesting she did this deliberately? That it was some kind of suicide attempt?’
‘I know what I saw.’
‘Well I didn’t see that. I saw her struggling with it, but it looked to me like she was trying to pull it back together.’
‘What, so I didn’t do it up properly, is that what you’re saying?’
‘Stop it!’ screamed Emily. ‘Just shut the fuck up, both of you! Caitlin could die or … or … be paralysed, brain-damaged, anything. Has anyone called Sheila, or Alex and Mia?’
The three men shook their heads.
‘No? Well let’s get on with it, then.’
—————
As Jamie had guessed, the police turned up and they were all obliged to give statements, though not before Sean had left with Caitlin in the ambulance. When they were allowed to go, Matthew and Emily drove to Warwick in Emily’s car, and Rick and Jamie packed up the kit and followed on in the truck.
The two Wolds reached the hospital a few minutes ahead of the Toyota. They found Sean sitting alone in A&E, his sister long since moved to one of the theatres. Emily sat on the seat beside him and drew him into a long, tight embrace before asking what the doctors had said.
‘They’re not sure yet,’ Sean replied, feeling both extremely detached and sick to his stomach. ‘It’ll be a while before they’ve got a complete set of scans. She’s obviously got lots of broken bones. The question is whether or not she’s damaged her brain or spinal cord. She was wearing her helmet, so that will have protected her head. But she might well have broken her neck. The weight of the helmet actually makes it more likely, they tell me.’
‘Has she come round?’
‘No. And she won’t – they’ve put her in an induced coma. Apparently it’s what they do if there’s a severe risk of concussion. It reduces the pressure on the brain.’
Matthew balled his fists and began to smack them into his forehead.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘What the hell is going on here? What is happening to us? It’s like some kind of curse.’
‘Come on, Matt,’ Sean said, getting up. ‘It’s not like that.’
�
�Don’t tell me what it’s like,’ Matthew spat back, vaguely aware that other people in the waiting room were glancing his way. He wanted to lower his voice and behave more rationally, but he couldn’t, and it seemed like an insult to Caitlin even to try. What had happened was a tragedy. It demanded an emotional response. It demanded that people be disturbed, feel compelled to look round.
‘I need to see her,’ he insisted. ‘I need to see her right now.’
‘You can’t, Matthew,’ Emily said. ‘Have some sense. She’s with the doctors.’
But he wasn’t going to listen, and instead marched off across the waiting room and shoved his way through the double doors that led to the operating suites.
‘What the fuck is his problem?’ said Jamie, who’d just walked in with Rick.
‘Isn’t anyone going to go after him?’ said Emily.
‘He’s your brother.’
‘Jamie – Jesus,’ said Sean, getting to his feet.
‘Don’t bother, really, either of you,’ said Emily, pushing past the men. ‘I’ll go myself.’
Matthew hadn’t gone far: she found him two corners away, sitting at the end of an empty row of grey plastic chairs.
‘Come on Matty,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘I just can’t bear it, Em.’
‘I know. It’s horrible. We’re all in shock. It’s a terrible thing to have happened. And then having to deal with the police on top of everything else. It’s just awful.’
‘It’s not that. I don’t care about the police. I just care about her. I’m still in love with her Em. Don’t you realise that?’
Emily sighed. ‘I think I’d worked it out,’ she said.
—————
By the time Alex arrived, Emily and Matthew had returned to the waiting room and were sitting sipping paper cups of coffee with the others. Sean brought them up to date with what had happened.
‘But when you say she fell,’ Alex asked, zeroing in on the one piece of Sean’s account that wasn’t precise, ‘what do you mean exactly? That the harness broke?’
Sean glanced over at Matthew, who was staring through the steam rising off his drink at the picture of a breaching humpback whale that hung on the waiting-room wall.
‘There’s a difference of opinion there, at the moment.’
Alex nodded. Emily had been reticent too, when she’d phoned to tell him what had happened.
‘You say she did this deliberately,’ Matthew said in a cavilling tone. ‘Okay, so let’s say you’re right. Then why? Why do you think she would do this?’
‘Matthew …’ said Emily, trying to head him off from whatever stunt he was planning to pull.
‘He knows,’ he said, spitting the words at Alex, who recoiled. ‘Don’t you?’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Come on, why don’t you tell them? It’s about time.’
‘Tell them what?’
‘You – you slept with her that night you took her home, didn’t you? Maybe even raped her, for all I know.’
‘What?’
‘What are you saying, Matthew?’ said Emily, utterly thrown.
‘I can assure you I have no idea,’ Alex said.
‘No, you don’t, that’s the trouble. You never had any idea. I made sure of that. Stupid Matthew here, always cleaning up someone else’s shit. You got her pregnant Alex. Did you know that? Pregnant! And guess who had to help her while you swanned back off to university? I did! I had to organise her abortion, I had to help her through it. I helped her, I loved her, and she wouldn’t even stay with me. She wouldn’t even let me touch her! Two whole years I was there for her, and at the end of it she despised me, and it’s all because of you!’
Matthew launched himself at his brother: flailing, punching, clawing at his face. Alex stumbled backwards into a chair, fell, and the two of them went down in the middle of the waiting room. Emily screamed, Rick and Sean dived in and started trying to separate the two of them, and the receptionist hit the panic button fixed underneath her desk.
Within seconds a security guard arrived and began trying to peel the roiling bodies apart. Rick and Sean immediately fell back, but Matthew lashed out at the new arrival and landed a couple of blows to his jaw.
‘Right, you little bastard,’ the guard muttered, then unleashed his gym-honed biceps and delivered a volley of short, accurate jabs to the kidneys of his assailant.
Matthew howled and creased in pain and the guard spun him round and frogmarched him out the main entrance and into the car park, closely pursued by Sean, Emily and Rick. Clutching his eye, Alex clambered to his feet and slumped into a chair.
Jamie came over and peered at his face. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I don’t know. I think so. He’s really hurt me.’
‘Your nose is bleeding.’
‘It’s my eye I’m worried about – it felt like he dug his fingers right into the socket.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘I’ve no idea! He just completely lost it.’
‘And what was all that about you and Caitlin? I mean, what he was saying … what was that?’
‘It’s just mad. I think he’s talking about something that happened years ago. One night when I dropped Caitlin home after they’d been out on a date. But it’s insane. I never slept with her. Nothing happened!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m fucking sure. What do you think, that I’m a rapist now? What is this?’
‘But he says she was pregnant …’
‘Well it’s the first I’ve heard of it. If she was then I promise you it had nothing to do with me.’
At that moment Sean and Emily reappeared.
‘Where’s Matthew?’ Alex asked.
‘Outside, cooling off. Rick’s trying to convince him to let him drive him home. What was all that about?’
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Alex said firmly, still pressing the heel of his hand to his eye.
The receptionist called Sean’s name and he approached the desk, flushed with embarrassment.
‘You can go in and see Miss Nolan now. She’s in Mallory Ward.’
‘Can we all go?’
‘Yes. But if I see or hear any of you behaving like that again, I’ll have you permanently barred from the hospital. Understood?’
—————
A male nurse buzzed them into the ward and asked them to clean their hands using the dispenser of alcohol gel fixed to the wall. One by one they worked the clammy substance around their palms and fingers and then, duly cleansed, they followed the nurse through the ward’s communal area and past the eight-bed units into the small private room in which Caitlin lay cradled in bandages and the tubes and cables of various monitors and regulators, a ventilator strapped to her face.
They filed in through the door and arranged themselves around the bed, staring at the contours of her body as if they were those of an island upon which they’d all been marooned. Outside the window a chestnut fidgeted in the wind. One of the monitors beeped.
‘Can she hear us?’ asked Emily, at length.
‘I don’t know,’ Sean said. ‘I don’t think so.’
The door opened and a woman in her mid-forties walked in and introduced herself as Doctor Odili. Her hair – chocolate brown, limed with grey – was drawn into a practical ponytail positioned high on the crown of her head, and her doughy complexion and puffy features told of long days without much exposure to daylight and short nights without much exposure to sleep. In her chapped hands she held a buff file thick with reports. She glanced from face to face.
‘Next of kin?’
Sean looked at Jamie. ‘Um, that’s me I guess,’ he said, so it was to him that the doctor addressed her assessment of Caitlin’s condition.
It was the hedge that had saved her it seemed: if she hadn’t hit it she would almost certainly have been killed outright by the impact with the ground. As it was, one of her ankles had been shattered, her left hip
was fractured and her left femur had been snapped and driven up inside her leg. Her left arm was broken in three places and two vertebrae were cracked, as were three ribs. Her body was covered in lacerations from the thorns and twigs, and there was a large wound in her side where a branch had torn into the flesh and penetrated her breast. Something had also pierced her right eye, and it was likely she’d lose it, or at least lose its sight. The better news was that although she had severe bruising around several vertebrae she didn’t seem to have damaged her neck or spinal cord. Most serious was her concussion: she’d need an MRI scan before they could ascertain its severity and the level of permanent damage to her brain. Because of the helmet there was a good chance this would be manageable, though they wouldn’t know for a while; there were a lot of factors in play. The prognosis was therefore positive, but indeterminate. Caitlin hadn’t fully hit the ground yet, the doctor said; in a certain sense she was still falling.
The doctor left and almost immediately the door flew open again. This time it was Sheila. She made straight for the bed, coat flaring behind her.
‘What have you done to her?’ she cried as she took in the sight of the figure on the bed.
‘It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Mrs Nolan,’ Emily began, although she stopped when Sean, now beside her, put his hand on her arm and shook his head.
‘Oh my baby, my baby.’ Sheila bent to embrace her daughter but was frustrated by the plethora of medical equipment, so she sought out Caitlin’s hand instead. But that was bandaged too, and had a catheter protruding from it. ‘Oh-oh-oh,’ she moaned. ‘I can’t even hold you!’
Sheila took the hand regardless. Alex fetched a chair and manoeuvred it beneath her, and she sat for a while, bending Caitlin’s fingers to and fro and pressing them to her lips in an instinctive, animal display.
‘I hold you responsible for this, Sean. I’ve always said those machines were death traps. Right from the start, didn’t I say? And now look. Look!’ She gestured at Caitlin and let out another wail. ‘Look what’s happened to my baby!’
‘I don’t think it was Sean’s fault, Sheila,’ Jamie said. ‘Caitlin didn’t fall. She undid her harness and jumped.’
