All the Invisible Things

by Orlagh Collins

  PART FIVE

  It’s always darkest before the dawn

  32

  The ambulance doors slam and when we start to move my eyes clamp shut. The light inside is so bright it hurts and it’s easier to concentrate on what the paramedic is saying when I can’t see all the terrifying things around me.

  ‘Pre-alert the resus room,’ he shouts into the front. ‘Sixteen-year-old male, high-energy injuries to his left-hand side. Altered consciousness. Abnormal work of breathing.’ My eyes open at this and I stare at Pez lying strapped to a stretcher, completely still, his face pale and lips tinged blue. The paramedic leans over him, hands quick, as more words fire fast from his mouth. ‘Low oxygen saturation. Reduced breath sounds. Haemodynamically unstable.’ He glances at the small watch attached to his breast pocket. ‘ETA 23.56,’ he says, covering Pez’s mouth and nose with an oxygen mask, which is hooked up to a stand with a small air bag above it. The bag expands and contracts in sync with Pez’s breathing but his chest heaves faster and faster, as though he can’t get enough of what’s inside.

  ‘He can’t breathe properly. Can he? Can he breathe?’ The questions sputter from my mouth.

  The paramedic turns his face to mine without speaking and I see by the tiny movement of his lips that he’s counting. ‘Breathing rate thirty-eight,’ he says then, to whom I’m not sure, then he presses his lips together before opening them again. ‘I’m Mo,’ he says, looking at me. ‘We’re doing all we can.’

  Pez groans like a wounded animal and I spin around. Mo does too and I follow the wires surrounding Pez’s face and body, trying to make sense of where they all lead.

  ‘This one is monitoring his heart,’ Mo says. I nod, concentrating on the beeps I hear, but each sound seems to follow the last too quick, and I can’t tell which thumps are my own and which beat through the machine that Pez is connected to. Our hearts are tangled and I curse myself for treating them both so recklessly.

  Mo drags Pez’s eyelids up one by one, shining a tiny torch inside and flooding them with light. ‘Has he taken any drugs?’ he asks, shooting me a quick look. I shake my head. ‘Alcohol?’

  ‘No,’ I say, wishing away the taste of the vodka lingering in my own mouth.

  ‘Any allergies?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is he on any medication?’

  Mo’s questions come quick but I’m almost as fast. ‘No. Don’t think so.’

  ‘Next of kin?’ My mouth opens but I stop. His head tilts. ‘Please,’ he says. ‘Your friend is sixteen. We’ll need an adult to communicate on his behalf.’

  I swallow down the lump in my throat. ‘His mum, but she’s working.’ I stumble on the words.

  ‘Is his dad at home?’ I shake my head. ‘Then I need Mum’s number.’

  I slide Pez’s phone from the pocket of his hoody. I find Luna under Mum and I hold out the phone.

  ‘His mum is Luna Boyd.’ I feel like a dick for pointing this out, like Luna’s fame is remotely relevant now, but I want to warn Mo that she might not answer because of it. His eyes widen the teensiest bit but his fingers continue ripping open the packet of a very long needle.

  ‘I’m putting in a drip,’ he says, taking out the shiny syringe, and I watch as a drop of Pez’s blood leaks on to the spotless white gauze. Mo scans the various machines then lifts his head, leaning into the front of the ambulance again. ‘No response but no deterioration with fluids,’ he says. ‘Blood pressure still low.’

  Oh god, please, please let him be OK.

  Please, god.

  Please.

  We leave a dark car park and burst into a hallway of holy hospital light. Mo and the other paramedic wheel Pez along a corridor and I scuttle after them as doors swing wide behind us and people press themselves to walls as we pass. The journey seems endless but then we come to a sudden stop in the centre of a strange room, empty of other beds but teeming with people wearing plastic aprons over what look like blue pyjamas. The doctors who treated Mum wore these same blue scrubs and the sight of them wallops me in the gut.

  Doctors dive on Pez like he’s the accidental star in some TV drama and soon he’s hidden by bent blue bodies and I’m left listening as beeps and blips merge with the buzzing inside my pocket and the loud tick of the clock that hangs on the wall. The big hand is minutes from midnight and it strikes me that Pez might not see tomorrow and I stand, stuck to the ground, frozen by this thought, for what could be an eternity or merely seconds because time has instantly lost all meaning.

  A warm hand grips my arm. ‘I’ll take you somewhere quiet where you can wait,’ says a soft voice. An older nurse with kind eyes places the same warm hand on my back and steers me along the corridor outside.

  I run my fingertips along the plastic couch as I look around the four small walls the kind nurse called the relatives’ room. There’s an identical couch opposite and a wooden table in between. A mug of tea sits half-drunk alongside a mound of tissues, dampened by a stranger’s tears. Every sound inside and outside the room makes me jump so I stand up and pace the floor. Of course, Luna didn’t pick up when Mo called but he left her a message and I’ve followed it up with several of my own. The signal seems patchy down here so Dad said he’d keep trying her. I log on to the hospital Wi-Fi and my messages open on the ones Pez sent last night.

  Mum went out

  Our chat never happened

  Maybe for the best

  I scroll up and see the shrugging emoji guy I missed this morning.

  I keep going, scanning every one of the messages Pez has ever sent me. I go right back to the September after Mum died, a few days after I started my new school. I read, then reread every word he wrote since I moved away, remembering how much I treasured each and every one of his lame jokes and stupid memes. In my head, I answered every one of them but it’s clear from the evidence in my hand that I only answered half. Maybe less. How did I not notice how much harder he worked? How did I not see how much reaching he did when all I did was move further away? How did I not see what was written underneath his words?

  My phone screen lights up and my heart leaps but it’s from March.

  Vetty, can’t get you. We saw the ambulance. Nick has pez’s bike. Tell me you’re both OK. xxxxxxxxxxxx

  My thumbs start to move …

  At the hospital waiting for luna. He’s … I stop and consider what words to use. With the doctors.

  I hit send, then I’m thinking about adding a kiss but the door has opened and the kind nurse is standing there framed in the bright light. ‘How is he?’ I ask, springing up.

  She steps inside. ‘He’s in a critical condition,’ she says, ‘but we’ve got the Trauma Team Consultant here. Any word from his mum yet?’

  My eyes drop downwards to my unsent kiss. ‘The reception is bad.’

  She points to an ancient-looking phone that hangs on the wall. ‘Give her another try. You can dial straight out.’

  I walk over and lift the receiver.

  33

  I hear Luna’s voice before I see her. I drag back the heavy door to the relatives’ room and she’s standing in the corridor wearing a smart navy suit, opposite a woman in blue scrubs I haven’t seen before. Luna somehow senses me there and reaches her left hand towards me without taking her eyes off the woman in front. I stare at her outstretched fingers, but something stops me taking them and her arm falls back by her side.

  ‘We’re worried about his breathing,’ the woman, who I’ve worked out is the emergency consultant, says. ‘He has a hemopneumothorax; a collapsed lung with blood in it, basically. He’s lost a lot of blood and we need to do a CT scan to see where he’s bleeding from, whether we can stop it and why he’s unconscious.’

  With the same rejected hand Luna grips the consultant’s arm. ‘But he’s going to be OK?’ she asks, as both of us step closer.

  The consultant edges back, tapping Luna’s wrist. ‘We put a large drain into his left lung and this has stabilised his breathing for the moment but he also
has free fluid in his abdomen.’ A deep sigh follows and I don’t like how long she’s taking to choose her words. ‘Bleeds can be life threatening,’ she says, ‘unless we identify the source and stop it.’ She moves towards the relatives’ room and pushes open the door. ‘Have a seat,’ she says with a tight smile. ‘I’ll update you straight after the scan.’ Then the door shuts and her footsteps move briskly off.

  I’m awake in my worst nightmare.

  Luna sits briefly on the plastic couch and then stands again. I’m waiting for a barrage of her questions but she paces the room with her hand against her mouth. Finally, she sits and stays seated but she still doesn’t speak and the only sound is her polished nails drumming the seat beside her.

  I turn my face to the wall, heart aching for all the stuff I didn’t say to Pez while I still could.

  Luna clears her throat and I look over, noticing for the first time the lanyard around her neck, and I squint to read Detective Rebecca Riley printed across the front; it’s the name of the character she plays in Darkzone. Pez is having his brain scanned, his stomach is full of blood, but then perhaps this could as easily be a scene from a TV programme that Luna is acting in, for work.

  Then, like she’s suddenly remembered her lines, her mouth opens. ‘How did he seem?’ she says. ‘You know, before it happened?’

  I examine her eyes, trying to work out whether she wants the truth or whether it even matters what she wants. Heat burns up my insides.

  ‘Scared,’ I say eventually, and she sits up, repeating the word like it’s foreign. ‘He didn’t want to come out tonight but I told him everything would be fine. I should have seen it.’

  She leans further forward, tiny lines crinkling the sides of her eyes. ‘Seen what?’

  ‘How fragile he was—’ I stop and cover my face with my hands because I don’t know how to say what needs to be said without destroying her.

  ‘Please,’ she says, voice trembling. ‘I need your help to piece all of this together.’

  I let my hands drop. ‘It’s him we need to piece together,’ I say, looking at her. ‘Haven’t you noticed how sad he is sometimes?’

  Her brow furrows. ‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘I have.’

  ‘Well, it’s like—’

  ‘Go on,’ she says, tugging at my words like she sees there’s more.

  I stare at the Darkzone ID that has settled in the crease of her lap. ‘It’s like he’s got stuck playing the one role,’ I say. ‘Forgetting about the rest of him … the Pez that is dreamy and funny and … gentle. Like he’s forgotten he can still play those parts, and maybe I … maybe we forgot too.’

  She goes to speak but then presses her lips together like she thinks better of it and we both stare at the floor, listening to the fridge endlessly humming its one long electrical note. ‘I’ve been concerned for a while about him,’ she says. ‘Everything that’s been going on with Harland and me …’ She gnaws on a knuckle on her left hand. ‘It’s been so difficult to get him to talk.’ She removes a bottle of water from her bag and takes a sip. The bottle is a funny square shape with a pink flower on it, the same as the silk tree in our garden, and I’m suddenly thirsty too. ‘He’s so distant,’ she says. ‘And he’s online the whole time, lost in his phone or his computer, and I don’t know how to reach him or whether he wants me to at all.’

  I try to drink down her words but they’re hard to swallow and soon it’s as though I might choke. ‘But—’ I say, shoving the table between us with my knees so I can stand, but the table won’t budge. In fact, it appears to be bolted to the floor and I’m left looming over her in a half crouch but for some reason the stupid table’s refusal to move makes me more determined. ‘It’s not the internet making Pez distant. He goes online because he’s lonely. He goes there to feel better, or not to feel at all.’

  She sits back into the seat. ‘But that’s not …’ she says, looking up. ‘I mean, it’s hardly the solution.’

  Like now she’s some parenting expert. ‘No! It doesn’t even work, not any more, but he’s had no one to talk to. No one.’

  Luna’s head barely moves but her eyes are latched on to mine as she breathes hard through her nose. Then her eyes fall shut like it’s all sinking in and when she opens them again, they’re wet. She takes a tissue from her bag and dabs at them, looking at me for a long time as tears splodge on to the wooded tabletop below us. ‘I just wish I knew what to do.’ She whispers it in such a way that I’m certain she’s not acting.

  ‘He wanted to talk to you.’ This comes out a bit too loud and I sit down, lowering my voice. ‘He’s been trying. If you guys do split up, he’ll still need you, both of you. Possibly even more.’

  She places her knuckle to her lips for a long time. ‘I didn’t know where to start. I don’t,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what to say to him sometimes.’

  ‘You could just … be there?’ The words tumble into the space between us and I picture Dad crouched down in Sainsbury’s between the Frosties and the Crunchy Nut. I look up. ‘I think that’s what he needs more than anything.’

  Then the door pushes open behind Luna’s head, startling us both into standing. ‘Please, sit,’ the consultant says, perching on the couch beside Luna. ‘His scan shows four fractured ribs on his left side. These punctured his lung and have torn his spleen.’ She’s watching only Luna. ‘There’s a significant amount of blood inside his abdomen and the only way we can manage that is with emergency surgery to remove his spleen and more blood transfusions. The surgical intensive care teams are managing him now. He’ll go to theatre tonight.’

  ‘His breathing,’ I say. ‘Can he breathe?’

  She turns to me. ‘We’ve got a tube in his left lung and another in his throat,’ she says. ‘He is connected to a ventilator, which is helping him along.’

  Luna starts to sob and the consultant reaches over and places a hand on her knee. ‘The good news is that there doesn’t appear to be a brain injury,’ she says. ‘But we’re still concerned about the bleeding. It’s the priority.’

  Tears spill from Luna’s eyes. ‘Can I see him?’

  The consultant nods. ‘Yes, briefly,’ she says. ‘He won’t be able to respond because of the tube and the painkillers but you can talk to him, of course.’

  Luna stands and I follow the two women out of the door, stumbling behind wordlessly along the corridor until we reach the resus room. Luna squirts antibacterial gel into her hands and the consultant tilts her head at me. ‘Immediate family only, I’m afraid.’

  Her words are soft but my stomach drops. ‘But when—’

  ‘Once he’s out of intensive care,’ she says.

  Luna reaches her arm out and this time I let her take me. ‘Get some sleep. I’ll call you as soon as there’s news,’ she says, smoothing down my hair. ‘And thank you,’ she says, taking a breath and pulling me close.

  I peer inside the glass panel after them and there he is, in the centre of the room, lying on a big red mattress, head wedged between two orange blocks with a collar around his neck.

  Sleep? Like I could even close my eyes.

  34

  Within minutes, I’m walking along the Euston Road alone, squinting half-dazed at the few people I see and peering up at empty office blocks and motionless cranes that reach high into the sky. It’s almost dawn, no longer night and not yet day, and it feels like precious, stolen time. My eyes are tiny cameras with their own aperture and shutter speed, changing the light and playing with depth of field as foreground and background alternately blur and blend before me. Gradually the light wins and geometrical blocks of pink-tinged sky emerge over the British Library as I pass by. With quick blinks the stark lines of St Pancras sharpen in the new sun. I’m halfway home before I remember to call Dad.

  He exhales into the handset after one ring. ‘Vetty, y’OK? How is he?’ he says, quickly.

  ‘Still in ICU.’ My voice catches. ‘I’m on my way.’

  ‘With Luna?’ he says.

  ‘No, I
’m walking.’

  The bed creaks. ‘At this hour? No!’ he says. ‘Not after—’ He stops. ‘Look, wait by reception,’ he says. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  ‘I’m almost on York Way.’ My voice is calm.

  ‘Jesus, Vetty, it’s five o’clock in the morning.’ I picture him sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

  ‘Dad, you can’t leave Arial. Besides, it’s bright now and I need to walk.’

  ‘OK,’ he says, after a while, softening like he might understand something of the hugeness that happened tonight. ‘But don’t hang up. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Just slide the phone back into your pocket. I’ll be here if you need me.’

  I take a right on to our street from Agar Grove and Dad is standing outside the flat in his old fleece dressing gown. He wraps me in his arms and carries me inside like I’m in a dream. We sit at the kitchen counter, where I drink the sweet tea he’s made and nibble on cold toast as birds begin to chirp noisily outside the window. We talk about stuff me and Dad never talk about, like all the months when Mum was sick and how much we both hate hospitals. It’s almost seven when my head has slowed enough to think of sleep.

  ‘How about we hold off telling Arial, just until we get the call to say that he’s out of ICU?’ he says.

  I kiss his forehead. ‘Sure,’ I say, leaving him alone with his coffee. The sound of soft singing stops me as I pass Arial’s room. She’s obviously got headphones on and she’s gloriously off-key. Whatever she’s listening to must be turned up loud because she doesn’t turn around when I open the door. She’s lying on her stomach and I walk over and lie down on my back beside her. She flicks one of her large white headphones away from her ear. ‘Before you say anything, Dad finished the Cheerios, not me,’ she says, repositioning her earpiece and singing along more quietly but still blissfully unaware of how everything has changed in the night. She lifts her head and takes in last night’s clothes that I’m still wearing. ‘You wore that exact top yesterday,’ she says. ‘That’s kinda gross.’