The Blame Game

by C. J. Cooke

  ‘What fears?’ Jeannie asks, and I have to close my eyes and steady myself before I say it.

  ‘That someone’s trying to kill us,’ I say through deep, juddering breaths, and instantly I can see the look of disbelief on both their faces. ‘The police arrested the van driver and he’s told them that Michael paid him to crash into our car.’

  ‘Say that again?’ Jeannie says, her eyes widening, and once I’ve repeated it she sits back in her chair and shares a horrified look with Shane. ‘Well, of course the other driver’s going to say anything to get off the hook. I’ll bet you anything he was drink-driving and now he’s trying to get out of serving jail time. Can’t say I blame him. I mean, if the hospitals are this bad you can imagine what the prisons are like.’

  ‘Surely they don’t believe a word the other driver says?’ Shane offers, a little more gently. I tell him I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more.

  ‘Does Michael know?’ Jeannie asks. ‘Have you told him?’

  I shake my head. ‘He was still unconscious when I left.’

  I ask them to help me into the wheelchair so I can finally head to see Michael. My thoughts pendulum between breaking this hideous news to him and his fate, which seems to rest now on the word of a stranger. What will happen to Michael if the police decide to investigate? Will they arrest him? Will they arrest me? What will happen to Reuben and Saskia?

  The thought of the police barging in to rip Reuben from my arms makes my blood run ice-cold and my whole body tremble uncontrollably.

  Shane offers to sit with Reuben while Jeannie pushes me in the wheelchair to check on Michael. The corridor is dark, a puddle forming in the middle from a drip in the ceiling and a single strip light that flutters, on the verge of giving up. Jeannie’s chatter behind me is soothing in its buoyancy, the confident tone of her voice.

  ‘We need to arrange a way home,’ Jeannie is saying in a crisp voice. I notice her accent has changed again – it tends to change to match her environment – to a solid RP accent, just like Shane’s. Last I heard she was working in London as a Programme Director for the National Opera. ‘I’ve already spoken to the airline and re-arranged your flights. Shane was already in Mexico when I got the call. He said he’d fly down and meet me here. Do you think you’ll be well enough to travel tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, ignore me. I forgot that Saskia’s in a different hospital. That reminds me: I hadn’t told you about Shane, had I? It must have been weird for you to see him earlier. He’s my new boyfriend. Met him at a thing in Mayfair. He’s handsome, isn’t he? And guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got him into leech therapy. We’re going on a GOOP retreat in January. A week in Bali with shamans, yogis and leeches. Bliss.’

  My younger sister and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, mostly on account of how different we are. She’s demanding, opportunistic, and doesn’t listen very well, unless you’re sharing wild gossip, in which case she’s all ears: a difficult person to warm to. Intuition whispers that she’s not here for me at all but for the drama. Jeannie adores drama.

  We’d not seen each for six years when the fire at the bookshop happened, and within twenty-four hours she was on my doorstep, eying up the destruction to our livelihood, and the niece and nephew that didn’t recognise her, with unveiled glee. She stayed for two weeks, which was long enough for Michael to tell me to cut ties with her.

  I wonder what he’ll say when he sees her here. Maybe he’ll be grateful. We need as many people fighting our corner as we can get right now.

  ‘We must have the wrong room,’ Jeannie says when we turn into Michael’s side room.

  I glance at the metal cupboard in the corner with the dent in the door, the flaking blue paint on the wall beside it making a butterfly pattern in the plaster. ‘No, it’s definitely this room. I remember it.’

  The bed is empty, the covers flung back. Jeannie flicks on the light.

  ‘Well, where is he, then?’

  The ventilator, monitor and drip-stand are here, tubes hanging redundantly by their sides. I glance at the chair beside the bed where I spotted Michael’s clothes and backpack. They aren’t there.

  ‘They must have moved him,’ I say, and swiftly Jeannie walks out of the room and further into the ward to find someone to ask.

  ‘We’re looking for Mr Pengilly,’ she tells a nurse, pointing at Michael’s room. ‘My brother-in-law. He was just in that room.’

  The nurse walks a little way ahead of us and turns into the room. She lifts the clipboard at the bottom of the bed, scans the notes. ‘Michael Pengilly,’ she reads slowly, then looks again at the bed as if he might materialise.

  ‘Excuse me, please,’ she says after a few moments, then heads back down the corridor to find a doctor. We tell him the same thing, and again we go back to Michael’s room, only to confirm the same: we had arrived to find the bed empty. Michael was last seen by a nurse at three o’clock. He’d been sleeping but otherwise stable. By all accounts, he should still be in the room. The catheter and IV have been removed but nobody had signed off their removal.

  I spot some bloodied dressings underneath the bed, and Jeannie picks them up and thrusts them at a nurse who stands in the doorway, her mouth open.

  Just then, a doctor appears by the nurse’s side.

  ‘We have been conducting an extensive search for Michael Pengilly,’ he says, out of breath.

  ‘And?’ Jeannie says, throwing her arms up.

  ‘We have searched the whole hospital, checked all the wards. Nobody has seen him. I’m afraid he has gone.’

  14

  Reuben

  1st September 2017

  I like hugs, like Olaf in Frozen, except I’m not a snowman and I’m much taller than he is. I also like pizza, animation, and hiding. I don’t like tight shoes, umbrellas, people who stare, and hand dryers, because they go off whenever you get too close and it’s like being shouted at only worse.

  I also like the colour blue and robins, though they aren’t blue but I saw this YouTube video once of a robin that waited by the same path for this man who walked his dog every day because he always brought food for the robin. Also ‘robin’ is one syllable away from being my name. I like whales now, too, blue whales in particular though they are the loudest animals on earth. Also, their tongues weigh as much as an elephant, though that wouldn’t really bother me if I saw one.

  I tell all this to the nurse and she has a look on her face that I can’t read, sort of angry and sort of shocked. It’s the same look that Mum sometimes has when she walks in and finds that I’ve used too much blue bath paint and then she’ll chillax and say, ‘You look like a Smurf, Reuben.’

  I begin to ask the nurse if she thinks I look like a Smurf when Shane talks over me in a big voice. He tells the nurse that we’re waiting on Helen, who is my mum, while she visits Saskia, who is my sister. Saskia hurt her head and is in a coma, which means she sleeps for days and nobody knows when she might wake up.

  The nurse says something I don’t understand. Everyone here speaks either Spanish or Kriol, which is a type of English but is the same thing as adding tomato sauce and onions and mince to spaghetti. The spaghetti is no longer just spaghetti but Spaghetti Bolognese.

  I don’t know where Dad is and him not being here makes everything louder.

  The nurse is waving her hands now. She tries to take my iPad off me. Shane stops her and speaks to the nurse and me very fast.

  ‘Reuben,’ he says. ‘I don’t think you’re allowed to film in here, son.’

  ‘I’m not your son,’ I say. On my screen the nurse’s face grows whiskers and bunny ears. I tried to tell her I liked watching everything on my screen – and actually I was recording – because it made me feel better, and filters can make things that are scary less scary, even funny, but she was still angry and shocked and Shane took the iPad off me.

  She said we could wait in a side room instead of the corridor and Shane sa
id yes, though when we go into the room I want to leave again because there is a woman and a baby in there who is crying really loudly and it makes my ears hurt.

  Shane tells me to stop smacking the back of my head with my hand. I try to but it’s really hard. My hand wants to do it even though I want it to stop.

  ‘Will you do the feet thing?’ I ask Shane.

  He frowns at me. ‘What’s the feet thing?’

  So I pull off my flipflops and lie back in the chair opposite and put my feet on his chest. His eyes are wide and he looks over my feet at me.

  ‘Reuben, do you mind telling me what on earth you’re doing?’

  ‘You have to kiss my feet,’ I say, wriggling my toes.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘And stroke my shins.’

  Shane says a swear then and I think he’s going to not stroke my shins and I think I might explode. But suddenly he touches my feet and I feel calm because my feet like being stroked. He’s not doing it like Mum does and he won’t kiss them but he rubs the soles of my feet with his thumbs in big circles which is nice actually and even the baby has stopped shrieking.

  When I open my eyes the woman and the baby are looking at me with my feet in Shane’s face and they’re laughing. Shane turns bright red and jumps up out of his seat.

  ‘Come on, Reuben,’ he says. ‘Let’s go grab some air.’

  We go out of the room and outside the hospital and get into the car where my new headphones are. He turns on the engine and the air con blasts out.

  ‘Better?’ he says, and I nod. I put on my headphones even though the car isn’t too loud, but I hate being inside the car because I keep thinking that someone is going to crash into us again.

  Shane is Aunt Jeannie’s friend. He has cardboard-coloured hair with bits of grey in it and crinkly eyes and a nose like a paper aeroplane. He does not like hugs or the heat.

  I tap the ‘voice memos’ app on my iPad and check it for the tracks I’d recorded of Dad. I want to hear his voice again but they aren’t there.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Shane says. ‘What’s with all the finger clicking?’

  ‘There is no Wi-Fi,’ I say, and he takes out his mobile phone and lets me log on to his personal hotspot. As I log into my iCloud I get three hundred and forty notifications on all my new apps.

  One of them is from iPix Pro, which is an animation app that lets you make drawings or even animations and then share them with your friends. I’m not allowed Snapchat or Facebook or any social media but I’m allowed iPix because you can create an avatar and a fake name and it’s mostly about drawing. Some people have a million friends on there. I have six. Josh, Lily, Jagger, Lucas, Rach, and Malfoy. I open the chat box and there are some messages from Josh and Lily asking what I’m doing. I say ‘Hi, not much’ to both of them and they don’t say anything so I open the one from Malfoy.

  Malfoy: Hi Reuben. Are you OK?

  Roo: Hey Malfoy. Yes am OK. Are u OK

  Roo: r u ther?

  The cursor blinks for fifty-five seconds. He doesn’t answer. I go to close the app and start drawing again but suddenly it says ‘typing’, and just over three seconds later a message appears.

  Malfoy: Yes I’m here. Are you alright? Where are you?

  Roo: Yes am OK. my little sis is not OK

  Malfoy: Is she still asleep?

  Roo: yes but for a long time

  Malfoy: ☹ Did the doctors say she’ll wake up soon?

  Roo: idk

  Malfoy: How is ur mum?

  Roo: she cries a lot ☹ ☹

  Roo: Have you finished ur animation of the pirate ship battle?

  Malfoy: Almost.

  Roo: Can I see?

  Malfoy: You bet. But can you do me a favour?

  Roo: k

  Malfoy: can you record your mum for me?

  Roo: Y?

  Malfoy: I want to see what your family is up 2 …

  Roo: thats a wierd request …

  Roo: u want me to interview my mum????

  Malfoy: no. don’t let her know ur recording. Better if it’s fly-on-the-wall stuff.

  Malfoy: Hey, I learned how to use Trapdoor Particular. If you record some stuff for me I’ll show you. Would be perfect for your Mayan village …

  The cursor blinks for twelve seconds.

  Roo: OK. I’ll record some stuff + send it to you tonight.

  Malfoy: Thanks. Gotta go.

  I sit for a few moments trying to work out why Malfoy wants me to record stuff. We’ve never met, not in real life, though he likes me and not very many people like me. He knows all kind of animation stuff. He showed me how to make palm trees move in the wind to make the village look like a real village.

  I go to the camera app but then remember the nurse being weird with me. Mum says people don’t like being filmed. I don’t mind it. But I can record sound with the voice memos app and nobody ever notices.

  I bring up the app. As Mum and Jeannie get in the car I say, ‘Hi Mum,’ and she says ‘Hi.’

  On my screen the ‘record’ light is flashing.

  15

  Helen

  1st September 2017

  Michael is missing. Actually vanished, missing, nowhere to be found. Nobody knows anything. I feel like I’ve slipped into a nightmare. My lungs feel crushed to the size of peanuts, my throat burns with fear, and I’m exhausted from pleading with every hospital worker we can find to tell us where Michael is. They look at me as if I’ve gone mad.

  My first thought was that the police had already arrested him, that they’d turned up unannounced and hauled him off to the police station, but a phone call to Vanessa confirmed that this isn’t the case. I told her that perhaps the van driver turned up to the hospital. Again, this isn’t likely, given that the man is still in custody. Though maybe he didn’t act alone. Maybe someone else is working with him.

  When I start wheeling myself down the corridors in tears, screaming Michael’s name, a doctor persuades Jeannie to take me to a side room.

  ‘You have to calm down,’ she says wearily. ‘They’re going to kick us out.’

  ‘Calm down? How can I? He’s been taken.’

  ‘Taken? What do you mean, “taken”?’

  I can’t stop shaking, adrenalin surging through my veins. ‘I know he has. We’re being watched, Jeannie.’

  ‘Watched by who?’ she says, clearly not believing a word I say, and I realise she’s in danger, too.

  I fall silent and concentrate on forcing my body to breathe. Blackness flutters at the edges of my vision, luring me to fall into it, but I have to stay awake. For Reuben’s sake, for Saskia’s. And for Michael. Jeannie knows nothing about Luke’s death and I can never, ever tell her. She hasn’t spent the last twenty-two years dragging the guilt of her dead lover behind her like a ball and chain. She hasn’t had to grow eyes in the back of her head, or develop echolocation to detect the sound of another letter being penned, calling her a murderer. How could she possibly understand a word I’m saying?

  Eight hours have passed since we discovered Michael was gone. I’m stinking with sweat and dried blood, overwhelmed by terror. Dawn begins to creep through the windows in a rich orange glow, the loud whirr of insects lessens. It’s morning. I have not slept all night. The surgeon calls to say that Saskia is out of surgery, that it was a success. The news brings staggering relief, but it’s short-lived. I want to go to her immediately but then Dr Atilio arrives, together with the hospital’s Chief Physician, Dr Gupta, to help with the search for Michael. Flanked by nurses, Dr Gupta is a tall, rakish woman in her late sixties with full red lips and an air of authority.

  ‘I can confirm Michael Pengilly is not in this hospital,’ she says. ‘We must now turn this matter over to the police.’

  If it is possible to feel more terrified than when discovering your husband has vanished into thin air after a serious car accident, then this is it. I beg her not to call the police and start to tell her about Superintendent Caliz, how he didn’t listen to a w
ord I said about the fact that I saw the van driver at the scene of the crash, how he did absolutely nothing to help any of us. That someone is watching us. Of course, she looks at me with a mixture of pity and wariness, and I see myself through her eyes: I’m a ranting foreigner who sounds entirely like she’s been doing drugs.

  So somehow I find the strength to push all the emotions that want to thrash and flail in outrage and fear down, down into a corner of my heart, and I force myself to comply, go along with procedure.

  Dr Gupta tells us that the hospital administrative manager, Zelma, has checked the hospital’s CCTV cameras and spotted something that she wants to share with us. ‘And the police,’ she tells us. ‘They have said they wish to see this also.’

  Jeannie and I are taken to Zelma’s office in the east wing of the hospital, a small room with a desk cluttered with framed pictures of smiling children and an old dusty computer.

  ‘I asked all the staff and the patients where your husband go,’ Zelma explains in a thick accent. ‘Many of them didn’t see anything. But there was one man, a janitor. He saw a white man walking on the road near the hospital.’

  ‘What road?’ Dr Gupta interrupts, and Jeannie writes it down. Orchid Street.

  ‘Did the janitor give a description of the man he saw?’

  ‘Yes. He say this man have dark hair and on him navy T-shirt with denim shorts and flipflops. Like Michael Pengilly have.’

  ‘A few white men of that description are in this area,’ she says. ‘We have a training college here in the hospital. Cheaper here than in the US so a lot of American medical students.’

  ‘Did the janitor say how the white man appeared?’ Dr Gupta asks Zelma. ‘It is not likely that Mr Pengilly was recovered enough to leave by himself. Did the man appear to be alone?’

  Zelma looks perplexed. ‘I’ll ask the janitor again.’

  A knock at the door. Dr Gupta steps across me to open it to two police officers and a man in plain clothes who doesn’t introduce himself. My blood runs cold. It’s Superintendent Caliz. I keep my eyes on the ground as he takes a chair behind me.