Breathe

by Cari Hunter

  “No.” Jem took off her high-vis jacket and wrapped it around Tahlia’s shoulders. “You stay close by and yell as soon as you hear people coming. Show them where we are.”

  “What if it’s not them?” Tahlia said. She was rocking gently, back and forth. “Men keep coming to find me.”

  Jem set a foot on the ladder and swung into the gap. “Look for the uniforms. Yellow jackets like mine, helmets, big boots. There’ll be loads of them, and they won’t be quiet.”

  Tahlia studied the fluorescent material of Jem’s jacket. “The other men all wear black.”

  “You won’t be able to miss this bunch, I promise,” Jem said, already on the move. “They won’t be long. Just be brave.”

  Taking her own advice to heart, she persevered on the ladder, her feet slipping on the slick metal as a cold layer of slime coated her hands. With her torch in her pocket for safekeeping, she descended into complete darkness, tapping each rung with her boot before she trusted her weight to it, and eventually stepping off onto a narrow concrete ledge. She took out her torch and panned it around a vast expanse of turbulent water enclosed by lichen-covered walls. She couldn’t see Rosie anywhere.

  “Rosie?” The rank air made her cough until she doubled over. She took her inhaler and tried again. “Rosie!”

  Gauging the direction of the current, she set off along the ledge, keeping one hand in contact with the wall for balance and using her other to aim the torch.

  “Rosie!”

  At regular intervals, she paused to shout and listen for a response, though it was difficult to isolate anything beside the constant white noise of the flood. She heard sporadic thumps as rubble ricocheted off the walls, the slosh and slide of her own laborious progress, and then finally, faint and wavering and not too far ahead, the incongruous sound of singing.

  “Keep going, Rosie,” she whispered. “Pick another verse. I’m almost there.”

  She couldn’t run—she could barely increase her pace beyond the tentative steps she was taking—but she could see Rosie’s hair now, and make out a tuneless but determined refrain from “Amarillo.” The lyrics stopped as Rosie spotted the light, and her hand appeared above the ledge, waving frantically.

  “Down here,” she yelled, her voice hoarse and broken. “Here. I’m down here.”

  Jem shoved her kit against the wall, and then knelt and clasped Rosie’s hand in both of hers. “Hey, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

  “Jem?” Rosie’s head shot up, but she was blinking, blinded by the glare of the torch after so long in the dark. Her bottom lip quivered. “Are you really here, or did I die?”

  Jem stroked Rosie’s forehead, avoiding a jagged laceration. “You haven’t died, you silly sod, but you’ve got yourself in a bit of a pickle.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” Rosie’s face crumpled, and she started to cry. “I can’t get out. I tried, but there’s metal in my leg and I can’t pull it, it’s proper stuck, and the water’s coming up. You should go, Jem. I don’t want you to watch. Please don’t watch.”

  “Hey, hey. Shh.” Jem squeezed her hand. “HART and Fire and your lot are all on their way. Just hold on a little while longer for me, okay?” Refusing to panic, Jem focused on the basics, shining the torch around Rosie to establish her position and general condition. Trapped at a slight angle, her head twelve inches below the ledge, Rosie had jammed her right hand into a gap between two bricks to keep herself steady. The water had covered her chest, but she wasn’t shivering, and her skin was mottled and clammy. Jem hit priority on her radio, her fingers pressed to the rapid pulse at Rosie’s wrist. “ETA, Ryan. I need water rescue and enclosed space capability and someone with bolt cutters ASAP.”

  “Twenty to twenty-five,” he said. “Half the available resources are en route to you.”

  “Thank fuck for that. Keep me updated.” She pulled out her IV pouch. “Score the pain out of ten for me,” she told Rosie, sticking the pulse oximeter on her finger and then attaching the defib’s blood pressure cuff and setting it to calculate. “Let’s say one is a paper cut, ten is stepping barefoot onto Lego.”

  “Four?” Rosie hedged, busy staring at the cuff.

  “Four, eh?” Jem made no attempt to disguise her scepticism. Tight lines were etched across Rosie’s forehead, and her jaw was clenched. At some point she had bitten her lip so hard it was still bleeding. “Try again without fibbing.”

  Rosie sighed, obviously embarrassed. “It keeps making me throw up.”

  “Don’t worry, I can fix that.” Jem fastened her tourniquet around Rosie’s wrist and slapped the back of her hand. “Are you allergic to anything?”

  “Ferrets.”

  “Drugs, Rosie. I’m not going to launch a bloody ferret at you.”

  “Oh. No, no drugs.”

  “Good. Bear with me, your veins have gone to shit.” Despite her misgivings, Jem managed to slide the cannula into place at the second attempt and secured it with a bandage. Rosie’s blood pressure was low, her pulse was racing, and her temperature wouldn’t even register, so Jem hung a bag of warm saline from a section of pipework and set the infusion running. “I can’t give you too much of this,” she said, injecting a cautious dose of morphine. “I don’t want you falling off your perch. It should help, though.”

  “Mm.” Rosie took a deep, relieved breath as Jem continued to work. “That’s better than a pint with a whiskey chaser.”

  Jem smiled and snapped the tops off her last couple of vials. “Smashing. I’m nearly finished. The nausea should ease, and this is to stop you from bleeding too much. Then all we have to do is sit tight and wait for the cavalry, okay?”

  “Okay,” Rosie said. “Is Tahlia all right? I didn’t realise it was her. I chased her. Probably scared her half to death, but I think she came back for me, didn’t she?”

  “She did. She’s up by the ladder—”

  A sudden crack cut Jem off, and she spun the torch around, searching for the source of the noise. The water seemed to boil, white foam cresting on the ripples, and a mass of wooden planks and bricks whipped past. When she turned back, the water was touching Rosie’s chin.

  “Fucking hell,” she whispered.

  Rosie had to angle her head to keep the water away from her mouth. “It’s doing that more often,” she said. “I think there’s a barrier or something that’s breaking down. If it goes…” She shook her head. “Jem, you need to get out of here. If it goes, it’ll take both of us with it.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Jem said without hesitation. “I’m not going anywhere.” She felt different as soon as she had made her decision, peaceful somehow, as if something unfathomable had slackened its hold on her. She had never been able to define it or give it a name, but it had tainted her life for as long as she could remember, and this—this seemed like the end game, one way or another. “You’re going to be fine,” she continued, sticking an imaginary middle finger up at their probable fate. “We’re going to be fine.”

  “Are we?” Rosie asked quietly. There was a palpable weight to the question, and Jem leaned low, brushing the tears from Rosie’s cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, abandoning everything she had planned and rehearsed, because it all seemed insignificant now. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would never—” She faltered, already lost. She still didn’t have the words for this.

  Rosie reached up and tugged at Jem’s sleeve. “You would never what?” she said, and yanked harder when Jem didn’t answer. “For fuck’s sake, just tell me, Jem. We might not get another chance to have this out, and I want to know what the hell is going on with us.” She spluttered on a mouthful of water and arched an eyebrow. “Seriously, how much worse could it get?”

  “That’s the point, Rosie. I didn’t think it could get any worse. I thought I’d stopped it. I thought leaving you would stop it, but it hasn’t.” Jem coughed, unable to regulate her breathing as despair overwhelmed her again, but even in the throes of wheezing and rasping she saw the moment
the penny dropped for Rosie.

  “You think the fire was your fault. That you actually caused it to happen.” Rosie spoke slowly, as if still working things through. “Jem, that wasn’t you. That was some arsehole with a couple of litres of petrol and a match.”

  “I know.” Jem drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. “Logically, I know that, but you were there because of me, and this stuff happens to me all the time. Jesus, look what’s happening to us now. I don’t have any luck, none at all. Girlfriends disappear on me, and dates ditch me, and I get bad job after bad job at work. Even the calls that sound simple turn out to be something awful.” She held Rosie’s gaze, willing her to take this seriously. “It’s exhausting. Every time I sign on, I know what’s coming. I should probably just resign. Maybe then it would stop, and all the patients I might have been sent to would be okay.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Rosie asked. She shifted slightly, grimacing at the discomfort. “That it would stop if you weren’t there?”

  Jem wasn’t able to answer that, not with any degree of assurance. She had gone so far as to write her resignation letter, though. It was saved on her computer desktop for the day she finally snapped.

  “I’m not sure what I believe,” she said, although that wasn’t strictly true. She had a theory, at least. She’d just never had the guts to voice it. “I think I used all my luck up when I was little.”

  “What? You mean when you were adopted?” Rosie said, easily following her logic.

  “Yes.” Jem wiped her eyes, bringing Rosie back into focus. “Perhaps you only get so much, and all of mine has gone.”

  Rosie held out her hand until Jem took it. “What if I said that meeting you in that puddle on Barton was the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to me?”

  “It can’t be,” Jem sobbed. “You can’t say that, Rosie. It isn’t fair.”

  “It’s the truth. I’m not scared of you.”

  Jem shook her head, utterly undone. “You should be. I’m scared of me.”

  Rosie adjusted her grip, interlacing their fingers. “You give yourself too much credit, Jemima Pardon. I’m quite capable of getting in a shitload of trouble regardless of your influence. You don’t get to claim ownership of this particular fuck-up.” She smiled, warming to her theme when Jem made no attempt to contradict her. “Hey, my stupid dumb luck might cancel out yours and reset the clock, or rejig the scales or whatever. You delivered a baby today, didn’t you?”

  “Little boy,” Jem said. “He was breech.”

  “And?” Rosie squeezed Jem’s hand.

  “He came out kicking and screaming,” Jem admitted, but she was starting to smile as well. “Actually, now you mention it, I had a chap survive an aneurysm last week, and the missing drugs thing all got sorted, too.”

  “See?” Rosie said. “We’re already on a roll. What did we call that thingummy on the bridge? A talisman? We’re lucky talismans for each other.”

  Jem made a show of tilting the morphine syringe in the torchlight. “How much of this did I give you?”

  Rosie snorted. “Not nearly enough.”

  Jem set the blood pressure cuff going again. She stared at the numbers as the cuff inflated, but she was miles away, considering what Rosie had just said and daring to imagine a possible future.

  “Jem?” Rosie said in an undertone, as if afraid of startling her.

  “What?”

  “I think we should chuck caution to the wind and give us a chance. What do you reckon?”

  “I reckon you might be right,” Jem said, and saw the delight slowly spread across Rosie’s face.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” Nothing more coherent seemed to be forthcoming, so Jem answered in kind, dangling half over the ledge to cup Rosie’s face for an inverted kiss. Their chapped lips met and parted a fraction, enough for a hint of warmth to ease the persistent chill, and Jem closed her eyes, giving in to the sensation, until a wave smacked into the wall and drenched them both.

  “Perfect,” Rosie said, peeling a strand of weed from her cheek. “I’ve had a few kisses in my time, but that was my absolute favourite.”

  “We certainly pick our moments.” Loath to sit up again, Jem checked her watch. “They shouldn’t be too much longer. How’s the pain?”

  “About a five.” Rosie wrapped her free hand around Jem’s arm, pulling her into a vague semblance of an embrace. “How’s the chest?”

  “Middling. But let’s not be borrowing trouble.”

  Rosie considered that for a moment, and her shoulders shook as she tried to suppress a laugh.

  “Harriet’s going to fucking kill us,” she said, a split second before all hell broke loose and she disappeared beneath a deluge that peppered the wall with pieces of brick and surged over the ledge.

  “Rosie!” Jem lurched forward, catching hold of Rosie’s coat and hanging on through the worst of the onslaught. She didn’t have the strength to lift her, but Rosie managed to break the surface, spluttering and gagging on the water she’d swallowed.

  “Oh God.” She retched, sank again, and re-emerged to vomit. “Jem? I can’t—” She couldn’t keep her head up, the water was too high, and Jem instinctively tried to pull, stopping only when Rosie screamed and slapped at her arm.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Jem loosened her hold and reached for her response bag, rifling through it until she found the largest endotracheal tube in her resus pouch. “Rosie!”

  Rosie’s head jerked, her face flashing white above the flow and vanishing just as quickly. Her hand slipped from the wall, and the defib wailed as her sats plummeted.

  “Shit!” In desperation, Jem swung herself off the ledge and into the water. Gasping against the sudden shock of the cold, she wrapped a fist in Rosie’s hood and pressed the tube to Rosie’s mouth. “Breathe through it,” she yelled, but there was no sign of Rosie complying, and the alarm on the defib kicked up a pitch. Jem fumbled blindly, finding Rosie’s mouth again and ramming the tube against her lips. “Rosie! Fucking breathe through the fucking tube!”

  That got the message through. Rosie pursed her lips, missed her target, and then snagged the base of the tube, almost taking Jem’s finger with it.

  “That’s it, love,” Jem said as water shot from the plastic opening. She found a hollow in the wall and shoved her free hand into it, stabilising them both. “That’s it, just breathe.” She saw Rosie take an experimental breath and then another with more confidence, and the defib fell silent. “You’re doing really well,” Jem said, her entire body shaking with relief and excess adrenaline. “They’ll be here any minute.”

  She didn’t know whether Rosie could hear her, but she felt Rosie’s head rest against her chest as Rosie put an arm around her and drew her close. The tube, sturdy enough to keep itself clear of the water, bobbed gently with every inhalation, and Jem fixated on it in the dim light, reassured by the strength of Rosie’s hold on her and by the defib’s continued quiescence. Huddled over Rosie, she was able to shield her from the worst of the passing wreckage, barely registering the frequent hits she took to her back and shoulders. Her breaths wheezed out far more slowly than Rosie’s, and when at last she heard the first distant call of the rescue team, she wasn’t able to respond to them.

  “They’re coming,” she whispered through chattering teeth. “We’ll be out of here in no time.”

  Powerful lights slashed across the water as multiple voices shouted their names.

  “Here!” She didn’t manage a yell, but someone must have heard her, because an excited clamour rose up and boots stomped in their direction.

  “Jem!”

  “Over here!”

  Letting go of Rosie’s hood for a second, she lobbed a chunk of brick onto the ledge. That did the trick, and bedlam erupted above them as a team of five threw down their kit and tools and spoke at once. Spence was the only paramedic amongst them, and Jem realised the remainder were uniformed police officers.

  “Fucking hell,” Sp
ence said. “Is she breathing?”

  “Yes.” Jem was still watching the tube. “Someone will have to—” she coughed, rocking them both, “have to brace her right thigh and cut the metal. Don’t try to pull it. It’s stuck fast near her femur.”

  Two of the officers had climbed from the ledge, and they ducked beneath the water, their torch beams circling and shifting as they assessed their task.

  “Her sats are fine,” Spence said. He set his own probe on Jem’s finger. “Yours are shite.”

  Jem ignored him. “There’s morphine in that ten-mil syringe. She needs it before they cut. I don’t want her hyperventilating.”

  “Okay. The rest of HART are five minutes out, but we’ll get it done if Smiffy’s happy.”

  “I’m happy,” Smiffy said, treading water and taking the bolt cutters from his colleague. “Tell me when.”

  Jem injected a generous dose of morphine into Rosie’s IV. She knew the instant it hit home; Rosie slumped against her, and the motion of the tube lessened. “Now,” she said to Smiffy. “Quick as you can.”

  He and his mate plunged out of sight again, and she felt one of them move Rosie slightly, repositioning her leg. There was no caution or indecision. Jem heard the crunch and snap of the metal and Rosie’s weak cry of protest. The tube floated free, snatched away by the current, and the men resurfaced, bringing Rosie with them. Hands reached down, grabbing her coat, her belt, anything they could get a grip on, and she was dragged from Jem’s arms to the relative safety of the ledge.

  “Get her on her side,” Spence said. “Easy, mind her leg.”

  Left behind and beginning to drift from the wall, Jem jumped when Smiffy clasped her arm, her fists punching the water.

  “I’m going to boost you, and Topper’s going to pull you up,” he told her.

  She did her best to help them, scrabbling her feet on the bricks as they hoisted her, and managing to sit unaided once they’d deposited her on the ledge. She choked out a lungful of water, took her inhaler as a stopgap, and crawled across to Rosie.