I Follow You

by Peter James

  A few minutes later he walked out of the garage, tapping his phone to close the doors behind him, and climbed the short path and then the steps to the front door. As he let himself in through the outer door to the porch, he heard the sound of a child screaming, and Claire’s raised voice.

  Oh joy!

  This was becoming normal, as were the tiny, discarded wellies strewn across the porch floor, along with a bunch of trainers. He shook his head. These should have been put away in the racks of carefully labelled shelves he had made for them, painstakingly, over many weekends in his garage.

  Adding to his exasperation, he saw that Claire’s Barbour coat was hung on the wrong peg. His peg.

  Jesus! He moved it, then hung his velvet-collared Crombie in its place. Its rightful place. His peg.

  He looked down at the trainers. The tiny ones belonged to the twins and the much larger pair was Claire’s. All with their laces sprawling untidily from them.

  He tut-tutted and knelt down. No self-respecting surgeon would ever tolerate such untidiness. He coiled and then tucked each pair of laces inside the shoes, before placing them in their correctly labelled cubby holes. When he had finished, he stood up and entered the hallway.

  To be greeted by an exhausted-looking Claire cradling a sleeping Cormac in her arms. She gave him a smile.

  ‘How was your day, darling?’ she asked.

  ‘Interesting and knackering,’ he replied, as he kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ve been dealing with the crash victims.’

  ‘Crash?’

  ‘Haven’t you seen the news?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve been a bit busy with work, with the Vomit Comet and our darling terrorists, trying to keep our home intact.’

  He peered at her. ‘You’ve got puke all over your top.’

  ‘It’s my new look! Like it?’

  ‘Very fetching!’ he responded, forcing a smile.

  ‘You look like you could do with a stiff drink – or are you going for a run?’

  No, Georgie’s not running at the moment, she’s sitting in the hospital by Roger’s bed, he nearly replied. Instead he said, ‘Yes please to the drink. A very large Martini.’

  ‘Funny you should say that – I have one all ready for you. I just need to put it into the shaker with some ice.’

  ‘I never knew I married a mind-reader.’

  ‘Ain’t life full of surprises?’

  47

  Wednesday 16 January

  Life was full of surprises, and many of them totally shit, Georgie thought, seated at the breakfast bar in her tracksuit. And they didn’t come much more shit than this. She’d spent the whole of yesterday at the hospital with Roger and was exhausted.

  Late yesterday afternoon, to her delight, he had started to become more lucid and they’d been able to have a conversation – in between bouts of him drifting off to sleep – when he’d started to tell her about what had happened. How some flying object came out of nowhere, and his panicking student pilot jammed the pedals.

  ‘Isn’t that why planes have dual controls?’ she’d asked. ‘So you can take over from someone who’s acting irrationally?’

  Roger gave her a slow, wry smile. ‘An engineer I knew, back in my RAF days, once told me something that’s very true. He said the problem with making anything idiot-proof is that idiots have a great deal of ingenuity.’

  They’d both laughed and Georgie was happy to see some of his normal, positive and jokey self. He would be fine. It was all going to be fine. He’d be coming home in just a few days’ time. And in just a few months’ time, his only after-effect would be that he’d become a penicillin junkie. There could have been a lot worse outcomes, she thought with a shudder. Half the people in the accident were now dead. It could so easily have been him.

  So very easily.

  Those poor families.

  She thought back to the conversation she’d had with Marcus in the corridor. He’d been really positive, but she would have preferred less humour and more reassurance. There was something about him that made her more unsettled than comforted, something she could not put a finger on. He came across all superior, but Roger had said that was ‘just him’. At the end of the day he’d saved Roger’s life so she would forever be grateful to him for that.

  Kiera Dale had gone off shift late in the afternoon. The equally friendly and attentive ICU nurse who had taken over from her, Theresa Adams, who was also pregnant, had suggested to Georgie, sometime after 10 p.m., with Roger sound asleep and breathing normally and unaided now, that she should go home and get some rest. It was the same advice Kiera had given her the day before. That she would feel a lot more refreshed after a decent night’s sleep and a change of clothes. And besides, she wouldn’t be able to come into the ICU again until after 11 a.m. when the morning ward round would be finished. The nurse assured Georgie that she, or someone from the team who took over from her in the night, would call if there was any change in Roger’s condition, although all looked positive.

  But she’d not slept a wink all night. Again. She’d just lain there in the empty bed, tossing and turning, fretting about Roger and about the baby inside her. Wondering, fearfully, if it was still alive. Finally, shortly after 6 a.m., she’d had enough and got up, walking over to the window and opening the curtains onto the pre-dawn darkness. She stared at the lights of St Helier in the far distance and the occasional flicker of light from a fishing boat out in the bay. Roger was improving, wasn’t he? That’s what Kiera had told her, and Nurse Adams too.

  That he was fine, doing well, heart rate good, blood pressure pretty much back to normal. The team seemed happy with the arterial blood gas readings which they took every couple of hours – although she didn’t fully understand what they were.

  She was desperate to speak to someone at the hospital now. To make sure Roger was OK. She’d been given a direct number to the ICU. She could just pick up her phone and dial. But she didn’t want to sound needy, and besides, what could they tell her? He was obviously OK, otherwise someone would have called.

  Wouldn’t they?

  She pulled on a tracksuit, gloves and a bobble hat and let herself out into the darkness. Then she set off, at a quickening pace, on a short run along the promenade. As soon as she had returned home, she switched on the television to Channel TV. On her iPad, she downloaded the online version of the Jersey Evening Post. And stared at the front-page splash:

  WAS DRONE CAUSE OF MONDAY’S AIRPORT CRASH KILLING FIVE?

  The picture beneath showed the tail section of the Beechcraft aeroplane sheared off and lying at an angle, in the foreground, with the wrecked Piper close by. Further away was the burning fuselage, with firefighters playing hoses on it.

  Beneath the splash was a smaller headline:

  Miracle Escape by Mother and Baby

  The story went on to say how a Piper, with a trainee pilot under instruction, had apparently veered off the runway on landing and collided with a taxiing Beechcraft awaiting clearance for take-off. The woman carrying her baby had stepped out of the rear of the tail section with only minor injuries. Four people, including the pilot and co-pilot of the Beechcraft, had died instantly when the privately owned aircraft had burst into flames. One person in the Piper, the trainee pilot, had also died subsequently from his injuries, but there were four survivors from the accident who had been taken to the Jersey General Hospital, two with life-threatening injuries, the other two being kept in overnight for observation.

  Life-threatening injuries.

  The words chilled Georgie’s bones. Roger was one of those with life-threatening injuries.

  If he hadn’t had his spleen removed, he would have bled out and died. Would never have lived to see his child born. And their baby would have grown up never knowing his – or her – father.

  There was no doubt Marcus Valentine had saved his life.

  It was ironic, she thought. They were all at dinner in Marcus’s house, just over a month ago, little knowing what lay ahead.
All the times that Roger had flown Marcus, holding his life in his capable pilot’s hands. The consultant relying on Roger to take him up into the sky and land him safely at his destinations.

  Now Roger owed his own survival to Marcus’s surgical skills.

  Strange how life worked out.

  When Roger was safely out of hospital and back home, they should sort out that catch-up with Marcus and Claire.

  She made a note on her phone to do just that.

  The story came up again, on the 8 a.m. news on television. She watched, clinging to every word the presenter said. As if by doing that, she could somehow influence the situation. Somehow make Roger whole and completely OK again.

  At least there was still no call from the hospital. Hopefully, the physiotherapist, as Kiera Dale had told her, would get him sitting up and out of bed this morning.

  She took a bite of toast, on which she had spread a thick layer of marmalade, and instantly felt queasy.

  She ran to the toilet and threw up.

  Afterwards she felt marginally better. She returned to the kitchen and sat back at the breakfast bar. On the television screen she saw the front facade of the hospital. A presenter stood outside, speaking into a large microphone. Alongside her, to Georgie’s surprise at seeing a recognizable face, stood Marcus Valentine.

  The presenter said, in a voice that seemed a little too upbeat, Georgie thought, ‘The survivors of Monday’s accident at Jersey Airport were ferried by ambulance here to Jersey General Hospital, which has long been prepared, through regular Major Incident scenario rehearsals, for such an emergency. I have with me one of the hospital’s senior consultant surgeons, Marcus Valentine. Mr Valentine, can you tell us how the hospital has been dealing with this horrific situation?’ She thrust the microphone at him.

  The face of the obstetrician filled the screen. ‘As you rightly said, my colleagues and I have regular worst-case-scenario drills. I believe that, despite our small team here, we coped with the emergency extremely well. The loss of life in this terrible accident is tragic, but all the injured have been given the best medical care possible.’

  Georgie watched, avidly. She wondered if he’d had press training for this sort of occasion.

  When the item was finished, she went along to the bathroom, turned on the shower and stripped off her running kit whilst waiting for the water to run hot. Then she stepped in and stood there for a long while, pounded by the soothing water. She felt, momentarily, shielded from the world. Maybe as safe as her baby was feeling inside her womb. Her baby, as yet happily unaware of all the shit that lay waiting out there. Waiting to screw you up. Waiting to get you no matter how much your guard was up.

  You’ll beat it, little one, my very special Bump. You’re going to be one of life’s winners. Your daddy and I will make sure of that. OK?

  The running water of the shower made her want to pee. She stepped out, dried off, then sat down on the loo. Before flushing, she followed Kath Clow’s advice, as she did every time she peed now, and peered down to inspect what she had done before flushing.

  To her dismay, she saw a small trace of blood.

  She stared at it for some moments. It was tiny. But it worried her deeply. Oh God, was it the start of a miscarriage?

  She quickly dried her hair and, as soon as she had finished, she hurried back down the corridor into the small entrance hall. Just inside the front door was a Victorian coat rack, hung with several of her and Roger’s hats and caps, one of which was an antique leather flying helmet she’d bought him in the St Aubin’s Vintage Fair as a Christmas present last year.

  Below the rack were their wellingtons, hiking boots and her trainers. As she looked down at them, she was puzzled.

  All the laces of their boots and her trainers had been folded neatly and tucked inside the shoes.

  48

  Wednesday 16 January

  Had Roger done that before he’d left the flat, Georgie wondered? And she hadn’t noticed?

  He could at times be almost irritatingly precise, which she put down to his pilot training. But he’d never before left his shoes – or hers – that neatly.

  At this moment, wanting to get back to the hospital as soon as possible, even though she knew she would not be able to see him until 11 a.m., she had no time to dwell on it.

  She gave their close friends a round-robin-type text update on Roger’s condition then spent more time than usual deciding what to wear. Something comfortable and not too warm, as she would be having a long day at the hospital and it was damned hot there. She changed from jeans and a blue sweater to a skirt and top, then back to jeans.

  Shortly after 9.15 a.m., having finally decided on a thin roll-neck, suede ankle boots, the black-and-white patterned overcoat and a flat red cap, she drove her Golf up towards the entrance to the Patriotic Street multistorey car park.

  She reversed into a bay in the hospital visitors’ section, paid on her phone for twelve hours and hurried across the road to the Gwyneth Huelin wing. Entering, she almost bowled over an elderly man on a stick. She murmured an apology, strode past a row of wheelchairs and the snack bar counter, checking the signs on the wall for the ICU, still not used to the warren this place was. Then she set off, as fast as she could, desperate to get to Roger’s bedside.

  Ignoring the lift, she sprinted up the two flights of stairs, and then walked quickly along the zig-zagging corridors until she reached the entrance to the ICU, and the sign to the right, above a bell, instructing all visitors to press the button. She looked at her watch and hesitated. It was only 9.30 a.m. and she’d been clearly told she wouldn’t be able to go into the unit until after 11 a.m. But at least she could speak to someone and get an update on Roger. She pressed and heard a rasping sound. And read the sign that said visitors sometimes might have to wait for a response if they were busy.

  Georgie waited for what seemed an eternity. Finally, a male voice in broken English asked her name.

  After a further short wait, Kiera came through the door, closing it behind her. She was all smiles, to Georgie’s relief. That had to mean good news, didn’t it?

  ‘You’re back bright and early, Georgie! Did you manage to get some sleep?’

  ‘Not really. I’ve been worried sick all night. How – how’s Roger?’

  A shadow flitted across the nurse’s face. Just the tiniest hesitation, a barely perceptible twitch of a muscle, then all smiles again. ‘He’s doing fine, he’s had some breakfast and he’s quite chatty.’ She paused. ‘But—’

  Georgie felt the hesitation as heavily as if a sack of lead weights had been dropped inside her stomach. ‘But?’ she echoed.

  ‘He’s perhaps not doing quite as well as we would have expected. He is OK, but I would have liked to have seen a little more improvement at this stage. There could be a number of reasons for this – it’s most likely that we haven’t quite got his medications right yet. But there’s no cause for concern.’

  Georgie could see from Kiera’s expression that there was, very definitely, cause for concern.

  Trembling, she asked, ‘Am I able to go in? I know you said that I’d have to wait till after 11 a.m., but—’

  ‘You can go in as soon as the ward round is over, Georgie. We’ll know a lot more after the doctors have seen him, but really try not to worry too much. Roger’s a strong, fit man, and everyone reacts to major surgery in a different way. As I say, it’s probably just a question of adjusting his meds and that will all be sorted during the ward round.’

  Georgie nodded, bleakly.

  ‘Really don’t worry,’ the nurse reassured her.

  A tear trickled down Georgie’s cheek and she wiped it away with a finger. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, crushing more tears with her eyelids. ‘I – hoped I’d come and find he was well on the mend.’ She smiled and sniffed. ‘I thought – you know – that you were going to tell me he was out running a marathon or something.’

  Kiera smiled. ‘I think that would have been slightly optimistic, don’t yo
u? Hey, you know, we’re doing everything we possibly can.’

  49

  Wednesday 16 January

  For the next hour and a half, Georgie sat alone on a chair in the Relatives’ Room, her coat and cap on the chair beside her. She distracted herself by contacting by phone and a few emails Roger’s frail parents and lots of friends who were keen to know how he was doing. His dear old mum and dad wouldn’t be able to travel to Jersey as they were not fit enough, but they were desperate to hear regular news. That in itself was quite draining just keeping everyone up to date. Trying to stay on the positive side of things. She hoped she hadn’t missed out anyone. No one else came into the room and she was glad about that, she didn’t want to have to make small talk to anyone. Did not want anyone to see her tears.

  She liked Kiera but, equally, she knew her job was a tough one. Trying always to be positive. Comforting. Trying to break bad news as gently as possible to relatives – as Georgie could clearly see in her face that she was trying to break it to her.

  She stared at the speckled floor. At the recently painted wall. Checked the news constantly for any further information on what had happened on Monday. The online version of the Jersey Evening Post and the Bailiwick Express. Something was plaguing her – something she was meant to be doing. She’d called all her clients booked in for today, cancelling their sessions, so she couldn’t think what it was.

  Trying not to dwell on the trace of blood in her urine, she sat, cradling her phone in her hand, occasionally staring at it, as if waiting for a message from Roger, a text or a WhatsApp or an email. Stupid, she knew, there wasn’t going to be anything coming from him because he didn’t have his phone with him. She googled ‘spleen removed recovery’ to kill time but as so often with internet searching on medical issues, she wished she hadn’t. She’d asked a nurse last night where the clothes that he’d been wearing had been put. They were all in a plastic crate, ruined. The Emergency team, she’d explained, had cut them off him, to avoid the risks in lifting him to undress him in case he had any spinal injuries. His wallet had been removed to confirm his identity, she’d told Georgie, and had now been placed in the hospital safe along with all the belongings he’d had with him.