by Mark A. King
Time is no longer a friend— it is a burly debt-collector. He has, maybe, a few days left—at most.
What’s worse? Dying without family—your only visitors henchmen you’ve been paying for years? Keeping your moral code but leaving the world knowing you could have stopped some of the criminal activity that’s turning this city into a cesspit?
Or… is it worse to die knowing you became an informant, nothing more than a filthy grass?
The decision is made.
There will be retribution, but… let them come.
The space between is
…taking control.
On an earlier daybreak, the touchscreen tablet blinks with the alarm app. 5:45. 5:45. 5:45, as it attempts to rouse Gerry to the soothing sounds of babbling streams and MP3 birdsong.
Gerry knows it’s 5:45. He’s been clockwatching instead of sleeping. He previously saw the numbers 5:30, 5:03, 4:42, 4:12. He doesn’t need reminding that he needs to get up, again, for another day of monotony. He aches with the pain of constant pretence.
Gerry thinks about today. He’s going to take charge of his destiny. The self-help book says: grab the day by the bollocks.
What about the people I inconvenience?
Screw them.
He’s been at their mercy every day. It’s time, for once, to look after himself. He no longer has to think about his wife’s betrayal and petty grievances, her control of his time, his selflessness rewarded with her deliberate attrition of what, once, had made him a person. He won’t stand back and let her win.
To the outside world, she is respectable, almost perfect, but Gerry knows differently.
Still… there are things to do. To fulfil his destiny, he needs to play the game for a little while longer.
He tiptoes to the bathroom, carefully avoiding the creaky floorboards. He methodically checks his work items and clothing, not wanting to invoke her wrath at this time of the morning. The crack of a bathroom light or the click of a switch might wake her. Out of habit, he checks the toilet seat to ensure it is down, scans the sink for residual toothpaste marks. He puts away his dirty clothes and ensures his socks are placed together (but not joined) in the laundry basket. The weight of responsibility presses down on him and has for some time. He can’t remember when he didn’t feel foggy or numb. When getting through the day wasn’t a challenge.
What does it matter, anyway?
He puts on the shower, dipping his fingers in to feel the temperature. But it’s pretence. His laptop is hidden behind the laundry basket, he turns it on and sends messages to social media:
[Today is the day. I’m taking control, folks!]
He posts links to upbeat songs.
He attaches pictures of sunsets, fluffy dogs, and cats in tights.
He gets some responses, all from people he has never met but who seem to care more about him than his friends, his family, or his wife. They like his status. They encourage him to take control. They want whatever will make him happy. In his heart of blackness, he is grateful for the light of their friendship. He gets up and powers down the laptop. His phone, stolen more than a week ago, is an absence. He keeps reaching for it, forgetting it is gone. But the memory card is there, tucked into his wallet, with all its secrets. Gerry jots a message on a scrap of pink paper—“Find my phone! PIN: 348961” and carefully folds it around the small memory card. He gets dressed and tucks note and card safely into his coat pocket, and then leaves the house.
The journey to King’s Cross is a blur of time-lapse traffic. He smiles as he sees the tourists, even at this hour, taking pictures of platform 9 ¾. He doesn’t remember when he last smiled.
He joins the shoals of Underground passengers as they descend into the arcs of artificial light and the tunnels of tepid recycled air. He looks at the mournful brick arches; for once he braves the touch of the grimy escalator rails. Germs will not harm him now.
The train approaches, hurtling through the tunnel. Chaa-chaa, Chaa-chaa, Chaa-chaa. Sparks dance in the dark abyss like fallen angels in the night. He steadies himself. His hands clasp tightly to the only thing still important to him.
As the train enters the platform, he jumps.
For that one moment, he hangs in the air, suspended, seemingly stopping time. Stopping gravity. He looks at the train driver’s eyes.
Shock? Pity? Panic?
He hears brakes screeching, metal on metal—or could it be angels calling?
He waves his hand in the air, the pink note and memory card clasped between his fingers. This is his final salute.
He smiles.
There are very few perfect moments in life, but in his complete control of his destiny, Gerry is content and at peace.
Then, with a thud and a drag, the moment is gone.
Day | light
The day is his and always has been.
He watches the glorious sun glitter against the dome of St. Paul’s. He dances in the ancient streets and sings behind the glass towers of obscene financial manipulation.
It’s time for the hopes and daydreams of the city’s nine million inhabitants to be fulfilled.
The body wakes. Without knowing why, the organs process, pump and purify. Industrious cells harry and converge—there is work to do. For the city, a day is the life-affirming pumping of blood through veins.
Charlie
Charlie stirred in spurts of disorientating blurs reminiscent of the after-effects of her teenage binge-drinking years. Her stomach was taut, but the tightness was not hangover, hunger, or anxiety. Reaching down, she felt bandages tightly wound around her like the final stages of mummification. A mask was attached snugly to her face, a coiled transparent cobra hissing oxygen.
With Charlie’s first few blinks, a nurse materialised from the blotchy shapes.
As her senses returned, the pain hit her.
The last thing she remembered was lying on the ground looking at the paramedic, trying to read his name badge, the hard, cold paving slabs of the street covered in her blood.
Charlie was thankful for the pain. It was preventing her from going under again.
“Hi, Charlotte. You’ll feel a bit groggy for a while yet. We have you sedated still. But it’s important to try and wake up a bit over the next few hours,” the nurse said. His accent was Irish and the tone of his voice was soft, almost hypnotic. Charlie thought he looked like Colin Farrell. Could be the accent. Could be the drugs they were pumping through her IV line. Still.
The nurse took a blood pressure reading. His hands were soothing and warm against her skin.
The BP machine buzzed like a bee-hive high on caffeine.
The nursed smiled reassuringly. Charlie tried to reciprocate, but the pain kicked in, and all she could manage was a grimace.
She removed the mask. The nurse nodded. “Please, call me Charlie.” The whispering sound of flowing oxygen settled into the background like Muzak.
The nurse gave her a small smile as he gently removed the Velcro of the armband. “Of course. I’ll update your records to save you having this conversation multiple times. You know… you can consider yourself fortunate. Do you remember what happened?”
“Bits.” Charlie’s voice was crumbly and dry from the oxygen. “I’d stopped to get milk. There was a robbery. One of the guys—the older one—seemed familiar, but I can’t place where I might have seen him before.” Her words were fast and breathless. “I tried to stop them ... I vaguely remember being on the ground, outside, unable to move. There were other people there, a woman and maybe her daughter.” The nurse looked away from Charlie, avoiding eye contact. “There was this ambulance guy. But nothing then ... until just now.”
The nurse’s name badge said Ciarán. His eyes were a soft walnut colour. His movements, purposeful and precise. “The police will want to talk to you,” Ciarán explained with an apologetic shrug. “I’ve told them they can wait. You need to get better. Your notes say that you have a young boy.”
Thoughts of Noah filled Charlie’s mind—
his spiky blond hair, summer-blue eyes, and bounding chaotic energy. She tried to sit up but could only manage a few inches before her vision started to fade. “Noah, he’s my little man. He’s only five. I need to get home to look after him.”
“All in good time, Charlie. First you need to get better, you need—”
“You don’t understand. I’m the only one he can rely on! Really rely on.”
The nurse fiddled with the pen in his breast pocket. “You had a visitor. A man. Maybe in his thirties. Greying hair. Tattoos on his neck.”
“Robbie?”
“He said ... he said that he was your partner. That he was looking after your boy—Noah.”
Charlie didn’t know what to say. She wanted to explain, but the nurse was a stranger, and every breath was painful. She turned from Ciarán, lifted the bed sheets, and ran her hand across the padded area of her torso.
The nurse looked at her, tilting his head towards his shoulder. “You were stabbed with a knife. Just once, in your side. It broke a rib and punctured your lung. A bit higher and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’ve had a few complications and we’ve struggled with infections. I’m guessing the knife wasn’t exactly sterile.”
“What sort of infections?” Charlie demanded.
“Best leave that to the consultants to explain. I can assure you, we’re doing everything we can.” Ciarán jotted some notes on her file. “Rumour has it you’re some sort of have-a-go hero,” he offered. “Apparently it’s not just the police that want to talk to you—the press have tried a few times as well.”
Charlie shuddered as she recalled the blank expression of the older criminal as he watched his younger accomplice knife her. Did he think that stabbing another person was mundane? Nothing more than a chore? She hadn’t had long to look at him, but he’d looked familiar. Was it someone Robbie knew? Charlie had only met a few of Robbie’s old school friends—taking an instant dislike to them. The way they looked at her as if she were his property, something he needed to control and to own. Robbie’s friends called woman “bitches” and enjoyed violence and cursing in music lyrics—she had told Robbie she didn’t want to be near them.
“What happened to the criminals? To the girl in the shop? And her mum?” Charlie asked. She pulled the bedclothes over her again, hugging her arms tightly across her body—the pressure relieved the pain.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’ll find out anyway. Two people were killed,” Ciarán replied. “One was the young woman’s mother. The other was one of the armed robbers.”
“And the girl?”
Ciarán stared at Charlie and wagged his finger in mock authority. “You need to look after yourself. You’ve been through a major physical trauma. You said you needed to get better to get home for your boy. The best way to do that is to recover as quickly as you can. Worrying about others can come later.”
“But you don’t understand. I need to know.”
“She escaped. She was unharmed as far as the police can tell. But she’s missing.”
“I need to help.”
“You’ll be doing no such thing. You’re not in any fit state to leave.” Ciarán’s words were measured and slow. “Besides which, from what the police have told us, and the reports on the news, they’d rather you stay somewhere where you are safe. You’ll be here for a while. The consultant is due soon, he’s—”
“Am I in some sort of danger?” Charlie managed between cracked gasps, her voice nothing more than feeble reception on an analogue radio. She thought about her circumstances. At least she was somewhere warm and safe, unlike the girl who had run from the newsagents’.
“You need to recover. That’s all you need to worry about,” Nurse Ciarán replied. “Like I say—”
“Yeah. Yeah. The consultant will tell me more.”
The nurse pursed his lips as if biting his tongue.
Charlie hadn’t meant to be so abrupt. The pain was only just manageable, and the drugs made her feel nauseous. She wanted to succumb, to drift away into the woozy sleep she’d been fighting. It was the sort of feeling she’s had when Noah was a fretful baby and his father had left them. She had been so exhausted, desperate, and completely alone—before Robbie came into their lives.
Charlie heard the unmistakable sound of Noah giggling. “Is that really my boy...”
“I’ll go check. If it’s them, do you want to see them?” the nurse asked, taking her brief nod as approval. “Don’t even think about moving.”
Time dragged in those few seconds—Charlie wanted nothing more than to see Noah. Embrace him. Gather him in her protection. Smother him in love.
It could have been so different, if the knife had been just a bit higher. How would he have survived without her? What sort of life would he have lived?
Noah bounded through the ward, almost knocking into several nearby beds as he ran, skipped, and hopped. Robbie and the nurse followed a few feet behind him. Robbie ‘s eyebrows were arched downward, encroaching on sinkhole eye sockets.
“Mummy,” Noah squealed, his face lit with a bright smile, which morphed into a frown as he studied her. “Are you okay, Mummy? I missed you soooo much.”
“I missed you, too, Pumpkin,” she replied, slow and careful, so as not to cause him concern. “Sorry that I don’t look so great, Noah.”
“You look beautiful to me, Mummy.”
Robbie bent and placed a cursory peck on her cheek.
“How’s he been, Robbie?” Charlie asked. She noticed Robbie looking at her hair—she brushed it with her hands, an urgent and familiar swoop she invoked when she didn’t seem to meet his approval.
Robbie rubbed the day-old stubble on his chin and shifted his weight between legs, as if trying to balance an answer. “Oh, he’s been fine. Naturally, he’s been very worried about you—”
Noah was distractedly thumbing through the magazines nearby.
“What did you tell him?” Charlie asked.
Subtlety had never been Robbie’s strong suit. “Oh, I just said there was an accident at work. That you’d be okay. But that Mummy needed some special rest.” Robbie turned toward Noah. “Isn’t that right, solider?”
Noah gave a shrug and a big grin. Charlie motioned him to come around the side of the bed where she hugged him tightly, without worrying about her injuries on the other side.
Deep crevices lined Robbie’s forehead. “Noah’s a good boy. But there are things we need to talk about. I’m not sure I’m cut out for all this.” He looked around, as if checking for listeners. His fists clenched. “I’m working at the legal minimum wage in a disgusting job—doing things no person should be asked to do. Zero hours contract. And for what? For someone who takes advantage of me! That’s what. Noah’s not mine, yet I’ve been more of a father to him than his real dad. But now, now I have this extra weight. We’ll have even less money. I’ll have more responsibility. I don’t need it, Charlie!”
She wanted to respond, to tell him that she was grateful, that life sometimes got in the way. But he’d made the choices. He was a grown man. Her throat felt stuffed with sandpaper and nails, and her body felt the draw of unconsciousness. She whispered, “Thank you.”
Robbie nodded briefly. He turned, scooped up Noah, and marched out of the ward. There was no goodbye—just the faint movement of magazine pages caused by the airflow he left in his wake. She watched as Robbie almost barged into a middle-aged man in a pinstripe double-breasted suit. The man had hair too dark for his age and skin that was supposed to resemble a natural suntan. He had several young, waggy-tailed recruits behind him.
He thrust a hand in Charlie’s direction. His shake was harder than it needed to be.
He quickly withdrew his hand and disinfected it thoroughly using the nearby liquid gel. The overpowering waft of anti-bac alcohol seared her nostrils. “Can’t be too careful, eh?” he chortled, his well-cultivated paunch jiggling with the motion. “Mr. Woodcroft. Consultant Surgeon. Pleased to meet you.”
He hit
ched up his trousers and edged onto the side of her bed, encroaching on her space. “I’m afraid the news is not good.”
“I’m not one for dwelling on things, Mr. Woodcroft. I’d rather you just tell me whatever it is. I need to know what I’m dealing with so I can move on. I have a little boy who needs me.” She stared at him and crossed her arms.
He looked as though he were thinking, as if he might manage a frown if it wasn’t for the Botox and filler. His voice was calm with well-practiced synthetic empathy. “Your stab wound fractured a rib and caused a perforation to your lung. This will take some time to—”
“Spit it out.”
“It left scarring, which will heal over time. But the wound became infected. It’s nothing serious, we can fix it with the right combination of antibiotics. However, it means you’ll be in here for a few more days than you would like. I’d say somewhere between five and seven days.”
“What! I can’t wait that long. I have a small—“
“It’s going to take time. You’ve suffered significant trauma. Your body needs time to heal. Your records show you are the primary caregiver for a five-year-old—”
“His name is Noah.”
“It will be better for you, and for Noah, if you are safe when we discharge you. I’ve seen cases, albeit rare, where these types of infections can cause major complications such as sepsis. As I say, it’s rare, but we’d rather you recover somewhere we can monitor you. Your boy, Noah, do we need to contact Social Services or—”
“No! No he’s not going into care, no matter how temporary! I will crawl out of here on all fours—on my stomach—over crushed glass and razor wire before that happens. Yes, he has someone to look after him!”
The consultant sprang off the bed with a speed that caught Charlie by surprise. He stepped back. “Very well, Miss Banks. Oh—there was one other thing.”
“Yes?”
“The police have told us to be vigilant. After all, you are a witness to an armed robbery that has resulted in the death of two people and which may be connected to organised crime,” the consultant said. The muscles in Charlie’s legs tightened like sprung coils; she just wanted to leave. “Don’t worry. There is no immediate threat. We’ve informed security and they’ll be patrolling on a regular basis. You’re perfectly safe.”
