The Forgotten_An absolutely gripping, gritty thriller novel

by Casey Kelleher

  Gripping the side of the bed, he experienced the piercing stab of what felt like a thousand needles penetrate his skin all at once. A dull ache rippling through him. Making him wince until it gradually subsided.

  ‘What’s happening to me?’ he whispered. His voice, unrecognisable even to him. Just a dry, hoarse whisper.

  So many questions. So many dark thoughts rattling around inside his brain.

  ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘My name is Nurse Huston. You can call me Marie if you like.’ The nurse smiled.

  A genuine smile that not only reached her eyes, but made them sparkle. She was staring down at him with so much intensity that it was almost unnerving. ‘I’ve been looking after you. You’re at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. You’re a patient here in our Burns Unit. It’s a lot to take in, I know. Here…’

  Knowing the shock that her patient would be feeling right now, how disorientated he would be from being in a coma for so many months, Nurse Huston poured a beaker of water and brought it to the patient’s lips.

  ‘Have some water. Your mouth must be dry after having the ventilator tube in there.’

  The man nodded gratefully as Nurse Huston held the cup to his mouth and tipped it back. He gulped back a large greedy mouthful.

  The icy cold feeling as he swallowed it down made him shudder, as his dry, cracked lips soaked up the droplets from the rim of the cup.

  ‘Burns Unit?’ he said then, as the woman’s words sank in.

  Nurse Huston smiled, pleased at the patient’s first signs of progress. Not only had he regained consciousness, he was drinking fluids too.

  She should call the doctors or her senior nurse, now that the patient had woken. That was procedure; only part of her wanted this moment for herself. It was selfish, she knew that. But she’d been the one tending to this patient for the past nine months.

  She just wanted these few first moments before the doctors and nurses would arrive and overwhelm the poor patient with all the technicalities and gory details of his ordeal.

  She wanted to be the one to break it to him instead.

  To tell him what had happened to him.

  He had a right to know.

  Taking a seat next to her patient, she was aware how frightened he must be feeling. This was a lot to take in. She kept her voice soft.

  ‘Do you remember anything at all about why you are here?’

  The man faltered, silently staring up at the ceiling, obviously deep in thought.

  Finally, he shook his head.

  ‘That’s okay. How about your name? Can you tell me your name?’

  Silence once more.

  She watched as the man clenched his fists. The frustration and pain his memory loss caused him were clear to see.

  She realised he couldn’t remember anything. Not his name, not how he got here.

  ‘It’s okay. That’s completely normal. You will remember in time.’ The nurse reassured him with another warm smile. ‘You were involved in an accident. A fire. You were badly injured, I’m afraid, but you’re a fighter, let me tell you,’ the nurse added with a small laugh. ‘You were my very first patient I was assigned, do you know that?’

  She thought back to her very first day on the job. How Nurse Langton had led her into the private room of the Intensive Treatment Unit, and she’d first set eyes on this patient. His body so badly burned, so damaged that the doctors had almost given up on him.

  She’d honestly never thought that she’d see the day when he would open his eyes and actually speak.

  Yet, he’d come through it all. Somehow, against all the odds, he’d survived and the fact that she’d been part of the process of nursing this man better, that she’d actually made a difference, made her feel ecstatically happy. Staring down at the man in the hospital bed now, a flurry of excitement swelled inside of her.

  He’d finally regained consciousness.

  He was talking. Moving around.

  It was for the rare moments like this that Marie had trained to do this job in the first place.

  ‘That was nine months ago now. I’ve been here every single day, caring for you while you were in a coma. I haven’t missed a single day.’

  ‘Nine months?’

  Nine months? He’d been in coma for nine months?

  She watched as he narrowed his eyes, recognising the pain returning to him. Building inside of him, surging through him.

  She winced as he screamed out again, pushing down on the bed, as if to try and force the pain out of him, panic and confusion on his face.

  Nurse Huston read his thoughts.

  He must be wondering just how horrific his injuries were to cause this much pain nine months on.

  ‘It’s okay. You had another skin graft a few days ago. We’ve just changed your dressings. The pain always feels worse when the air gets to the wounds. I’ve just upped your morphine levels, so you’ll be able to relax again shortly. I’ve been keeping a close eye on you,’ Marie said then, wanting this man to realise that he wasn’t alone. Not any more, despite the fact that they still didn’t know who he was. He’d had no ID on him when he’d been brought in, and all the staff here had been able to hope for was that someone would try and find the man. That a family member might contact the local hospitals, or the police. But no one had claimed this man as their own. The entire time he’d been here at the hospital not a single soul had come here to visit him. No one had come looking for him.

  That was part of the reason Marie had gone above and beyond her duties for this patient. Spending so much time with the man. She’d popped in to see him every single day, regardless, whether or not she was working. Sometimes she even stayed on after her shift, sitting in this chair next to him, reading to him. Or just talking about her day. Marie had started to rely on him, just as he relied on her as his nurse. In a funny way, he had become a confidante to her, especially as he didn’t talk back. He just listened to her. That was all she needed.

  ‘What happened to me? How badly injured am I?’ the man asked.

  He raised his hand and ran his fingers across his face. Flinching as he felt the material that covered his skin, the large gauze patch covering his left eye.

  ‘It’s a surgical mask. It helps with the healing process. Not exactly the height of fashion now, mind. So don’t you be panicking when you take a look at it, but it does the job, trust me,’ Marie said, not wanting to add that it was far less scarier than the alternative; the patient seeing their burned and blistered skin, their face no longer recognisable. The Lycra mask was a much kinder sight to bear.

  ‘My eye?’ the man said as he ran his finger further up and touched the pad that covered his eye. Realising then that his vision was slightly impaired.

  That he was only looking out from one eye.

  He knew even before the nurse spoke.

  ‘I’m really sorry. We couldn’t save it,’ Nurse Huston said gently, placing her hand on the man’s arm as a form of support as she broke the news.

  She stared towards the doorway then, making sure that none of her colleagues could hear her talking to the patient so frankly.

  The doctors were the ones to break news like this to the patients. Only Marie knew that they wouldn’t be as honest and sincere as she would be.

  To them, this man would just be another patient.

  To her, he’d become so much more than that. She genuinely cared about him.

  He deserved to know the truth. The ugly truth, rather than a beautiful lie. Rather than her playing it down.

  She wanted him to know from this first moment that she would always be straight with him.

  That he could trust her.

  He went quiet then, the enormity of what he had just been told sending him into shock, as he lay there, obviously trying to process what he was hearing. ‘What happened to me? The fire? How? I don’t understand?’ He sounded disorientated.

  He’d lost an eye.

  Gripping the sides of the bed once more, only this time
not from pain. This time in a vain attempt to keep the room from spinning so violently.

  ‘We don’t know for sure ourselves,’ Marie said, as she recalled the facts that had been given to her at the time. ‘You were found by a dog walker out by an old abandoned warehouse, in King’s Cross. By the old disused railway tracks,’ Marie said then, hoping something she said might jog his memory even the slightest bit.

  Still, nothing.

  She could see by the pained look on his face that the man still had no recollection of his ordeal at all.

  ‘Can I see?’ he said.

  Marie was apprehensive, peering out of the room into the abandoned corridor; she should really wait for the doctors. They would be able to talk the patient through his exact procedures and the implications of them with much more depth than she could.

  But they didn’t care about him. Not like her.

  Maybe, if she showed him, it would feel less impersonal.

  She nodded.

  Cautiously, she lifted up the hand mirror and held it out in front of him. Waiting for a few minutes before she spoke again. She watched as he took in the harrowing reflection that stared back at him.

  ‘You’ve had several surgeries including skin grafts and reconstructive facial surgery. The mask is to speed up the healing process and prevent any infection.’

  He lifted up his eye pad then. Forcing himself to see the damage that was there.

  He winced. The horror hitting him with full force as he processed how serious his injuries were. The man recoiled at the sight of the jagged, rough line. His eyelid sewn tightly shut.

  ‘It’s healed really well,’ she said, sensing the shock that the man was feeling right now.

  This was the hardest part of her job, she thought. The aftermath. Helping the patient come to terms with catastrophic injuries like this.

  ‘From the fire?’

  Nurse Huston shook her head.

  ‘You had other injuries too. Ones that weren’t directly linked to the fire,’ she said, speaking with caution.

  Her patient had a right to know the truth, to know what had really happened to him.

  It might trigger his memory.

  ‘We think that you were possibly tortured. Obviously we don’t know anything for sure, but you had other injuries inflicted on you that led us to believe that.’

  She remembered the conversations at the time between two specialists. Of how the patient’s eye injury looked as if it had been caused by a much greater source of direct heat, like a blow torch or something similar. The other injuries that they’d recorded on his notes. The missing teeth, and toenails. The lacerations in his skin.

  It was a lot to take in.

  ‘I have to call the doctors in now so that they can check you over and make sure you’re doing okay, now that you’re conscious again,’ Nurse Huston said as she heard the voices floating down from the opposite end of the corridor. ‘But I’ll be right here. Okay? If you need anything. I’m here.’

  The man nodded, understandably dazed. She touched his arm lightly, with such gentleness, before making her way down to the nurses’ station to inform the other staff that the patient was conscious again.

  Their few stolen moments together over for now.

  Her heart was beating rapidly inside her chest.

  It was the strangest most wonderful feeling ever, and Marie Huston couldn’t even explain it to herself.

  But she’d felt it. She was sure of it.

  That connection between them both. That link.

  Call it fate, or serendipity. Whatever it was, this patient had been brought into Marie Huston’s life for a reason, and she into his.

  And now that he was awake, she would continue to be there for him in any way that she could.

  The poor man still had no idea that he had no one else in the world to look out for him. That he was all alone.

  That Marie was all that he had.

  Four

  ‘You all right, Nan?’ Nancy said, smiling at her grandmother, breaking Joanie’s trance.

  ‘I am now, girl. Now I’ve met my beautiful great-granddaughter,’ the older woman said, smiling back at her. Taking in the beautiful sight of her granddaughter holding her precious newborn daughter lovingly in her arms.

  Scarlett Edel Byrne.

  Right at this very moment, Joanie Byrne couldn’t have been prouder.

  ‘She’s perfect, Nancy. Little Scarlett is just the blessing that this family needs.’

  Especially after everything that they’d all been through.

  ‘Motherhood is going to be the making of you, my girl.’ Joanie smiled with certainty, watching Nancy place the tiny scratch mittens over Scarlett’s small hands, so that the baby wouldn’t tear and mark her skin with her tiny fingernails.

  ‘Who fancies a cup of tea?’ Michael said, barely able to drag himself away from the delectable sight of his great-granddaughter’s presence, now that Jack had brought them both home from the hospital.

  Joanie had been on tenterhooks all morning. Ordering the staff about to ensure that the house sparkled from top to bottom. The marble staircase had been swept and polished, the kitchen fully stocked up with all Nancy’s favourite foods. Joanie had even instructed one of the gardeners to place some huge urns of red flowers either side of the large arched front door. It was almost as if Joanie was expecting royalty to arrive at the Byrnes’ residence here in Richmond, not Nancy and her baby. Though the woman’s excitement over their first great-grandchild coming home had been infectious; a completely new feeling for Michael.

  ‘Tea?’ Jack laughed. ‘I think this one here deserves a bottle of champagne, after all the hard work she put in giving birth to our daughter last night,’ he said proudly, shooting an admiring glance over to Nancy. Glad that their secret was finally out.

  That the rest of the Byrne clan now knew he was Scarlett’s father.

  He understood why Nancy had wanted to keep it a secret from the family. Not telling a single soul that he was the father.

  It was complicated. Scarlett was the result of one passionate night, a one-night stand in effect.

  Though if Nancy would give him half the chance, Jack could be so much more to her. There would be nothing greater he could wish for than to be with Nancy, but he knew that he had to respect Nancy’s wishes. She didn’t see him that way.

  Why would she?

  He was more than double her age. A middle-aged friend of her father’s. Jack had been on her father’s payroll as a bent copper, way back when Nancy was born. Since then, he’d come into his own. Working his way up the ranks as a DCI for the Met. He’d been part of the family for years.

  Jack was more like an uncle to her than anything else.

  As far as Nancy was concerned, what had happened between them that night had all been one big mistake. A mistake that she’d initiated in a moment of weakness. All they could do now was pick up the pieces and be the best parents that they could be for Scarlett’s sake.

  Nancy hadn’t told her family about him because she hadn’t wanted any of their opinions or their negativity about her not being with him forced upon her.

  Or worse than that, the opposite reaction, and Nancy’s mother and grandparents turning against him. That they’d think he took advantage of her.

  Though she needn’t have worried about what any of them thought. Scarlett was here now, and the family seemed to have willingly accepted the news.

  Whether they liked it or not, nothing was going to change the fact that Jack was Scarlett’s father. And he was going to be the best dad that his daughter could ever wish for. He’d silently vowed that to himself when he’d first held his little girl in his arms, just minutes after she’d been born.

  He would do whatever it took, whatever was needed, to see that Scarlett and Nancy wanted for nothing now. Even though he and Nancy weren’t together, they were going to bring the child up together, as one unit. As a family – however unconventional that seemed to the rest of the Byrne clan, and Ch
rist knew this lot knew how to do unconventional.

  ‘You know she can’t drink alcohol, Jack,’ Colleen scolded the man. ‘She’s breastfeeding.’

  ‘Yeah, Jack!’ Nancy laughed, wagging her finger at him playfully. Knowing that Colleen didn’t mean any harm in her reproach. She was just looking out for Scarlett. They all were. ‘It’s all right, Colleen. He’s only teasing me. He knows I’m gagging for a drink, after being teetotal for the last nine months. But you all should have some. I insist. We need to wet the baby’s head. It’s good luck, isn’t it? And we could all well and truly do with some of that.’

  ‘Well, in that case, I say we get a couple of bottles.’ Michael Byrne chuckled, not needing to be told twice, and got to his feet. ‘Come on, Jack, Nancy’s right, it’s tradition. Let’s go and pick up some supplies and leave the ladies to coo over little Miss Scarlett here.’

  Jack smiled, checking with Nancy that it was okay. Nancy nodded.

  ‘Go on. I’ll be fine,’ she insisted. Knowing that Jack was being more protective than ever of her now that she was officially the mother of his child.

  It was a good feeling, she realised. Knowing that he was consciously looking out for her. That he actually cared. She just hoped that his enthusiasm lasted. Not every dad stuck around and faced their responsibilities. Though she was certain that Jack would.

  Of course they should all be celebrating.

  Today was the happiest day of Nancy’s life. Scarlett may not have been planned, but she was very much wanted and loved by them all.

  Staring down at her precious little daughter, her tiny strands of dark auburn hair on her head, eyes tightly shut as she slept, her chest rising and falling with each gentle, peaceful breath, Nancy had never seen anything more perfect in her life.

  ‘God, I can’t stop staring at her, Nan! It’s like I’m obsessed or something. She almost doesn’t feel real.’ She giggled, after the men had left.

  She sat back in the chair, still dazed at the fact she was a mother now, that this tiny baby that lay in her arms was her child. Her responsibility for the rest of her days. She wondered when it would ever really sink in.