by Cari Hunter
“I want to go home,” she says. “Please don’t let me die in here.”
And I hug her and kiss her and promise her that I won’t.
“Are you finished with this, love?” The twilight shift nurse slides my abandoned supper tray toward her. The doctors have left, and we’re alone in the room. My mum is gone.
I manage to say, “Yes, thank you,” though I’m still punch-drunk with sorrow. My mum’s scent—her face cream and the peppermints she sucked to ease the burning in her throat—overwhelms that of the meal I’ve hardly touched.
“Didn’t fancy the stroganoff, then? Can’t say as I blame you.” The nurse wrinkles her nose at the lumps of grey meat congealing on a bed of wet rice. “You poor dab. How about I make you some toast instead? You really need to eat something.”
She means well, but I don’t need toast. I need my mum, who would read Enid Blyton to me when I was poorly and melt cheese into Heinz tomato soup. She died in her own bed, her brain riddled with metastases and her lungs full of fluid.
“Toast would be lovely,” I say.
I push my hand under the sheets, digging my nails into my palm to stop myself from falling apart. The instant the nurse leaves, I stuff my fist into my mouth, muffling the sobs that tear through me as I mourn my mum for the second time.
Curling onto my side, I pull my knees up and hide my face with my bandaged arm. The pillow beneath my cheek is soaked, and I’m wracked by that weird open-mouthed juddering that children do when they’ve cried themselves out. The supper tray has displaced my box of tissues, so I dry my face on the bedding instead and stare at the monitors until the colours become too bright.
Eventually, a yawn catches me off guard. I smother it and start to read the yellow drug labels stuck to all my IVs, sounding the words out and guessing what the medicines might be for. I’m absolutely knackered, but I don’t want to sleep. I’m terrified of closing my eyes and finding somebody else I’ve already lost.
* * *
Deemed healthy enough for a regular ward, I’m transferred from HDU before the sun is up, shunted along deserted corridors and into my new single room on the trauma ward, T6. I’ve swapped the bank of monitors for a window overlooking a car park and a sign that reads Ysbyty GWYNEDD. Mesmerised by the sight of people going about their everyday lives, I watch the car park fill up with staff arriving for the early shift, their heads bowed against the persistent rain and a wind strong enough to turn their brollies inside out. Grey clouds mass as day breaks, and the window lets in a draught that smells of petrol fumes and seaweed.
A few minutes after handover, a student nurse comes to introduce herself. She writes her name on the whiteboard in block capitals—CEINWEN—and tells me not to worry about getting it right, because the southerners always say it wrong anyway.
“You have physio at ten, and you’re getting a cast put on your arm at eleven,” she says, creating a multicoloured schedule punctuated with smiley faces. “And we’re going to pop that catheter out as well.” She decides against adding that to the day’s events. “Shall we do that before breakfast?”
I’d rather she didn’t “pop” anything out of me, but I nod my consent, which prompts her to scurry from the room in search of equipment and, hopefully, supervision.
I only have two tubes remaining—an IV and the chest drain—as I eat my porridge and hobble into the bathroom, where Ceinwen expertly directs the shower hose, avoiding my stitches and sticky tape and various other parts too tender to touch. Taking pity on me, she tosses my arse-revealing gown into the laundry and smuggles in a set of scrubs she’s pinched from the staff stores.
“There,” she says as she combs my damp hair in front of the mirror. “I love this colour. What do you use?” She bites her lip as she hits the question mark, but I smile at her.
“Your guess is as good.” I tease out a strand, examining the hint of deep blue along its length. “It’s probably called something ridiculous.”
“Brazen Blueberry,” she suggests, and starts to giggle.
“Exactly.” I wipe the mirror clear of steam and peer at my reflection. The swelling around my eyes is less pronounced now, and I can see they’re a nondescript hazel. Purple bruises mottle my cheeks and jaw, and my hair has settled loosely around my ears. It’s not long enough to tie back, and I seem to have a fringe, though its style is something of a conundrum.
“How about this?” Ceinwen doesn’t wait for an answer, and within seconds she’s feathered and tousled and swept my fringe across to the right, where it seems to sit naturally. She beams at me. “That looks well tidy. It really suits you.”
“It’s very fetching,” I say, genuinely tickled by my new do. She’s even managed to cover my bald spot, but it’s the sense of normalcy she’s brought in with her that I value the most.
“Oh, before I forget,” she says, collecting my wash things, “the ward sister said Detective Pryce will be in to see you at half one.”
And as easy as that, my cheerful little bubble bursts.
Pryce phones to say she’s running late, allowing me time to adjust to the weight of my new plaster cast and recover from the conniption fit I have when a lifelike sketch of Jolanta appears on the one o’clock news.
“The North Wales Police are appealing for witnesses after a car crash left one woman dead and a second in a serious but stable condition in Bangor General Infirmary. The navy blue Ford Focus veered off the A5 late on Friday evening, leading to a large-scale search and rescue operation after the injured woman managed to alert the emergency services.”
I mute the report, but the room’s last resident has set the subtitles going, and I don’t know how to turn them off. My name is given in full, as well as a brief summary of my amnesia-induced predicament, and Jolanta’s image is used again to close out the piece. A hotline number scrolls along the bottom of the screen, and then they’re back to discussing whatever the Tories have fucked up this week.
I gulp a glass of lukewarm water, part of me hopeful that someone will come forward to claim me, and the rest knocked for six by the artist’s impression of Jolanta. I haven’t been able to provide her surname. I think I mostly followed her lead and called her “Jo.”
I’ve just managed to compose myself when Pryce strides in after a cursory knock, her hair wet and rain-scented.
“Not much of a view, is it?” she says, shaking off her coat and hanging it over the bathroom door. She pauses on her way back to the chairs, her head at a slight angle as she regards me.
“Student nurse,” I say, helping her out. “She got a bit giddy with the comb earlier.”
“Ah.” A faint blush colours Pryce’s cheeks. “She did a good job.”
“Yeah?” I shrug, unwilling to lower my guard. “It’ll do for now.”
Pryce gets herself comfortable, following her usual routine: bag propped by the chair, notebook open on her lap. She taps her teeth with her pen, signalling a return to business.
“We found your cottage,” she says. “It’s about eight miles from where you crashed. That’s what the keys are for.”
“My cottage?” I’m damn sure I don’t own a cottage in Snowdonia. My only connection to Wales is a hazy memory of a daytrip to Rhyl when I was young enough to find the Sun Centre exciting. I came out with a pink and white ice cream and a verruca.
“Sorry, no, you don’t own it,” she says, because apparently, my actual drip feed isn’t enough, and she has to provide her information in another. “It’s a rental. The owner went round yesterday to check everything was all right and realised you’d never arrived. She’d heard about the crash and put two and two together.”
I rub my left temple. I’ve had a nagging headache all day, and Pryce is making it worse. “How long had I rented it for?”
She consults her notes. “A week. You booked it last minute through an agency and collected the keys at their office in Conwy.”
“Why didn’t I have a bag in the car, then?” I ask. None of this makes any fucking sense. Pryc
e throws up her hands, obviously sharing my exasperation. Logical explanations don’t seem to be forthcoming, so I go for outlandish. “Could someone have stolen it after the accident?”
Folding her arms, she gives an exaggerated sigh, as if she’s willing to let this play out but wants me to understand it’s under duress. “Did you see or hear anyone in the vicinity?”
“No.” I squeeze my eyes shut and attempt to reconstruct a clear narrative of that night. I can’t do it. All I get are snapshots of disconnected visuals that don’t come close to forming a whole. I decide to hedge my bets. “I don’t think so. But I’d been unconscious for a while.”
“Do you think it’s plausible that someone followed your car down the embankment on foot, purely to take your luggage?”
“Plausible? No,” I mumble, feeling like a chastised schoolgirl. “But I suppose it’s not impossible.”
She scoots forward, bridging the gap between chair and bed. “Any idea what you might have been carrying that would be worth all that effort?”
“No.” I curse myself for gifting her this new angle of attack. I really should think these things through before I open my mouth. My head’s pounding, and I can feel tears clogging my throat. “I’m just trying to help,” I whisper.
Pryce nods in a distracted way, busy scribbling a note that she encircles and marks with a bold star. I can guess what she’s just highlighted (drugs? proceeds of a robbery? incriminating documents used for blackmail? cybercrime gadgets?) because I’m running through the list myself to see whether any of it provokes a response. That nothing prompts so much as a twitch does little to console me.
She shuts her book. “I think that’s enough for today. I’m going to speak to Dr. Lewis about taking a formal statement from you. It’ll be taken under caution. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes: ‘I do not have to say anything. But it may harm my defence…’ et cetera, et cetera.” That uneasy sensation swirls around in my stomach again. I wait until she’s fastening her coat before I say, “I saw the news.”
“Ah.” Her hand freezes with half the buttons done, and her expression softens into one of concern. “I forgot to warn you about that. I should have, I really meant to, but it just slipped my mind.” She seems so sincere that I regret sending her on a guilt trip.
“Hey, I know what it’s like to have stuff slip your mind.”
A smile brightens her face, giving me a split-second glimpse of Bronwen Pryce rather than the DS. She rests her hand on my arm. “We’ll get to the bottom of all this, Rebecca. I know it’s a lot to take in, but we’ll sort it out.”
“One way or another,” I say.
Her hand slips away. “Yes. One way or another.”
* * *
The car rocks, pitching me left to right, and I feel someone grab a handful of my hair and jerk my head up. The violence shocks a moan from me, and the hand lets go as if scalded.
“They’re still alive,” a man says. The buzz of my bad ear warps his voice, but he sounds frantic, a quaver rattling his speech. He pushes my face away, his gloved fingers exerting enough force to bruise. The smell of his sweat fills the car, and I hear a metallic jangle every time he moves.
“Stop fuckin’ bellyaching,” a second man says from behind me. “Look at the state of ’em. Problem solved. Come on.”
I’m held in place until he’s inched well beyond my eyeline. The car boot slams shut, locking out the worst of the storm, and I turn toward the woman’s sodden breaths. She’s unconscious and bleeding. I open my mouth to speak to her, but I don’t know what to call her.
“Jo? Jo? Aw, Jesus fuck!”
I wake in a twist of sheets and IV tubing, a pillow clutched in front of me like a shield. Blood is trickling along my wrist where I’ve yanked the line loose, and the dream is receding too quickly for me to catch its details. Panting hard, I stretch out and get a grip on the whiteboard’s marker pen. I don’t have any paper, so I bring my left arm across my chest and use its new plaster cast as a notepad: Two men. My accent. Leather glove? Metal.
I snarl in frustration, unable to lock anything else down and unsure whether what I’ve written even took place. The timing of the nightmare, hot on the heels of my theorising about the presence of a third party, is too much of a coincidence. This is what happens when my subconscious is allowed to run riot. I can imagine Pryce’s face if I suddenly reveal two mystery men who might have caused the crash but managed to leave no evidence of their involvement. She would pin me with that look of hers, the one she reserves for moments when I’ve yet again denied all knowledge of a fact she deems incontrovertible. Her right eyebrow arches, and her teeth pull on her top lip a little—not enough to be obvious, more like the tell of a poker player aware of the game’s foregone conclusion.
Regardless of her scepticism, I’m still unnerved by the dream, and the sound of approaching footsteps makes me push down in the bed, acutely aware of how vulnerable I am now that an appeal has been made and Jolanta’s image has gone out on national television. “The female survivor,” the news called me, and then blabbed my current location and condition to all and sundry.
The nurse who enters has already been in to check my observations a couple of times. She tucks the pillow behind my head and straightens my sheets.
“Nightmare?” she asks, wrapping a dressing around my leaking vein.
“Yeah,” I whisper. I keep my cast pressed close to my body as she resites the IV.
“Can I get you anything, love? Coffee? I can do you some warm milk if you’re having trouble sleeping.”
“No, thank you. I’m fine.”
She drapes the emergency cord over my pillow. “Buzz if you change your mind.”
“I will, I promise.”
I wait a full minute and then inch my legs out of the covers, letting my bare feet dangle until I’m accustomed to sitting unaided. I slide to the floor before I lose my nerve, gripping the bed rail and my IV pole for balance. Carrying the drain low and loose like a bag of shopping, I limp to the bathroom. No one comes to investigate when I switch the light on, so I turn the left side of my face to the mirror, inspecting the arch of my cheekbone. Set within a broad area of blue-green bruising are two deeper circles of purple. I press my fingertips against them and feel the corresponding sting where the man dug in with his own.
“Shit,” I whisper.
Mindful of how often my obs are taken, I turn out the light and hobble back to bed. The nurse has left my door ajar, and I lie wide-awake and jittery, listening to an elderly woman call for help every thirty seconds. I peek at the underside of my cast, murmuring the words there in an effort to make sense of them, but there’s no light bulb revelation, no eureka moment where everything falls into place and I find out exactly why I’m in Wales or why two men would leave me and my friend for dead in a smashed-up car.
Chapter Five
Monday and Tuesday pass by on the whiteboard. Ceinwen takes to drawing little weather symbols based on each morning’s forecast, and I compare her predictions to the permanent layer of gloom that sits over the car park. The sun breaks through on Wednesday, and she adds the requisite smiley face and an ice cream cone to her sketch.
“Deep breath in,” Dr. Lewis tells me, her steth poised over the brittle side of my chest. “Good. Hold it. Okay, let it out.” Satisfied, she drapes her steth around her neck. She removed the drain an hour ago, and Ceinwen has promised to celebrate my new tube-free status with a trip around the grounds if the day stays fine.
Lewis perches on my bed and offers me an Everton Mint. We suck them in comfortable contemplation while she writes on my chart.
“Your CT showed a moderate reduction in the subdural haematoma,” she says, after she’s crunched her mint. “You don’t have any signs of infection, and your post-drain chest X-ray looks fine. How are the headaches?”
“Manageable.” On average, they hit me every twelve hours or so, but I’ve stopped asking for painkillers in case Pryce arrives unannounced and I’m t
oo stoned to deal with her. I haven’t said a word about the men to anyone. The bruises have merged into one, and I’ve been studiously ignoring the scribbles on my cast.
“All on that left side?” Lewis checks my pupils with her penlight.
“Yes,” I say. Then, pre-empting her follow-up questions, “But there’s no weakness or loss of function or other funny stuff, and the tinnitus isn’t as loud.”
She chuckles. “You know me too well.”
I don’t really know her at all, but I can see that something’s troubling her, and I have an inkling what it may be. I sit straighter on the bed, ignoring the stitch that immediately pulls on my ribs.
“When do I get to go home, Doc?” I ask, in as cheerful a voice as I can muster.
She folds her arms, seeing through my ruse in a heartbeat. “How does the end of the week sound?”
It sounds bloody scary, given that I don’t actually have a home to go to.
“Okay,” I venture, and the recently reattached sats probe registers a pulse rate of one-oh-eight.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She reaches over and silences the alarm. “When did you last speak to Detective Pryce?”
“Sunday afternoon. I think I’ve had a couple of days off for good behaviour.”
Lewis lets out a short laugh. “She’s all heart, that one.”
Though her reply matches the wryness of mine, she catches herself and her smile fades. She takes a breath as if she’s about to retract her comment or add a qualification, but then she seems to think better of it and signs my chart instead. Whatever her history with Pryce, she’s not going to share it with a patient, and curious as I am, I appreciate her discretion.
“I know Detective Pryce is doing her best to trace your family and friends,” she says quietly.
