The Story of Us

by Dani Atkins

  Richard too would surely be worried by now. We’d said we’d phone each other at the end of our respective hen and stag nights, and I wasn’t entirely sure what happened when you dialled a mobile that had been reduced to molten plastic in a fiery inferno.

  When a shadowed silhouette paused just beyond the curtain, I called out in a tone even I could recognise as annoyingly demanding. ‘Excuse me, could you please come in here and see me?’

  There was a grating sound of old metal rings scraping on the pole, as the curtain was drawn back and Jack’s large form stepped into the cubicle, making it suddenly feel matchbox-small.

  ‘There you are,’ he announced, as though he’d been on some sort of quest to find me. Had he? ‘I thought I recognised that imperious tone.’ I flushed at his rather damning but, let’s be honest here, entirely accurate comment.

  ‘Sorry, I thought you were a nurse or someone.’ His look quickly changed to one of concern. ‘Is something wrong? Are you in pain?’ I shook my head, and he seemed to relax a little. ‘What is it you need? If it’s anything other than a bedpan, I’ll see what I can do.’

  He had a curious knack of being able to make me smile in situations where no humour should exist. ‘A phone would be good, better still would be some information about Amy. I’ve no idea what’s happening with her.’

  He nodded understandingly and drew his mobile out of his pocket.

  ‘I don’t think you’re meant—’ I broke off as the screen lit up, and as he passed me the phone I noticed the large red stain on the temporary bandage swathed around his forearm. ‘Has no one seen that yet?’ I asked, nodding at the wound which was clearly still bleeding.

  ‘I told you, it’s nothing. And the ER has been kind of crazy over the last half-hour, with ambulances arriving every five minutes. I overheard someone saying there’s been a fire in an old folks’ home.’ That explained the activity and the lack of attention. ‘But you should’ve have been looked at by now, you have a head injury. It could be affecting you in all sorts of ways.’

  ‘Nah. I’m pretty much like this all the time.’

  He smiled. ‘Then he’s one courageous guy, your fiancé.’

  God. Richard. I was meant to be calling him and not exchanging pleasantries with my new-found rescuer friend. Jack was on my wavelength instantly. ‘Give me the number and I’ll dial it for you.’ I recited my home number first, willingly letting him key it in; I didn’t think I was up to handling an unfamiliar mobile. It actually took three attempts before I got the number right, which was the first real indication that I was still far more shaken up than I’d realised. How could I not know my own home number? Jack was calmly reassuring, saying it was just another symptom of delayed shock. I nodded back weakly – he wasn’t to know how forgetting something, anything, freaked me out these days.

  The phone was answered on the second ring. I took a deep breath and smiled broadly before speaking, hoping that might take the tremor out of my voice.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  ‘Emma?’ Not a bad guess, since I was an only child.

  ‘Yeah, Dad, it’s me. Did I wake you up?’ I heard grappling about, and knew he’d be reaching for the alarm clock on his nightstand.

  ‘Emma, it’s half past three in the morning. Where are you?’

  Pause. Think of the best way to say this without causing panic, I told myself.

  ‘I just wanted to say first that I’m fine, absolutely fine, but that I won’t be back for a little while, we’ve had a bit of an accident.’

  I saw Jack’s eyebrows rise several centimetres at this gross understatement.

  ‘Are you all right? Are you hurt?’

  Damn. Even lying through my teeth hadn’t stopped the panic from threading its way into his question. I heard a second voice then, and felt my concern ratchet up another notch.

  ‘Is that Emma? Is something wrong? Where is she?’

  ‘I’m good. Tell Mum I’m just running late, then I’ll tell you properly.’

  I waited patiently while he repeated the lie to my mother, keeping my gaze firmly fixed on the weave of the hospital blanket covering me, rather than meet Jack’s eyes. It might be his phone, but that didn’t mean I had to explain myself to him.

  ‘Okay.’ My dad’s voice returned on to the line.

  ‘Don’t say anything at your end, or you’ll start her worrying again. Just listen, okay?’ He gave a deep sigh, but he understood why I was being this way.

  ‘Okay, love.’ There was a false cheeriness to his tone.

  I related it as succinctly as I could. ‘We had a car accident. I’m okay, just a little scratch on my forehead.’ I did look up then, and saw Jack’s eyes widen and the eyebrows rose, if possible, even higher than before. ‘Caro is fine, but Amy was hurt quite…’ there was a quavering in my voice, that no lie could wallpaper over, ‘… quite badly. I’m not sure what’s going on with her. No one will tell me.’

  ‘Where are you? I’ll be right there.’

  There was some more muted questioning in the background, and I realised that we were doing a pretty poor job of keeping the tone of our conversation calm enough not to panic my mum.

  ‘No, Dad. That’s not necessary. I’m going to phone Richard, and he can come up and be with me. If you left now, who would you get to sit with Mum at this hour?’

  He was silent for a long moment, realising I was right.

  ‘I don’t like the idea of you being there on your own.’

  I looked up at Jack and gave a small smile.

  ‘I’ll be fine, Dad. I’m not alone. I have a friend with me.’

  There was a long moment of silence after I pressed the disconnect button on his phone. Jack broke it first. ‘So, compulsive lying? How long have you had that little problem?’ I shrugged. This was one conversation that I just wasn’t getting into with him. Annoyingly he wouldn’t let it go. ‘“Bit of an accident”? “Little scratch”?’

  ‘Yeah, then I went for a major whopper and called you my friend.’

  His face softened then, as though he suddenly recognised not to push me on this matter. ‘No. That one was true.’ His hand reached across the blanket, and gently laced his fingers through mine. I felt the pressure of my diamond solitaire press into the skin of his palm, and wondered if that was why he released my hand almost as quickly as he had taken it.

  ‘Okay, let’s ring that fiancé of yours,’ he commanded, and there was a distance in his voice that I swear hadn’t been there a moment before. ‘And this time, tell the truth.’

  The phone rang for five minutes in Richard’s flat before I hung up. Surely he had to be home by now? And the phone was right there in the bedroom. He couldn’t have slept through its constant ringing, could he? I glanced at my watch. Almost four o’clock. He’d told me it was going to be a low-key stag do, just a couple of teachers from the school where he worked, and a few guys from the rugby club. Nothing wild. I thought of the look Simon, his best man, had given him, when he’d overheard Richard describing the plan for the night.

  I sighed and punched Richard’s mobile number into Jack’s phone. The blare of loud music was the first thing I heard, that and a loud background buzz of a noisy bar or club.

  ‘Richard?’ More noise, a raucous shriek of laughter, and the clinking of glasses. The stag party was obviously still in full swing. ‘Richard, can you hear me?’

  ‘Who is this?’ Not a good start.

  ‘Richard, it’s Emma.’ There was a long pause, which sounded like it needed filling. ‘Your fiancée.’

  ‘Emma,’ he repeated, as though the name might just be a little familiar to him. I heard another voice I recognised then, speaking in what he must have thought was a whisper. I couldn’t make out all the words, but I definitely caught the phrases ‘checking up on you, mate’ and ‘ball and chain’.

  ‘Richard, something terrible has happened. We’ve been in an accident and we’re all at the hospital.’ My words were more effective than throwing a cold bucket of water over hi
m would have been, just not as satisfying.

  ‘Emma, are you okay? Are you hurt?’

  ‘Nothing major.’ I looked up at Jack who was waiting with poorly concealed interest to see how I was going to finish my sentence. ‘I have a nasty cut on my head, and my legs are badly bruised, but Caroline and I got off pretty lucky. But Amy…’ I suddenly couldn’t finish as my throat had constricted and the only thing coming past my lips were gulping sobs.

  ‘Amy? What about Amy?’ Richard’s voice sounded completely sober now. ‘Emma, calm down, tell me everything.’ But I couldn’t, the words were lost in the tangle of fear and panic that I thought I had managed to escape from, only to find it was just lying in wait to enmesh me all over again. I shook my head helplessly at the phone, knowing I could say no more.

  The handset was gently prised from my grip by its rightful owner, and a calm and controlled voice spoke for me. ‘We’re at Queen Victoria Hospital. Just get here as soon as you can.’ Jack looked about to disconnect the call, without ever identifying himself, but stopped to add just one last comment. ‘Get a cab, man. Don’t even think about driving.’

  Jack held me while I sobbed, and it never once occurred to me how strange it was that I was leaning so heavily upon someone who I really didn’t know. He could be anyone. He was anyone. Chance or fate had just put him on the right road at the right time. Had he not have been around, both Richard and my dad would have been getting an entirely different type of phone call by now. The thought made me sob even harder.

  ‘Better?’ Jack asked eventually, when the tsunami had petered out to just a small flow. He passed me a box of sandpaper-rough tissues, and I tried to mop up as best I could. There was nothing ladylike or genteel about the nose-blowing, though. He waited patiently until I was once more able to converse sensibly.

  ‘Where’s the buck’s night? Has he got far to travel?’

  ‘You should come with subtitles. That’s an Australian term. It’s called a stag night over here.’

  He gave a shrug and a smile, and surprisingly I found my lips still remembered how to return it. ‘I’m not from around these parts, ma’am,’ he said, mimicking the words I’d heard in countless old western movies.

  ‘I kind of guessed that. What are you doing in the UK, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘I’m an author, with a publisher’s deadline and a novel I have rather foolishly set in the English countryside, so I thought I should spend a couple of months here doing some hands-on research. I’m renting a cottage on the coast near Trentwell.’

  In different circumstances I’m sure I’d have been intrigued enough to ask more, but there were other much more important issues on my mind right then. For someone who didn’t know me, it was a little disconcerting to find Jack was able to read me like a crystal ball. ‘Why don’t I go and round up one of those doctors and see if I can get you an update on Amy and Caroline?’

  After he’d gone, the cubicle seemed much more spacious, but curiously bland and colourless. He was the kind of man whose presence filled all the available space around him. And it wasn’t just a matter of his good looks or charm, which even on a night like tonight were undeniable. He was probably going to have to utilise both of those to full effect if he was going to get any information about Amy, because I was pretty certain they only gave out details like that to close relatives or immediate family. But damn it, we were Amy’s family, Caroline and I. Well, not in an actual sibling sense, but in a deeper more enduring way that bound us closer than blood ever could. I imagined the police would have called Amy’s parents by now, but as they’d moved out of the area several years ago and lived four hours’ drive away, until they got here Caroline and I were all she had.

  I decided to go out and find Jack for myself – I spotted him walking down the corridor in deep conversation with a nurse. She turned to me first. ‘What are you doing out of bed?’

  ‘That was going to be my line,’ said Jack.

  ‘I’ve found out Caroline is about to be discharged and Amy’s in surgery,’ he informed me, as we walked back to the cubicle. He held out a hand to assist me back on to the hospital bed. I pulled the blankets back over my damaged legs and let Jack’s worrying news sink in.

  ‘Surgery? For her face?’

  He shook his head sadly. ‘No. I think she has some internal injuries, but I couldn’t find out what specifically.’ I felt a blast of cold fear run from the base of my neck right down the length of my spine, hitting every vertebra on the way. Internal injuries sounded like a hospital euphemism for really, really badly hurt. Nothing else Jack could say or offer in consolation could get me beyond that dreadful terrifying phrase.

  Fortunately he appeared to be the kind of man who valued silence over mindless conversation-filling, which was lucky because I wasn’t able to concentrate on anything except the nightmare we were currently living through. I’d even needed his help completing some hospital forms which a nurse had given to me on a clipboard. My hand was trembling too much to write even my name and address, so I gratefully allowed him to take the pen and board from my hands and complete the form in sure bold lettering as I dictated my details.

  At my request he’d left the cubicle curtains open, as though somehow news would reach us quicker without that thin barrier of fabric holding it back. We watched a continual stream of medical staff pass by our bay, some rushing with purpose and haste, others just idling by, some mindlessly chatting away, apparently oblivious to the fact that the road leading to our future was about to be altered beyond all recognition. When I overheard two nurses deeply engrossed in a discussion about a ludicrous plot twist from some television show, real and genuine anger flooded through me. Television? You had to be kidding me? They should be saving lives, doing CPR on speedily pushed stretchers, or barking out unintelligible orders that ended in the word ‘stat’, not discussing some TV programme, for Christ’s sake! Jack saw my agitation, and patted the back of my hand understandingly. ‘It’s just another day at the office for them.’

  ‘Not for me.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied consolingly.

  Richard arrived in a tornado of panic, concern and alcohol fumes. His footsteps preceded his arrival, slapping noisily against the tiled floor, as he ran the length of the triage area, calling my name. He burst into the cubicle, and Jack immediately got out of the chair he’d been occupying beside the bed. I’d thought I was done with crying, thought I’d already wrung myself dry in Jack’s arms, but apparently not. Just one sight of Richard’s familiar face, suffused in worry, concern and love and suddenly the Sahara was replaced by a mini Niagara. Richard held me against him, rocking me like a child, and even though he smelled more like a distillery than a person, it felt good to be in his arms.

  ‘Hush, hush,’ he soothed against my hair, and I tried not to notice the faint but still discernible thickened slur in his voice, and the aroma of stale cigarette smoke he appeared to be kippered in. He’d been out on his stag night, and it was totally unjustified of me to feel angry that while we’d been crawling through debris and flames on the side of the road, he’d been in a bar, getting drunk. But I felt it anyway.

  ‘What on earth happened, Emma?’ he asked, apparently not noticing my wince of pain as he sat down on the foot of the bed, and rested one arm against my lower legs. Jack swooped in like a hawk, removing the arm from my shins and earning an annoyed glare from my fiancé. He looked up at Jack as though he’d only just noticed he was there.

  ‘Her legs are badly bruised,’ Jack explained succinctly and even though Richard looked abashed and apologetic, something told me that, first-impression-wise, he’d just failed a major test.

  ‘And your face…’ Richard continued. ‘It looks really bad.’

  There’s not a lot you can say to an observation like that. Fortunately I didn’t have to.

  ‘She cut her head when the car flipped over, before it crashed into the ditch, and trapped her in the wreckage. After that, it burst into flames.’ Jack’s stat
ement of what had happened, although accurate, was deliberately harsh and cuttingly shocking.

  ‘My God, Emma. You could have died. I could have lost you.’ There was such vulnerability in his voice, I could only hold out my arms to him. For a moment I was so absorbed in the reversal of our roles, I almost didn’t notice Jack was about to exit the cubicle.

  ‘Wait!’ I called to his retreating back, and for a moment I thought he wasn’t going to turn around.

  ‘You’re going?’ I asked incredulously, knowing I had no right to be surprised, but feeling it all the same. He’d already gone far beyond the role of Good Samaritan with everything he’d done that night. Why on earth should he remain here, now that Richard was here? Yet still, I felt something akin to panic at seeing him go.

  Jack’s eyes met mine, and I knew a moment of real dread as I realised I would probably never see him again. Could he read that feeling? Maybe. He’d been pretty intuitive at knowing what was going through my head all night. He paused, then took a decisive step back towards the bed. We both ignored the confused look Richard was giving us, as his head turned from me to Jack, as though trying to fathom out a complicated plot in a play he’d missed the start of.

  Jack smiled gently down at me and picked up one of my hands, holding it carefully in his own. ‘It’s time for me to go now. You’re going to be fine. I really hope everything works out for your friend.’

  I nodded, my throat suddenly too full to squeeze a word past the lump that was lodged within it.

  ‘Look after yourself, Emma,’ he said softly, bending down and kissing me gently on the forehead.

  ‘What—?’ Richard exclaimed, swivelling around to follow Jack’s tall shape as he strode quickly out of the cubicle. ‘What the hell…? Why did that bloody doctor just kiss you goodbye?’

  Two strong black coffees later, Richard could probably have passed a basic sobriety test. By the time he’d accompanied the entourage of nurses and orderlies who wheeled my bed to the X-ray department, he was at least capable of holding a coherent conversation. Not that I’d have recommended putting him in charge of anything mechanical or operating equipment of any kind, not after watching his torturous attempts to send my dad a text to let him know what was happening.