Talking to Addison

by Jenny Colgan

  He started jumping up and down.

  ‘We should celebrate too!’

  ‘We should!’ I tried a couple of experimental hops, then tilted my head up to his, and moved in for the kill.

  ‘Huh?’ he said, mid hop, peering down at me as I held up my face to be kissed.

  ‘We should celebrate,’ I said, reaching for him. ‘Kiss me.’

  Part II

  Eight

  You know those dreams you have, whereby you have to sit your O-level maths again, only you’re naked and the whole test is in a language you’ve never seen before and they’re making you take it in a swimming pool?

  That’s what the next moment was like; and will probably be like for my whole life.

  Addison jumped back, nonplussed, when I unleashed my assault on him. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a place to jump back to. It was that simple. One minute he was there, the next minute he dropped from sight. He didn’t scream, there was just a scrambled yell, then a smash and a terrible, terrible thump as he crashed into the shallow, filthy water twenty feet below.

  At first, I kept staring straight ahead, stupidly, my lips puckered, my brain trying to compute where the hell he was.

  Then I screamed, then I realized that I wasn’t the one with something to scream about, and leaned crazily far out over the wall. What I saw made my heart stop. Addison, his eyes closed, only his head above the water, was bobbing up and down on the waves. A bird had shat on his head. I’d killed him.

  I was about to launch myself in when I heard shouts and footsteps behind me, and a strong hand grabbed the back of my dress, and a man hauled me off the wall. A group of people had gathered ridiculously quickly, and hailed a policeman, who, unusually, happened to be passing by, rather than taking part in the normal constabulary occupation of stopping disproportionate numbers of young black men.

  The policeman ran over, then spoke brusquely into his radio, took off his hat and gingerly but quickly lowered himself over the wall.

  I stumbled backwards.

  ‘I’ve killed him! I’ve killed him!’ I said over and over again, freezing hot and white cold at the same time. The man who had pulled me off the wall – and probably saved me – had disappeared back into the crowd. A woman came over from the spectators.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, putting a tentative, English arm around me. ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill him.’

  I started to hyperventilate.

  Neither Addison nor the policeman reappeared over the wall. If I’d been thinking straight, I would have realized there was no way they could have shinned up the sheer drop, and the tide was low enough for them to wait there until the ambulance arrived. I thought that I’d killed the policeman too.

  An ambulance and a police car drew up with a screech of brakes. In my blind panic I wondered whether or not they let you have books and magazines in prison. I tried to take a step forward, but my leg buckled from under me, and the woman kept hold.

  ‘Do you need to phone anyone?’ said a man with a dog, holding out his mobile.

  I thought of a solicitor, but I don’t have one. I phoned home, but all I could get out was ‘Kaaaaa …’ before launching into floods of tears when Kate picked up the phone.

  ‘John?’ she said hopefully.

  ‘Kaaaaaa …’

  ‘Holly? Is that you? What the hell’s the matter?’

  ‘Kaaa …’

  The man with the dog grabbed the phone back off me.

  ‘Hello …’ He turned to me. ‘Is this your friend?’

  I nodded.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘K … K … Kate.’

  ‘Kate, hello. Listen, I’ve got a friend of yours here … there’s been a bit of an accident. Yes, she does have messy hair … No, somebody fell into the river.’

  There was a very long pause. Then he mentioned the name of a hospital and hung up.

  ‘Your friend will meet you there,’ he said to me. I nodded mutely, shivering uncontrollably.

  By the riverside, the ambulancemen were letting down a stretcher on a kind of mountain climbers’ apparatus. The scene was now attracting more of a crowd and the atmosphere felt like that before a football match. In my hysterical state, I still noticed one man with his video camera out, and bitterly hoped he choked on the £250 he’d get from one of those morbid TV shows if they managed to tape Addison being dragged from the river with fish eating his eyes.

  At that thought, I choked, stumbled forward, and thought I was going to faint. Everything went fuzzy round the edges, and a small child dressed up as an ambulanceman rushed towards me and put a white hospital blanket round my shoulders.

  ‘Are you the other person involved?’ he asked me, and I nodded.

  ‘Come over here and we’ll make sure you’re all right.’ He half led, half dragged me over to the back of the ambulance, and sat me down.

  ‘Did you fall down? Did you hit yourself? Did he hurt you?’

  I shook my head. A policeman who’d been hanging about trying to make himself look useful hurried over.

  ‘Good evening, miss,’ he said, taking out his notebook.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said the baby ambulanceman, ‘but I’m the paramedic and I’m checking to see if she’s all right.’

  ‘I think you’ll find I’ve got to establish what exactly the situation is here first,’ said the policeman pompously.

  ‘As soon as I’ve ascertained the clinical priority,’ said the paramedic, just as snootily. I got the impression these two knew each other.

  The policeman held up his hands. ‘Fine. But keep it quick.’

  ‘It’ll get the clinical time it deserves.’

  ‘OK.’ The policeman sighed and had a look at his watch. The paramedic turned his attention back to me.

  ‘All right. Ehm … how are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m fine. I didn’t fall, or hurt myself or anything. I just … Where’s Addison?’

  I started crying again.

  ‘OK, OK.’ He paused, then glanced at the policeman again. ‘Right – how many fingers am I holding up?’

  ‘Four … where’s Addison?’ I sobbed.

  ‘That’s right. Now, does it hurt when I do this?’

  He pinched me on the leg.

  ‘Ow! Yes! Where’s Addison?’

  ‘Now can I have a word with her, please?’ said the policeman.

  The paramedic stood back a bit sulkily. ‘I diagnose that she’s suffering from severe shock,’ he said. ‘She ought to have some oxygen.’

  ‘In a sec,’ said the policeman, then he crouched down beside me.

  ‘What’s your name then?’ he said, in a deeply patronizing way.

  ‘Holly,’ I stuttered. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Hang on,’ said the policeman, and went and checked over the wall, where three men were hauling up ropes.

  ‘Well,’ he said, returning. ‘He’s not dead.’

  I collapsed into noisy sobs again.

  ‘I thought I’d killed him.’

  It’s a measure of how very upset I was that I said this in front of a policeman.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t … I went to kiss him and he fell over.’

  The policeman and the paramedic looked at each other.

  ‘You must be some kisser,’ said the paramedic.

  ‘Can I see him?’ I sniffed.

  ‘Ehm … actually, you should sit down for a bit,’ said the paramedic. ‘But we’ll take you both in at the same time.’

  ‘Yes, and give me your full name and address,’ said the policeman hurriedly, presumably in case I had deliberately thrown Addison in the river, forgotten to run off, and was just about to hijack the ambulance.

  So I sat there for what can’t have been more than five minutes but felt like hours and hours. Amazingly, a woman came out of one of the nearby houses with a flask of tea and gave me a cup. I snottered at her in gratitude, and she didn’t even ask intrusive questions – in fact, she simply
waited until I’d finished, took the cup and disappeared again. That just made me snotter even more as the last act of kindness anyone would ever extend to me after they found out how I’d ruined Addison’s life forever.

  Suddenly there was a huge clatter and lots of shouting. I glanced up to see the stretcher coming over the wall. On it, out cold, was a very pale, very unconscious Addison, with a white collar round his neck like he had fleas.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said. The baby paramedic ran back to me, to open the doors wide and guide the stretcher in.

  ‘Get in,’ he said to me, and I staggered back, with my hands at my mouth.

  They pushed the stretcher in feet first. One policeman and two paramedics were screaming at Addison. At first I thought they were angry with him and couldn’t figure out why; then an iron fist grabbed at my stomach again as I realized they were desperately trying to wake him up.

  ‘What’s his name?’ one of them barked at me.

  ‘Addison,’ I said quietly.

  ‘MR ADDISON! MR ADDISON! CAN YOU HEAR US?’

  ‘It’s Addison, not Mr Addison,’ I murmured, but they weren’t listening to me.

  One of the paramedics was shining a torch into his eyes, and the other banged twice on the partition of the ambulance – where I was sitting – then we took off. At the other end of the van, the three men continued shouting at him. One, my baby paramedic, was looking at his watch worriedly. He spoke into a radio hanging down from the side of the van.

  ‘ETA eight minutes,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a GCS three.’

  ‘Is that bad?’ I whimpered. He didn’t reply. Pretty bad then. I hoped a three was out of, say, five and not a hundred.

  I ached to reach over and wipe the duck shit off Addy’s forehead, but I didn’t dare. As if reading my mind, the baby paramedic leaned over and wiped it off with a piece of blanket.

  ‘Poor bastard,’ he said, and I didn’t like his tone of voice.

  ‘WAKE UP,’ the other paramedic was shouting very loudly, slapping Addison round the face.

  ‘WAKE UP FOR US NOW, SIR.’

  I put my head in my hands. ‘Wake up,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Wake up, Addison, wake up.’ Then I reached out and rubbed the bottom of his trainers. ‘Wake up. Wake up.’

  The ambulance screeched to a halt, and I realized we were there. I expected an ER-style assault on the back of the ambulance, but thought I detected a certain lack of urgency in the paramedics and the nurses when they opened the back of the van.

  ‘They think it’s over,’ I thought to myself. ‘They think he’s braindead. And it’s over.’

  I felt numb now. It was too real with him beside me to cry.

  They pulled him out, and a chunky, bossy-looking girl with greasy hair came out. She was wearing a white coat with various things – books, papers, pens and weirdy medical equipment – protruding from it and forming a trail behind her, underneath which was an unironed shirt and a very unprepossessing pair of trousers. She went up to Addison and did that torch-in-his-eyes thing again then hastened him inside. She motioned to me, and I followed them.

  The hospital was new and shiny and noisy, with shops and cafés. It was like an airport. People in uniform were marching about with serious looks on their faces, to show they were serious people doing a serious job. Addison disappeared into a thicket of them, laden with tubes and beepy machines. People were shouting and children were crying. I felt extremely disorientated. The chunky girl came up to me.

  ‘Name?’ she barked, rudely.

  ‘Holly Livingstone,’ I choked.

  ‘Not your name, his name.’

  ‘Addison. Addison Farthing,’ I said, glad that this woman seemed to be doing her best to make me feel even worse than I did already.

  ‘Has he been drinking? Drugs?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘It’s better if you tell us, you know. It could make all the difference.’

  I seriously wanted to hit her, but daren’t, in case she authorized some kind of new experimental medicine and killed Addison with octopus radiation.

  ‘He hasn’t taken anything, I promise.’

  She gave me a look, just in case I didn’t know she thought I was lying, then asked me if I was his next of kin. When I told her I wasn’t, and didn’t have his mother’s telephone number, she gave a loud and exaggerated sigh.

  ‘Well, let’s just hope he doesn’t require an operation,’ she said. I reflected that it was a good thing we were in a hospital casualty department, for when I hit her with a brick.

  ‘HOLLY!’

  Kate and Josh came hurtling up the corridor.

  ‘Is he here? What happened?’ They threw their arms around me, whilst the podgy doctor stood by, tapping her foot.

  ‘Are any of you next of kin?’

  Kate looked round.

  ‘I’ve contacted his mother, and she’s on her way, but she lives in Lewes.’

  My insides shrivelled even further when I thought of trying to explain to his mother what I had done to the only person (I imagined) she had in the world.

  ‘Do you know what blood group he is?’ countered the doctor.

  ‘A negative,’ said Josh surprisingly.

  We all stared at him. ‘It’s on a sheet he gave me when he moved in,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I don’t know why, do I? He’s the same as me, and it’s rare, that’s why I remembered, OK? Oh …’ His voice went quiet. ‘… And he’s an organ donor.’

  Jesus. This just got worse and worse. I glanced at the podgy doctor to see if she would say, ‘Oh, that’s not going to be necessary’, but she simply raised her eyebrows and said grudgingly, ‘If you want to wait you can sit over there –’ indicating a row of uncomfortable plastic chairs. Behind us, they were taking Addison elsewhere.

  ‘But what are you going to do?’ I asked helplessly.

  She looked at me. ‘Well, do you want me to stand here and explain it to you, or do you want me to go and see what I can actually do for him?’

  What I actually wanted was to kick her in the nuts, but I retreated, and the three of us sat down in the corner, huddled together, terrified.

  They both stared at me when I told them how it had happened. I had hoped that they would say, ‘Oh, that could happen to anyone – once, I tried to kiss so-and-so and they fell out of a third-storey window – but they didn’t. They just stared at me.

  ‘Well, don’t worry, Holl,’ said Josh eventually, squeezing my arm. ‘It’ll make a great story to tell your grandkids.’

  ‘Yes, when they ask why Grandpa’s dribbling and has to wear his pyjamas all the time and can’t walk and has to be fed with a spoon,’ I said, swallowing hard.

  ‘He’s young and healthy,’ said Kate. ‘I might go and phone my dad, see what the prognosis is. Do you know where he bumped himself?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. By the time I saw him he was on a stretcher. I didn’t see a mark on his face though. Well, apart from some duck poo.’

  ‘Are you sure it was duck poo and not coagulated blood?’

  ‘Or brains,’ said Josh. ‘Sorry,’ he said, when we both glared at him.

  ‘No, it was poo,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t see the back of his head.’

  Kate nodded. ‘I couldn’t ask Dad without knowing, and Dr Hitler in there doesn’t seem inclined to help us out.’

  ‘She’s a witch,’ I said. ‘I specifically asked for Dr Greene.’

  ‘Yes, she wouldn’t be allowed in ER with those rat-tails tied up in an elastic band, that’s for sure,’ said Josh comfortingly. ‘And you’d think, being a doctor, she’d know how to get rid of blackheads.’

  ‘It’s not that easy when you’re inside under electric lighting for one hundred hours a week saving lives, you know,’ said Kate.

  ‘You know what I say … you can always make time for grooming.’

  ‘You know, Josh, I thought having sex would make you less like a girl, not more. Maybe you’re a lesbian.’

  ‘Stop it you two,’
I said, and I must have looked completely downtrodden, because they did. We sat there in silence for an hour and a half, pausing only to choke down some revolting substance which might have been from a coffee machine or a nasty medicine dispenser they’d installed for handiness. Josh leafed through some ancient Women’s Weeklys, while I just stared into space. The policeman hadn’t been back to talk to me – maybe they were waiting to see whether Add woke up, to decide whether they pressed for GBH or murder. Oh God. How did I get myself into these things? How? Kate took my hand, and squeezed it every so often, and I was glad of it.

  People came and went across the hall – lots of people with cuts, and things held to their eyes, and a lot of yelping children. Only one other ambulance came in, and they brought out a woman so old you could see right through her, breathing through an oxygen mask almost big enough to cover her whole head. She looked very frightened when they all started yelling at her. I shivered, feeling awful and fluey and morbid. Suddenly, to my amazement, Tash limped in with a huge bruise on her head and scratches all over her face, accompanied by one of the boys from the flower yard. I hid behind Kate.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Big bully,’ I whispered, ‘at eight o’clock.’

  ‘I’ll fuckin’ kill ’er the next time!’ Tash was saying. ‘No one fuckin’ punches me.’

  ‘She might be top bitch now though, right, Tash,’ said her gormless companion.

  ‘No fuckin’ way,’ said Tash and started to cry. ‘And you can fuck off as well,’ she said to the young doctor who’d approached her. ‘Being fuckin’ top bitch – it’s all I fuckin’ have! I’m going to have to have a fuckin’ baby now!’

  My eyebrows were in my hairline.

  ‘She seems all right,’ said Kate. ‘Kind of person we could do with on the dealing floor. Never say die. I wonder if she needs a job?’

  After an hour and a half, a young male nurse came and got Josh and asked him if he would donate some blood. He leapt up immediately. Kate asked them for information, but the nurse shrugged and said they would have to wait for the next of kin.

  ‘That means they want to turn off the machines!’ I yelled dramatically.