“Yes, you can, baby,” he soothed. “You know what that noise is? That’s the guys getting ready to force this car back open. You following me, sweetheart? Just a few more minutes and they’ll open this one up and Ellie and Rob will take you off to hospital.”
The look Ezra gave him—wide-eyed, panicky and half-mad with sheer fear—was the worst expression that Jesse had ever seen.
“I don’t want to die, Jess,” he whispered, and Jesse’s heart seized for a brief, dizzying moment.
Then he leaned close and said fiercely, “You are not going to die. I’m not going to let you, Ellie and Rob aren’t going to let you and the hospital isn’t going to let you. We will get you out of here, and you will recover from this, you being the bloody-minded bastard that you are, and I will be there every. Step. Of the way. You hear me?”
The panic shifted in his eyes. When Alan called for Jesse to get out of the car and help them, Ezra squeezed his hand one last time.
“I love you,” he croaked, sounding terribly pathetic in the mangled confines of his ruined car, and Jesse swallowed against the lump in his throat.
“Tell me again when I come back,” he said, and let go.
Untangling a car hit by a lorry was intensive work but untangling two cars that were fairly light in the first place was relatively easy. Once they began, it was over in a matter of minutes, the crumpled recess groaning as it was split open again, and Tony reaching in to lift the ruined steering column free of Ezra’s legs. Jesse had pushed him to do it, not trusting himself not to shake or throw up when the footwell came into view. The moment Ezra’s legs were out, the column was dropped back, and Jesse forced himself to hang back with his colleagues as Ezra was lifted clear by the two paramedics, a couple of burly policemen and a nurse who had been walking to work and had stopped to assist them.
Alan clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I can’t let you go right now.”
“I know,” Jesse said shortly. Partner or no partner, he had a job to do here.
“Vehicle removal are en route,” Alan said shortly. “Another half-hour and we’ll be clear. Then I’ll run us back to the station so you can get out of your kit and go.”
“I—sir?”
“You heard me,” Alan said flatly. “You’re no good to me if your head’s elsewhere. We finish up here, then you go. I’ll put you in for compassionate leave for the rest of the week.”
Jesse looked towards the ambulance as the doors slammed. Rob lifted an arm in a wave, then it was sliding away down the hot tarmac, sirens bouncing off the surrounding buildings.
Jesse’s heart hurt as though it was trying to follow.
“Thank you, sir,” he choked, and Alan tactfully pretended not to notice him dashing away a tear.
* * * *
It was an hour and a half before Jesse managed to get to the hospital, and by the time he did, there was only a nurse with an apologetic face and a compensatory cup of tea waiting for him. Ezra had been taken straight into surgery and wasn’t bound to come out again for several hours.
“Can you tell me anything?” he begged her, unashamed of it. “Anything about how he was, about—about what they were saying?”
About the outcome.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
And she did look genuinely sorry.
“I can’t tell you anything. I don’t know anything, but—”
She squeezed his elbow and pressed him to sit in a hideously orange plastic chair.
“I can say your partner’s in the best of hands. Dr Anwar is on duty today, and she is a phenomenal surgeon.”
Surgeon. Surgery. Somehow it felt jarring, because of course Ezra was having surgery, everything from his hips down would be an absolute mess, but—but Ezra was having surgery. It was frightening, and Jesse clutched the cup of tea desperately, the adrenaline that got him through the day ebbing and bleeding away. It wasn’t even eleven. Ezra had texted him at eight. Not three hours ago, he had been trying to think of what to say, how to get past the ugly shouting match and what he’d blurted out, how to persuade Ezra not to leave him.
Now maybe Ezra would leave him anyway.
He had never waited this side of the door. He’d been brought in himself at least twice a year since he’d started working with the fire service, for everything from last month’s fractured wrist to excessive smoke inhalation and first-degree burns. Ezra had been on this side of the door twice for Jesse. Maybe he’d sat right here, wringing his hands and tapping his right foot in that antsy way he had. Both times had been in the middle of the night, though. Both times, Ezra had been tired and grumpy and beautiful in that ruffled way.
Jesse dropped his head into his hands and stared blindly at the tiles.
He knew nothing about medicine. He knew nothing about car accidents apart from how to cut people out of them. He never knew whether the victims lived or died unless it made the papers or they were already dead when they arrived to help. He had no idea what—what was going to happen. What was happening, somewhere in this hospital.
There were things to do. When Jesse came to hospital, things were simple. Make sure someone called Ezra and wait for him to show up. But Ezra had family. Ezra had a mother and a sister—though maybe he could skip the sister—and he was supposed to go to work in the morning, and—
And none of it would stick. Jesse felt shaky and sick, and he wanted someone to tell him what to do. There was always someone to tell him what to do. Ezra. Alan. A doctor. There was always something to be done, and someone to tell him to do it, and—
Now there wasn’t.
He abandoned the cup of tea and staggered towards the lifts. The nurse made no attempt to stop him, though she watched him go. He followed the signs without any real idea of why, and the little unassuming door opened into a near-empty room, lit in gentle red and soothing blue, cushioned seats in a row facing a great window that overlooked a memorial garden. A middle-aged man with a green jumper looked up from lighting candles on a tray, the little flames glimmering suspiciously in the evening light, and he looked both welcoming and solemn.
The hospital chaplaincy.
“Would you like to speak or be alone?” the man asked.
“I don’t know,” Jesse said honestly, and sank into the nearest seat. The door cut out the hospital behind him. There was a carpet in this room, and the smell of antiseptic was fainter. He had always pictured chaplaincies to be more like churches—pictures of Jesus and crucifixes like Mrs Pryce’s—but the absence of them was calming. He supposed it wasn’t just Christians who lost people in hospitals.
The man offered him the burning stick.
“Would you like to light one?” he offered.
“He’s not—” Jesse started, and shook his head. “He’s in surgery,” he said, and the man nodded as if he understood.
“A family member?”
“My partner.”
There was no real reaction. The man blew out the burning stick and laid it down in the tray with the candles. After a moment, he came to sit in the chair opposite, folding his hands between his knees.
“I take it that whatever has happened has come as some surprise?”
“Car accident,” Jesse said hoarsely. “I don’t know how he is.”
“No news is good news, as they say,” the man said.
Jesse tried for a smile and failed.
“We argued,” he said. “We were supposed to meet up after work and talk about it, and—I’ve been an idiot.”
The man said nothing.
“I’ve been so caught up in thinking I’m not enough for him, that I’m not good enough—and maybe I’m not—but I’ve been forgetting what I can do, what I am doing for him, and now—now I—”
“What is his name?”
“Ezra.”
The man raised his eyebrows. “Rather Biblical.”
Jesse laughed wetly, and a few tears escaped. A moment later, a handkerchief was being pressed into his hand, the tiny letters ‘RR’ stitched into the corner
.
“His family are Catholic,” he said, and gestured vaguely at the room. “I figured, you know, I could…pray or something. It couldn’t hurt.”
“Unfortunately, I think God ceased to work like that around the time He had a son,” the man said. “Fatherhood changes people, and I suspect the Almighty wasn’t any different.”
Jesse laughed again, the humour soothing a little of the raw, impotent pain in his chest, and he looked up at the window. It was arched, framed in dark wood like a chapel window, but with no stained glass or forgotten saints.
“I was with him,” he blurted out. “I held his hand while they—while they cut him out of the car, and I—I couldn’t stop the pain, but I could be there. Is that enough? If he—if—”
“Being there is the greatest thing any one person can do for another,” the man said softly, and sat back a little. “I was a porter here, before I retired. I can’t tell you the number of times I left my trolley and sat by someone’s bed to hold their hand. I almost never spoke to them. I never knew them. I very much doubt any of them had ever noticed me before. But I would sit and hold their hand, because if there is one thing we can do for each other, it is be there.”
Jesse choked and his vision blurred. He dropped his head, and the burn of his eyes carried down his face in wet streaks. Quite suddenly, the man was grasping his hand.
“I have been thanked by people who barely have the strength left to breathe, who have been unconscious for days,” he said gently, his voice a deep and soothing timbre in the quiet room. “I believe the dead have not left us until they are quite, quite dead. If you have been there, then it will have been enough. If you could offer even a little comfort to him, then he will grasp that and understand it, no matter what comes next.”
Jesse squeezed the rough hand in his and pressed the handkerchief blindly and ineffectually to his face.
“You love him?”
“He’s everything,” Jesse croaked.
“Then it will have been more than enough,” he said. “If we can all go out of this world saying that someone loved us, and someone was there for us, then we can all go content and in peace. It sounds as if your Ezra has had both.”
Jesse shook his head. “I’ve been an idiot.”
“You’re human,” the man said, and when Jesse looked up, he was smiling softly. “I was married for eighteen years before my wife passed away. Every single one of those we fought, we argued, we bickered and we reconciled. I nearly walked out once. She threatened to divorce me twice. And I would change nothing. I loved her, with all that I knew how, and I was there for her in every way that I could be. When the end comes, it comes. I very much doubt my last words to Janice were of love. I probably asked her to get milk at the supermarket on her way home. By the time I learned of what happened, she was gone. But she died a woman loved, and I had been there every time that I could. So, yes, it hurt. But she rests in peace, and I wouldn’t change that.”
It was some time before Jesse could find his voice again, the possibility of life without Ezra yawning like a chasm in front of him, like an abyss from which there was no exit, and when he could breathe again, the man was still there, hands folded in front of him again, serene.
“What happened?” he asked eventually.
“To Janice?” the man hummed. “An aneurysm. Swift and quite thorough.”
Jesse took a deep breath through his nose and twisted the handkerchief in his hands. “I—I wanted to pray,” he said, “but I don’t know how. I don’t even know if I’m praying to anyone.”
“Voicing our fears makes them less frightening,” the man said. “Some call that talking to God.”
He rose and waved to Jesse to keep the handkerchief.
“Talk,” he said. “I’ll keep myself busy for a while. And keep hope, if not faith, because hope can be much more powerful, I find.”
He shut the door quietly behind him. The sun was finally beginning to sink towards the horizon in the arched window, and Jesse folded his hands around the wet handkerchief and stared out into the dusk.
“Please,” he said.
That was all.
Chapter Eleven
“Mr Dawkins?”
Jesse started. It had been hours since he’d arrived at the hospital, hours since he’d half-prayed, half-begged a window in the chaplaincy and hours since anyone had seemed to remember that he existed. The teacup nurse had long since gone home and the early-morning children had long since given way to the middle-of-the-day accidents and mishaps.
He half-rose to meet the doctor who came marching towards him. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet in height, with dark hair piled up under a plastic cap and large, keen brown eyes.
“Dr Marwa Anwar,” she introduced herself, shaking his hand firmly. “I’ve been told that Mr Pryce is your partner?”
“Yes. Is he—?”
“Come with me.” She turned on her heel and marched away again, and Jesse sluggishly followed. Doctors were unreadable. Nurses had things written all over their faces, but doctors were inscrutable, and he wanted to just shake her and wring the answers out of her.
“How is he?” he tried hoarsely as she led him into a lift, and her face relaxed minutely.
“He will live, Mr Dawkins,” she said gently, and Jesse sagged against the side of the lift. Her tiny hands were immediately on his sides, bracing him with a surprisingly strong grip.
“He’s—he’s going to—”
“He will live,” she repeated firmly. “I cannot discuss much of his condition at this point, but, barring complications, he won’t die.”
“And how likely are complications?”
“They’re not,” Dr Anwar said shortly as the lift coughed them out. “I am a very good surgeon, Mr Dawkins.”
She led him down a short corridor and paused before a glass window.
“I can’t let you in until he has been fully assessed by the consultancy team, but I thought you would appreciate at least a look,” she said, though Jesse already wasn’t hearing her.
In the short ward were four beds, all facing the window, and a nurse was fitting a drip into the back of Ezra’s hand. He had obviously only just been settled, by the activity, but he was unconscious, face ashen against the sheets, hair still matted and dark with his own blood. The ugly gash on his forehead had been stitched, and the blankets were badly misshapen, one shoulder visibly strapped up—but he was alive. A jumping line across a dark monitor tracked his heartbeat. He was safe and alive, and Jesse sagged against the glass, pressing one hand to it as though he could get through.
“When—when can I see him?” he breathed.
“Come back tomorrow in visiting hours, and the consultant will have more answers,” she said. “He will need full assessment then, but I imagine, unless he deteriorates during the night, you should be permitted to sit with him for a few minutes.”
“I need—”
“Mr Dawkins, you need to go home,” Dr Anwar said firmly. “Mr Pryce is in safe hands, I can assure you. His injuries were not in themselves life-threatening. He may have lost a limb—may still, if infection sets in—but he would not have died. He will still be here in the morning, and I would be greatly surprised if he woke any time before tomorrow, even if we were to reduce his drug dosages.”
Jesse tore his gaze away from Ezra’s still, slack face. Dr Anwar stared right back at him, face open and patient.
“You’re sure?” he croaked.
“I am certain, Mr Dawkins. You need to go home and rest.”
Slowly, he nodded. Ezra was safe. He wasn’t going to lose him. Maybe things were going to be difficult for a while, but he wouldn’t be—
“Go,” Dr Anwar insisted gently, and steered him away from the window.
Jesse let her.
* * * *
Jesse didn’t go home.
He called for a taxi from the A&E entrance, and in the ten minutes it took for the battered private car to creep into the drop-off point, he changed his m
ind and asked the driver to go to the fire station instead.
The station was quiet, but Jesse turned his back on it and walked to Ezra’s house, the crisp air clearing the fog and the shock from his mind and body. Ezra would be all right in the end. He wasn’t going to die. Every step up from that was only an improvement, and whatever the long-term impact of this, Jesse was going to be there. He was always going to be there, because he had been such an idiot lately, and absolutely none of it was important.
The only important thing was Ezra, and whatever it took, Ezra would get better.
A couple of months previously, Ezra had given Jesse a key for the back door in case he wanted to come over but Ezra hadn’t got back from the school yet. Jesse almost never used it, mainly because it involved wrestling with the sticky latch on the side gate, but tonight he popped it open and slid around into the back garden. Kitsa joined him at the back door, slipping out of the bushes to wind around his feet and meow plaintively, obviously upset at his departure the night before.
It was—peaceful. Distracting and peaceful, to have to feed the cats before anything else, to line up his boots on the kitchen mat, and see the post waiting in the hall. To see Flopsy asleep on the sofa. To see the plate and cup in the sink from breakfast, and the teaspoon that said Ezra had been having a yoghurt bender again.
And it felt wrong, too. Jesse sat heavily on the sofa and stared at the empty living room. It felt wrong. It wasn’t that he was here without Ezra—he’d stayed behind some mornings, lounging about and playing with Kitsa, when he’d stayed the night and Ezra had had to go off to work first thing in the morning. But it wasn’t the same as this. This time, Ezra wasn’t going to come back at four with an armful of books and muttering about dumb kids, dumber colleagues and the latest change to the curriculum. This time, Jesse would go to bed alone and wake up alone. This time, Jesse wasn’t feeding the cats because they were pestering him—he was feeding them because Ezra wouldn’t be, for weeks.
He hadn’t expected to ever be allowed back in this house again. Now he was here under nearly the worst circumstances possible, and it hurt.
Enough Page 14
