Daughter sorted, he turned his attention to the fate of his son.
Yet, as Dom followed in the wake of the frustratingly slow nurse, he found himself still worrying about Martha. She and her brother were close, unusually so for an eighteen-year-old and a fourteen-year-old. It made sense. When your mum abandons you, you cling on harder to those left behind. Dom hated Adele for many reasons, but top of the list was the way she’d left, the mess that followed and the impact it had had on Martha. It had turned her into a worrier. She was often anxious about small, irrelevant things, always fearful of what might happen. That was all Adele’s fault. Christ, how was Martha going to deal with this? What if Harry really was badly hurt? Or worse? Why couldn’t the nurse just tell him, one way or the other?
They came out of the lift and turned left. They seemed to be heading away from the action, into the quieter, calmer hinterland of the hospital. Dom rationalised that this must be a good sign. They were not going to A&E or the operating theatres; they were going to a ward. ‘Here we are.’ As the nurse laboriously punched numbers into the keypad, Dom tried hard to quell his mounting frustration. At last the door buzzed and they were through. She led him onto the ward. It was a long, old-style room with a lot of beds, many of which were filled with sleeping, unidentifiable forms. Dom spotted Harry straight away. He was sitting in one of the cubicles with the curtains open. The angled wall lamp cast a tight circle of light around him. Dom’s first instinct was to shout ‘Harry!’, rush over and hug his son, but something stopped him – respect for the other patients, the presence of the nurse, or was it something else? He wasn’t sure.
He asked the nurse if she might be able to find someone to talk to him about Harry’s injuries and treatment – effectively dismissing her – then took a few moments to compose himself. Dom found that he wanted to assess the situation, examine his son, get a grip on his emotions, before he was ready to move. Harry was sitting on a plastic chair, staring at his feet. He looked in one piece. In fact he looked remarkably normal. He certainly didn’t look as if he’d just been in a bad car accident. This reality shook Dom, bringing with it a rush of pure, powerful relief. He wouldn’t have to smash Martha’s world. Thank God.
And yet still he hesitated, processing the night’s events.
Harry hadn’t moved. Why hadn’t his son moved? Why was he frozen to the spot?
Dom crossed the room. On his approach, Harry looked up. The expression on his face stopped Dom in his tracks. Harry’s face wasn’t full of relief. It didn’t flood with love at the sight of him. It was blank. Totally devoid of any emotion. Instead of embracing his son, Dom put his hands in his pockets.
Perhaps that was the moment – that fraction of a second when neither of them reached out to the other in their need and shock – when it all started to go wrong.
‘You okay?’ Dom asked, as if it was nothing, as if the last three hours hadn’t been some of the worst in his life, and Harry’s.
Harry seemed to have to think before answering. ‘Yeah.’
Dom leant awkwardly against the bed and looked his son over. A quick scan revealed a scatter of cuts and abrasions on his face and neck, a bandage around his right hand and dressings on both his arms. That was it. Given the photos of the crash, the state of the car, the amount of broken glass and bent metal, the lack of physical damage was a miracle. So why weren’t they celebrating? Why weren’t they clinging onto to each other, crying with love and gratitude?
Harry had gone back to looking at the clumpy bandage.
‘Harry!’
‘What?’
Dom asked the only question that seemed relevant, ‘What happened?’
Chapter 7
JAKE’S PARENTS were the second family to be called.
They were escorted down to the bowels of the hospital, to the operating theatres, the place where the emergency cases were treated. The thought of her youngest being cut and stitched behind one of those frosted-glass doors made Anita feel nauseous. They walked the full length of the building, past one, two, three sealed-off areas, imagining the worst, until they were finally led into a curiously hushed and calm recovery bay. Anita ran and actually skidded across the room into the trolley in her rush to get to her son. The jolt made Jake open his eyes. ‘What the hell, Mum!’ His voice was gravelly. He was battered and bruised. But he was alive. After so many hours of not knowing, the reality of being with him, seeing him alive and hearing him speak, was overpowering. It was not so much a relief as a release.
He was half-sitting, half-lying on the trolley, his right leg hoisted up and attached to a complicated shiny contraption that arced over the bed. The pulleys and weights on the frame were wired into bolts that had been driven deep into his skin. Dave tried to avoid looking at his son’s smashed leg, but it was hard not to. There were patches of what looked like blue felt-tip marks around the holes and bolts in his skin. The sight made Dave feel light-headed. It was better to focus on his son’s top half. There was a drip in Jake’s arm and monitors attached to his bare chest, which was covered in sickly brown marks, like rust stains. There were cuts on his arms – some dressed, some not. He looked like some sort of weird hybrid creature: half-human, half-Meccano.
‘Oh my God, Jake,’ Anita sobbed.
‘Hey there, Bud.’ Dave’s emotions were too big to allow for anything other than small words.
‘Hey, Dad. Hey, Mum. Whoa! It’s okay, Mum. Calm down. I’m okay.’
Dave didn’t know where to touch his son. Every bit of him seemed claimed by the hospital equipment. Anita stroked Jake’s hair across his forehead and kissed his face. ‘Are you in pain?’
Jake rested his head back against his pillow and actually smiled. A dopey, very familiar expression. ‘Nah. They’ve given me the good stuff.’ He did sound high. ‘But I think I’m a bit fucked for the match.’
Despite everything, Dave and Anita laughed.
Chapter 8
FRAN AND MARCUS were the next to be called. They got up quietly, their hearts skittering, suddenly reluctant to face their fate.
Twenty minutes later, despite the doctor’s patient explanations of MRI scans and damage assessment, Fran was still struggling to put the sharp fragments of the night together and connect them to Jess. The transition from a normal Saturday night to the intensive care ward was so abrupt and abnormal that it was hard to take everything in. But above all, what Fran felt was relief. At least they were finally with Jess, able to hold her hand and talk to her, to see her face and touch her hair. They had their baby back. And despite the showreel of horrors that had been spooling through Fran’s head since the police had knocked at their door, Jess looked…okay. She was very pale and there was a nasty scrape along her jawline, but there were no dreadful contusions, no blood.
The doctor spoke of how lucky Jess had been to escape any pelvic or leg injuries. They had not had to operate, though he stressed that surgery might still be necessary, depending on the result of the scans and on Jess’s progress over the next twenty-four-to forty-eight-hour period. Fran was struggling to listen. She couldn’t stop looking at their daughter. Whoever had got her settled had done a good job of cleaning her up and making her comfortable. Jess looked serene. Peaceful. Not in pain. That would be the drugs – the sedation the doctor had spoken to them about. For that, Fran was grateful. She didn’t want Jess to be frightened, or distressed. After the trauma of the crash it was good that she was sleeping, unaware of all the lights and activity and machines. Jess was stable. That had to be good news.