Sophie's Encore (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It wasn’t until the door had shut behind him that I realized I didn’t even know whether he would be coming back to my house, going home, or staying at the hotel. I poured myself a glass of wine as I settled in front of the telly and surmised that, based on previous experience, he was most likely to stay at the hotel. He had always done so in the past, even when he was going out only miles from his very own bed.

I giggled and blushed as I recalled a night we had spent together at the Royal Hotel over a decade ago, getting very nearly, but not quite, up-close-and-personal. Yup, on balance, he would probably stay in a suite at the Hyde Star Inn.

I went to bed at eleven with only the slightest sense of unease, having spent all evening convincing myself that Dan would be okay, would probably have finished the gig already and be happily partying. Stretched out under my snuggly duvet, I fell asleep instantly and dreamed vivid dreams involving the kids and Dan playing a noisy game of hide-and-seek.

The house was dark and the alarm clock read three a.m. when a particularly loud bang woke me up. I lay in the darkness and steadied my breathing, suppressing recollections from my inadvertent drug bust and resulting fears of retribution.
There is nobody in the house apart from you and the kids
, I told myself calmly. However, the distinct and unmistakable sound of heavy footfalls coming up the stairs told me otherwise, and I stuffed a hand in my mouth to keep from screaming. For the fraction of a second, I considered that it might be Dan, but I dismissed the thought. He would be staying in the hotel. And anyway, the irregular, heavy thumps didn’t sound like him at all.

The footsteps reached the top landing and silence ensued. My mind was racing, and I was paralyzed with frustration at not being able to recall where I had left my mobile phone. The landline handset by the bed would beep when I lifted it off the cradle, and I really didn’t want that to happen. My bedroom door was only ajar, as always, and the man was sure to hear any noise I made. Hell and damnation, but did I never learn?

The silence was oppressive and I was shaking with fear. Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes before there was a massive thud, followed by a groan, followed by more silence.

The groan, however, was familiar, and I leapt out of bed. Nearly tripping over my own feet in my tired haste, I pulled open my bedroom door but ground to a halt at the threshold. Dan was sprawled across the floor at the top of the stairs. He had barely made it all the way up before collapsing. My first reaction was anger. How dare he to get so blindingly drunk and come back to my place, frightening me and quite possibly the kids, too?

Thoughts of waking the kids galvanized me into action, and I tiptoed across the landing to close their bedroom door. But when I returned to Dan, I had to shelve my anger. This man wasn’t drunk. Something else was wrong.

Even by the scant illumination from the nightlight on the landing, I could tell that Dan was white as a sheet, as ghostly pale as I had ever seen anyone, but with a bright heat burning red in his cheeks. I sank to the floor beside him, using the sleeve of my pajamas to wipe his brow. He looked at me and mumbled something incoherent. His eyes were feverish and unfocused with enormous dilated pupils. He was drenched in sweat and shaking violently, his breathing shallow in between bouts of hoarse coughing.

“Dan,” I whispered. “Dan, it’s Sophie. Can you hear me?”

No response.

My heart jumped into my mouth and a thousand thoughts chased each other around my head. What was I to do?

I stroked his forehead and tried to make eye contact, which was difficult as Dan’s gaze skittered all over the place. Primal fear took hold of me, and I rose to my feet abruptly.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” I declared and turned to go into my bedroom for the phone. A desperate, violent gurgling sound stopped me in my tracks.

“No. Please, no.” Dan’s words were barely audible between his ragged breaths and I paid no heed.

“Dan, you need medical attention,” I reiterated and took another step away from him. Unexpectedly, Dan’s hand shot out and clamped around my ankle with surprising strength. I nearly fell over with the motion.

“No,” Dan rasped again and tried to speak on, but his words drowned in another coughing fit. He held onto my ankle for dear life while his lungs heaved, and I slowly sat down again. The act of restraining me and the effort of coughing had worn my rock star out completely. His hair was matted with perspiration and the brightness in his cheeks shone even stronger than before. Dan desperately needed a doctor. Evidently, he didn’t want one. What was going on?

“Dan, let me get you to bed at least.” I grasped at the next reasonable course of action. He had to get off the landing for his own sake, as well as mine and my family’s. If the kids woke and saw him like this….

Dan tried to speak again, but this time his tongue merely lolled in his mouth and no further words came out. I swallowed hard, trying to control my panic. I stroked his face some more, but his eyes were closed and his eyelids barely fluttered in response to my caress.

“Dan,” I said again, speaking a little more loudly. “I need to get you into bed, okay?”

Dan rolled his head from side to side before pulling his legs up into a fetal position as his body was consumed by a violent attack of the shivers. I held his face in both my hands, simultaneously trying to stem his quaking and make him look at me.

“Dan!” This time, my voice was nearly a shout. “Dan, look at me!”

No response again. His eyes remained closed and his mouth worked furiously as if he were chewing. Next thing I knew, he tried to bring a fist up to his mouth. He was uncoordinated and clumsy, and he never made it, but the act caught my attention.

“What have you got in there?” I demanded. “Let’s see.”

Dan made an incoherent sound. There was a sinking feeling of foreboding in my tummy, and I was watching the two of us as though I was detached from the scene. I saw myself take Dan’s hand, shaking and clammy, and pry away his fingers, one by one, until I revealed a small, orange-tinted but transparent plastic bottle half full with small pills. I took in a sharp breath as I turned the bottle over and over in my hands. There was no label on it, which I took to be a bad sign. Something was very seriously wrong here. And I needed help with this; I needed help helping Dan.

Dan was becoming more agitated by the second. With apparent effort, he opened his eyes again and looked around wildly until he finally saw the bottle in my hand. Weak and disorientated though he was, he nonetheless tried to grab the pills back out of my hands. Anger rose in my throat alongside bile, and I whipped the offending pharmaceuticals out of his reach. “Oh no you don’t,” I hissed. “You’ve done far too much damage already, you stupid man.”

I stuffed the bottle into the breast pocket of my pajamas and did the third weightlifter heaving-rock-star-into bed impression of my life. Momentarily too furious to be compassionate, I yanked at Dan’s arms and upper body until I had him almost upright. When he stumbled and refused to cooperate, I slapped his face to get him to focus.

“Get up and walk, dammit,” I hissed. “If the kids see you like this, I’ll kill you.” I didn’t mean that bit, of course, but it got a reaction. Dan made a grand effort, and together, we stumbled the few steps into my bedroom, where Dan collapsed yet again and passed out like a dead weight. I closed the door and switched on my bedside light. For a minute, I sat on the floor and wept.

I pulled the vial of pills out of my pocket and looked at it again. My hands now shaking almost as much as Dan’s had, I fumbled with the cap until I had the bottle open and shook some pills into the palm of my hand. They were white and looked fairly innocuous, almost like sweets, but they weren’t stamped with any pharmaceutical company’s logo or make number, and that in itself was the worst piece of news. Humble painkillers, they were not.

“What am I to do?” I wailed, purely for my own benefit as Dan’s eyes were closed and he was very much passed out. He was breathing but he was shaking all over, and I knew I had to do something. Well, not something. Dan needed an ambulance, he did, he really did. But he had begged me not to make that call.

Was I to listen to my friend, or to my gut instinct? How much time did I have to make that decision? Could I risk losing another of the men in my life?

I grabbed Dan’s wrist and tried to take his pulse. It took me ages to find it, and when I did, it was thready and fast, but it was there. I gave myself permission to make one more call before summoning the medical services. One more minute. Just to be sure I was doing the right thing for him.

Rachel answered after the second ring.

“Sophie?”

“Rach,” I whispered as loudly as I could. “You have to help me. I’m sorry to wake you.”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” she soothed me. “Henry is teething, and you know what that’s like. What’s up?”

“It’s Dan,” I sniffled but forced myself to get a grip. I related events as coherently as I could, ending on the hateful orange bottle of little white pills.

“I don’t understand,” I muttered. “What’s going on?”

Rachel responded with a volley of quick-fire questions. Had Dan been working hard? Had he seemed strange? Up and down, perhaps? Hyper, at times?

I answered each question with a simple ‘yes,’ desperate to cut to the chase now. “What’s going on? I have to call that ambulance, right?”

Rachel spoke quickly, urgency in her every word. “Dan’s been taking something. He needs a doctor fast.”

“I know! But Rach, he begged me not to call an ambulance—”

“Call 999, now. He’s done drugs, and you need to help him.”

“I—”

“Sophie, he may be dying! Hang up, ring that ambulance, and I’ll be round as soon as I can. Do it. NOW.”

The line clicked dead as my friend hung up and the shock propelled me into action. Feeling stupid now for indulging Dan’s request, I dialed 999 with clumsy fingers.
He may be dying. He may be dying
. Rachel’s words ran round and round my head and I barely managed to stop myself from howling in despair.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

While I waited to be connected, I retrieved a thermometer from my bedside drawer were it lived in continual readiness for child-related crises, and I took his temperature. He was running a fever of forty degrees centigrade, the equivalent of one hundred and four, and I panicked even more.
Hurry up, operator, I have a sick man here!

Although it seemed an eternity, in reality, I spoke with an emergency operator in mere seconds. The dispatcher was great. She asked me short, relevant questions, reassured me, gave me advice, and told me an ambulance would be there within minutes. Meanwhile, I was to make sure that Dan didn’t choke in the event of vomiting and stay with him in case he woke up or had a seizure.

“I’ll be staying on the line with you until the ambulance arrives, Ma’am, I’ll be right here, okay?” the operator assured me after finishing her instructions. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I breathed, “thank you.” It was a relief having her there, like a lifeline. Although it was a little awkward struggling into my clothes while holding the phone. Then again, if I were to go to the hospital with Dan, I didn’t want to do it in pajamas. I put the phone on the bedside table, face up so I wouldn’t inadvertently hang up, and got myself organized.

Quite suddenly, Dan shifted in my bed and rolled on to his side. He started coughing and retching. His breath rattled ominously and it sounded as though he was choking on something. Without warning, he spat out a few globs of foul-smelling, rusty-colored phlegm. The sputum soiled his shirt and the sheets, and more kept coming, but Dan choked on it and swallowed some down. Then he started vomiting. He coughed and spluttered and heaved, and the bilious brown vomit kept on coming, wave after wave it.

“Ma’am? Ma’am, what’s going on?” The headset on my bedside table emitted the operator’s voice, and I gave a little start. In the shock of the moment, I had forgotten that the line was still open.

“He’s coughed something up and then he was sick.” I snatched up the phone and spoke quickly. “He’s stopped now but there’s sick everywhere.”

“Are his airwaves clear? Is he breathing okay?”

I nodded in response but remembered that the operator couldn’t see me. “Yes, he’s breathing freely. Well, it’s ragged and raspy as before, but he’s breathing.”

“Good. Keep him on his side, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed, glad of someone to tell me what to do. I put the phone onto speaker and put it on my bedside table. Then I sat by Dan’s head and stroked his hair, his face, holding him steady on his side as he heaved again, making sure all the come-back was clear of his airwaves and mouth and talking to him all the while.

“Good, you’re doing great,” the operator praised me. “It won’t be long now until the crew get to you.”

After a couple of minutes, Dan was finally spent and the vomiting stopped. He was awake, but barely conscious, and he didn’t seem to recognize me. I nipped out to the bathroom to retrieve a washcloth and wiped down his face, noting again how hot he was to the touch.
Hurry, ambulance, hurry!

My mobile phoned beeped. It turned out that it was under the bed and I seized it swiftly. Rachel had texted to say that she was outside my house.

“Rachel is here,” I explained to Dan and added for the benefit of the operator, “A friend’s here. She…she’ll be sitting with the children if…if…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. “I’m just going to let her in.”

“You do that, Ma’am,” the operator acknowledged my statement.

Downstairs, Rachel gave me an enormous hug. “You okay? You look beat.”

“He’s been sick. Like, everywhere. And he’s running a fever, a really high one. I’m so worried.”

“Did you call the ambulance?”

I nodded. “They should be here any minute. And the operator is still on the line, too.”

“Good. All will be well. You’re doing all you can. Where’s your bucket and mop?”

Rachel was pragmatic as always. I let her get on with collecting some cleaning stuff while I hurried back to Dan’s bedside. I had barely been gone two minutes, but he had been sick again. Because I hadn’t been there, he had simply spat where he lay and he was covered. The phone was talking incessantly.