Sticks and Stones (20 page)

We’ll talk about that later

‘Shouldn’t we be getting one of the girls to do this?’ Tom asked as he watched Dylan rifle through Lou’s underwear drawer and shove a handful into the hot pink wheelie bag he had out on the bed.

Dylan shrugged. ‘It’s not anything I haven’t seen before mate. You know what Lou’s like; this stuff is her daywear around the flat, summer or winter.’

‘Still, I think I’ll just…’ Tom started backing away from the pile of brightly coloured silk and lace now sprawled across Lou’s bed. Dylan knew it would be entirely fruitless to search for more appropriate, possibly cotton-based, underwear. Just like he knew that there was a raggedy old, grey bit of cloth under her pillow that she’d had since childhood. The same one that she had stuffed up her sleeve and taken to every test or exam she’d ever done. He knew all these things because he
knew
Lou, inside and out. He didn’t give a monkey’s if him rooting through her stuff was a tad inappropriate; he was the one who would know absolutely what she wanted to have in hospital with her.

The sense of numbness and unreality still had him firmly in its grip as he started digging into the pile of clean clothes on the bottom of her wardrobe, looking for some sleepwear that was vaguely decent for a hospital stay. After realizing that nothing Lou had was decent, and grabbing all the tiny sets of what passed in Lou’s eyes for pyjamas he could, he stood suddenly and banged his head on the shelf above him. Something fell onto his head and then what seemed like hundreds of photos, bits of paper and random objects rained down on him. He blinked when he his own smiling face staring up at him from the floor.

As he took in the rest of the chaos he realized that it wasn’t just one image of him amongst hundreds of others of their friends; all the photos were of him. Sometimes he was alone in the picture and sometimes he was with other people but he was always the focus. It was weird seeing himself in so many different poses: happy, pissed off and giving the camera a one-finger salute, drunk, half naked on the beach (he noted with some satisfaction that that photograph was particularly dog-eared). There were bits of paper too with his handwriting all over them, sometimes combined with Lou’s. He recognized them as some of the notes he’d passed her in lectures at Uni, and more recently in the Grand Round teaching at the hospital. Looking back on it he’d sent more notes to Lou than anyone else. There was something about being the one to make her do what he called her ‘blowfish face’: the face she made when she was desperately trying to hold in a laugh (because let’s face it, his notes, which were often accompanied by liberal illustrations, were bloody funny) that gave him a feeling of huge achievement.

He lifted up a creased piece of A4 notepaper, and was taken back in time to a biochemistry lecture ten years ago. He’d drawn a caricature of Professor Thomas in dominatrix gear spanking a cheeky-looking mitochondria (this had been sparked off by the prof saying how some intracellular organisms could be naughty in certain circumstances). He could remember Lou’s snort like it was yesterday as it filled the lecture theatre, rapidly followed by the loud sounds of her choking on her bottled water. Her face had been bright red, her eyes watering and still she was so incredibly beautiful it almost hurt to look at her.

Dylan grabbed the shoebox to start carefully replacing all the photos, and noticed something small rattling at the bottom. He reached in a pulled out a small pink and white shell. After staring at it for a second and turning it over and over in his palm he finally put it back in the box and sat down heavily, leaning against the side of the wardrobe. He spent a couple of minutes staring into space as the numbness of the last few hours started to lift. A slow smile spread across his face before he got up to sort out the mess. He needed to get back to Lou.

*****

Lou cracked her eyes open and turned her head to the side. She blinked as she took in an unshaven, sleeping Dylan swamping the hospital chair next to her. Her hand went to her neck against the burning in her throat when she swallowed. There was a glass of water on her side table and she made the mistake of trying to sit up to reach it. White-hot pain ripped through her midsection and she gasped, lying back down on the bed with both hands clutching her stomach. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and when she turned to the side Dylan’s green eyes were staring back at her, his face splitting into a huge, and what looked like relieved, smile.

‘Hey sleepyhead,’ he rasped, his voice heavy with sleep.

All Lou could do was stare up at him in shock. What on earth was he doing here? Her shock deepened as he reached down to tuck a chunk of her hair behind her ear, completely ignoring her attempt to flinch away from his touch. Unfortunately her stomach didn’t seem to like any sudden movement, and even that small flinch caused another shot of pain. She watched Dylan’s smile vanish as he noticed the tightening of her features. He frowned as he looked down at her hands, now clutching at the sheets over her abdomen. Before she knew it he’d nabbed her remote and pressed the call bell. A harassed looking nurse Lou recognized popped her head round the door.

‘Oh hi you’re awake,’ she said cheerfully looking at Lou. ‘What do you need?’

‘She’s in pain,’ Dylan answered for her and Lou narrowed her eyes at him. ‘If you wouldn’t mind getting some morphine for her and I’d like to speak to the anaesthetist on call.’ Dylan’s voice was at his most amiable charm-the-knickers-off-the-nurses-to-get-what-I-want and was accompanied by his trademark ultra charming smile.

‘Right…okay. I’ve just got to finish the drug round so I’ll be there in about – ‘

‘She’s in pain
now
,’ Dylan clipped and Lou’s head whipped round to him in shock. His face was stony. Smiley, amiable Dylan a thing of the past. ‘She needs morphine
now
, and I want to speak to anaesthetics
now
. Or do I have to call the ward sister?’ Lou’s mouth dropped open; Dylan never spoke to any of the nurses like that. He never spoke to anyone like that. The nurse’s face had paled as she backed out of the room.

‘No problem, no problem,’ she said hastily, abandoning the drugs trolley behind her in her rush to get to the treatment room.

‘Dylan,’ Lou said in a hoarse whisper, unable to get anything else out through her burning throat. ‘What are you - ?

His eyes snapped back to hers and he smiled again. ‘Do you remember talking to the surgeons on ITU babes?’

She frowned and concentrated. She remembered bright lights, pain, Frankie’s voice asking questions, Dylan’s voice telling her she was okay, his big warm hand engulfing hers.

‘You were pretty out of it,’ Dylan explained, after taking in her confused expression. ‘Do you remember what happened?’

Lou nodded slowly and shivered when she thought of the knife going in like a punch to her stomach, and the horror of the blood surrounding her. Her eyes flew to Dylan’s again in a panic.

‘Benji,’ she whispered frantically. ‘Is he okay?’

‘He’s fine,’ Dylan said, gently pushing her back down into the bed to stop her straining her stomach more than she already had. ‘Benji’s tough as old boots, so is Alun. The same cannot be said of that evil twpsyn* that attacked you. I doubt he’ll live down being beaten up by a five year old and a frail eighty-five-year-old recovering from a stroke in a hurry.

‘What happened to him?’ Lou felt a jolt of fear as she remembered Mr Talbot’s furious face and wild eyes when he shoved her back into the wall.

‘He’s still on ITU,’ Dylan told her. ‘Alun smashed his skull in pretty good. They had to drain a small subdural haematoma and it’s early days, but unfortunately they think he’ll recover.’

Lou squeezed her eyes shut and tried to control her breathing. Her fear was in no way rational but she knew she’d prefer it if he were dead.

‘Even if he recovers, he’s still totally screwed babes,’ Dylan said, as if weirdly being able to read her mind. ‘Not just for stabbing a doctor nearly to death, but also for the amount of class A drugs he had on him when he was brought in, not to mention the amount of drugs and money at his house when it was raided yesterday. Seems that was why he wasn’t letting social services in to see Mrs Talbot, in case they saw anything they shouldn’t, which would have been likely since most of the rooms were being used to grow cannabis and the rest had a large amount of heroine and cocaine strewn all over the place.

‘The selfish prick didn’t want to have to move his “business” elsewhere; that’s why he made such a fuss about “continuing health care” funding for his mum. He needed her out but he didn’t want her to have to sell her house to pay for a nursing home, seeing as it was supplying half of Cardiff’s druggies with their regular fixes.

‘You don’t have to worry about him now Lou. I promise.’

Lou looked away from him and nodded, just as the nurse rushed back into the room.

‘Okay, morphine,’ she chirped, checking the syringe and reaching for Lou’s cannula.

‘But I didn’t – ‘ Lou was cut off by another jolt of pain so severe that she could feel all the blood drain out of her face and a wave of dizziness come over her. Dylan cupped her jaw with his hands and smoothed her cheekbones with his thumbs, his eyes searching her face. The shock of having his face so near to hers and the concern in his eyes distracted her from the pain. Before she realized what was happening the nurse had administered the morphine and was backing out of the room.

‘Hey there,’ Lou heard from the doorway and turned to see Cassie smiling across the room at her. ‘It’s so great to see you awake. How are you feeling?’

‘She’s in pain,’ Dylan replied for her, his terse tone causing Cassie to stutter slightly in her walk over to Lou’s bedside. Lou scowled at Dylan; she was getting really pissed off with this whole answering for her thing. Although she had to admit, now the pain was rescinding, that the morphine might have been a good idea.

‘Oh dear,’ Cassie muttered, eyeing this new, angry Dylan warily. ‘Well, we could – ‘

‘She needs a PCA Cassie,’ Dylan practically growled. ‘She should have had one set up before she came to properly.’

‘Now, I’m not sure that – ‘

‘She’s in
pain
,’ Dylan repeated, and with the strain in his voice it almost seemed as if Lou’s pain was causing
him
physical pain. ‘I want it sorted.’

‘Okay,’ Cassie said slowly, and Lou got the strange impression that this wasn’t the first time she’d had to deal with a less than reasonable Dylan. Had he been this ridiculous the whole time she’d been unconscious? And for God’s sake, why? ‘But I think now that she’s more awake we can try oral analgesia as a first port of – ‘

‘No.’ Dylan’s hand sliced through the air to emphasize his point, and Lou stared at him in fascination. What on earth had gotten into him? ‘She needs a fucking PCA. I’m not going to have her – ‘

‘Stand down crazy man,’ Lou managed in her weird raspy whisper. ‘I can speak for my bloody self.’ She swallowed and then blinked for a little longer that was normal. In addition to the blessed absence of pain, a warm fuzziness was now enveloping her and she could feel herself start to drift.

‘Hey gorgeous, stay with me a little longer, yeah?’ Dylan’s face was back to being inches from hers, his hands cupping her jaw again. ‘Come on, you’ve got to stay awake. Who’s going to fight with me and call me a prick if you go to sleep again?’

‘Prick,’ Lou whispered, a small smile tugging at her lips but she couldn’t fight the fuzziness any longer and her eyes drifted shut. Just as she was about to lose herself in sleep again she managed to whisper, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Looking after you; you’re my best friend,’ he whispered back, his mouth close to her ear.

‘Why are you being weird?’ she asked, her voice fading even more.

There was a long pause before he whispered back, ‘We’ll talk about that later.’ Lou could hear the smile in his voice and frowned, but was sucked into the void before she could reply.

Oh, the
Welshman’s
here

‘I won’t poke her in the tummy; I’m not stupid,’ Lou could hear a familiar high-pitched voice cut into her dream and start dragging her back to full consciousness. ‘I’ll just poke her in the cheek or something.’

‘Benji,’ Lou heard Frankie whisper in a warning tone. ‘No poking, full stop. We’re going to wait until she wakes up by herself, and you promised Mummy that you wouldn’t make any noise if you came.’

Lou could hear feet scuffing on the floor as Benji muttered, ‘She’s been asleep bloody ages.’

‘She’s recovering.’

‘Recovering is dead
boring
. All she’s doing is lying in bed. I haven’t even got to see where she was stitched up.’

‘You’re not here just to look at where she’s been stitched up Benji.’

‘Auntie Frankie, if you think that you can bring me to see Lou after she had her tummy unzipped and not let me see it you’re bonkers. I’m a six-year-old boy for crying out loud.’

‘Stop saying “bloody”, and stop saying “for crying out loud”. Your uncle was wrong to give you all the gory details.’

‘What’s wrong with “for crying out loud”? There’s no bad words in it.’

‘It’s just…not really the kind of thing a normal – ‘

‘Well I’m not normal; I’m special.’ Benji’s proud voice filled the room as Lou heard Frankie sigh in frustration.

‘Yes honey, I know you’re special, Mummy and Daddy know you’re special, your brothers know you’re special, your teachers knows you’re special, your friends know you’re special, even the blinking lady in the hospital gift shop knows you’re special,’ Lou heard Frankie whisper-shout at Benji, and her lips twitched as she imagined him regaling everyone in his path with his heroic story. ‘But, like Mummy said, however special you are, you still
can’t say the b-word.’

Lou took pity on Frankie who was clearly losing this round with Benji and made a concerted effort to open her eyes.

‘Hey slugger,’ she croaked and Benji’s eyes widened, his little face paling.

‘Hey,’ he replied, his voice lacking his usual confidence. ‘Why’s your voice funny?’

She cleared her throat, but her larynx was too ravaged for it to make much difference. ‘Don’t worry about my voice, honey. It’ll get better.’ Benji’s face was still pale; he didn’t look reassured in the slightest. He bit his lip and glanced up at Frankie who smiled encouragingly.

‘You’ve been sleeping
a lot
,’ he said accusingly, some of his usual confidence returning.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said as she reached up her hand to ruffle his hair, then moved it down to the back of his neck. She put some light pressure on and once his face was near enough to hers she risked the surge of abdominal pain she knew she would experience as she lifted her head up to kiss his cheek. ‘Thank you honey,’ she whispered in his ear, and when she pulled back she saw his eyes were wet. Lou waited as he sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He allowed Frankie to give him a quick squeeze from the side, but did not allow any actual tears to fall.

‘Do you know how brave you are?’ Lou asked

‘Yes of course,’ he replied, puffing out his little chest, and causing Lou to risk another surge of pain as she laughed. Turned out that laughing was a bad idea however, and she couldn’t keep the agony from wiping the smile off her face and causing her brows to pinch. She looked down, finding the button for the PCA, which she had of course been given after Dylan’s ridiculous overprotective crazy-man display. She had to admit that over the last forty-eight hours she had been begrudgingly grateful to him for being so pushy, the pain was pretty bad.

He’d visited a few times since that first confusing awakening and had been just as weird as before; trying to make all sorts of decisions for her, nosing around in her medical charts, rivalling the Spanish inquisition whenever anyone involved in her care made the mistake of dropping in. He seemed to have a fair amount of time on his hands for a newly appointed consultant, and the really weird thing was that people were sharing all sorts of medical information with him about her as if he were her family.

Even though his visits were frequent, she had the distinct impression that if it wasn’t for Frankie policing her visitors, and the fact the ward stuck strictly to visiting hours, and only allowed two people in at a time, he would be welded to the chair next to her bed. Yesterday the nurse had to practically physically eject him from the room at the end of visiting hours with him fussing around over her fluid balance and scar healing. She drew the line when it was her bowels that were up for discussion, making her voice as threatening as it could be in its weakened state to get her point across.

Once Benji had relaxed and was used to her voice he livened up, and started asking increasingly gory questions, wanting to go into detail about exactly which organs Lou was missing now, and then about exactly what a spleen looked like. Lou was pretty exhausted by the time he left, but relieved that he did not seem in the least bit scarred by the experience. Indeed he had proudly told Lou that he acted out the entire car-park scenario for his whole school, coming up for a special mention and a standing ovation in assembly (acting out a gruesome assault probably wasn’t what the teachers had anticipated would happen when they called Benji up on stage, but they should have known that with Benji anything is possible).

*****

‘Sweetheart,’ Lou’s father said, moving forward to give her a tentative hug where she was sitting up in bed. His eyes looked suspiciously wet as he pulled back and scanned her frail body.

‘Daddy,’ she whispered, her husky voice even more broken with her attempt to hold back tears.

‘Why on earth aren’t you in a private hospital Louise,’ Lou’s mother sneered as she eyed the drab side room, startling Lou out of her moment of connection with her dad. ‘God knows
you
can afford it. Is this some sort of socialist protest thing darling?’

Lucy, one of the nurses who Lou particularly liked, chose that moment to come into her side room.

‘I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to stay in this dump, looked after by these…people.’ Lou flushed with embarrassment as she saw her mother cast a disdainful look at the Lucy, who was in the process of taking down Lou’s empty iv fluid bag. Ever the professional Lucy just smiled at Lou, gave her a small wink, and whisked the bag and its paraphernalia away.

‘Your fluid intake is much better now Lou,’ Lucy told her. ‘I think we can do without the ivs now okay?’

‘Shouldn’t a
doctor
be making those decisions?’ Lou’s mother put in. ‘Someone qualified to do so.’

‘Mum,’ Lou hissed. ‘She’s a
qualified
nurse. It doesn’t take a doctor to see how much fluid I’m drinking and pissing.’

‘Louise Sands! I will not have you using foul language in front of your father and me. I don’t care how vulgar you are around your so-called friends…’ Lou rubbed her temples as her mothers shrill voice drilled into her brain, putting down her friends, her lifestyle, her lack of care about her own safety. ‘And, worst of all, to put a child in danger Louise, I don’t know how you could have possibly thought – ‘

‘Mum,’ Lou cut her off, having to strain her painful throat to make herself heard over her mother’s piercing voice. She was too weak to deal with this attack, and as usual her dad was just standing on the sidelines. She knew her mother was just trying to get to her, but by choosing to focus on the danger Benji had been in she’d scored a direct hit. ‘Please don’t – ‘

‘Hi there,’ Dylan cut her off as he burst into the room, looking between Lou and her family. To anyone else he would look relaxed, like he was just there for a casual visit, but Lou knew him better; she could see the muscle twitching in his jaw, and the barely leashed fury in his eyes as he glared at her mother.

‘Lovely to see you again Mr Sands,’ he said, moving forward to shake her dad’s hand. ‘Mrs Sands,’ he added, pointedly not offering his hand in her direction.

*****

Dylan had heard that bitch’s cruel words from where he was waiting at the ward desk and he didn’t care if Lou was only allowed two visitors at a time, he wasn’t going to sit there and leave her to fend for herself when she couldn’t even speak or move without pain. He was glad that he’d charmed Lucy and a number of other nurses on the ward to call him if Lou’s parents arrived. Lou might not think she needed him but that would change soon enough, and he wasn’t going to let them upset her in the meantime.

‘Oh, the
Welshman’s
here,’ Mrs Sands sneered. ‘Lou darling, have you finally managed to get your claws into – ‘

‘Yes Mrs Sands I’m here and my name’s Dylan in case you’ve forgotten, although at your age dementia is a real threat you know.’ Dylan was not about to listen to Mrs Sands attempt to embarrass her daughter again. He knew now, after seeing the contents of that shoebox, what she was on about with this. And he definitely knew that Lou had never fancied Wet-Pant Ewan. It was something Lou and he would discuss when the time was right, not when she was lying in pain in a hospital bed being ripped into by this harpy.

‘Michael,’ Mrs Sands spluttered. ‘Are you going to let him speak to me like that?’

‘Well I… ‘

Dylan watched as Mr Sands looked from his wife to Dylan, and then at his daughter in the bed.

‘I can’t believe this,’ Mrs Sands spat out, hands on her hips. ‘No wonder your brother won’t even bother to come home from whatever godforsaken corner of the globe he’s hiding in to see you; probably doesn’t want to put up with your vulgar ways and the horrific company you keep.’

Dylan was about to burst out laughing at how ridiculous she sounded, but his amusement quickly morphed into anger when he caught sight of Lou, slumped back in the bed, eyes closed and looking utterly defeated.

‘I begged him to stay out there mum,’ she whispered. ‘He’s got to keep the project going or it’ll dissolve, there’s so much corruption and – ‘

‘Waste of time, waste of money,’ Mrs Sands said dismissively. ‘I don’t know what you two were thinking. There is a reason that those countries have never civilized you know; the people out there won’t ever change, they’re just violent savages and if you think – ‘

‘How dare you.’ Dylan had been holding onto his temper by a thread since she mentioned Jimbo not coming home for Lou, but putting down Lou’s achievements of the last year was too much. ‘Do you even know what she’s accomplished out there? How many lives she’s saved? She’s built an entire wing of a hospital and staffed it with her money and her blood sweat and tears. Do you think that was easy? Of course you wouldn’t understand why she did it because you are nothing like her. She’s the most compassionate, strongest person with the biggest heart I’ve ever met in my life. How a monster like you could possibly have produced someone like her is a miracle. And then for her to remain the person she is in the face of her miserable, abusive childhood is an even bigger miracle. You make me sick.’ He then turned to Mr Sands. ‘You both make me sick. Jesus, man up and tell her where to get off already you pathetic loser.’

Dylan’s tirade was met by a stunned silence. Lou was staring up at him in complete confusion. How did he know the details of everything she had done with Jimbo in Africa? She hadn’t even told Frankie about the funding for the hospital. Jimbo had initially thought it was a mad idea but as it started to take shape, and it became clear that the charity he worked for would not approve the project, he’d decided to match Lou’s donation. Between them they had achieved what many thought would be impossible.

In her typical style Mrs Sands ignored most of the uncomfortable information in Dylan’s speech, and focused instead on what she considered the only important aspect.

‘That money was not left in trust to you for you to squander on pointless charity projects Louise. If your grandfather was alive today he would – ‘

‘He would have been very proud.’ Mr Sands was standing very still, his arms straight down by his sides, and his hands balled into fists. ‘He was
my
father Evelyn. I think I would know better than you what he wanted that trust fund used for. He spent a lot of time in Africa, and he would be very proud of what Lou’s done.’

‘I…I…Richard, you can’t – ‘ Mrs Sands stuttered.

‘Abusive?’ he cut her off, no longer looking at his wife but down at his daughter, that one word sounding strangled and almost like it had cost him a piece of his soul to voice.

‘Daddy,’ Lou whispered, tears swimming in her eyes. ‘I- ‘

‘She beat you.’ Mr Sands voice was flat. It was a statement, not a question, almost as though he was coming to a realization that deep in his subconscious he had already known. ‘How was I so blind?’

‘I have no idea,’ Dylan said and they all turned to him. ‘I knew in the first hour of meeting her what a vicious bitch she was. What I do know is that you’ve both outstayed your welcome and you’ll be leaving now.’ Dylan’s massive arms were crossed over his broad chest and his face was set in stone. He had no idea how Lou had coped with this sick excuse for a family for so long, but she was not doing it on her own from now on.