The Story of Us (6 page)

Fortunately he appeared to be the kind of man who valued silence over mindless conversation-filling, which was lucky because I wasn't able to concentrate on anything except the nightmare we were currently living through. I'd even needed his help completing some hospital forms which a nurse had given to me on a clipboard. My hand was trembling too much to write even my name and address, so I gratefully allowed him to take the pen and board from my hands and complete the form in sure bold lettering as I dictated my details.

At my request he'd left the cubicle curtains open, as though somehow news would reach us quicker without that thin barrier of fabric holding it back. We watched a continual stream of medical staff pass by our bay, some rushing with purpose and haste, others just idling by, some mindlessly chatting away, apparently oblivious to the fact that the road leading to our future was about to be altered beyond all recognition. When I overheard two nurses deeply engrossed in a discussion about a ludicrous plot twist from some television show, real and genuine anger flooded through me.
Television?
You had to be kidding me? They should be saving lives, doing CPR on speedily pushed stretchers, or barking out unintelligible orders that ended in the word
‘stat'
, not discussing some TV programme, for Christ's sake! Jack saw my agitation, and patted the back of my hand understandingly. ‘It's just another day at the office for them.'

‘Not for me.'

‘I know,' he replied consolingly.

Richard arrived in a tornado of panic, concern and alcohol fumes. His footsteps preceded his arrival, slapping noisily against the tiled floor, as he ran the length of the triage area, calling my name. He burst into the cubicle, and Jack immediately got out of the chair he'd been occupying beside the bed. I'd thought I was done with crying, thought I'd already wrung myself dry in Jack's arms, but apparently not. Just one sight of Richard's familiar face, suffused in worry, concern and love and suddenly the Sahara was replaced by a mini Niagara. Richard held me against him, rocking me like a child, and even though he smelled more like a distillery than a person, it felt good to be in his arms.

‘Hush, hush,' he soothed against my hair, and I tried not to notice the faint but still discernible thickened slur in his voice, and the aroma of stale cigarette smoke he appeared to be kippered in. He'd been out on his stag night, and it was totally unjustified of me to feel angry that while we'd been crawling through debris and flames on the side of the road, he'd been in a bar, getting drunk. But I felt it anyway.

‘What on earth happened, Emma?' he asked, apparently not noticing my wince of pain as he sat down on the foot of the bed, and rested one arm against my lower legs. Jack swooped in like a hawk, removing the arm from my shins and earning an annoyed glare from my fiancé. He looked up at Jack as though he'd only just noticed he was there.

‘Her legs are badly bruised,' Jack explained succinctly and even though Richard looked abashed and apologetic, something told me that, first-impression-wise, he'd just failed a major test.

‘And your face…' Richard continued. ‘It looks really bad.'

There's not a lot you can say to an observation like that. Fortunately I didn't have to.

‘She cut her head when the car flipped over, before it crashed into the ditch, and trapped her in the wreckage. After that, it burst into flames.' Jack's statement of what had happened, although accurate, was deliberately harsh and cuttingly shocking.

‘My God, Emma. You could have
died
. I could have lost you.' There was such vulnerability in his voice, I could only hold out my arms to him. For a moment I was so absorbed in the reversal of our roles, I almost didn't notice Jack was about to exit the cubicle.

‘Wait!' I called to his retreating back, and for a moment I thought he wasn't going to turn around.

‘You're going?' I asked incredulously, knowing I had no right to be surprised, but feeling it all the same. He'd already gone far beyond the role of Good Samaritan with everything he'd done that night. Why on earth should he remain here, now that Richard was here? Yet still, I felt something akin to panic at seeing him go.

Jack's eyes met mine, and I knew a moment of real dread as I realised I would probably never see him again. Could he read that feeling? Maybe. He'd been pretty intuitive at knowing what was going through my head all night. He paused, then took a decisive step back towards the bed. We both ignored the confused look Richard was giving us, as his head turned from me to Jack, as though trying to fathom out a complicated plot in a play he'd missed the start of.

Jack smiled gently down at me and picked up one of my hands, holding it carefully in his own. ‘It's time for me to go now. You're going to be fine. I really hope everything works out for your friend.'

I nodded, my throat suddenly too full to squeeze a word past the lump that was lodged within it.

‘Look after yourself, Emma,' he said softly, bending down and kissing me gently on the forehead.

‘What—?' Richard exclaimed, swivelling around to follow Jack's tall shape as he strode quickly out of the cubicle. ‘What the hell…? Why did that bloody doctor just kiss you goodbye?'

Two strong black coffees later, Richard could probably have passed a basic sobriety test. By the time he'd accompanied the entourage of nurses and orderlies who wheeled my bed to the X-ray department, he was at least capable of holding a coherent conversation. Not that I'd have recommended putting him in charge of anything mechanical or operating equipment of any kind, not after watching his torturous attempts to send my dad a text to let him know what was happening.

Of course, he did turn a very unpleasant shade of green when they cleaned up and sutured the wound on my forehead, but that was more due to a basic weak constitution and a phobia of needles, rather than alcohol. In the end, someone had stuck a moulded plastic chair behind him, which considering the way he'd been swaying on his feet, was probably a good call.

As the morning inched ever closer, he stayed by my side, refusing to leave me even when I was eventually moved to a small single room, where they insisted I was to remain under observation for the rest of the night. He left my room only to make regular trips to the nurses' station to ask for updates on Amy, and was repeatedly given the same standard reply.

‘Still in surgery,' he reported back to me at some time after six. The lights in my small side room were turned down to their lowest setting, presumably to encourage sleep, but nothing had ever felt less likely to happen. No night I'd lived through had ever felt this long.

I knew at once when he'd received different news. I swear the door handle opened strangely; his shadow fell in a peculiar way through the gap when the door slowly swung open. He stood awkwardly, and there was a look I have never seen before on his face. I prayed to God that nothing would ever happen in our lives, that I'd ever have to see it again.

He stood immobile and silent, and I just
knew
.

‘No,' I protested, shaking my head in denial of something that hadn't yet been voiced. ‘No, no, no.'

His eyes began to fill, yet still he never moved.

‘It can't be true. I don't believe it. I
won't
believe it.'

He moved then, taking small unsteady steps towards me.

‘About ten minutes ago,' he said hoarsely, reaching for my hand. I could hardly see it through my tear-blurred vision. I think he may have said something else then, something about them having done all that they could, or was it something about the gravity of her injuries? I just don't know. I couldn't get beyond the screamingly awful headline to the news.

Amy, one of my best friends for over twenty years, was dead.

Numb.
Novocaine
numb. Ice-water numb. And not in a good way, more the kind of numb you feel when you have frostbite, right before you start losing your digits.

Richard and I had sat in total silence for what felt like hours, trying to assimilate and absorb something so gut-wrenchingly terrible that it was almost beyond acceptance. Amy, the most vibrant and alive person I'd ever known, had turned her own philosophy of living each day as though it was your last, into a prophecy.

The news had clearly shocked even the hospital staff, for I swear we were treated differently after it had broken. It was there when the nurse who came to take my blood pressure had given my hand a long hard squeeze, after removing the cuff from my arm. It was even evident with the registrar on morning rounds, who had finally told me I could go home. He had patted my shoulder, in a slightly awkward and uncomfortable way, and although nothing had been said there had been a look of sympathy and condolence on his face, which I had a feeling I was going to be seeing quite a lot of in the days to come.

After the hospital team left my room, Richard had helped me to get changed out of the starchy gown they'd put me into, and back into my suddenly highly inappropriate short party dress. I cringed when I felt the fabric brush against my bare skin, because there were several dark encrusted stains splattered on it, which I knew had to be blood. I just didn't know whose. Mine? Jack's? Or was it Amy's? What difference did it make? It was going to go straight in the bin the moment I got home.

To save time, Richard volunteered to go the hospital pharmacy and fill the prescription for the painkillers I'd been given. ‘I won't be long,' he promised, kissing me briefly below the large white bandage on my forehead. ‘Will you be all right while I'm gone?'

I shook my head sadly and all he could do was nod back in understanding. It felt like nothing and none of us were going to be all right ever again, we both knew that. And I strongly suspected that the moment we left the confines of the hospital, it was going to get a whole lot worse.

A light knock on the door was followed by a young nurse who opened it just wide enough to slide her head through the opening. I assumed she was there to tell me the cab we'd ordered had arrived, but she surprised me instead with the words, ‘You have a visitor, Miss Marshall. It's not our regular visiting hours… but given the special circumstances…' There it was again, that VIP treatment reserved for those whose tragedies transcended the usual. I didn't want to be a member of this club.

The nurse stood to one side to allow my visitor to enter the room. Jack stood for just one moment without saying anything, then his first words were my undoing. ‘Emma, I am so, so sorry.'

I tried very hard not to lose it. I nodded my head, acknowledging his sympathetic words, but I could already feel my lip beginning to tremble, like an opera singer about to sing an aria. With a sound that started like a hiccup and ended like a dog's yelp, I was once again being held in his arms, while the tears, which hadn't fallen when Richard had been there, finally found the crack in the dam.

I am actually not much of a crier, I never have been. So it was even
more
astounding that this American stranger, who I'd known less than twelve hours, had now comforted me in was arms while I wept like a child more often than my fiancé had done in the last twelve years.

I didn't hear Richard enter the room, even though I was starting to regain control by then. So the first I knew that we weren't alone was Richard's rather cool enquiry, ‘Emma?'

Jack looked up, but kept his arms firmly around me. His hold was innocent and intended only to comfort, but I saw a challenging light spark in his golden-brown eyes at Richard's tone. This was definitely something I didn't need right then. I struggled out of Jack's embrace, and his arms instantly fell from around me. He extended his hand to Richard. ‘Jack Monroe,' he announced. ‘I'm sorry, we never got a chance to be formally introduced last night.'

Richard took a moment too long in raising his hand to shake Jack's. Then, just before the situation tipped from slightly discourteous to downright rude, he placed his palm against the other man's. There was no warmth in the handshake, or on either of their faces.

‘Richard Withers,' supplied Richard baldly, ‘Emma's fiancé.'

A small muscle twitched on Jack's face.

‘You've not been here all night too, have you?' I queried, failing to notice until I'd finished speaking that Jack was in different clothes and had clearly washed and shaved since I'd last seen him.

‘No. I got fixed up and then went home.'

I noticed then a much smaller bandage on his forearm, just visible from beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his dark shirt.

‘So what are you doing back here?'

I glared at Richard, because there was no way to gloss over such blatant rudeness. His returned look said
what?
,
but he knew exactly what.

‘I phoned this morning to find out how Emma was doing, and to ask about Amy. They gave me the news and I just… well, I just felt like I should come back to see you.'

‘That's very nice of you,' said Richard, although his voice said he actually meant the exact opposite.

‘Yes, it really was,' I added, with a great deal more sincerity.

‘However, as you can see, I'm about to take Emma home, and she really needs to rest up properly. So thank you for coming and all that, but we have everything under control here now.'

Under control? Nothing,
ever
, had felt less like being under our control; but dealing with Jack, being beholden to him for saving the woman he loved, was just one pressure too many for Richard to deal with at that moment, and I knew that, rightly or wrongly – and I really knew it was
wrongly
– I had to side with him.

‘Thank you for coming. It means a lot.' My voice said
Goodbye, please go now
, even if my words didn't.

‘I just wish it wasn't under these circumstances. I just wish there was more I could have done. For Amy.' I felt the last two words were added to prevent Richard from jumping in with some smart-mouth comeback about having done more than enough already. As ludicrous as it sounded, it was almost as though he resented Jack for saving me; as though not having been the one to do it himself belittled or emasculated him in some way. It made no sense. He should have been grateful, but all he sounded was petty and jealous.