Trust (25 page)

And now he was almost out of the car but he couldn’t see Stella-Jean. For the first time, Seb panicked. This Andrew dude was trying to move him, trying to take him away from Stella, and they were doing stuff to her, hurting her —

‘Fuck off!’ he yelled as Andrew tried to ease him around. He managed to raise the arm that had been squashed between his body and the seat, and swung it across like a club, trying to punch the guy away. Only his forearm connected; Andrew’s head, already moving back, caught the edge of the clumsy blow.

‘Whoa! Go easy, tiger,’ he said, nudging his dislodged glasses back into place with his upper arm. ‘We’re here to help, Sebastian. Trust me.’

Another person was there, and then a third, easing him from the car and onto some kind of trolley, fiddling and fussing and strapping him in and then he was being wheeled away. There were cops and ambos and onlookers. He was wheeled past the open back of one ambulance where Finn sat with a uniformed woman beside him with her arm around his shoulders. He looked like a little kid in a war film.
This is freaking surreal
.
It’s like I’m in a TAC ad on TV.
Only the pain made him know he was really there, actually
in
it, not just watching. He was holding his breath against the pain and Andrew leaned close.

‘Keep breathing, Sebastian,’ he said, and did a few big breaths – in-and-out, in-and-out – to demonstrate. Seb fixed his eyes on his face, the coloured light glinting on his glasses, and copied him. He had to. Andrew nodded. ‘That’s it, stay with it. We need your help. The coppers’ll need to call your family.’

‘My mobile …’ said Seb. Where was it? ‘It’s in my bag. The big sports bag. It’s in —’

He tried to turn his head, to look back toward the car, but couldn’t. His head seemed to have been braced or something.

‘We’ll get it. You’re a champ. You just keep steady with those slow, deep, breaths.’ Andrew touched his chest, very lightly. ‘Grrreat!’

They were wheeling him away from the car. Away from Jeejee, away from Stella-Jean. Seb took another breath, a slow deep breath that turned into a ragged tearing sob.

TWENTY-TWO

In Vinnie’s kitchen, behind the framing workshop on the ground floor of Studio Lulu, half-a-dozen of people were getting in each other’s way as they prepared an impromptu dinner after the life drawing class. ‘Two minutes, everybody!’ yelled the woman who’d just tested the penne, while another stirred the sauce and someone else tossed a big bowl of salad at the table. Vinnie was chopping parsley with an enormous knife while Susanna, standing next to her, grated a big chunk of parmesan. Everyone was talking, all at once.

‘So, you liked the class?’ Vinnie asked her over, or rather under, the hubbub. ‘What did you think of Rita?’

‘She’s terrific,’ Susanna assured her. ‘Though … it was a bit confronting, the way she told me so severely, “You heff not turnt off your teacher brain!” ’

‘Ah.’ Vinnie’s mass of dark hair swung with her as she flashed a grin at Susanna. ‘And that was her solution? Getting you to lie on the floor and draw?’

‘Yep.’ Again Susanna imitated Rita’s European accent. ‘ “Moofe
in
. Moofe in ker-loh-ser!” Gawd! How much closer could I get? The poor model, she was starting to look quite nervous.’

‘Nah, don’t worry, Lisa’s an old hand,’ Vinnie said as she scooped up the finely chopped parsley with the flat of her knife and dumped it in a bowl. ‘I saw the drawing you did:
so
Venus of Willendorf, all those rising mounds of flesh.’

Susanna nodded agreement. ‘Actually, I’ve been doing a few self-portraits lately. Maybe that’s where the —’

‘Coming through!’ one of the others called, lugging the enormous pasta pot from the stove to the sink. ‘Hot hot!’ Steam billowed as she poured the pasta into the waiting colander.

‘Somebody’s phone’s ringing,’ a voice sang out. ‘He-llo – somebody’s phone!’

Susanna glanced across at the bag dangling from the woman’s hand. ‘Oh, that’s mine. Ta!’ She darted over. This would be her mother, or one of the kids, or Gerry wondering where she was.
No, not Gerry: he’s in New York.
And it would certainly not be Angie, not after — no. As she flipped her phone open, Susanna tightened against the memory of that awful meeting with her sister. She would
not
go there.

But the voice, a man’s, was unfamiliar, and she couldn’t make out what he was saying. ‘What?’ she said, walking away from the racket around the table, over to a quieter corner. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.’

From the far side of the kitchen, Vinnie saw Susanna stop dead, heard the terror in her voice as she cried, ‘
An accident?
’ All the women froze. ‘What do you mean?’ In the sudden silence, her voice was shrill and penetrating. ‘What sort of accident?’

Someone murmured, ‘Oh, no,’ and a moment later they all flinched as Susanna screamed, ‘
Oh no!
’

Vinnie had her bag over her shoulder in an instant. ‘Carol, will you make sure the place is locked up when you go?’ The woman she’d asked nodded quickly. ‘Please, all of you: stay and eat. I’m going with Susanna.’

Susanna insisted on driving, but after only a few hundred metres she pulled over. ‘Would you?’ she asked Vinnie in a shaky voice. ‘I need to make phone calls.’

They changed places. ‘Which one first, Northern General or St Vincent’s?’ Vinnie asked.

Susanna said tensely, ‘Northern General.’ Then, anguished, ‘
Why
would they take them to two different hospitals?’

‘Facilities? Specialists?’ Vinnie hazarded. She could hear Susanna sucking air in strongly through her nose, sensed her struggle for control. ‘Hang in there,’ she said, taking one hand from the steering wheel to give her arm a squeeze.

‘I know,’ Susanna said. ‘I know. I’ll keep it together. It’s right to go to Northern General first. Isn’t it? If Seb’s conscious, I can at least talk to him.’ She stared at the mobile phone she was holding in her hand. ‘What — Vinnie, what time is it in New York?’

‘Um – mid afternoon? I’m not sure.’

‘We don’t usually call each other when he’s away.’ Susanna made no move to key a number. ‘International …’ she said uncertainly. ‘My brain’s not functioning.’

I’m not surprised,
thought Vinnie. ‘If he’s set for international roaming, you shouldn’t need to dial the code. Just his usual number.’

‘Oh.’ Susanna pressed a couple of keys, put the phone to her ear, waited, took a big breath. ‘Gerry, it’s me,’ she said. ‘Could you give me a call, as soon as you get this message?’ She paused. ‘Urgently. I’m – ah – there’s been an accident.’ She took the phone away from her ear, eyeing it doubtfully, then added, ‘Um – bye. Bye, darling,’ and closed it. ‘Should I have said that?’ she asked Vinnie. ‘That there’s been an accident?’

‘Yes. He needs to know it’s urgent.’

‘He’s at a conference. He has to give a talk. I don’t want to worry him.’

She doesn’t want to worry him.
Vinnie was incredulous. ‘Susanna, that was a good message,’ she said firmly. ‘He needs to know.’

‘Okay. All right.’ Susanna was staring at the phone again. ‘Now I’ve got to call my sister.’ She pressed a couple of keys and held it to her ear, waiting. ‘Voicemail,’ she muttered, then, rapidly, ‘Angie, it’s me. I’m on my way to Northern General. The police called me, they said they’ve already spoken to you: I guess you’re probably at St V’s now. I hope Finn really is okay; the guy I spoke to said they were keeping him in for observation. I don’t know …’ She started crying. ‘Angie, I’m sorry about this afternoon, I really am. We were both upset.’ For a moment she couldn’t go on, and then she managed, ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. See you.’

She held the phone down in her lap, arms stiff and back rigid, and let out a howl of anguish. ‘Why wouldn’t he tell me about my
mother
? What’s
happened
to her?’

‘Hang in there, Susanna,’ Vinnie said again. ‘We’ll be there soon.’

‘I want to talk to my
mother
!’ Susanna cried. ‘I want
her
to tell me what’s happened. What to
do
!’ She clutched her arms around herself, making wordless sounds of distress. ‘
Why
did I call her earlier? Why did I ask her to go and get the kids? They could’ve got the
train
home, they’re not
babies
!’ She was rocking back and forth.

‘Susanna …’ Vinnie didn’t know whether to tell her to let it all out, or pull herself together. ‘Susanna, if you
could
talk to your mother, right now, what would she say? What would she tell you to do?’

Susanna made a whickering sound of protesting helplessness, but she’d heard. She stilled herself, and on her next breath raised her head as though listening for something, then exhaled slowly. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘She’d say, “Don’t panic, Susie, stay calm.” She’d tell me to be strong.’ It was remarkable, how her voice had steadied. ‘I have to be strong.’

‘You can do it,’ Vinnie said.

Afterward, Susanna could remember very little of that night. At the time, it felt like she was deaf, or else the police and the hospital people – and it was hard to be clear who was who: doctors, nurses, surgeons, admissions staff – were talking in a language other than English, one she didn’t understand. She watched their mouths moving but could make no sense of what was coming out of them. Time and again she had to turn, literally, to Vinnie, for interpretation.

What she did remember most vividly later was her first sight of her kids: Seb’s face when she arrived, his relief so naked, so childlike, despite his pain. They were going to operate on his shoulder the next morning. ‘It’ll be okay, Mum,’ he said, but he was crying. And the moment – was it hours later? – that she saw Stella-Jean, the small part of her face one could see instantly recognisable –
my little girl, my baby
– despite the swelling, the bandages, the tubes. They had already operated to relieve the pressure in her brain; Susanna thought they told her that a piece of skull had been removed and was now refrigerated (though this turned out, later, to be an option that had been considered only) and Susanna felt a wild desire to go to that fridge and hold that piece of bone, cradle it as she couldn’t cradle her daughter.

Coma
: an incredibly easy word to lip-read. Someone said “induced”, but what did that actually mean? She couldn’t understand: was Stella-Jean unconscious because of the accident, or the anaesthetic from the operation?

She had no memory of any forms, yet in the days and weeks that followed she saw her signature on so many. The amount of information she’d apparently been able to impart was astonishing. She’d even thought to enlist Marcus to make contact with Gerry in New York; poor Marcus, he was distraught, and wanted to come to the hospital, but she told him that since she had to switch her mobile off inside, he was more useful on his phone at home. All this, she was reminded of later.

She could remember being told that her mother was dead, but not who told her, or the words they used. Vinnie and Angie were able to fill in those missing words for her later, but she had a persistent sense of shame at not being able to remember them herself. Nor what she had said when she was told. Had she said anything? Had she wailed? She did remember hearing herself protesting, ‘
I can’t! I can’t!
’, like a piteous child when they told her that it was necessary to officially identify her mother’s body. And Angie taking a step forward and saying, with calm assurance, ‘It’s all right. I’ll do that.’

Angie embracing her, taking charge; their roles reversed. For Susanna, crawling across a trackless and terrifying desert, it was like her sister holding a glass of cool water to her lips, saying
Here. Drink.

But the desert still stretched on.

TWENTY-THREE

‘Who are you?’

The guy sitting in the chair beside Seb’s bed looked up from the magazine he’d been reading. ‘Hello there, Sebastian,’ he said, closing the magazine and placing it on the floor beside him. ‘Awake, are we?’

‘Se-
bus
-tyun,’ mimicked Seb. The way the guy said his name was kind of familiar, and so was the guy himself. Tall, red buzz-cut hair, wire-rimmed glasses. ‘Where do I know you from?’ he asked, and the words seemed to float out of his mouth, soft, like bubbles.

‘I scraped you up off the road last night. No, I exaggerate,’ the guy said, leaning forward. ‘No scraping required. You just needed a bit of assistance releasing your seatbelt.’

Seatbelt …
A sudden jumble of images spilled through Seb’s mind, like floodwater swirling with debris. Seatbelt; truck lights; howling dragon; shoulder; pain.
Whoa.
Too much! He closed his eyes for a moment, gasping like a fish.
Car crash
. Coloured lights, flashing off those glasses. ‘You were there. You’re like, an ambo or something. Yeah?’

‘That’s right,’ the guy confirmed, nodding. ‘Well done, Sebastian.’

‘What’s your name again?’

‘Andrew.’

‘Unn-drrrew,’ said Seb. It wasn’t the way an Aussie would say it. ‘Scottish.’

‘More just a mongrel Brit, unfortunately.’

A power pole in the back seat; Stella, not moving. Was it fact, or nightmare? Trapped, he’d been trapped, and now, as he tried to heave himself upright so he could meet whatever was coming, he was
still
trapped: his whole right side – arm, shoulder, neck – was wrapped up tight, like a rolled roast at the butcher. ‘Why can’t I
move
?’ he cried.

‘Take it easy, tiger. You’ve just had a shoulder op a few hours ago.’

‘Shoulder op.’ Seb saw a chain of little bubbles floating in front of him, popping open to release strange images and words. ‘Anterior dislocation.’

‘Correct.’

Pop, pop.
‘From when that fucking dragon tried to rip my arm off.’

Andrew nodded agreeably. The lad’s eyes were almost all pupil; no doubt post-operative pain relief was being generously administered.

‘They couldn’t get it back in. What do they call it, when they can’t get a dislocated shoulder back in?’ Seb asked.