By the time I left the elevator and stepped out onto the ICU floor, the Dilaudid had gone off like a depth-charge. I was queasy below and woozy upstairs, giddy as a three-legged donkey on wet cobbles. I went through to a waiting area of low chairs, low tables and people who paced, fretted or wept quietly. No worst there is none, Hopkins reckoned, although he’d never had a child comatose in ICU. You could taste the desperation on the dead air. Salty, like an offshore mist in the early dawn.
Two of the people were Dee and an angular guy in his early forties, sandy hair brushed across his forehead, wide eyes. A chin like a soft-boiled egg. He was wide in the shoulders and wore a mauve shirt under a checked sports jacket with leather patches at the elbows.
She saw me coming. Closed her eyes, allowed her chin slump forward onto her chest. Then she turned her head away and held up a hand to ward me off.
‘Don’t even come near me,’ she said. Sounding dull, raspy. The guy unfolded from his seat and got up in stages. I had to peek under his armpit to speak to Dee.
‘Whatever they told you, it’s not true.’ My own voice was a croak. ‘We were rammed, ran off the road.’
‘Jesus, Harry. Do you really think I give a fuck how it happened?’
She had a point. I looked up at the guy. ‘Hey, d’you mind? I’m trying to talk about our son here.’
‘She says she doesn’t want you near her.’ He sounded smooth, controlled. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t rasp or croak. He pointed over my shoulder. ‘Why don’t you sit over there? There’s a seat free.’
‘Why don’t you sit over there?’
‘I’m already here,’ he said.
‘I don’t know who the fuck you think you are,’ I said, ‘but-’
‘Frank.’
‘Right.’
I gave Frank some fish-eye. By now someone had iced the cobbles and the donkey was down to two legs. I tilted my head to peek under his armpit again and the room swam away, seemed to loop around on itself, then settled down into a whirlpool groove. Frank put out a hand, maybe to steady me, maybe to fend me off, as I began to topple in towards Dee. I swiped at it, missed, and wound up with my jaw planted on Frank’s chest.
Dee whipped around, using the heels of her palms to swab her cheeks. Eyes red-limned and raw. A mascara tear-streak had curved outside her right cheekbone to head for her ear. ‘Christ’s sakes, Harry, I’m trying to fucking pray here.’
I’ve had worse moments, although most of those were idled away in front of a gun. ‘Pray?’
It was bad, then. I struggled away from Frank, which is to say he stood me upright, just as a barrel-shaped Sikh doctor came through the double swing-doors at the end of the room. Every head turned but he barrelled straight for us, a clipboard tucked under one arm. I don’t know why, he didn’t refer to it once. Dee stood up, a hand to her mouth. Frank put an arm around her. He looked solid, dependable, so I lurched up against him.
‘Mizz Gorman?’ the Sikh said.
She nodded. He took a deep breath. ‘I am very sorry,’ he said, not so much rolling his Rs as bowling them at skittles, ‘but I have very little to report. No significant change, yes.’
‘O Christ,’ Dee whimpered.
The Sikh held up a forefinger. ‘This means, you understand, that he has no deterioration. But soon he will need the transfusion. He has lost a lot of blood.’ A hint of reproach, as if it were Ben’s fault. ‘The boy has had two transfusions in four hours. At this rate …’ He tailed off with a shrug, turning his palm upwards.
From behind her hand Dee emitted a sound that was somewhere between sob and stifled screech. Frank squeezed her shoulders. The Sikh glanced from one to the other as if waiting for applause.
‘So give him the transfusion,’ I said.
‘It’s not that simple,’ Frank said over his shoulder.
The Sikh looked at me for the first time. ‘Who is this?’ he said.
‘The father,’ Frank said.
There followed a conversation I didn’t fully follow, its natural flow clogged up with AB negatives, anti-Ds, antigen factors and incompatibilities, but as the room swirled away, then came rushing back, I realised they were all staring at me, waiting for an answer.
‘What the fuck are we waiting for?’ I said, ripping the dressing off my forearm. Drops of blood flew, spattering the tiles, the Sikh’s penny loafers.
The effort, or the momentum, tugged me sideways. Frank half-turned to grab at me. The donkey, down to one leg, gave one last kick.
I don’t remember making it all the way down.
22
More tubes, crisp sheets, muted beeps. A different room, another nurse, this one a pert blonde with a luscious overbite. Tohill leaned against the wall at the foot of the bed, hands jammed in his pockets, his face now looking like they’d just pulled the boot out of a canal.
‘Don’t mind the cop,’ I told the nurse. I felt sharp enough, even though I heard myself chewing tinfoil. ‘It’s what they call community policing. He’s just taking an interest.’
She flushed a little, averting her eyes as she fussed around, checking this, measuring that. My jaw still throbbed but the Dilaudid had bedded in. The pain was there, constant but tolerable.
I’d slept again. Long enough to allow them round up the donkey, take him away to some sanctuary in the hills. The nausea was gone and my vision had cleared, although the world was still shorter and narrower than God intended. ‘How’s Ben?’ I croaked.
The nurse glanced at Tohill. He blinked once. ‘No change,’ she said. ‘Stable but no change.’
‘I’m compatible?’
‘Already done,’ Tohill said. ‘They’ll be giving him a transfusion once they know it’s clean.’
‘You won’t find any booze in it,’ I said. ‘And even if you do, you’d have needed prior permission before it’ll stand up in court.’
He nodded, grim. ‘You nearly finished?’ he asked the nurse.
‘Nearly,’ she said. When she was done, she asked if I wanted a cup of tea, some toast.
‘Coffee’d be nice.’ But my heart was a cotton puff, so tea it was. The nurse left. Tohill locked the door, opened the window and produced a battered pack of Marlboro Lights, sparked us up.
‘Sorry about the kid,’ he said.
‘He’s not gone yet.’
The niceties observed, he jumped in. ‘Tell me again,’ he said, ‘how you weren’t boozing.’
‘We were rammed. Maybe it looks like a one-car deal to you, but we were rammed.’
‘By who?’
‘The fuck would I know? He came up from behind, hit me blindside.’
He had himself a drag while he thought about that. ‘Convenient,’ he said, ‘that the only person who can verify your story is in a coma.’
‘So we wait ’til he comes out of it.’
His stare was a deadpan ‘If’.
‘We found the stuff,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’ll be telling me the guy who rammed you planted it.’
‘What stuff?’
‘The coke,’ he said, patiently. ‘About ten grand’s worth, although we’ll work it up to fifty. Plenty enough to put you back where you belong.’
He wasn’t kidding. Given my record, ten grand worth of coke was enough to see me deported to the dark side of Jupiter. I took a long hit off the Marlboro while the prickles of cold sweat dried cold into my back. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ I said.
‘Probably the bang on the head,’ he said. ‘Temporary amnesia. When you remember, be sure to let us know. Some of the boys are keen to know where it was going, who stumped up the ten grand. Unless it was all for personal use, hey?’ He winked, the grin that of a hyena with bad gas. Then he stubbed out his smoke in a kidney-shaped metal dish and took a pair of gloves from a side pocket. For one horrific moment I thought he was aiming for a cavity search, but instead he reached into his breast pocket, drew out a padded envelope. The cling-film had been unwrapped, hung loose. ‘Personally,’ he said, ‘I’m more interested in this.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You tell me. We found it on the back seat.’