Big and Clever (30 page)

I'm getting weaker and weaker. I try to crawl, but my arms won't keep me up. I unwind my scarf from around my neck, the black and orange scarf my mum knitted for me when I was a little lad, and I hold it into my side, trying to put pressure on the wound, trying to soak up the blood, trying to stop it pouring away.

Images are flickering in and out of my mind. It's a slideshow of memories. No order, just a mish-mash.

Kite flying with my dad on Great Yarmouth beach. Raks grinning, holding up a fish. Scoring for Thurston Dynamo. The first time I kissed Zoe, next to the conifers on Hill View Drive. A hot still night in my garden, moths on the honeysuckle. The smell of Samsara perfume. Mum's perfume.

I start to cry. I'm finished. I know I am. The blood's coming out too fast. I'm going to bleed to death. And for what? There's no honour in this. I'm not a soldier, laying down my life in a noble cause. The NLLF army was all a sham. A bunch of thugs who could dish it out but couldn't take it when it came back at them. I'm just an idiot. A fucking idiot.

I sink down onto my back, gasping, looking up at the full moon.

“Sorry Dad. Sorry Mum,” I whisper.

And then everything goes black.

It was my scarf that saved my life. By pressing it onto the hole in my side and keeping it there even when I passed out, I managed to stem the flow of blood just enough to keep me going. Otherwise I'd have died, out there on the wasteland amongst the old car batteries and shopping trolleys and bicycle frames.

Even with the scarf in place, I'd lost two and a half pints and was hypothermic and in deep shock by the time I'd been found and was in the back of an ambulance heading for Letchford General. If it hadn't been for the paramedics stuffing my wound with gauze, filling me up with blood volume expander, getting my circulation going and the pressure in my system back up to something like normal, I'd have pegged out there and then.

When I first arrived at the hospital I was unconscious and bleeding internally. I was assessed straight away and then rushed into theatre. I'd been stabbed between my eleventh and twelfth ribs, and the blade had passed through the muscles of my body wall. Beyond that, nobody could really say without opening me up. When they did, it wasn't good news. My right kidney was so badly lacerated, it had to be removed.

I cried when I woke up on Saturday morning and they told me my kidney had gone. I was groggy, zonked out, pumped full of antibiotics and painkillers, and in that split second an
emergency nephrectomy
sounded pretty serious shit. I thought I'd be spending the rest of my life strapped to a machine. Doctor Konje put me right though. It's not so bad. You can live perfectly normally minus a kidney, assuming that the one you've got left is up to scratch, and everything looks alright on that front.

I felt a lot happier after that. I felt even better when he told me how lucky I'd been. According to Doctor Konje, if there's any such thing as a good stab wound leading to the removal of a kidney, then this was it. First of all, the knife didn't catch my renal artery, so my rate of blood loss was relatively slow. Nick the artery and it's
Goodnight Vienna
. Secondly, although the blade went almost four inches into me, it somehow managed to avoid damaging my peritoneum or my diaphragm. Thirdly, despite the knife being shoved upwards and twisted into me, it missed cutting into my liver, my duodenum and my ascending colon. All things considered, I've had a bit of a result. Maybe I don't deserve it, but I've been given a second chance.

The biggest result of all though, was being found in the first place. And that wasn't too far off being a miracle. Because it wasn't just anyone who found me. It was Dad and Raks and Raj Patel.

A lot of things were going on while I was standing on the Kop on Friday night. Zoe realised I wasn't at
Oliver
and phoned my dad during the interval. That was about quarter past nine. Dad phoned Raj Patel. Raj spoke to Raks. Raks said he didn't know where I was. Two minutes of wrestling with his conscience later, the truth came tumbling out. He knew I was at Southlands and he knew what I might be getting myself into afterwards. Raj phoned my dad, and five minutes later all three of them were on the way into Letchford in Raj's car, ready to confront me outside the ground.

But the trip into town took longer than they thought. By the time they'd arrived, at about ten o'clock, parked at the side of the road near The Shakespeare and started heading down into the Industrial Estate, the match was finished, the fighting was finished and the area around the ground was deserted apart from the police and a few stragglers. At that point, the most logical thing they could have done was head for home. But they didn't. And what happened next was spooky. Because Raks just became convinced I was on the wasteland. He set off into the darkness with Dad and Raj in tow, certain he was on the right track. And the rest, as they say, is history.

It's Sunday afternoon now. I've been in Letchford General for the best part of two days. I've never been in hospital as a patient before. I visited Mum when she was in here, but I don't remember much about it. Just a few sights and sounds. This is the first time everything's really registered on me.

I'm in The Devonshire Ward. It's a long narrow room. The walls are cream, the floor tiles are grey. There are ten beds along each side of the central gangway. I'm up at the end furthest from the doors. The curtains are navy blue and the sheets are white. The whole place looks exactly the way you'd imagine a hospital ward to look. If my night at the police station was like being trapped inside
The Bill
, then now I'm having a turn in
Holby City
.

According to the clock on the wall opposite my bed, it's just coming up to two o'clock. The afternoon visiting hour. Dad was here all the way through from Friday night until yesterday evening, and he's going to be back again this afternoon. Raks is coming with him.

Right on the stroke of two, the double doors over to the right swing open and people start filing into the ward. A fat Asian bloke in a grey hoody. The three middle-aged daughters of the old man in the corner bed. An elderly couple. Two tall thin black lads in blue and red baseball jackets. I gently push myself backwards along the mattress, propping myself up against two pillows. The doors open again and Raks appears.

As he comes towards me he's smiling, but I can see the shock in his eyes. He saw me on Friday night of course. But that was before the bruising on my face came out. When I still looked relatively normal.

Raks pulls up a chair. He plonks a copy of
Nuts
and a bag of green grapes onto the bed next to me and shakes his head.

“Fucking hell, Tom,” he says. “You look like the Elephant Man.”

I know what he means. I caught sight of myself in the washroom this morning. Eye closed, nose, cheek and jaw swollen, skin tight and purple, lips like a goldfish.

“Broken nose, fractured eye socket,” I say. “You should see the state of the other bloke.”

Raks laughs, but it's a nervous sound. With all that's gone on over the last couple of weeks, he doesn't really know where we stand any more.

“So how are you then?” he asks. “Your dad says they took a kidney out. You going to be OK?”

I shrug.

“Doctors think so,” I tell him. “I'm pissing blood at the moment, but that's normal, they reckon. I'm already up and about. I should be out of here in a few days. A week at the most.”

He nods. He breaks off a sprig of grapes and starts pulling them off one by one.

“Where's Dad?” I ask.

Raks pops a grape into his mouth. He jerks his thumb back over his shoulder.

“Just out there. He thought we'd want a bit of a chat.”

I nod. I look at Raks and grin.

“What?” he says.

“The bruises on my face are pretty good, yeah?”

“Mmmm.”

“Well check this out,” I say. I pull the sheets down and my pyjama top up.

Raks's mouth drops open.

“Shit, man,” he says.

There's a huge white bandage around my midriff. Above and below it the skin is literally black and blue. It looks like someone's taken two buckets of paint and loosely mixed them together, adding in a few splodges of red just to liven things up.

“Not bad, eh?” I say.

“Not bad at all,” Raks says. “I like your corset too.”

I smile. We're both loosening up now. I reach down and get a couple of grapes.

Raks clears his throat.

“So what went wrong?”

I close my eyes, reliving the experience.

“Too many Mackworth.”

Raks scratches his forearm.

“What happened to Ryan and the rest of the gang then? Where were they when you were getting turned over?”

“Don't ask,” I tell him.

Raks understands my drift. He has another grape.

“Have the coppers spoken to you yet?”

“No,” I reply. “Not yet. But I expect I'll be getting a visit in the next couple of days.”

Raks nods.

“Can you describe the lads who attacked you?”

I shake my head.

“Not really. It's all a bit of a blur. I get flashbacks but nothing definite.”

“The coppers are going to want to know why you were at Southlands again aren't they?” Raks asks.

I laugh.

“Yeah. I'm going to have a bit of explaining to do.”

“Just a bit.”

We both go quiet for a while. In the next ward a baby is crying. I look at the cover of
Nuts
. It's some bird from last summer's
Big Brother
in a polka-dot bikini. I take a deep breath, composing myself. There are things I need to get off my chest.

“Raks,” I say. “Thanks for Friday night. You saved my life, mate. Literally.”

Raks grins, embarrassed.

“All part of the service,” he says.

I shake my head.

“How did you know where I'd be?” It's been playing on my mind. I just can't work it out.

Raks rolls his eyes.

“I've got no idea, man. It must have been some sort of telepathy. Vibes in the air. Something like that. I just
knew
you were out there.”

I puff out my cheeks.

“Well, anyway. You saved my life. For real. And after the way I acted…” My voice trails off. I'm too choked up to carry on.

Raks grips my hand.

“Don't be stupid man,” he says. “There's been all sorts of stuff going on recently. I shat on you, you shat on me. It's gone now. Forgotten.”

“Thanks,” I say. “And we're mates again, yeah?”

“Definitely,” he says. “Mates though, nothing more. Just because we're holding hands now, I don't want you getting any funny ideas.”

We both laugh, and suddenly, despite the surroundings, it feels like old times.

I edge a bit higher up the bed, flicking a glance over Raks's head. The doors of the ward are opening again. I'm wondering if it might be Dad. It's not. It is a visitor for me though. Zoe.

My heart leaps into my mouth. She's striding across the polished floor in slow motion, holding a big bunch of blue and white flowers. As she gets closer, her expression is changing. Forty feet away she's looking determined. Thirty feet away she's forcing a smile. At twenty feet the smile starts to fade. By the time she's ten feet away, her eyes are widening in horror. As she arrives next to me, the colour is visibly draining from her face.

“Oh, Tom,” she whispers, putting her hand to her mouth. She wasn't prepared for this.

I try to smile, try to look reassuring, but I'm nervous, tensing up.

Zoe dumps the flowers on the bedside cabinet and sinks into a chair.

Raks stands up.

“Right then,” he says. “I'd best get going. I've got to get a few Christmas bits and pieces.”

“Okay.” I know he's not really going Christmas shopping. He's just being diplomatic. “Come and see me again, yeah?”

“Course,” he says. He gives me the thumbs up, grabs a last sprig of grapes, pats Zoe on the arm and makes his exit.

When Raks has gone, me and Zoe look at each other. Neither of us knows what to say. I'm burning up with shame and guilt. Zoe looks torn between sympathy for the state I'm in and anger for the way I've treated her.

“Oh, Tom,” she says again. There are tears in her eyes now.

I try another rigid smile. My mouth is bone dry. I swallow.

“It's OK,” I tell her. I point to my face. “This is just superficial. It'll be gone in a week or two. Even with the kidney, I'm not really in any pain. I'll be back to normal before you know it.”

I reach out with my right hand. Zoe shuffles her chair closer to the bed, linking her fingers with mine. We look at each other again, and for a few seconds I think everything's going to be alright. But then she starts to cry. And I know she's not just crying because I've been stabbed and beaten and left for dead. She's crying because she knows I'm not the lad she thought I was. Because everything has changed. She hunches over, letting go of my hand, blonde hair spilling across her face, sobbing.

I feel completely helpless. I want to put my arms around her, hold her, tell her sincerely that I'll never deceive her again, never let her down again, but I can't. Too much movement like that and I'll rip my stitches. And besides which, she wouldn't believe me anyway. Why should she?

“Zoe, I'm sorry.” It's all I can really say.

She looks up. Her eyes are red. She reaches inside her army jacket and gets out a blue tissue, dabbing at her nose. She stuffs the tissue back into her pocket.

She takes hold of my hand again, looking straight at me.

“I just don't understand,” she says eventually. “How could all of this have happened? How could you have got so deeply into all this Letchford Town stuff that you ended up like this?”

I shake my head, looking down at the sheets bunched up around my waist, the red track marks on the inside of my elbow, where the IV drips were put in on Friday night. I'm lost for words. In the cold light of day, the whole thing is so illogical it's pointless even to try to explain.