Falling For You (17 page)

‘You’re bleeding,’ he points out. ‘There, see.’ He indicates my thigh. ‘Right now what you need is some medical attention before you worry about anything else,’ he says firmly.   

‘I’ve got my bag in here, somewhere. Some medical supplies …’ The muffled echo of his footsteps against the flagstones remind me of the sound of being inside a cave. ‘I can probably deal with the injury to your leg myself,’ he’s saying.
He’s going to do what …?
 

My leg is bleeding. I didn’t notice that before. Yuck. Now he’s pointed it out, I can’t stop shivering. I feel so strange and numb and disconnected. As if all this were a dream and nothing more.

‘You’ve gone into shock, Rose.’

 In an almost tender gesture he drapes the coat he’s just taken off and shaken out around my shoulders and I am brought spinning right back down to earth.

‘If I’m going to need to treat you then I guess I’d better tell you my name, too.’ He bends down and the unexpected warmth of his hand on my shoulder sends a shudder of happiness right through me. I feel my face growing hot because
he really is too cute
but this is no time to be coy.

‘I’m Lawrence,’ he says.

I don’t need this right now.

She’s a pretty girl. Under any other circumstances she might have been good company. But she’s injured - I glance up at her from where I’ve been hard at work getting the fire going - she’s possibly concussed and she’s almost certainly in shock. She needs medical attention and I … I need any sort of attention right now about as much as I need a hole in the head. I can’t believe I just told her my name.

The fire I made earlier
i
n the day has gone out. The wood I picked up yesterday will do for the moment but I’m mindful that we’ll soon need more fuel. I strike a match and hold it gingerly up against the tinder I’ve just shoved in under the metal brazier the workmen left behind. A few pieces of an old copy of ‘The Mail’ flare up bright orange and then shrivel into black curls in an instant.

The news from Sri Lanka when I spoke to Arjuna this morning was cautiously optimistic. They tell me right now Sunny is recovering well from the operation, and that’s good. They need the ward bed back though, ASAP. That is not so good.

Arjuna seemed stressed when we spoke earlier but then, Arjuna is always stressed. I’d have preferred to speak to Dougie - but for some reason Arjuna didn’t explain, Dougie couldn’t come to the phone. That didn’t bode well. There have been some developments even in the few hours since I left Jaffna. Some of the contact
names I came away with have had to drop out. My boss was supposed to be bringing me up to speed with the director of the medical charity that’ll most likely be helping Sunny out - one Herr Lober. Dougie was going to book me a telephone appointment with the man’s secretary. I need to know how I’m going to proceed once I’ve got my mum on board with her sponsorship signature. I know the fact it’s Christmas will have made it that much more difficult to reach people.

I strike another match and set fire to the tinder in several different places at once in order to give the fire the best chance of taking.

‘You’re very good at that,’ my companion observes.

‘Thank you. I’ve had enough practice at getting fires going from damp wood in my time.’
Most of them up here, as it happens.

‘Are we really going to have to stay here overnight?’ There’s resignation in her voice because she already knows the answer to that one. I glance up at her and she’s still shivering. Ideally, I’d have liked to have got her back down the hill tonight if possible but with the weather like this it isn’t going to happen.

‘I’m sorry, Rose.’ Is she regretting it now, I wonder? Running away from home or wherever it was that she ran from? I’ve spent enough time going AWOL myself to know a runaway when I see one. She’s scared and she’s got that unmistakeable air of desperation about her. Apart from that, I picked up her backpack a few minutes ago. I don’t know what she’s got in there but it’s more than just a bottle of water and her mobile phone that’s for sure. This girl wasn’t just planning a bracing walk up to the post box to get some medicines was she? I keep my head down, concentrating on my task.

‘Do you need to phone anyone?’ I ask her at last.

I know
I
want to phone someone. I really, really want to phone Dougie right now.  Jaffna is five and half hours ahead of us - over there it’ll be coming up to ten pm his time - but I’m also acutely aware of the fact that on the journey down to Colombo,
Arjuna
agreed with me that we’d stick to specific times. For one, Dougie could make sure he was in a safe place to talk that way. Secondly, I should ideally keep my phone switched off as much as I can. I’ve got no way of recharging the battery up here and I can’t risk missing an all-important call just because my phone’s gone dead at the eleventh hour
.

The best thing I can do for the moment is put Sri Lanka right out of my mind. I glance up at the girl now.

‘Anyone who might need to know that you’re somewhere safe?’ The tinder in the brazier is obligingly glowing bright orange. Some little flames are beginning to lick hungrily around the smaller sticks. My companion doesn’t answer me. She’s looking very sad.

While the going’s good, I feed in some small chunks of rotting wood I’ve hacked with my pen-knife out of one of the felled trees I found stacked in the courtyard. The decaying wood burns fast, pretty soon increasing the heat enough for me to start feeding in some small sticks. The growing warmth which spreads through my hands as I slowly build the fire is a comforting relief.

‘I’d better text my cousin,’ she answers eventually and her voice sounds slightly strangled. Not too keen to make contact with her folks, by the sounds of it. The truth is, I’m not ecstatic about her telling people that she’s up here. Inevitably it’s going to draw attention to me, too.

And why her cousin?

Where are your parents, Rose?
I’m surprised they even let you out in these weather conditions. Not my business, I know but ... do they even know you’re out?  

I feed another two slender branches of wood into the burning heap. Then several more. Without making it obvious, I watch her as she rummages for her mobile.

‘You going to mention that you’re up here?’ I ask casually.

‘Better not,’ she shakes her head curtly. I see he
r tap in a few words.
‘There’s nothing anyone can do tonight and they’d only worry. They’ll assume I’ve gone on to my friend Shona’s house. I said I’d do that if the medicines hadn’t been left in the post box…’ she stops abruptly as I straighten.

The fire is at a stage where it needs to be left for a few minutes to take before I can feed in some of the larger pieces of wood that’ll take us into the night. For the moment, we have some warmth at least, a fair amount of light.

‘Go on.’ I pick up my paramedic bag and come over and kneel down beside her.

‘‘The medicines …?’ I prompt. I saw her checking for them, earlier. Is that really what she was doing up here? Picking up something from the crossroads post box? It’s possible. It’s a tradition as old as these hills round these parts. I set my bag down on the floor beside her and I see her steeling herself. 

‘Important medicines, right? To come out of the house on a day like this …’ She looks pretty choked up, when I ask that. She nods.

‘For you?’ She doesn’t answer. ‘Come on now, Rose, You’ve been doing great up to now. Don’t disappear on me again will you?’  I pick up her hand and her palm feels too cool for my liking. I feel her forehead.

‘Still woozy? Any pain to the back of the head or neck? Any tingling sensations, numbness?’ She’s shaking her head to all my questions. ‘Okay. Everything feeling pretty normal then, apart from the soreness where you’ve bruised yourself?’ I unzip my paramedic bag and in the orange firelight I see her large eyes open slightly wider.

‘Everything’s okay.’

‘I’m still a little concerned about your leg, though. Will you allow me to have a look at it?’

‘I’m
fine
,’ she tells me.

‘You’re bleeding,’ I point out. ‘There, see.’ I point at her thigh and even in the half-light, the darker patch where the wound has soaked through is worryingly more visible to me than it was before. ‘Do you have any idea how that might have happened? Did you see what you might have snagged yourself on, on the way down?’

She shakes her head. Right now she’s looking very close to tears but I can see she’s battling like mad not to show that.

‘I noticed there’s quite a lot of bits of old rusty wire up here, that’s all. Can you tell me if you’re up to date with your tetanus jabs, Rose?’

‘I think so. I had one last summer when I scratched my arm on the farm gate.’

‘That’ll do. I’d still like to look at your leg. You’ll need a dressing on that. Maybe one or two stitches …’

‘Stitches? Oh.
If I need stitches
, then who’s going to do them?’ She swallows nervously. I spread my arms, trying my best to make her feel at ease. There’s nobody else here to do it.

‘I’m medically qualified to do it, I’ve done dozens before,’ I promise her. ‘I know it’s a little uncomfortable but you’d be better off having the suture done promptly if it’s needed. It might not even be needed. Shall I just take a look?’  

She hesitates.

‘I can’t roll these jeans up that far,’ she says after a slight pause. ‘Am I going to need to take them
off
?’

I appreciate this is awkward for her.

‘I’m really sorry. There’s no way I can check it out for you otherwise. Do you need any help in taking …?’

‘
No
!’ she says.

‘Look, I’ll go back and tend the fire for a bit. You take as long as you need. Feel free to cover yourself with my coat and let me know when you’re ready.’

‘Fine.’

As I go and kneel down to tend to the fire, I can hear her struggling with her jeans. 

‘There’s a
lot
of rusty wire around these parts,’ she’s suddenly talking rapidly. It’s the nerves, I know. ‘Our horrid neighbours seem to think it’s necessary to put it up all along their boundary walls. It’s pointless,’ she says feelingly. ‘Wild animals get hurt on it all the time. It’s not as if it would deter anybody who really
wanted
to get into the property anyway …’   

‘I don’t suppose it would,’ I tell her softly. Barbed wire doesn’t seem to be much of a bar to people who want to get out of a place, either. For a minute the memory of the camp at Jaffna looms large in my mind, surrounded as it is by rusty barbed wire. I loathe the stuff with a vengeance. Over the last year I’ve administered more tetanus jabs, sewn up more jagged tears on the skin than I care to remember, mainly to children, because of it. The proximity of so many people and animals and the constant damp and mud is a perfect breeding ground for bugs.

I feed a medium sized-log into the brazier now and it catches immediately.

This is the entire reason why I’m even here,
the thought intrudes. So Sunny can recover under hygienic conditions. But he’s doing all right, I remind myself. He’s still got that bed in the field hospital and Arjuna has promised it’s his till the end of the year. I need to put Sri Lanka out of my mind. I need to focus on what I have to do right here.

Behind me, she coughs slightly now and I turn. She’s covered up the top of her legs with my coat but there’s a nasty-looking jagged cut on her right thigh. That’s going to need stitches all right but it’s not too bad - only a couple of inches or so. There’s blood all over the thigh which I need to clean up for her but all around the wound it’s already congealing nicely. Three or four stitches will do it and I travel with the equipment I need as standard in my bag. I almost didn’t bring my paramedic bag. When it came to it though, I couldn’t bear to leave it behind and Arjuna agreed it would help my cover story in getting out of the country.

‘Is this going to hurt?’ her voice sounds nervous as I go and kneel back down beside her.

‘The anaethestics will sting a little bit when I put them in around the wound but after that you won’t feel me stitching, I promise.’  I take the torch and place it where the light can fall best for me to see what I’m doing. ‘Not ideal conditions, eh, Rose? But you’ll be fine.’ I look up and smile into her eyes for a few seconds. Her eyes are shiny, wide open, scared.