If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) (31 page)

When Stark awoke he was told it was Thursday morning.

A sedative, then. He remembered the ambulance and waiting in A&E. He remembered an X-ray and being told two bones in his right hand were broken. He remembered a doctor making sure the bones were aligned properly, strapping a plastic splint to the back of his hand, wrapping it up in a blue glass-fibre cast and the heat of the resin going off. And he remembered Dr Hazel bloody McDonald appearing at his side, talking over his head and prescribing something he didn’t recognize, a drip; he’d assumed it was a painkiller.

He tried to be angry but couldn’t, even when Hazel blithely confessed to stealing two days of his life. She’d see him soon, she said. Stark didn’t look forward to it.

The aroma of missed breakfast hung over the ward, taunting him. Then an orderly appeared with a covered plate on a tray. Stark could’ve kissed her. He ate every scrap and drank about a gallon of water. Then he realized he was catheterized and wished he hadn’t. He hated catheters. He’d sworn never to piss in a bag again. He called the nurse to remove it but she wouldn’t without a doctor’s say-so. Stark begged her to find one and held his fire grimly. The doctor eventually turned up, argued with him for several minutes, conceded and left. Stark suffered the indignity of de-catheterization with little grace, waited till the nurse stepped outside the curtain, seized the bedpan and relieved himself, blissfully. One small victory. One small step. Here we go again.

The only good news was a negative on his HIV and hepatitis tests. Otherwise he sat up in bed, bored and fighting the inclination to feel sorry for himself. Hospitalized, bedridden, again. He looked around the ward without really taking anything in, lost in dour thought. Then another part of his brain alerted him to a new and attractive shape in the corner of his vision. He looked round and did a double-take. Kelly?

A nurse pointed his way and Kelly wandered over, glossy hair swaying in time with slim, denim-clad hips. ‘Hello, stranger,’ she said. She picked up his notes from the end of his bed, sat in the adjacent chair and began reading.

‘Are you allowed to do that?’ he asked.

‘I explained my professional interest to the ward nurse,’ she answered, without looking up. ‘They called the Carter after you were admitted.’

‘So this is a professional visit?’

She still didn’t look at him. She pulled out a pair of X-ray films and held them up to the light. The first was his hand. She put it aside without comment and looked at the second.

‘You have a hairline fracture of the pelvis above the hip joint.’ The consultant had shown Stark but he couldn’t see much. ‘Bit hard to spot among the old damage but the leading culprit for your recent discomfort. The key feature … Here,’ she pointed, ‘it skirts this thickening where the bone healed over the graft. The consultant suggests it can only be the result of a fresh impact. Any ideas?’

Stark shook his head. ‘I thought it might be more tear than wear, like you said, but I’ve been on my feet so much recently.’

Kelly tilted her head. ‘He called to ask my opinion. I told him how careful we were to avoid impact, how careful we’d told
you
to be.’ There was a slight barb. She was calm but cool. Stark realized, with dismay, that she was angry. ‘Think. A fall? Car accident? I know you wouldn’t risk my wrath tackling any assault courses and I’ll assume a prisoner hasn’t thrown you down the cellblock stairs. You must remember something. You told me your symptoms were recent.’ Her gaze took on an alarming similarity to Groombridge’s inquisitorial technique.

‘Ah …’

‘Define recent,’ she said.

‘Well, I suppose … a few weeks,’ he admitted.

‘Weeks!’

‘I suppose. I think it began not long after I started work. That’s why I thought wear and t–’ He stopped. ‘Ah.’

‘What?’

‘Well, there was one time …’ Stark sighed, the truth finally crystallizing
in his mind when it should’ve been obvious all along. The day he’d arrested Maggs. ‘In my second week, I vaulted some railings. It jarred but there wasn’t time to pay it much attention.’

Kelly remained expressionless. ‘Not enough to notice you’d just broken your pelvis?’

‘A man had been stabbed.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘There was a lot going on. That hip’s always stiff and sore.’

‘This stiff and sore?’

‘Well, no, but I had to spend so much time on foot –’

‘Wear and tear,’ she interrupted, with a strong waft of sarcasm. ‘And now I find you admitted to hospital, mentally and physically exhausted. Why didn’t you say something?’ she demanded. ‘I could see you were struggling but …’

‘I was trying to impress you,’ he admitted, hoping wry honesty might defuse the tension.

‘Think it worked?’ she asked, indicating their surroundings. She had a point. She stared at the X-ray again, shaking her head. ‘Six or seven. On a scale of one to ten you think walking around on a broken pelvis is a six or seven? Or was that supposed to impress me too?’

Stark puffed out his cheeks, trying to think how to explain. On a scale of one to ten, kneeling in the firing position, with shrapnel through your pelvis, leg, neck, face, head and half a dozen other places, with burnt hands and a missing finger isn’t a ten. It doesn’t even become a ten when a bullet punches through you. Chemicals in your brain quash the pain and then, if you’re lucky, the medics quash it with more. The nearest Stark thought he’d ever come to ten was in the days following surgeries when his brain had sometimes seen through the morphine’s smoke and mirrors.

‘I thought seven was pretty bad,’ he offered lamely.

Kelly jabbed at the X-ray. ‘You’ve been walking around on this, letting me put you through entirely inappropriate treatment for weeks, to impress me?’

‘My judgement may have been clouded.’

‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, perhaps if I could discount the levels of opioid found in
your blood toxicology screen I might take it as one.’ She was visibly angry now. ‘Tell me that was about pain control and not putting on a face for me.’

For a split second Stark considered explaining about the nightmares, but their mutual opinion of him had sunk too low already for him to bear it. No doubt Hazel would be asking him the same question soon enough.

‘How could you be so bloody stupid?’ Faces throughout the ward turned at her raised voice.

Inside, a piece of Stark died. He’d thought he’d reached a new low in pissing off Groombridge, but this …

Kelly’s expression softened. ‘Don’t look like that.’ She laid the notes carefully on the bed. ‘Now I feel like I’ve kicked a puppy.’

‘A puppy isn’t quite the impression I hoped to make.’

‘No,’ she agreed sadly. Why sadly? Stark wondered. ‘You look better at least.’

‘Better than when?’

‘I stopped by on Tuesday evening but they’d already sedated you.’

Had she? So he hadn’t burnt all his bridges. ‘I’m trained to respond quickly to food and rest. It’s a Pavlovian military thing.’ Perhaps a bad analogy, given Pavlov’s famous experiment centred on training puppies.

She rubbed her eyes. ‘Look, you’ve obviously got a lot going on in your life and, I think, in your head, and you’re hiding it all behind glib hand-offs. That’s fine, I’ve no right to expect anything more and I won’t ask. I’m not interested in a project.’ There was something rehearsed in her delivery. If she’d arrived undecided she had still come with this option prepared. He’d never know now if she’d had another.

‘I’m not interested in being one,’ he agreed evenly. A small part of him shouted at him not to be so bloody stubborn, just this once, but he clenched his jaw against futile words. She was right and they both knew it. She’d seen through his bullshit from the start; now she saw through him completely, clear through the hole in him.

She nodded. Stark thought he saw tears well up but she blinked and stood to go. ‘I’m glad you’re feeling better. You’re going to need an operation and recuperative treatment afterwards. I’ll see you’re
referred back to the Carter once the physios here are done with you. I’ll ask Lucy to take over.’

‘Whatever you think best.’

She hesitated, then leant in and kissed him on the cheek, a warm, soft, brief kiss and a lingering hint of perfume. ‘Please take better care of yourself,’ she said, then left without another word or backward glance.

Stark stared at the point where she’d disappeared and felt numbness inside, nothing more.

Fran came to see him too. She didn’t say much. Maybe she was still angry with him as well, he couldn’t tell. What would she think tomorrow morning? He thought about saying something but didn’t. He wouldn’t know where to begin. Having apparently satisfied herself he was alive, she left.

When lights-out came Stark struggled to settle. It wasn’t that he wasn’t tired – he was depressed to discover that even after two days out he still was – but a hospital ward is never a silent place. Nurses come and go, huddle around the nurses’ station and gossip or bid on eBay, while the other patients shift or moan. One night after he had been moved to the NHS ward in Selly Oak, Stark had heard a demented old man with terminal cancer groan incoherently for hours, repeatedly trying to get out of bed, unwittingly pulling out his catheter. Every time he began to do it again Stark pressed his call button. Every time a nurse arrived too late and the poor old sod had to be held down and re-catheterized. In the end Stark levered himself off his bed and, using his visitor chair as a zimmer, hopped across himself. The old guy calmed down the second Stark took his hand and slipped away before dawn. It was that night that Stark’s opinion of nurse empathy hit bottom. Perhaps that was unfair: there was little they could do for the old man – was it their fault they were too busy to sit with him? And perhaps it was guilt that had made them react so angrily, calling Stark a fool and worse as they shooed him back to bed. Perhaps they didn’t like being reminded that no one should die alone if they didn’t have to.

This ward had no such distractions, but with his mind reeling over the next morning’s
Gazette
, it was enough. He wistfully thought about
discharging himself, but in his condition there was no way they’d accede. It would be futile anyway: there could be no hiding. One of the more attentive nurses asked him if he’d like something to help and he reluctantly agreed.

He was woken by an explosion. He sat up in shock as several more blinding flashes rocked the darkness. There was a shout, then furious shouting, and the silhouette of a man with a large camera chased from the ward by a bewildered nurse. It took several seconds for Stark to realize what had happened, and when he did, anger and despair fought for space in him.

It was just before three in the morning. The ward was in turmoil. Security guards appeared and disappeared. Nurses tried to quieten the other patients. The ward sister demanded to know why a photographer had snuck into her domain to photograph Stark in his sleep. He didn’t know how to explain and resented the implication that it was his fault, even if it was. Gradually everything settled down but, groggy as he was, Stark slept no more.

It had begun.

Even before the rounds began to wake the patients, Stark saw orderlies and nurses, even doctors, saunter through the ward to peer at him. He didn’t wait for a nurse, but levered himself off the bed on to one leg and yanked the curtain round the track to shut out their stares.

Of all angels, it was Doc Hazel who appeared to save him. She had him moved into one of the side rooms normally used to isolate infectious patients. Apt, thought Stark.

When they were alone she laid several newspapers on the bed. Stark could hardly bring himself to look. Most made do with his army service photo, a serious young man in uniform, but the most loathsome tabloid splashed the hours-old picture of him laid out in this hospital bed, looking half dead; a fine scoop. The huge strap-line read, ‘FROM HERO TO THIS!’

He should’ve expected it, he supposed, but he’d naïvely thought the mainstream papers would take a day to catch up with the
Gazette
.

‘You and I are going to talk about this,’ said Hazel. ‘I knew you were holding back but …’

Another person angered, thought Stark. Another tick. Sooner or later he’d piss off the entire world. The hum of his phone crabbing across his side table on vibrate prevented her saying more. Stark looked at the screen and made a pained expression. ‘Later,’ said Hazel, and left.

Stark closed his eyes and answered the phone. ‘Hi, Mum.’

There was a reporter on the front steps of the station with a camera crew. News about Pinky was out then, thought Fran, as she drove past, parked and used the side entrance.

In the office DC Dixon and the others were huddled around a copy of the
Sun
.

‘Don’t you boys ever tire of page three?’ she asked wearily.

‘Haven’t you seen this?’ asked Dixon, with incredulity.

‘Seen what? You know I don’t read the comics.’

‘Stark, splashed across the front page of every newspaper in Britain!’

‘What?’

Dixon held up the crumpled red-top. Fran’s eyes widened. She snatched it and read furiously, muttering frequent expletives. Eventually she looked up at the others’ mixed expressions. ‘Stupid,
stupid
bastard!’

‘I know,’ agreed Dixon.

‘Christ!’ Fran thought of the reporters downstairs. ‘Get me two uniforms now – no, get a van together. The hospital must be crawling with sodding press. See if Dearing’s free. No one gets near Stark without a hospital ID. Is the guv in?’

Dixon shook his head. ‘He’s with the CPS this morning.’

Fran thought back to the day the CPS lawyer had pressed Stark to confess. The guy must have choked on his latte! Had Groombridge known about this? She thought not. But Cox? Well, she couldn’t go demanding answers from the super.

She beat the van to the hospital where she had to barge through a crowd of reporters and cameras. She made the mistake of flashing her warrant card and was bombarded with questions as microphones and cameras were thrust in her face. She pushed all aside and stormed into the hospital. Security men tried to stop her getting on to the ward but she brushed them aside too.

Stark was standing on one leg by the window, looking down at the reporters. ‘Morning, Sarge,’ he said, without turning.

‘Get back in bed before they see you, for God’s sake!’ she said.

‘They’ve already got their picture,’ he said, indicating the top tabloid on the bed.

Fran picked it up. ‘When was
this
taken?’

‘Three o’clock this morning.’

‘Jesus! Well, I’ll have a uniform on your door soon. Don’t argue – you know you’ve left us no choice. There’ll be a van here any minute now.’

‘It’s just pulling up.’

She joined him by the window. Sergeant Dearing and a dozen other coppers climbed out. Dearing was six foot eight and broad to match. The swarm gave way before him like waves before a super-tanker. Stark sighed quietly. Fran stared disconsolately down at the reporters. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

‘I wasn’t. Not in any considered sense. There wasn’t time.’

‘Like outside that squat?’ Fran shuddered, remembering the murderous look on his face.

‘Something like that.’

She considered this for a moment, but none of it made much sense. ‘I don’t understand these wars.’

‘These wars, or any wars?’ he asked. There was a tiny defensive slant there.

‘These more than most,’ she admitted.

‘You’re not alone.’

‘So why do
you
think you were over there?’ asked Fran.

‘What does it matter?’ replied Stark.

‘What? No “We’re there to make life better for the people, to help build a stable democracy and improve UK security”? Isn’t that the soldier line?’

‘I was only a part-time soldier.’

‘You’re being evasive.’

‘You’re being
in
vasive.’

‘I’m just making conversation but it’s like getting blood from a stone, as ever.’

Stark rested his forehead against the glass. ‘I don’t mean to be
impenetrable,’ he said, after a moment. ‘I’ve just never been comfortable discussing these things.’

‘Must make your shrink sessions a barrel of laughs.’

‘Indeed.’ He sighed. ‘Look, I have an opinion on Iraq, Afghanistan, of course I do, but as a soldier I recognized that my opinion didn’t matter. You don’t sign up for specifics. You don’t get to opt in or out. You sign up to serve. The nature of that service is up to your elders and betters. You put your faith in the command structure and if that lands you in harm’s way there’s probably good cause.’

‘That’s ducking responsibility,’ protested Fran.

‘Is it?’ Anger fizzed in the question. ‘War is the least democratic thing a democracy can do. It isn’t one soldier one vote! That would give a new meaning to death by committee. Indecision costs lives. So soldiers do what they’re bloody well told and keep ethical or moral concerns to themselves.’

‘No wonder you all go doolally afterwards.’

‘Or end up drunk in a park or kicked to death for being homeless and old,’ agreed Stark. ‘How else would you have it? What better method would you propose?’

‘I’d propose not fighting at all.’

‘As would I, as would any soldier, but this isn’t a Miss World speech. Armies cross borders, corrupt despots starve their populations and fanatics carry out genocidal insanities, and until they stop, someone must be prepared to stand up and say no. If that means some politician bullshitting his apathetic armchair demographic to get it done, then that armchair demographic only have themselves to blame.’

‘How can you say that? They lied to us! How can you, of all people, not care?’

He looked at her now, intently. ‘Because in the end someone has to make the difficult decisions. We elect people to do it for us. Whether they’re right or wrong becomes a matter for debate, and the methods they use to sell us the hard decisions will be endlessly picked over, but we ask them to decide for us and they do their best. If they get it wrong they’re out, fair enough, but anyone thinking they can do better should get out of their armchair.’

‘You think I’m some apathetic, armchair whinger?’

‘Of course not! You serve! You put yourself in harm’s way so other
people don’t have to. You know all this crap already –’ Stark stopped. The look dawning on his face showed he’d finally realized he was being baited.

‘Not bad for an impenetrable sod who doesn’t value his own opinion.’ She laughed openly.

Finally he smiled. ‘Piss off.’ He hopped to the bed and sat down with a grunt. ‘What did the guv’nor say?’

‘He wasn’t in. He’s with the CPS. He didn’t know, then? What about Cox?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘He’s a wily one, the super.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

There was still something distant, disconnected, in his voice. Not as bad as before she’d brought him here, but an echo. He looked bone weary. ‘The shrink spoke with me after I brought you in. How’s that going?’

‘Who can tell? She’s not best pleased with me.’

‘I’ll bet.’ She stared hard at him but that was all she was going to get, it seemed. ‘What about your hip?’

‘Nothing a metal plate and some nuts and bolts can’t fix. This afternoon. They’ve been starving me since yesterday.’

‘Don’t they know you bite if you’re not fed?’ She thought for a moment. ‘I’ll send someone round to pick you up some things. Uniform saw reporters outside your flat this morning. You’ll need somewhere to lie low when they kick you out of here.’

‘Is that an offer, Sarge?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Thanks, but forget the press. If I did a bunk we’d have my mum hunting us down.’

‘Fair enough. Christ knows how we’ll get you out. We’ll have to use a riot wagon.’

‘Maybe the crowd will have lost interest by then.’ He sounded unconvinced. Fran wouldn’t have banked on it either. ‘How’s things in the office?’ he asked.

Not ‘How’s the case going?’ Fran almost smiled at the subtlety. ‘Oh, you know – same shit different day. DS Harper’s been in the wars again,’ she mentioned casually. ‘Poor thing has one arm in a sling.
Nothing broken, thankfully. Took a tumble on the station stairs apparently.’

Stark gave the barest laugh. ‘Will he sue, do you think?’

Now Fran did smile. ‘No. I don’t think so.’ She was pleased to note a flicker of relief on Stark’s face. She asked what he needed from his flat and left him sitting forlornly on the bed.

At the nearby nurses’ station a storm was brewing. Dearing was politely out-looming two Military Policemen while their female officer demanded access with increasing irritation. A senior nurse and a hospital security guard hovered uncomfortably while a girl with dark hair tried to be heard.

Fran recognized her at once, and the officer. A copper never forgot a face, and both were blessed with faces to remember. The army officer who’d door-stepped Stark in the station reception and the girl … She’d been hanging around the nurses’ station on Tuesday evening when Stark was out for the count, she’d been in the Princess of Wales pub and she fitted Stark’s description to a T.

‘I’m his clinician,’ she managed to get in. ‘I have every right –’

‘Hospital staff only, miss,’ Dearing interrupted politely. ‘No excep–’

‘Never mind that,’ interrupted the officer brusquely. ‘This is a military matter, Sergeant. Now stand aside.’

Dearing had stood in uniform too many years to be daunted by her ilk. ‘You’re welcome to take up the matter with my superiors,’ he replied calmly. The MPs stiffened ominously.

‘Perhaps I can help.’ Fran stepped in, smiling.

The officer looked her up and down coolly. ‘And you are?’

Fran flashed her warrant card. ‘Detective Sergeant Millhaven. Captain Pierson, I presume. This is a civilian hospital, Captain, and the sergeant here will stand aside when ordered to and not before. Rest assured, no one is getting in or out of Constable Stark’s room without a hospital badge. You will be allowed to see him during visitors’ hours
if
the nursing staff allow it.’ She turned away from the woman before she could voice the protest evident in her face. ‘And now Kelly, I presume?’

The girl nodded in surprise. ‘I’m sorry, do I know you?’

‘I’m afraid the same applies to you, unless your urgency is indeed clinical, in which case you must take it up with the nurse here.’ To her
credit she looked fit to object vehemently but the captain got in first.

‘Now look here –’

‘I have looked,’ Fran interrupted firmly. ‘I have seen, and I have spoken. And if you don’t like it you are both welcome to have your superiors speak to mine.’ Neither woman looked ready to back down one inch. ‘Or,’ Fran smiled, ‘we can sort this out pleasantly over a coffee, like the capable women we are.’