Split Second (8 page)

‘I don’t know.’

A man dressed in a Santa suit wandered up to the counter, setting off banter among the staff and customers. Louise wanted to weep.

She wondered why Andrew Barnes expected her to have any answers. What had driven him to come and see Luke? Surely he’d enough going on dealing with his own situation. She felt a flare of irritation with him. Edgy, she moved her drink towards the middle of the table. ‘I’m just going out for a smoke, won’t be long.’

He dipped his head, picked up his own drink.

She had to go outside and across the road to escape all the no-smoking notices. Other people ignored the exhortations near the entrance and clustered there; she could see two women sucking hungrily on fags and a man in a wheelchair and another youngish lad with a drip. She didn’t feel proud of smoking again and she didn’t want to flout the rules. The first drag made her cough and her mouth felt dry, her tongue rough; she wished she’d brought her drink out with her.

When she went back to the café, Andrew Barnes had gone.

The man probably didn’t know whether he was coming or going. His son had died trying to help Luke; maybe he’d needed to see the cause of his bereavement. She wondered if he had spoken to Luke and what he’d said. She could have asked Andrew about the fight if she’d only taken the chance instead of running off for a fag. It had been at his house after all. How had it started? Thinking about that, about Luke’s fear and the violence of what they’d done, made her stomach turn.

She hadn’t seen Carl since Saturday, when he’d rung first then come round with takeaway and a couple of bottles of wine. They’d kept in touch by phone, but there had not been any time and she needed to concentrate on Luke and Ruby for now.

She asked him to take the Christmas tree away – see if anyone he knew could make use of it. Ruby stayed close, as if she was frightened to leave Louise. ‘You can go round to Becky’s,’ Louise had told her, ‘or she can come over.’ Thinking that seeing her best friend might be a break for the girl; but Ruby shook her head.

They’d watched a film on telly, a mindless rom-com. Carl laughed too loudly at the slapstick and she wished he’d leave.

At midnight Ruby went to bed and Carl asked Louise if she’d like him to stay. She shook her head and hugged him, said she’d barely slept but wanted to try and get a good night tonight. Thanked him for the food and the wine.

After he’d gone, she stood in the back garden to have the last fag of the day. There was a full moon rising, bright and luminous, a ring around it, mother-of-pearl. It illuminated the whole of the landscape, bouncing magnesium white off the blanket of snow. The lights in Angie’s were off now; Angie would be sleeping in the warm fug of the living room, Sian upstairs.

Louise had wondered about her clients. All the people she’d missed seeing and would miss in the coming week. Some of them – Miriam and Terence and Mrs Coulson (who preferred the formality) – would have got her a Christmas present like last year. Not easy for them to arrange when they were stuck in the house. Miriam’s delight at keeping the gift secret from Louise (who had access to her cupboards and drawers in the course of looking after her) had been present enough. Mrs Coulson had flourished a crumpled parcel wrapped in half a mile of Sellotape, and Louise had thanked her, keeping her face straight when she fought her way into it and discovered the packet of assorted mints that Mrs Coulson herself had received for her birthday back in April. As for Terence, he’d arranged for his daughter in Cornwall to buy and post a beautiful pair of sheepskin mittens. They must have cost him a few bob. ‘It’s perishing out there,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t want you getting chilblains, eh?’ They’d be disappointed not to have a chance to give her their presents. She had not bought theirs yet – always last-minute.

Would they know what had happened? Would some replacement carer tell them about Luke, or would they just be told Louise was off sick?

Louise had dropped her cigarette and heard the hiss as it went out, stooped to pick it up and put it in the wheelie bin. The wind blew even harder, buffeting the fence. Across town, just a couple of miles away, Luke lay still. Alone. ‘Night, night, darling,’ she whispered. And went in.

They stopped the sedation on Tuesday morning. Louise and Ruby had been warned that it was impossible to predict what would happen. ‘Some patients open their eyes almost immediately, others can take hours, days. And some remain unresponsive.’ Persistent vegetative state. Someone had used the term at some point, but she wasn’t going to think about that. He was going to wake up.

There was nothing very dramatic to the withdrawal of sedation, just the unhooking of a drip and a note in his charts. It would take several hours for the sedative to clear from his system. Then they could try rousing him. He was breathing on his own, which they said was really good.

The past three days of bedside vigils had forced Louise to find something to do while she sat there. There was only so much chattering she could manage while Luke lay calm and quiet and so very still. Was he running in his mind? Climbing and ducking and diving? Flying even? Unfettered. She liked to think so, but no one could tell her if he was even able to dream.

So, incapable of reading, her concentration in shreds, and unwilling to sit there like a lemon, she had ransacked the roof space for her rag-bags, pulled out all the cotton pieces and the old card templates and started on a quilt. She’d no clear idea yet whose bed it would go on. There might only be enough for a single, in which case it would be Ruby’s. Or maybe she’d hang it on the wall like a picture. The project meant she could sit with Luke, cutting and tacking hexagons. Threads of cotton and scraps got all over the floor but were easily cleared up.

Ruby had loaded an MP3 player with all Luke’s favourite tunes and rigged it up to a little speaker so they could play it to him. They had it on for a while. Ruby brought some homework to do – a history project. It was one of the few subjects Louise could help her with if needs be, unlike maths or French. Grandad had been big on history and some of it had stuck.

When it got to mid-afternoon, the nurse looking after Luke came in and checked his vital signs again. There was a whole scoring system used to rank a coma. Based on how easily they opened their eyes, verbal ability, and whether they moved when given pain. Below eight was a coma. Luke had ranked five before the operation.

‘Have you tried waking him?’ the nurse asked.

Louise shook her head. They had been told they could, but part of her was fearful of trying, thinking what harm in waiting another few minutes, after she’d tacked the next patch, or the next. The nurse seemed to get this. She gave a little nod and said, ‘When you’re ready, just call his name, touch his shoulder or squeeze his hand. Try it two or three times, and if there’s no response, leave it. We don’t want to overload him. It’s very common not to get a reaction immediately; it doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually. Otherwise just chat to him like you have been.’

‘We’ve been playing him music as well,’ said Ruby.

‘That’s great.’ The nurse smiled. She changed his IV fluid and checked his catheter bag and left. Her kindness disarmed Louise, made her feel weepy. She closed her eyes and waited for the feeling to recede.

Eventually she put her sewing down. She moved her chair up even closer to Luke and put her hand on his shoulder, his skin smooth and warm. She could feel the bones solid beneath, the muscles. Perfect. She leant her head close to his ear. The bandage concealed all the top of his head. The swelling on his cheek had gone down a bit; a small Steri-Strip crossed his torn eyelid and she could see the scab where it was knitting together. The bruises were yellower now, not as obvious.

He was so peaceful. If she woke him, would he start to feel pain? Would they be able to tell?

‘Luke.’ She shook his shoulder. Ruby watched intently, her hand over her mouth.

‘Luke, it’s Mum. You can wake up now, Luke. Come on, Luke, wake up.’

Louise watched for the faintest flicker on his eyelids, any tremor on his face. There was nothing. She picked up his hand and held it in her own. His beautiful hands, long, slim fingers. There were still traces of blood under his fingernails and cuts on his knuckles.

‘Luke. It’s Mum. You’re in hospital. I’m here and Ruby’s here and it’s time to wake up now.’

Time to wake up now.
All the mornings she’d roused him, reminded him, yelled at him, dragged him out of bed and fed him and made sure he got where he was supposed to be going.

He lay unmoving.

Ruby sighed, ‘She said it might not happen straight away.’

‘Yeah.’ Louise’s throat hurt. ‘I’m going to see about giving him a wash. Do you want to go and get a drink? A burger or something?’

Ruby nodded.

The nurse gave her a bowl and a bottle of special cleanser to use in the water and some cloths. They wouldn’t turn him over, but anything she could reach, she could clean.

Louise drew the blanket down. It was some years since she’d seen her son naked, but she felt no embarrassment, though she imagined he would. ‘I’m giving you a bath, Luke. You don’t like it, you can wake up.’

She swept the cloth over his stomach and down his thighs. Over his shins and round his calves. Counting the old scars: the pale oval on his knee where he’d fallen down the promenade steps at Prestatyn beach, the puckered skin on his arm where he’d burnt himself mucking about with a bonfire. She wiped his feet, amazed that he wasn’t writhing around, unable to bear the tickling. She wiped his groin, being careful with the catheter, and then brought fresh water and used a new cloth over his chest and along his arms. She wiped his neck and then his armpits. She could smell his body odour, sharp and musky; she soaped at the tufts of black hair there.

She replenished the bowl again and bathed his hands, lifting each one into the water and letting them soak a few minutes, then running her own fingernail under his to dig out the curls of dried blood. His nails were growing long.

A libation; the word came to her. Something to do with oils and death and purification. The story of Mary Magdalene weeping on Jesus’ feet and washing them with her tears, wiping them dry with her hair. ‘Opiate of the masses,’ Louise muttered, echoing her grandad. She wasn’t washing the dead.

She had a hazy memory of her own mum sharing a bath with her. Four or five she must have been, and the bubbles filled the tub. Her mum scooping up handfuls and sculpting a crown on her own head, then Louise’s. And singing. The memory never got any clearer. There was no one to ask about it; they were all gone.

She changed the water once again, got a fresh cloth. Finally, very gently, she cleaned his face, stroking between the bruises, around his mouth, his chin, up along the edges of the bandage. ‘You’ll do,’ she whispered. And kissed him. Oh Luke, she thought, if love could bring you back, you’d be running round the ward, spinning breaks, turning cartwheels. Crowing with joy. And so would I.

Emma’s skin felt sticky, clammy, and her heart kept missing a beat, like it was tripping and losing its rhythm. She’d felt like that when she had the interview for the job, and each time she had her six-monthly review. It wasn’t as bad as talking in front of lots of people, but it was still gruelling. And the worst thing was when her brain just seized up so she couldn’t even find the right words.

Her throat was sore too, tickly, and she thought she was coming down with something.

The man interviewing her was very nice. He said it must have been traumatic for her to see the incident on the bus and then to learn what had happened. He thanked her for getting in touch and then he asked her to talk him through her journey home that day, starting with leaving work. What time had that been? Did she always get the same bus?

Emma explained, and described where the bus had got to when the three chavs got on. Except she said ‘the three of them’, not wanting to sound rude. He asked her lots of questions about who said what, were those the actual words? Then it dawned on Emma that they must have the CCTV of it all but without any sound. They could see who did what but not who said what.

The man got even more interested when she told him about the names they’d called Luke, the racist stuff, and again when they’d made threats about the knife. Who did they say had a knife? Was she sure? Did she see any knife?

It was clear in her head, like a film trailer, but as she remembered it all, she also caught the cold, sick feeling inside. Frozen, not wanting to do anything and look stupid, just wanting it to stop.

‘It was really, really scary,’ she said, needing to explain. ‘No one knew what to do. They were so horrible,’ she said, ‘really aggressive.’

The man nodded as he wrote.

‘Then Jason came downstairs.’ Saying his name like she knew him, had some connection. But he was just a stranger on a bus. She described the scuffle, felt herself blush, flames in her cheeks as she repeated the swear words. And she described the chase along the pavement. She had to say it in little short bits because she felt like crying. She felt small then, and wrong, and she wanted him to go.

He read back what she’d said and asked her to sign that it was a true record. He told her she might need to give evidence in court. God, no! It was bad enough telling him just sitting in her own place; it would be ten times worse in front of a load of strangers.

The officer got a diagram out, a plan of the bus, explaining it was the exact same layout as the bus Emma had been on. He had some small Post-it notes too. He asked her to write on the notes all the different passengers so he could see where everyone had been. Emma quite liked doing that. It reminded her of the diagrams people had to include for some of their claims, where they had to describe the damage from a leaking dishwasher or what had been broken in a robbery or destroyed by fire:
broken window, all our DVDs melted
or
carpet ruined, and underlay.
Laura once had an old man ring up in a state because burglars had gone to the toilet on his rug (number twos) and he didn’t know if he should include it on the form as it wasn’t a very nice thing to have to put.