Survival of Thomas Ford, The (5 page)

Thomas Ford was dressed early, sitting upright in the chair by the bed. He was regretting that he’d arranged with Finlay to be picked up at the hospital. It would have been better to just get a taxi by himself, back to the house. But then again he knew he was still unsteady on his feet, safer to fall with Finlay there. By the time Thomas saw Finlay’s head coming through the double doors at the end of the ward he had been ready to just get up and leave on his own anyway though, fall or not.

As Finlay drove down towards the roundabout, Thomas felt a kind of terror. It was like a sickly sweet insanity, lapping at the edges of his soul in waves of suggestion. Obviously, Thomas told himself, this is what it has to be like, the first time in a car since the
Toyota
went into the water. He sat stiffly in Finlay’s passenger seat, trying not to look crazy. He felt his eyeballs swivelling here and there, trying to see too much, too fast. He felt his throat doing rapid swallowing motions.

“Alright there Thomas?”

Thomas blinked and stared straight ahead. He was surprised to find he couldn’t bring himself to turn his neck and look back at Finlay. Something in him was jammed. He could only sniff and nod as Finlay indicated right and took the car into the long, smooth turn.

Soon they were passing through streets full of people, faces, crowds it seemed to Thomas. There had been plenty of people coming and going at the hospital, but this was different. At the hospital everyone had shared a unifying context. Here, outside the car windows, was humanity in the wild. Many of these pairs of eyes would have read about the crash, seen photographs of Lea and himself. Somehow that thought made the crash real in a horrible new way. Thomas thought he recognised a face in the crowd.

“Slow down Finlay,” said Thomas suddenly.

“Sorry man. I can’t go slower here. We’re packed in tight with this traffic.”

Thomas twisted his neck, trying to look back. The thick black hair had been the same, even something birdlike in the face. Thomas had only glimpsed the face for a moment, in the crowd. Now it was gone, there was no way to tell from the backs of all those heads there, which one might have been the driver of the red car that killed Lea. Thomas turned to face the road ahead again.

“I thought I saw someone,” he said.

“Who?”

“No-one. Just my head playing a trick.”

“Yeah?”

“No. Wait. I don’t know. Finlay, stop the car.”

“I can’t stop here.”

Thomas punched the dashboard in front of Finlay.

“Stop the fucking car here or I’m jumping out!”

“Alright. Alright.”

Thomas was shoving at the door handle. Some part of his brain wouldn’t slip into gear, he just kept fumbling at the handle. He saw his hands doing it and realised the gesture was like Lea in the car, twitching uselessly with her hands, neither undoing her seatbelt nor letting Thomas undo it for her. This was the first moment he felt understanding for the way her hands had behaved in that sinking car. Thomas sensed rather than saw, that Finlay had managed to stop in the traffic. He heard horns beeping from behind. Then, almost as though by accident, Thomas had the passenger door open. He lurched his weight toward the pavement. It was full of moving bodies and his legs were shaking with the unaccustomed effort. The physiotherapists at the hospital had made him walk up stairs and down, but this was different. There were so many ways his legs had forgotten to work, to support him, move him, balance him.

“Tom!” Finlay shouted once.

But Thomas Ford didn’t hear. He was in the crowd now, moving up Academy Street, past the bank. The mad thought flashed through his mind, that he should go in and check his account. Then he remembered why he had left the car. He looked ahead, as far as the traffic lights. He would have to cross over, then get to the corner, before he would be at the place where he had seen that black hair and bird face in the crowd. He bit his lip, realising that, no, he would have to get much further than that, to catch up with the head. The head had been walking, its body had been walking, when he saw it from the car. Thomas’ legs just wouldn’t move fast enough, to catch up with the man, not unless the man had stopped for some reason, just round the corner. There was a bus-stop just round that corner, and the back entrance to the railway station, and the big shopping centre. Maybe if the man had been going to the bus-stop, that was Thomas’ only chance of catching up with him.

Thomas felt his left leg bend too much as he took a step. It was just before the traffic lights. The leg buckled and Thomas fell heavily against a large female thigh, covered in cotton. He made a strange sound, hitting the pavement with his shoulder. Then pain spread out from a point deep in Thomas’ chest. It was as though some wild animal had bitten him there and was now chewing. The pain was so intense and relentless that Thomas had to close his eyes and rest his head fully on the pavement. He was oblivious to the pedestrians, the traffic noise, who he was, or where. Only the pain existed now.

Jimmy and Lorna had walked well past the corner by the time Thomas Ford collapsed at the traffic lights behind them. They were not headed for the bus-stop. They were going to the shopping centre. Jimmy liked to stalk its floors and escalators. The observation of the public was both a discipline and a hobby to Jimmy. He enjoyed the feeling of passing anonymously through crowds. His stomach still hurt where his dad had stamped on him. He had to stop and sit for a while on a bench, just inside the shopping centre’s large doorway. He leaned forward on the bench, grinning, looking straight ahead, hugging his belly.

“No Jimmy. That’s not right. You should go up to the hospital and get it checked. You could come up with me on the bus when I start my shift. OK?”

Jimmy grinned harder and shook his head. He did not look at Lorna. He sighed out air, then sucked in a breath greedily. He blew out quickly twice. He laughed.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll get you a coffee up in Starbucks.”

Jimmy chose the high seats by the window. Lorna was sipping coffee and watching Jimmy watching the people pass by. It was disconcerting, the attitude he had to the passing crowd, as though he was watching television and these people passing were only half-real to him. Sometimes Lorna would see someone in the crowd notice Jimmy staring. The person would look back at Jimmy but Jimmy would not react, he would show no awareness that he was being looked at. He would just continue to grin like an Alsatian dog on a hot day. Lorna looked away from Jimmy, down into her coffee. At that exact moment Jimmy turned his black eyes on her.

“Did you talk to that man again at work?” he said.

“Who?”

“That man you said you’d talked to. The one who had the accident out near Drumnadrochit, at Loch Ness. His wife died in the car eh?”

Lorna frowned.

“Thomas Ford? He’ll have gotten out today. Gone home.”

“Aye,” said Jimmy. “You were saying you got talking to him eh? That he was quite nice.”

This was the third time Jimmy had asked, over the weeks since he had found out that Lorna was cleaning in Intensive Care when Thomas Ford was there. The first time had made sense to Lorna, because Jimmy had been reading in the paper about the crash and he had asked her if she had seen the man whose photo was in the paper, at the hospital. But now there was something strange to Lorna, about Jimmy asking, and the tone of his voice when he asked.

“Did he ever say anything to you about his wife?” said Jimmy. “Or about the crash, how it happened?”

Lorna watched Jimmy. He blinked. He grinned. He lifted his mug to take a drink of coffee, but he swallowed before he drank.

“No, Jimmy, of course he didn’t.”

“I don’t know,” said Jimmy. “Stressful situation. People will talk about anything, after an accident like that. Bonnie lassie like you, Lorna. Shoulder to cry on.”

Lorna shook her head and looked out the window, into the crowd of faces

The Accident and Emergency staff couldn’t believe that this was Thomas Ford back again. They recognised him right away. The story of a man escaping from a car that crashed into a freezing loch and sunk didn’t come along every day around there. The Indian doctor was asking Thomas about the pain, but Thomas’ eyes were darting around the ceiling like twin flying insects.

“Mr Ford? Mr Ford? No, Jill, call ITU and tell them Mr Ford’s on the way back up.”

By the time the bus arrived at the hospital there was only five minutes left before the start of Lorna’s shift. The west theatre was still undergoing its rapid clean and detox, to ready it for the spot-inspection that hospital admin had been forewarned was to happen. Jimmy was curled forward on the seat beside Lorna. Sweat glistened on his forehead. Lorna had an arm round him as they got off the bus. She half-carried him to the reception for Accident and Emergency. Finlay, who was sitting, still waiting for word to come back about Thomas, looked up as the girl and young guy tottered through the double doors. At first, Finlay thought they were drunk, but no, the young man seemed to be in pain, his guts.

Five minutes later, Jimmy found himself lying back on a trolley in a room full of people, looking at the ceiling.

“Hey,” he said, “I don’t think I should be here. It was my girlfriend. I just had some pain and she made this big thing of it.”

Jimmy’s shirt was off. He noticed a nice-looking young nurse and stared at her. He hoped she was impressed by his tight abdomen and healthy pink torso. But she didn’t meet his eyes. Then his stomach started that whooshing pain again.

“Whhoooooo!” went Jimmy. “Hey though, I think I’ll be fine eh?”

“Mr McCallum, I see you have deep bruising here on your stomach. Mr McCallum, have you been in a recent altercation? I would say that is the imprint of a boot there.”

The first thing that came to Jimmy’s mind was Lorna’s boots.

“Aye, well, maybe playing around a bit with the girlfriend and that eh? She might have eh, stood on me like.”

“Stood on you?”

“Aye. She’s a sound lassie like. Lorna. Works here eh? Aye, a cleaner like. I better no tell you her name or you’ll know who it is eh? Don’t want you going up to her like, in her tea-break or that, and asking her to stand on you too eh doc?”

Jimmy let his head fall back on the hard trolley. He laughed up into the harsh overhead lighting.

“Bit like the dentist this eh doc? Eh? You haven’t got a pillow have you? Aw, you know, I’ve changed my mind eh? There’s no need for all this. I’ll just split eh?”

A nurse was taking Jimmy’s pulse. Jimmy moved jerkily, reaching for his shirt which he could see stacked on his jacket near the trolley he was on. The nurse’s hand was batted away roughly. She moved back in reaction and knocked a tray of instruments over. They clattered noisily to the floor. The doctor turned to see what had happened. Another nurse instinctively put a hand on Jimmy’s bare shoulder.

“Hey,” said Jimmy, “get your paw off! I’m splitting eh? Shouldn’t have come. Bloody girlfriend’s idea.”

“Mr McCallum!” said the doctor. “Calm yourself!”

“I’m calm! Just get your bitch here off me eh, before he loses the hand. I just want my shirt.”

The nurse’s hand stayed on Jimmy’s shoulder.

“Get the fuck off eh!”

“Mr McCallum!”

Jimmy pushed the nurse hard, on the chest. The nurse moved through the air slowly it seemed, until his back hit a large, expensive-looking machine on wheels. The machine tipped over and crashed to the floor. There was an electrical fizz, then a loud explosion and sparks filled the air. Jimmy felt more arms on his shoulders and chest, pushing him back and down. Jimmy saw the doctor’s face close to his.

“Control yourself, Mr McCallum!”

“Hey, don’t touch me motherfucker…
hey motherfuckers…don’t fucking touch me…you’ll lose that hand motherfucker…”

Over the shoulder of the doctor, Jimmy saw a young, pretty nurse filling a syringe from a tiny bottle. He saw her hold the syringe up to the fluorescent lights, as though in a moment of sacrament, and flick it casually with a long finger. He fixed his eyes on hers as she approached him.

“Hey bitch, don’t think you’re going to stick that fucking needle in me…I’ll stick it up you…get your filthy fucking paws off me! Do you know who I am? I could kill all you cunts with one hand! Get the fuck off me!”

When they got the needle into him, nothing happened for a second. Then it felt like a brick was in his arm. The brick travelled very slowly up to Jimmy’s chest, then his neck. When the brick reached Jimmy’s eyeballs his head got heavier and heavier until it flopped back on the trolley and bounced.

As soon as Thomas Ford was back in the bed in Intensive Care his mind seemed to clear. The pain was gone from his chest. Kate, the nurse, was grinning at him.

“Thomas, what have you been up to? We let you go and you just come right back. How’s that going to look on our annual statistics? You’re not making us look exactly competent.”

Thomas blinked at her. Then a tall man appeared at her shoulder in profile. He had a strange sloping look to his face. He murmured something to Kate and she nodded. The man turned to face Thomas.

“Hello Mr Ford. I’m Dr Radthammon. I’m a cardiologist. I hear you collapsed on the street, shortly after discharge this morning, that is correct?”

Thomas nodded.

“I know you have reported pains in your chest area, Mr Ford, which is why I have been asked to consult. I’ve talked to Dr Timmons and read his notes. Now I’d like to examine you myself, OK? Could you manage to sit up a little? That’s good.”

Thomas tried to shift on the bed.

“Are you able to speak, Mr Ford?”

“Yes. Actually, I feel a lot better now. The pain is gone.”

“I see. Breathe deeply please. Yes. And out again. Good. Is there pain when you breathe?”

“No. Not now.”

“But earlier there was?”

“Well, not exactly. The pain was just huge, like something was biting my chest.”

“Right, Mr Ford, we’ll do some more tests then. We’ll talk again when I have the results.”

Lorna was thinking about Jimmy as she took the cleaning solutions from the storeroom and began to stack them on the small trolley. How could his own father stamp on his stomach? She had met Mr McCallum, Jimmy’s dad, twice. Jimmy had told her so much, about his father being a hard man. Jimmy was proud of his father’s status, the respect he had from his employees, but at the same time Jimmy was always arguing and fighting with his father.

She pushed the trolley along the corridor, noticing a damp area on the high yellow wall, near the ceiling. At the left turn towards the theatre, she was able to glance through into Intensive Care by the rear exit. There, framed perfectly by the green-painted walls, she saw Thomas Ford’s head, lying on a pillow. That was strange. He should have been discharged. She remembered Jimmy asking about the man again today, in the café, and now, there was the man here still. He must have had some kind of relapse. That could certainly happen, with the pressure to get folk out of ITU and down to High Dependency or the normal wards. Then you saw people in the normal wards getting sent home too soon. Lorna had seen an eighty-year-old woman discharged from the chest ward the day before, against her family’s wishes. The old woman’s son had made a scene with the Sister, accusing them of only putting his mother out to clear a bed. But the woman had left in the son’s car, only to pass out at the first roundabout and have to be brought back. Lorna and another cleaner had watched and listened to it all, as it unfolded, like it was a play.

She pushed the trolley against the theatre doors, and Jimmy came back into her mind again. What was that he had been saying last night, about atoms and accidents, cars falling through the air? No-one else ever talked to her about things like that. Lorna laughed. God, she hoped he was alright, but what the hell could he be saying right now, to the A&E doctors and nurses? She leaned on the trolley and let out a long, braying laugh. He could be saying absolutely anything. He’d be lucky to get out of here without being Sectioned. Mr McCallum, we are keeping you here under Article so-and-so of the Mental Health Act. She finished laughing and shook her head. No, really, he would be lucky to get home without being Sectioned if he said to the staff here half the things she’d heard him going on about lately.

She blinked and pushed the trolley again.

Shit, and he would blame her, for making him come here.