The Blame Game. C.J. Cooke

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СКАЧАТЬ nod and study his face for clues. This is probably as much information as I’m going to get from him about the man who came. I look around the ward – it’s unusually quiet, all the visitors gone and the patients asleep. Just the sound of the traffic outside and the ceiling fan.

      ‘Let’s go check on Saskia,’ I say, and he wheels me quickly down the hall to her room. When I see her there in the bed it’s a bizarre mixture of relief and renewed grief that hits me hard.

      I take her little hand in mine, staggered by the confirmation by each of my senses that this is happening. Crescent moons of blood and dirt under her nails. Her closed eyes and the frightening chasm between each bleep of her pulse.

      Night falls and every time I hear footsteps coming up the hallway I seize up with blunt, raw fear. The ward I’m in is right at the far end of the wing and there is no exit without going up the hallway, so if anyone came to get Reuben and me, we have nowhere to run. The hospital is like something straight out of a zombie movie – there is one bathroom that I’ve spotted and it was crawling with insects, no loo paper, and brown water pouring from the taps. No catering, very little drinking water. Both Reuben and I are weak from hunger. I’ve asked to be moved but the nurses either don’t understand me or feign ignorance. Vanessa hasn’t appeared and I’m worried that she won’t return. She said a neurosurgeon was coming to see Saskia – why isn’t he here?

      There is no phone I can use and I don’t have my mobile. Worst of all, they won’t let me sleep in Saskia’s room. Reuben and I take up too much space and the nurses need to be able to access her – it took half an hour of interpretive gestures for me to work out that this was the reason – but it’s utter rubbish, because we only get seen once a day. I’m trying to be brave for Reuben’s sake. He keeps saying, ‘What’s wrong, Mum? What’s wrong?’ and I have to tell him I’m fine, that everything is fine.

      But it’s a lie.

       9

       Michael

      31st August 2017

      My head hurts like a meteor has landed on it. Someone’s knocking against the windowpane, a thunk thunk that seems to fall into rhythm with the banging in my head. I get up to see who’s knocking and find it’s an insect of some sort, the size of a small bird, trying to get outside. With a gasp of pain I yank the tube out of my arm and struggle forward to let the bugger out. He has a stinger about three inches long but he’s more scared of me than I am of him.

      I sit on the side of the bed and discover I’m wearing a snot-green hospital gown, tied at the waist and neck like a weird apron. Nothing underneath. Who undressed me? I’m in what seems to be a hospital, albeit a pretty nasty one. It looks like a building site. Smells like one, too. My back aches like I’ve fallen off a mountain. I’m covered in cuts and bruises. My first thought is that I’m here because of the fire, and my mind spins back to being trapped inside the shop, black smoke swirling. The sensation of my lungs being crushed.

      And then the sight of Luke at the beach hut. His hands out at either side in a half-shrug, as if to say, what did you expect? With a shiver I wonder if I saw a ghost. A more rational explanation is that I was half-asleep, or that the trespasser bore an uncanny resemblance to Luke. But it could have been Theo.

      There’s a black rucksack on the floor next to the bed. I pull it towards me and begin hunting through it. Not much in here. Someone’s already been through it. Of course they have. I know I put Helen’s passport in here, the kids’. All three are gone.

      I remember putting my passport in the secret pocket at the back. It’s still there, along with my wallet, a notepad, pen, and my mobile phone. The battery’s dead. Damn it.

      My checked shirt is rolled up in there, too. I pull off my bloodied T-shirt and use it to wipe my armpits and neck, throw on the clean checked shirt. I see my shoes on the floor by the door.

      I see a nurse walking down the corridor and my impulse is to call out to her, tell her to contact our next of kin and tell them what’s happened. But neither Helen nor I have parents, or any close relatives.

      I sit back against the cold bars of the bed, weighed down by the knowledge that we have no one to call for help.

      This is my family. I have to do it. There is no one else.

       10

       Helen

      1st September 2017

      I fight sleep for as long as I can, listening out for sounds of movement in the hallway. I have the distinct feeling of being watched. Not just a feeling – a gut-wrenching certainty. All the hairs on my body stand on end despite the crushing heat, my senses on high alert and my heart fluttering in my chest. I’m in excruciating pain and physically helpless against whoever is in the shadows, watching us. None of the nurses on the ward tonight understand me and no one helps. We are completely alone.

      The white van coming towards us is a vivid, garish splinter in my mind, and my foot jerks, puppet-like, at an imaginary brake pedal every time I think of it. Over and over, this circular reaction, my body reacting to a memory that’s stuck in the pipework of my mind.

      When my body finally caves in to exhaustion I dive deep into dreams and surface again with a gasp into that same terrible realisation of where I am, and why.

      I dream of the fire at the bookstore, black clouds of smoke billowing out of the windows of the shop, ferociously hot. Michael and I at the end of the street helplessly watching on as fire fighters roll out long hoses and blast the flames with jets of water. In the dream, though, it is the beach hut that’s ablaze, not the shop. A figure running away from the scene, up the bank into darkness. I try to get Michael’s attention.

       Look! Do you think he was the one who caused the fire?

      Michael’s comment floats to the surface of my dreams.

       Kids didn’t start the fire, Helen.

      There is a tone in his voice that I can’t work out. When I wake, it continues to echo in my ears, making the slow transition from dream to memory.

      A little after eight in the morning I hear voices down the hall: an ambulance is here to take Saskia to the hospital in Belize City. To my relief, they say that both Reuben and I can go, though for one terrifying moment I feel I’m abandoning Michael. He would want me to go.

      But right as the nurses are helping me into the ambulance, Vanessa pulls up alongside us in her car. ‘The police have requested that you go to the station right now to make a statement about the collision,’ she says emphatically.

      I tell her that Saskia is going for surgery right at this moment but she holds up her hands.

      ‘It’s not my call,’ she says. ‘The police have the last say. And they require you to go to them right away.’

      It’s a heart-breaking decision to have to make, but Vanessa insists I have no choice. She says I have a legal obligation to СКАЧАТЬ