And then he was in, his leg at the wrong angle, and the doors slammed behind me.
Crack! Something hit the top of the rig. I screamed and ducked. Some part of me thought absently, Is this it? Is this how I die, in my bad jeans, while a few miles away my parents argue about birthday cakes with my sister? The boy on the gurney was screaming, his voice shrill with fear. And then the ambulance skidded forwards, steering right as the men approached us from the left. I saw a hand rise, and thought I heard a gunshot. I ducked again instinctively.
‘Bloody hell!’ Donna swore and swerved again.
I raised my head. I could make out the exit. Donna steered hard left, then right, the ambulance almost on two wheels as she hurled it around the corner. The wing mirror clipped a car. Someone dived towards us but Donna swerved once more and kept going. I heard the thump of an angry fist on the side. And then we were out on the road, and the young men were behind us, slowing to a furious, defeated jog as they watched us go.
‘Jesus.’
The blue light on, Donna radioing ahead to the hospital, words I couldn’t make out through the thumping in my ears. I was cradling Sam’s face, grey and covered with a fine sheen, his eyes glassy. He was completely silent.
‘What do I do?’ I yelled at Donna. ‘What do I do?’ She screeched around a roundabout and her head swivelled briefly towards me. ‘Find the injury. What can you see?’
‘It’s his stomach. There’s a hole. Two holes. There is so much blood. Oh, God, there’s so much blood.’ My hands came away red and glossy. My breath came in short bursts. I felt, briefly, as if I might faint.
‘I need you to be calm now, Louisa, okay? Is he breathing? Can you feel a pulse?’
I checked, felt something inside me sag with relief. ‘Yes.’
‘I can’t stop. We’re too close. Elevate his feet, okay? Push up his knees. Keep the blood near his chest. Now make sure his shirt is open. Rip it. Just get to it. Can you describe the wound?’
That stomach, which had lain warm and smooth and solid against mine, now a red, gaping mess. A sob escaped my throat. ‘Oh, God …’
‘Don’t you panic now, Louisa. You hear me? We’re nearly there. You have to apply pressure. Come on, you can do this. Use the gauze from the pack. The big one. Whatever, just stop him bleeding out. Okay?’
She turned back to the road, sending the ambulance the wrong way up a one-way street. The boy on the gurney swore softly, now lost in his own private world of pain. Ahead, cars swerved obediently out of the way on the sodium-lit road, waves parting on the tarmac. A siren, always a siren. ‘Paramedic down. I repeat paramedic down. Gunshot wound to the abdomen!’ Donna yelled into the radio. ‘ETA three minutes. We’re going to need a crash cart.’
I unwrapped the bandages, my hands shaking, and ripped open Sam’s shirt, bracing myself as the ambulance tore round corners. How could this be the man who had been arguing with me just fifteen minutes earlier? How could someone so solid just be ebbing away in front of me?
‘Sam? Can you hear me?’ I was crouched over him now on my knees, my jeans darkening red. His eyes closed. When they opened, they seemed to fix on something far away. I put my face down so that I was directly in his field of vision and for a second his eyes locked onto mine and I saw a flicker of something that could have been recognition.
I took hold of his hand, as he had once held mine in another ambulance, a million years ago. ‘You’re going to be okay, you hear me? You’re going to be okay.’
Nothing. He didn’t even seem to register my voice.
‘Sam? Look at me, Sam.’
Nothing.
I was there, back in that Swiss room, Will’s face turning away from mine. Losing him.
‘No. Don’t you dare.’ I placed my face against his, my words falling his ear. ‘Sam. You stay with me, you hear?’ My hand was on the gauze dressing, my body over his, juddering with the rocking of the ambulance. There was the sound of sobbing in my ears and I realized it was my own. I turned his face with my hands, forcing him to look at me. ‘Stay with me! You hear me? Sam? Sam! Sam!’ I had never known fear like it. It was in the stilling of his gaze, the wet warmth of his blood, a rising tide.
The closing of a door.
‘Sam!’
The ambulance had stopped.
Donna leaped into the back. She ripped open a clear plastic pouch, pulling out drugs, white padding, a syringe, injected something into Sam’s arm. With shaking hands she hooked him up to a drip, and placed an oxygen mask over his face. I could hear beeping outside. I was trembling violently. ‘Stay there!’ she commanded, as I made to scramble out of her way. ‘Keep that pressure. That’s it – that’s good. You’re doing great.’ Her face lowered to his. ‘Come on, mate. Come on, Sam. Nearly there.’ I could hear sirens as she worked, still talking, her hands swift and competent on the equipment, always busy, always moving. ‘You’re going to be fine, my old mucker. Just hang on in there, okay?’ The monitor was flickering green and black. The sound of beeping.
Then the doors opened again, flooding the ambulance with swinging neon light, and there were paramedics, green uniforms, white coats, hauling out the boy, still complaining and swearing, then Sam, lifting him gently away from me into the dark night. Blood swilled on the floor of the ambulance and as I made to stand up I slipped and put a hand out to right myself. It came back red.
Their voices receded. I caught a flash of Donna’s face, white with anxiety. A barked instruction: ‘Straight to theatre.’ I was left standing between the ambulance doors, watching as they ran with him, their boots clumping across the tarmac. The doors of the hospital opened and swallowed him, and as they closed again, I was alone in the silence of the car park.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Hours spent on hospital seating have a strange, elastic quality. I had hardly noticed them when I waited for Will during his check-ups; I had read magazines, pecked out messages on my phone, strolled downstairs for too-strong hospital coffee on an overpriced concourse, worried about car-parking charges. Moaned without really meaning it about how long these things always took.
Now I sat on a moulded plastic chair, my mind numb, my gaze fixed on a wall, unable to tell how long I had been there. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel. I just existed: me, the plastic chair, the squeaky linoleum under my bloodied tennis shoes.
The strip-lighting overhead was a harsh constant, illuminating the nurses who walked briskly past, barely giving me a second look. Some time after I had come in, one of them had been kind enough to show me a bathroom so that I could clean my hands, but I could still see Sam’s blood in the dips around my nails, rust-coloured cuticles that hinted at a not-so-distant atrocity. Pieces of him in pieces of me. Pieces of him where they shouldn’t be.
When I closed my eyes I heard the voices, the sharp thwack of the bullet hitting the roof of the ambulance, the echo of the shot, the siren, the siren, the siren. I saw his face, the brief moment when he had looked at me and there had been nothing – no alarm, nothing except perhaps a vague bemusement at finding himself there on the floor, unable to move.
And I kept seeing those wounds, not neat little holes like gunshot injuries in movies, but living, pulsing things, pushing out blood as if they were trying maliciously to rid him of it.
Crack! Something hit the top of the rig. I screamed and ducked. Some part of me thought absently, Is this it? Is this how I die, in my bad jeans, while a few miles away my parents argue about birthday cakes with my sister? The boy on the gurney was screaming, his voice shrill with fear. And then the ambulance skidded forwards, steering right as the men approached us from the left. I saw a hand rise, and thought I heard a gunshot. I ducked again instinctively.
‘Bloody hell!’ Donna swore and swerved again.
I raised my head. I could make out the exit. Donna steered hard left, then right, the ambulance almost on two wheels as she hurled it around the corner. The wing mirror clipped a car. Someone dived towards us but Donna swerved once more and kept going. I heard the thump of an angry fist on the side. And then we were out on the road, and the young men were behind us, slowing to a furious, defeated jog as they watched us go.
‘Jesus.’
The blue light on, Donna radioing ahead to the hospital, words I couldn’t make out through the thumping in my ears. I was cradling Sam’s face, grey and covered with a fine sheen, his eyes glassy. He was completely silent.
‘What do I do?’ I yelled at Donna. ‘What do I do?’ She screeched around a roundabout and her head swivelled briefly towards me. ‘Find the injury. What can you see?’
‘It’s his stomach. There’s a hole. Two holes. There is so much blood. Oh, God, there’s so much blood.’ My hands came away red and glossy. My breath came in short bursts. I felt, briefly, as if I might faint.
‘I need you to be calm now, Louisa, okay? Is he breathing? Can you feel a pulse?’
I checked, felt something inside me sag with relief. ‘Yes.’
‘I can’t stop. We’re too close. Elevate his feet, okay? Push up his knees. Keep the blood near his chest. Now make sure his shirt is open. Rip it. Just get to it. Can you describe the wound?’
That stomach, which had lain warm and smooth and solid against mine, now a red, gaping mess. A sob escaped my throat. ‘Oh, God …’
‘Don’t you panic now, Louisa. You hear me? We’re nearly there. You have to apply pressure. Come on, you can do this. Use the gauze from the pack. The big one. Whatever, just stop him bleeding out. Okay?’
She turned back to the road, sending the ambulance the wrong way up a one-way street. The boy on the gurney swore softly, now lost in his own private world of pain. Ahead, cars swerved obediently out of the way on the sodium-lit road, waves parting on the tarmac. A siren, always a siren. ‘Paramedic down. I repeat paramedic down. Gunshot wound to the abdomen!’ Donna yelled into the radio. ‘ETA three minutes. We’re going to need a crash cart.’
I unwrapped the bandages, my hands shaking, and ripped open Sam’s shirt, bracing myself as the ambulance tore round corners. How could this be the man who had been arguing with me just fifteen minutes earlier? How could someone so solid just be ebbing away in front of me?
‘Sam? Can you hear me?’ I was crouched over him now on my knees, my jeans darkening red. His eyes closed. When they opened, they seemed to fix on something far away. I put my face down so that I was directly in his field of vision and for a second his eyes locked onto mine and I saw a flicker of something that could have been recognition.
I took hold of his hand, as he had once held mine in another ambulance, a million years ago. ‘You’re going to be okay, you hear me? You’re going to be okay.’
Nothing. He didn’t even seem to register my voice.
‘Sam? Look at me, Sam.’
Nothing.
I was there, back in that Swiss room, Will’s face turning away from mine. Losing him.
‘No. Don’t you dare.’ I placed my face against his, my words falling his ear. ‘Sam. You stay with me, you hear?’ My hand was on the gauze dressing, my body over his, juddering with the rocking of the ambulance. There was the sound of sobbing in my ears and I realized it was my own. I turned his face with my hands, forcing him to look at me. ‘Stay with me! You hear me? Sam? Sam! Sam!’ I had never known fear like it. It was in the stilling of his gaze, the wet warmth of his blood, a rising tide.
The closing of a door.
‘Sam!’
The ambulance had stopped.
Donna leaped into the back. She ripped open a clear plastic pouch, pulling out drugs, white padding, a syringe, injected something into Sam’s arm. With shaking hands she hooked him up to a drip, and placed an oxygen mask over his face. I could hear beeping outside. I was trembling violently. ‘Stay there!’ she commanded, as I made to scramble out of her way. ‘Keep that pressure. That’s it – that’s good. You’re doing great.’ Her face lowered to his. ‘Come on, mate. Come on, Sam. Nearly there.’ I could hear sirens as she worked, still talking, her hands swift and competent on the equipment, always busy, always moving. ‘You’re going to be fine, my old mucker. Just hang on in there, okay?’ The monitor was flickering green and black. The sound of beeping.
Then the doors opened again, flooding the ambulance with swinging neon light, and there were paramedics, green uniforms, white coats, hauling out the boy, still complaining and swearing, then Sam, lifting him gently away from me into the dark night. Blood swilled on the floor of the ambulance and as I made to stand up I slipped and put a hand out to right myself. It came back red.
Their voices receded. I caught a flash of Donna’s face, white with anxiety. A barked instruction: ‘Straight to theatre.’ I was left standing between the ambulance doors, watching as they ran with him, their boots clumping across the tarmac. The doors of the hospital opened and swallowed him, and as they closed again, I was alone in the silence of the car park.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Hours spent on hospital seating have a strange, elastic quality. I had hardly noticed them when I waited for Will during his check-ups; I had read magazines, pecked out messages on my phone, strolled downstairs for too-strong hospital coffee on an overpriced concourse, worried about car-parking charges. Moaned without really meaning it about how long these things always took.
Now I sat on a moulded plastic chair, my mind numb, my gaze fixed on a wall, unable to tell how long I had been there. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel. I just existed: me, the plastic chair, the squeaky linoleum under my bloodied tennis shoes.
The strip-lighting overhead was a harsh constant, illuminating the nurses who walked briskly past, barely giving me a second look. Some time after I had come in, one of them had been kind enough to show me a bathroom so that I could clean my hands, but I could still see Sam’s blood in the dips around my nails, rust-coloured cuticles that hinted at a not-so-distant atrocity. Pieces of him in pieces of me. Pieces of him where they shouldn’t be.
When I closed my eyes I heard the voices, the sharp thwack of the bullet hitting the roof of the ambulance, the echo of the shot, the siren, the siren, the siren. I saw his face, the brief moment when he had looked at me and there had been nothing – no alarm, nothing except perhaps a vague bemusement at finding himself there on the floor, unable to move.
And I kept seeing those wounds, not neat little holes like gunshot injuries in movies, but living, pulsing things, pushing out blood as if they were trying maliciously to rid him of it.
