Fall Guys by Ian Andrew

Author:Ian Andrew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Manuscript, Crime, Mystery, thriller, PI, Military
Publisher: The Book Reality Experience
Published: 2017-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

The Royal Free Hospital, London

Beeps and swishes and claps. Soft and rhythmic. Like the gentlest of alarm clocks. It was all she had listened to for days now. Annoying at first, then comforting. Like a strange affirmation of life. Beeps and swishes and claps. The beeps from the ECG, the swish and clap from the ventilator and then, at irregular intervals, a higher-pitched beep as the automated drip received another hit of pain medication. Round and round, day in day out. A routine. A simple routine but one that was coming to an end. The doctors and nurses had come and gone. Each time assessing and measuring, monitoring and observing. They had slowly reduced the drugs, lifted the anaesthesia. Now they waited for the consciousness to return. The induced coma at an end. The tension increasing. The potential trauma of what might be revealed, coming closer. A palpable expectancy in all those observing. The swelling in the head had reduced. The bruised tissue had retracted to normal size. The internal bleeding was ‘fine’. No ‘complications’. Nothing that would cause ‘undue long-term concern’. Medical speak. A language of its own and one she was used to. It didn’t really mean much. Head injuries were a bit of a lottery. Wake up okay, wake up not okay. The thing was to wake up.

She turned the page of her book and looked once more towards the bed. As she had done a thousand times since she had arrived. Forced to go for food, forced to go for a shower and a change of clothes, forced to go for sleep. She came back each time, sooner than the rest of them had advised. It didn’t matter. Being here mattered. She read books, five of them so far. Read a page, turn the page and look across. Read, turn and look across. Read, turn, look. Read, turn…

“Hello stranger,” she said softly as open eyes looked back at her for the first time in the week she had been here.

No spoken response. Not possible with a tube still providing ventilation.

The eyes closed again.

ɸ

She passed another day, finishing ‘Goodbye to All That’ by Graves and embarking on G.R.Elton’s ‘England under the Tudors’. She had just read of Lord Stanley crowning Henry VII, vanquisher of Richard III, on Bosworth Field, when she sensed a movement to her left. “Hello again,” she said.

The eyes stayed open this time.

“If you can hear me, blink.”

A blink.

She reached forward, resting her hand gently on the bed.

The eyes closed.

ɸ

A day later, as she was sailing with Howard and imagining the fire-ships splitting the Spanish Armada in Calais, the eyes opened again. “Hi,” she said.

The eyes held a confusion in them.

She placed her fingers in the palm of the hand free from drips and monitors.

“If you know who I am, squeeze my hand.”

A long, but weak squeeze.

She smiled down and was about to call for a nurse when she felt two short squeezes. The eyes blinked again. Another short, even weaker squeeze, followed by the feather touch of a long followed by a short squeeze.

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